adrenaline pumping through him like it did before he made a jump. She didn’t have to be off-limits. He could pursue her, kiss her, touch her.
He could strip off that cute bikini of hers and bury himself deep inside her.
He could make the biggest mistake of his life.
The words came out of his mouth, anyhow. “You’re back for the summer?”
“I’m out at Sweet Moon.” He knew the place. Her grandparents had run it for years, booking romantic cabins with four-posters and fireplaces. It was the kind of place a man took a special woman.
He’d never spent the night there.
“Important occasion?” He kept his voice deliberately light.
She shook her head. “Not anymore,” she replied, giving him a wry smile. “But my grandparents reserved a cabin for me, so here I am.”
“His loss,” he growled, and her eyes widened as if he was some kind of mind reader, because he’d put two and two together and come up with the correct answer. “Whoever he was, he messed up.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly, making it clear she had no intention of giving him the details about what had brought her here alone to Discovery Island. “It’s over. Water under the bridge. Things happen.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But maybe I can make it up to you? What about ice cream?” he asked. He definitely needed to work on his social skills. “I may not have been back here in years,” he coaxed, “but I still remember how good the ice cream is.”
She eyed him cautiously, her brown eyes examining him. He didn’t know what she saw, but it must have been something good because she nodded and a slow smile lit up her face. “I can let you do that.” She paused, toying with the strap of her tote bag.
He gestured toward the ice cream shack at the far end of the beach and started walking. The muscles in his knee knotted, putting a hitch in his gait.
“You okay?” Dani’s expression was all worry.
“Leg’s fine.” He wasn’t fielding questions, not today, so he returned the conversation, what there was of it, back on her. “We need to worry about you. First thing you do when you hit the beach? You lose the sandals.” Stopping, he pointed at her sandy flip-flops, holding out his hand. “You can’t be comfortable in those things. Let me carry them.”
She hesitated, clearly not sure if she wanted to hand over her shoes or jam them into her bag, sand and all. When she looked down at her feet, as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing, his gaze followed hers. The nail polish on her toes was perfect—more proof this was her first day on the beach.
Leaning in closer, he caught a whiff of coconut-scented sunscreen.
“You haven’t been on the island long, have you?”
“A week. What gave it away?”
The pristine beach tote and the perfect polish were his first clues. “No tan lines,” he said.
“Being pale is an occupational hazard. I work in an office. It increases my risk of dying from heart disease because I’m too sedentary, but decreases my risk of contracting skin cancer. At least the sun is a controllable risk.”
“Wow.” That was a first.
“Too much?” She made a face. “My day job is as an actuary. I only moonlight as a beachcomber.”
She toed off the shoes, shaking loose a small avalanche of sand. He captured the flip-flops, which looked ridiculously feminine in his hand.
She looked over at him. “You have any other suggestions for me?”
Did he ever. Indecent suggestions a decent man would never say out loud.
Because he wasn’t looking for a happily ever after. Getting serious and marriage weren’t something he’d ruled out for himself in the future—the very, very distant future. As it was now, he was away for months at a time on missions he couldn’t discuss. So Others May Live. That was the rescue swimmer’s motto, but it made commitment difficult.
And since he didn’t do forever, he shouldn’t be looking at Dani Andrews and wondering if she’d taste as good as she had the last time he’d kissed her.
Trouble.
She’d taste like trouble.
She was too sweet, too innocent even all these years later. She’d never faced real danger, never experienced the missions he had. That made him fiercely glad. She was safe because he’d done his job, and he’d keep her that way, no matter how badly he wanted to kiss her now that he had her close again. The breeze from the coming storm tumbled her hair around her face and shoulders.
He needed to let her go. He needed to wrap up this conversation and walk away. Again. Instead, he took a step closer, brushing up against her with his body. He was close enough to feel the heat radiating from her. “First storm of the summer’s arriving soon,” he said, brushing her arm briefly because he couldn’t take being this close and not touching her.
When a really violent storm blew in, the hotels opened up their conference rooms, ballrooms, whatever, putting down mattresses and offering bottled water for the locals. Sometimes the safest course of action was to put a kind of wall between yourself and any incoming storm. That could work for any number of things, he reminded himself.
She scanned the horizon. There were still several boats out on the bay. “It doesn’t look too bad. All those boats—they still stay here and ride out the storm?”
“Depends.” He pointed to a slim aluminum shell bobbing up and down just a few yards offshore. “Right there you’ve got your basic panga-type boat—aluminum sides, no cover, fifty horsepower motor.” He shrugged. “Not bad for a casual fishing trip inside a harbor or near shore, but nothing I’d want to trust my life to out on the open water. A bad storm’s going to toss one of those right up on the beach here if the owner doesn’t yank it out first. Then you’ve got your bigger boats.” He touched her shoulder lightly, directing her attention to a handful of larger vessels anchored farther away. “If the mooring’s good, those boats might ride it out. Bumpy as hell, but as long as they don’t get hit by debris, they’ll still be there in the morning. Then,” he said, smiling wide, “you’ve got your biggest boats.”
“Biggest?” She laughed, and he tried to ignore the urge to lean in and kiss her.
“Yeah, biggest. As in my boat’s the biggest. Perfect for your average midlife crisis or deep-sea fishing. Those guys hire the likes of me to pull the boat and get her under cover. Or, if they’re too cheap to pull the boat before the storm hits, they hire me after the fact to go salvage the pieces. You like sailing?”
She pursed her lips. “No. I don’t really care for the water much. Are they safe?”
“Enough.” He pushed the memories back. “I’ve pulled more than one captain out of the water.”
When she tilted her head, the question was clear in her eyes, so he continued. “With spec ops,” he explained. “After I left here, I did a couple tours with a helicopter sea-combat squadron as a rescue swimmer.
