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.