smile had faded, and the amusement in his eyes was gone, replaced by something else entirely, something hot and dangerous and impossible to turn away from.
“I like my positive reinforcement delivered a little differently,” he told her, his voice no more than a husky whisper.
His gaze flickered down to her mouth, then up again to meet her eyes, and Mia knew that he was going to kiss her. He leaned forward slowly, giving her plenty of time to back away. But she didn’t move. She couldn’t move. Or maybe she just plain didn’t want to move.
She felt him sigh as his lips met hers. His mouth was warm and sweet, and he kissed her so softly. He touched her lips gently with his tongue, waiting until she granted him access before he deepened the kiss. And even then, even as she opened herself to him, he kissed her breathtakingly tenderly.
It was the sweetest kiss she’d ever shared.
He pulled back to look into her eyes, and she could feel her heart pounding. But then he smiled, one of his beautiful, heart-stoppingly perfect crooked smiles, as if he’d just found gold at the end of a rainbow. And this time she reached for him, wrapping her arms up around his neck, pressing herself against him, stabbing her fingers up into the incredible softness of his hair as she kissed him again.
This time it was pure fire. This time he touched her with more than just his lips, pulling her even harder against his chest, running his hands along the bare skin of her back, through her hair, down her arms as he met her tongue in a kiss of wild, bone-melting intensity.
“Frisco! Frisco! The ice-cream truck is here! Can I get an ice cream?”
Mia pushed Frisco away from her even as he released her. He was breathing as hard as she was, and he looked thoroughly shaken. But Natasha was oblivious to everything but the ice-cream truck that had pulled into the beach parking lot.
“Please, please, please, please, please,” she was saying, running in circles around and around the beach blanket.
Frisco looked up toward the end of the beach, where the ice-cream truck was parked, and then back at Mia. He looked as shocked and as stunned as she felt. “Uh,” he said. He leaned toward her and spoke quickly, in a low voice. “Can you take her? I can’t.”
“Of course.” She quickly pulled on her T-shirt. God, her hands were shaking. She glanced up at him. “Is your knee all right?”
He dug a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to her with a weak grin. “Actually, it has nothing to do with my knee.”
Suddenly Mia understood. She felt her cheeks heat with a blush. “Come on, Tasha,” she said, pulling her hair out from the collar of her T-shirt as she led the little girl up the beach.
What had she just done?
She’d just experienced both the sweetest and the most arousing kisses of her entire life—with a man she’d vowed to stay away from. Mia stood in line with Tasha at the ice-cream truck, trying to figure out her next move.
Getting involved with Frisco was entirely out of the question. But, oh, those kisses… Mia closed her eyes. Mistake, she told herself over and over. She’d already made the mistake—to continue in this direction would be sheer foolishness. So okay. He was an amazing mixture of sweetness and sexiness. But he was a man who needed saving, and she knew better than to think she could save him. To become involved would only pull her under, too. Only he could save himself from his unhappiness and despair, and only time would tell if he’d succeed.
She’d have to be honest with him. She’d have to make sure he understood.
In a fog, she ordered Tasha’s ice cream and two ice bars for herself and Frisco. The trek back to the blanket seemed endlessly long. The sand seemed hotter than before and her feet burned. Tasha went back to her sand castle, ice cream dripping down her chin.
Frisco was sitting on the edge of the blanket, soaking wet, as if he’d thrown himself into the ocean to cool down. That was good. Mia wanted him cooled down, didn’t she?
She handed him the ice pop and tried to smile as she sat down. “I figured we could all use something to cool us off, but you beat me to it.”
Frisco looked at Mia, sitting as far from him as she possibly could on the beach blanket, and then down at the ice bar in his hands. “I kind of liked the heat we were generating,” he said quietly.
Mia shook her head, unable even to look him in the eye. “I have to be honest. I hardly even know you and…”
He stayed silent, just waiting for her to go on.
“I don’t think we should… I mean, I think it would be a mistake to…” She was blushing again.
“Okay.” Frisco nodded. “That’s okay. I…I understand.” He couldn’t blame her. How could he blame her? She wasn’t the type who went for short-term ecstasy. If she played the game, it would be for keeps, and face it, he wasn’t a keeper. He was not the kind of man Mia would want to be saddled with for the rest of her life. She was so full of life, and he was forced to move so slowly. She was so complete; he was less than whole.
“I should probably get home,” she said, starting to gather up her things.
“We’ll walk you back,” he said quietly.
“Oh, no—you don’t have to.”
“Yeah, we do, okay?”
She glanced up at him, and something she saw in his eyes or on his face made her know not to argue. “All right.”
Frisco stood up, reaching for his cane. “Come on, Tash, let’s go into the water one last time and wash that ice cream off your face.”
He tossed the unopened ice pop into a garbage can as he walked Natasha down to the ocean. He stared out at the water and tried his damnedest not to think about Mia as Tasha rinsed the last of her ice cream from her face and hands. But he couldn’t do it. He could still taste her, still feel her in his arms, still smell her spicy perfume.
And for those moments that he’d kissed her, for those incredible few minutes that she’d been in his arms, for the first time since the last dose of heavy-duty pain medication had worn off five years ago, he’d actually forgotten about his injured knee.
NATASHA DIDN’T SEEM to notice the awkward silence. She chattered on, to Mia, to Frisco, to no one in particular. She sang snatches of songs and chanted bits of rhymes.
Mia felt miserable. Rejection was never fun, from either the giving or the receiving end. She knew she’d hurt Frisco by backing away. But her worst mistake had been to let him kiss her in the first place.
She wished she’d insisted that they take her car to the beach, rather than walk. Frisco was a master at hiding his pain, but she could tell from the subtle changes in the way he held himself and the way he breathed that he was hurting.
Mia closed her eyes briefly, trying not to care, but she couldn’t. She did care. She cared far too much.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured to Frisco as Natasha skipped ahead of them, hopping over the cracks in the sidewalk.
He turned and looked at her with those piercing blue
