Mar he thought about sunny days and sensual nights, warm, clear seas and sex...
“You have to go, Mac,” Kade said, deeply serious.
Mac knew it was a reasonable option. Hell, he’d brought up the idea of leaving. But he couldn’t help feeling like he had as a kid. Powerless over his situation.
“My life sucks,” Mac grumbled.
“Yeah, poor baby. You’re heading for a luxury house on a Caribbean island with a hot chick.” Quinn mocked him by rubbing his eyes like a toddler. “Boo hoo.”
Mac still had the use of his good arm. A well-placed punch to Quinn’s throat would relieve a lot of his frustration.
Kade ignored Quinn. “I like the idea of you heading to the beach house for all the reasons I mentioned and one more.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Nobody will know where you are so you’ll be free of the media.”
“Always a bonus,” Mac agreed.
“And if something happens between you and Rory then they won’t pick up on that either,” Kade added.
Mac held Kade’s mocking glare. Okay, yeah, of course that was a factor. He would try to resist her but his willpower where she was concerned wasn’t a sure thing.
“It’s not going to happen,” he said, but he wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince his friends or himself.
Quinn laughed. “You’re going to take one look at Rory in her bikini and be all ‘let me show you the view from my room.’”
A punch to the throat would definitely shut Quinn up and would make Mac feel so much better, he mused.
“Sorry, I’m late.” Rory picked up her e-reader from her coffee table and shoved it into her tote bag.
“We’ve got time.” Mac, standing by the window, looked at his watch. “Not a lot but some. And if the jet misses its time slot, we’ll just request another.”
Private jets and time slots. Rory tried not to look impressed. But she was. She was traveling to the Caribbean in style. Rory tried to think calmly. She’d done most of her packing last night but she’d thought she’d have time to finish up this morning. Thanks to Troy’s mom going walkabout from her nursing home, that hadn’t happened. She and Troy had spent three hours looking for her and had eventually tracked her down in a garden center sitting on a bench between two cherry trees. Rory was glad Troy’s mom was okay but her temporary disappearance had put a serious dent in Rory’s schedule.
“Passport and credit card,” Mac told her. “You can buy anything else you need there.”
So spoke the man with far too much disposable income, Rory thought. She held up her hand in a silent gesture for him to be quiet. She needed to think, and him standing in her little apartment, looking so hot, wasn’t helping. All she could think about was that she was leaving the country with a sexy man who just had to breathe to turn her on.
Her eyes dropped to his arm, which rested in a black sling. He was injured, she reminded herself.
You could go on top...
Rory slapped her hand across her forehead.
“Tell me about Puerto Rico,” Rory said, hoping the subject would distract her from thinking about straddling Mac, positioning herself so that...argh!
“It’s an island in the Caribbean,” Mac replied.
“Don’t be a smart-ass. Tell me about the house where we’re staying.”
Mac leaned his shoulder into the wall and crossed his legs at the ankles. It was so wrong that he looked at home in her apartment, like he had a right to be there. “The house is situated about thirty-five minutes from San Juan, on a secluded cove near only two other houses. It’s three stories, mostly open-plan and it has glass folding doors that open up so you feel like you are part of the beach and sea.
“The owners of the other two properties are off-island at the moment so we’ll be the only people using the cove.” Mac added.
Rory swallowed at the low, sexy note in his voice. She’d be alone with Mac, on a Caribbean island, with warm, clear water and white beaches and palm trees. Utterly and absolutely alone. She wasn’t sure whether the appropriate response was to be thrilled or terrified.
Or both.
Sex and business don’t mix! He’s your patient!
Sun, sea, sexy island...sexy man.
Get a grip, Kydd. Not liking the cocky look in his eyes, the glint that suggested he knew exactly what she was thinking, she lifted her nose. “Well, at least we won’t disturb the neighbors with your screams of pain when we start physio.”
“Or your screams of pleasure when I make you fall apart in my arms,” Mac replied without a second’s hesitation.
Rory’s heart thumped in her chest but she kept her eyes locked on his, refusing to admit he rattled her. Instead of making her furious, as it should, his comments made her entire body hum in anticipation. Her body was very on board with that idea.
Rory folded her arms and rocked on her heels. “I hate it when you say things like that.”
“No, you don’t. You want to hate it because it turns you on.” Mac looked up at the ceiling. When he looked back at her, his expression was rueful. “Ignore me, ignore that.”
She couldn’t do as he asked. They needed to address the pole dancing, come-and-get-me-baby elephant gyrating in the room. “Mac, I don’t know what you think is going to happen in Puerto Rico, but us sleeping together can’t happen, won’t happen.”
“I know why I think it shouldn’t happen. I have a few solid reasons for thinking it would be a hell of a mistake, but I’m interested in hearing yours.”
Rory bit the inside of her lip. God, she couldn’t tell him she thought he was just like her dad, unfaithful. That the fact he’d dated her sister bugged her. Or her personal favorite: that he drove her crazy.
Rory thought fast and latched onto the first reasonable excuse that popped into her head. “I’m on sticky ground here. I shouldn’t treat you and sleep with you—that would be crossing some pretty big lines. I have to maintain professional boundaries with clients. I can’t misuse or abuse my position of authority—”
“You have no position of authority over me,” Mac scoffed.
“The point remains—” Rory gritted her teeth “—that if I engage in any nonprofessional behavior I can be pulled up before the board.”
Mac stared at her, his face inscrutable. “Okay, for the sake of argument, may I point out that you’ll be in a foreign country and nobody but us will know? And you’re on holiday.”
“I’d
