Claiming Her SEAL(3)

 

Not that Dex would say that. You didn't utter that nasty phrase out  loud. Besides, Dex had his own crap to deal with, and his demons didn't  cotton to a lot of jibber-jabber. So the silence in the bungalow Dex  shared with Evan suited them both to the ground.

When they got back to Duchess Island, the dive captain pulled up to the  dock near the small village the locals just called Town and anchored,  allowing the team to collect their gear and spill onto the wooden  planking that led to land.

It was rare that all six of them went out to the reef they were  restoring off the coast of Countess Cay. Only on days when they didn't  have any parasailing or snorkeling excursions planned-usually they  tag-teamed it. The Duchess Island resort, also owned by billionaire  Jared Anderson, was between cruise ships, which always put a crimp in  their bookings.

Dex arranged his gear in the shed where they kept it under lock and key.  Emma of the White Bikini had probably shipped out with high tide. Most  of the resort guests came and went via the ships that arrived and sailed  every couple of days. When he'd left her on the beach yesterday, he'd  thought that would be the end of it. No more Emma.

Instead, he'd dreamed about her last night.

Since visions of the firm little body underneath those scraps of white  had replaced his normal nightmares of lifeless corpses, he couldn't find  a downside. But this morning he'd had the strangest urge to tell Evan  about the woman he'd met. Which was crazy. Emma had been nothing more  than a small blip in his day. An easy target that had taken a  considerable amount of will to avoid nailing.

But that didn't stop Dex from wondering what had put those shadows in  Emma's eyes, as he and the guys set up a campfire on the beach to cook  Dex's catch. He had a feeling Emma was one woman he wouldn't easily  forget.





"Emma Richardson!"

When Rachel squawked like that, Emma knew better than to interrupt. She  glanced up from her e-reader to see the squawker in question at the end  of Emma's bed holding that cursed white bikini, one piece in each hand.  The strings of the top dangled nearly to the floor of the hotel room  they shared at the Duchess Island resort.

"Did you throw away this swimsuit?" Rachel asked, peering over the top of her dark-rimmed glasses.

A rhetorical question, no doubt, since her friend had clearly dug it out of the waste can near the minibar.

"I can't wear it again." Emma wrinkled her nose. "It's ruined now."

The creep on the beach had tainted it with his ham hands and stale  breath in her face. She could never wear it again without thinking of  him touching her without her permission. And she'd loved that swimsuit  the moment she'd tried it on at the store near downtown Boston.

"That's letting him win, honey." Rachel threw the bikini down on the  coverlet like a gauntlet, then plopped down next to Emma and curled her  hands around her feet. "You should put that suit on and wear it proudly  because you have nothing to apologize for. You showing some skin did not  make him attack you."

Emma had trashed the bikini the instant she'd torn it off yesterday,  unable to even look at it because of the associations it had, even  though it was the only swimsuit she'd packed. But now that Rachel had  brought it up …  good point. Emma had carried a tiny bit of guilt, like  maybe if she hadn't been wearing that sexy bikini, the cretin would  never have noticed her. Like maybe she'd brought it on herself.

That was crap. She scooped up both pieces in one hand. "You're so right.  I paid a hundred and forty-seven dollars for this suit and it's mine.  No creep has the right to take away one second of my good time on this  trip."

An excellent mantra as a whole. That meant she had to stop letting bad  memories of Chris interfere with the trip too. A bonus. The less she  thought about her ex-fiancé, the better. In fact, that had been the  whole point of jetting off to the Caribbean with Rachel-to celebrate  narrowly escaping from the clutches of a disturbed man like Chris  Cummings.

Of course they'd planned this trip before realizing that the panic  attacks weren't going away. Her stupid brain should be done spazzing out  every time she even thought about dipping a toe in the ocean. Not done.

If she could just stop having nightmares about drowning, that, she was  convinced, was the key to moving on from the horrific events of three  months ago when Chris had tried to murder her in cold blood for breaking  up with him. If only she could heal, she could rebuild her nice, stable  life and get back to normal.

"Let's go to the pool," Emma said decisively and Rachel nodded, vaulting off the bed to go do her hair in the bathroom.         

