glass and left the bar.
She walked across the small breadth of decking and down the sand-covered steps onto the beach. Why couldn’t it be any other girl in the entire world who haunted his dreams and made him want to fix her life in every way? Why Robbie’s sister? Why the woman who blamed him for an unthinkable tragedy, detested him and would undoubtedly rip his heart from his chest once she found the worst possible way to do it?
He clenched his jaw. Deep inside, he sensed Izzy would be incapable of cruelty no matter how much she might want to humiliate him. Her kindness and false sense of bravado were the things that struck at his very core since he first laid eyes on her. From the moment she’d walked into the Coast bar to join her brother for a late-night drink, Trent had wanted to know who she was. The discovery that Izzy was the sister of the first guy he’d befriended in Templeton had been an obstacle he was determined to overcome.
It had taken him almost four years to have the honor of kissing and touching such a beautiful and wonderful woman. Then Robbie was killed and Trent hadn’t for one moment considered the strength of Izzy’s resistance to having anything more to do with him.
“That’s six pounds, twenty, mate.”
The barman’s voice sliced through Trent’s reverie and he turned, sliding his hand into his back pocket for his wallet. Saying nothing, his eyes still on the barman’s. The guy had clearly decided Izzy was a free agent from the way his cool stare met Trent’s.
Trent slid a ten-pound note from his wallet and held it out. “Keep the change.”
The barman nodded, his face somber as he reached for the money. “I’ll put it in the charity box.”
“You do that, and for the record, that girl I’m with, she’s out of bounds.”
The barman smiled. “I didn’t get the impression she considers herself yours, mate.”
“One, I’m not your mate and, two, she’s had a rough time of it lately and doesn’t need guys hitting on her left, right and center.”
The barman took the note from Trent’s fingers and raised his eyebrows. “Fair enough. Might be a good idea if you took your own advice, if that’s the case.”
He walked away and Trent glared at the barman’s retreating back as he picked up his beer. He took a hefty slug and turned to the beach, his gaze immediately picking out Izzy as she stood alone, jigging lightly to an R&B track, her almost-empty glass swaying back and forth in her hand.
He headed in her direction. Even if he could never get her to accept that Robbie had died before the fire service’s arrival on the scene, he would do anything to make her genuinely smile again. He’d make that happen, even if he was eventually forced to admit defeat and surrender her to another man. If someone else—apart from the cocky barman—could hold her in his arms and make her smile, it would be enough for him to let her go.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.
He moved beside her and she turned, her eyebrows raised. “Finished your face-off with the bar staff?”
He took another drink. “Yep.”
“Good.” She reached up, took the bottle from his hand and placed it beside her glass on an upturned crate beside her. She took his hand. “Now we dance.”
“I told you I don’t dance.”
He tugged her back and she stopped short. “What?”
His gaze drew like a tracker beam to her sweet, kissable mouth. “You’ll regret making me do this.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”
* * *
IZZY REGRETTED HER decision to dance with him the instant Trent’s hands touched her waist.
Boom! The sexual tension took off like a damn rocket.
What was wrong with her? For months and months, even before Robbie died, she’d avoided having anything less than two feet of space between her and Trent in the name of self-preservation. She’d watched enough women embarrass themselves by salivating after her brother’s best friend to know there was something about Trent that was potent and dangerous.
Then she’d gone and slept with him.
What had she thought would happen after such an amazing night? That one or both of them would walk away, be unaffected by those hours? The truth was, three amazing weeks had followed...and then Robbie was killed and ever since, everything between her and Trent had been different. Irrevocably different.
She would never again open herself up to the risk of falling in love only to have the guy die or walk away.
Yet she’d given in to the childish need to call Trent out, to bluff his advances and now she was suffering the consequences of his magnetism all over again. Once Trent had his entire focus on a woman and she was close enough to smell his scent, she was caught.
Then to have him put his hands on her?
Izzy swallowed her groan as it threatened to erupt, slapped on a smile and raised an eyebrow in an attempt to impersonate a femme fatale who could nonchalantly separate the men from the boys whenever she chose. “Are we going to move? Or just stand here with you looking at me like that?”
He smiled. “Like what?”
“Like you’re going to...” Her shaky facade faltered. “Bite me.”
He laughed...and goddamn it if she didn’t smile. Really smile. He met her gaze again and winked. He pulled her closer and, against her better judgment, Izzy didn’t move away.
The music slowed and a soul ballad pumped seductively from the speakers like a cruelly planned serenade. He nodded. “Now, this kind of dance I can do. We just need to get real close and shuffle. You can shuffle, right?”
Every inch of her body screamed with suppressed sexual attraction. Her heart beat fast as she fought the heat tingling through her breasts and lower. The man was a walking, talking love machine.
She forced her gaze to stay on his. “Of course I can.”
“Good.”
He lifted one of her hands to his chest and, with a single tug on the other, eased her close enough a grain of sand couldn’t have lodged between them. His heart beat under her palm, as hers pulsed in her ears. The soft teasing in his eyes slowly dissolved until he looked at her with such focused attention her legs grew feeble. Her feet shifted upon the sand of their own accord. He was so tall, broad and wide at this close proximity, she felt fragile in his arms. She looked into his eyes and her stomach flipped over as if she were a fifteen-year-old girl instead of a twenty-nine-year-old woman. Heat burned. Attraction soared. At last, for just a few moments, everything felt right in the world.
She froze.
Everything wasn’t right in the world. Despite the slowly gathering peace between her and her parents, they were still thousands of miles away. Robbie was still dead, and the man who held her so close his breath whispered across her lashes had arrived too late at the garage to save her brother’s life.
She
