office, embarrassing herself beyond measure, she remembered coming to and finding the doctor almost finished stitching her foot. Nick had actually been very sweet by distracting her while the nurse gave her a tetanus booster shot. Bree moved her arm tentatively, happy that it didn’t hurt too much, at least not yet. Although nothing was as bad as her headache at the moment.
She remembered Nick walking her back to her cabin. But wait a minute... They’d stopped walking when they’d heard laughing in the distance and Bree had recognized her girlfriends’ voices. So they’d followed the sound to the hot tub. Right, the hot tub.
Amber had been curled up in a towel on a lounge chair, an empty champagne bottle on the ground next to her. Hannah had sat on the edge of the pool, dangling her feet in the water. Roxie. What had Roxie been doing? Oh, right. She’d been in the hot tub with a couple of other people.
She remembered something else, but had no clue how much time had passed between the two memories. There was something about a boat. Had they been on a boat?
The rest was a blank until she woke up this morning next to Nick. At least they’d been fully clothed.
Had they slept together? Evidence pointed to them doing just what Nick had suggested. Sleeping or—more precisely—passing out.
Nick walked back into the cabin then, ending her musings. He headed directly to the small kitchen sink in the corner of the cabin and washed his hands.
“Have you been tested?” she asked.
He spun around. “Tested?”
“Yes. Have you been tested for...for STDs?” The thought that she might have been so stupid made her stomach roil.
“Did you remember something from last night?” he asked, instead. He turned away to finish washing his hands as if she’d merely inquired about the time.
“I don’t like to take chances in case something happened between us. Just answer the question. Have you, or have you not, been tested recently?” She could barely breathe, anticipating his reply.
He dried his hands on the towel hanging on the side of the upper cupboard and finally faced her, a dead serious look on his face.
“Yes, I’ve been tested. You don’t have to worry.” He was hiding an emotion that Bree couldn’t quite decipher.
“You don’t have to worry about me, either,” she said quickly, in case that was what his reaction was about. Her gynecologist tested her yearly, but you had to be having unprotected sex to contract an STD.
That counted her out since she hadn’t had sex since—
“Did you find a plastic bag?” he asked.
She was happy to change the subject. “No, I got distracted.” Trying to remember if she’d screwed up last night.
He walked to the closet next to the bathroom door and opened it. He reached in for the dry-cleaning bag hanging there. “This will work perfectly. Do you have a rubber band or something to go around your leg to seal it?”
She nodded and hobbled to the bathroom where she had a hair scrunchie she thought would fit over her foot and ankle. He’d followed her and she handed it to him.
“Sit down over there.” He pointed to the closed toilet.
“I told you I can do it myself.”
“I heard you the first time,” he said. “But if your head feels anything like mine, then it’s going to explode if you lean over.”
As much as she wanted to argue, she knew he was probably right.
She took a seat and watched the top of his head as he dealt with the plastic bag, wrapping it tightly enough around her ankle to keep out water. He looked up at her and asked, “Is that too tight?”
She shook her head, and that same vague memory came to her as his gaze met hers. She couldn’t wrap her head around it because it didn’t make sense. “Were we on a boat last night?”
“A boat?” he asked. “You remember being on the boat, too?”
So there was a boat.
She nodded slightly. “We were all there. You, me, my friends.” She paused. “Wait. There was another guy there, too.”
“Pete. Pete Buchanan.”
She nodded. “Yes. That sounds familiar.”
“He’s my cousin, although he’s legally my brother. My parents raised him after his mom and dad were killed in a car accident when he was eight.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” she said. “So it was his boat we were on?”
“No, we borrowed it from a friend of his who lives in San Juan. This vacation was all Pete’s idea. He thought I needed to get away, stop focusing on work so much.”
“Sounds familiar,” she said. “That’s exactly what the girls said to me. ‘Go have a vacation fling,’ they said. ‘You work too hard.’”
“I guess we have that in common,” he said quietly.
He was being very nice to her, and she hadn’t been as thankful as she should be. In fact, she’d been openly hostile. Opening her mouth to speak, she was suddenly very aware that he still had his hand on her calf. Their eyes met and she couldn’t look away. Without thinking she put her hand to his bearded cheek, remembering the softness of it when he’d kissed her on the beach.
She wanted him to kiss her again. In fact, she wanted more than a kiss. She wanted him. All of him. She wanted to take her girlfriends’ advice and have that vacation fling.
With Nick.
She leaned in and he did, too. When their mouths met, she knew for sure that nothing had happened between them last night except for that kiss on the beach. She definitely would have recalled the electricity between them.
Nick rose, pulling her up with him until they were both standing. He deepened the kiss and her body kept screaming that she wanted more.
He suddenly lifted her, and her legs wrapped around his waist. He carried her to the bed without removing his mouth from hers. She touched him everywhere she could reach—his back, his hair, his face, his arms, his butt. She couldn’t get enough.
He caressed her, as well, his large hands learning her body. When he stopped kissing her suddenly and pulled back to look her in the eyes, she groaned. She didn’t want him to stop. She didn’t want this to be a repeat of how he’d ended their kiss on the beach.
“Are you completely sober?” A strange question to ask her at this moment.
“Yes, I’m sober. Why?” She ran her hand down his chest to his abs, lingering on the button at his waistband.
He grabbed her hand and held it in his. “I’m serious. I don’t take advantage of inebriated women. I’m pretty sure neither of us was in good enough shape to do anything last night, but if you’re sure you’re sober enough to consent—” he grinned and waggled his eyebrows