     



 

The only way to get over her ridiculous phobia about water was to get in  it. The pool didn't bother her though, so it was kind of a cop-out, one  she hadn't exactly let on to Rachel about. Emma still held out hope  that something would magically happen in the messed up part of her head  that would free her from the grasp of such weakness.

And besides, she couldn't keep an eye out for her white knight from a hotel room.

Dex. Even thinking his name made her shiver deliciously. The bikini  could remind her of Dex just as easily. And her rescuer was a real man  who knew how to treat a woman. His gorgeous, flinty gray eyes, dark  stubble and darker hair, and cut, bronzed body were just icing on the  cake.

He wasn't the type of man she normally went for. But this wasn't Boston.  Her normal type of man had turned out to be an unstable psychopath,  which had frankly put her off men entirely.

Maybe in the Caribbean she could go for a different kind of man  altogether. Just for a few days. No one was doling out marriage  proposals, and even if they did, she wasn't accepting. No more  relationships. At all. She was single and happy about it. If Chris had  taught her nothing else, at least she'd learned that marriage and men as  a whole didn't give a girl any guarantees. She was much better off on  her own.

Except vibrators didn't always do the trick at the end of the day.

She stripped out of her sundress and panties, imagining that the white  triangles of the top were Dex's hands cupping her breasts instead. Oh.  Much better. It was so much safer to fantasize about a man than it was  to deal with a real one. The fabric peaked up her nipples, sensitizing  them as she mentally experienced Dex's thumbs brushing over the tips as  he murmured to her in that sin-drenched voice of his.

Nice.

He was her little secret, the one thing about being on a small island  situated in a big ocean that had made her feel something other than lost  and terrified. The whole time she'd been near him, her pulse had raced  with excitement, like she'd finally woken up from the nightmare of the  past three months and it was over.

She didn't think about her ex-fiancé, Chris, one time while in the presence of Dex.

And that made Dex someone she just might lift her man-moratorium for.  There was very little Emma wouldn't do to forget how the man she'd once  been engaged to had tried to drown her. If that blessed memory wipe came  in the form of a beautiful guy like Dex who radiated carnal energy and  came equipped with a killer smile, sharp wit, and a protective gene?  Sign her up.

She slipped on the bikini bottom, right over the ache at her core that  she'd managed to generate with a three-second fantasy about the man  she'd met on the beach. Well, Dex had flat out told her his name rhymed  with his best skill. Clearly, his abilities extended to virtual  pleasure, and dear God was she in desperate need of a man who could do  all of the above.

She just wanted to feel like a woman in charge of her own destiny again.

The fact that he'd also flat-out rejected her wasn't a factor. If she  ran into him again-and oh, she intended to-she'd change his mind. It was  practically a requirement.

Rachel emerged from the bathroom wearing her swimsuit and a sarong-style  skirt. Coupled with the glasses Rachel wore, her friend's style  screamed sexy librarian, and it worked very well for her.

They found empty lounge chairs near the bar, and Emma let Rachel fetch  margaritas for them both because her friend had a crush on the  bartender. Since his dimples flashed deep enough to be viewed from the  moon, she couldn't find fault in Rachel's taste.

Plunking down in the other lounge chair, Rachel stuck her bare feet out  and handed Emma her drink. "There's a club over on Abaco Island that  Rico just told me about. Wanna go dancing later? He said he'd pick us up  in his speedboat at nine."

Speedboats traveled over water. At night. The murky depths of the ocean  would be dark and impenetrable. Emma schooled her expression. "Wearing  the bikini is one thing. But I don't know if I could do the speedboat."

Rachel glanced at her over the tops of her glasses, which had turned  dark in the sun. Concern radiated from her eyes. "That's okay. You don't  have to do anything you're not ready for."

So much for trying to be cool about it. Emma's throat swelled to roughly  the size of a bowling ball. Rachel had been her roommate in college,  and they'd been tight for so long that Emma couldn't even remember a  time when she didn't have her friend to lean on. It was a godsend,  especially as she tried to fight her way to the surface of a crappy  water phobia and a sense that she'd never trust a man again.