Nodding, Brant said, “Yeah, the sun usually works miracles for a headache; that is the first thing I would have done.”
“My headache was better after taking some Tylenol. I was still having the chills, though, so I thought the sun would warm me up.”
Brant had to give her credit for thinking fast on her feet, but he still moved in for the kill. He took a leisurely look down her barely covered body, smirking as he said, “Your case of the chills must be a lot better since you are wearing next to nothing. I know anytime I’m sick, I come straight to the beach practically naked and bake in the sun for hours. Ahhh, does a body good, right?”
She gave him a dirty look before flopping down on the towel in front of her. When she started rubbing her eyes like she was crying, he threw back his head and laughed. He might have been taken in again had it not been for that look she’d given him before turning on the waterworks.
She looked up at him, dropping all pretenses of sobbing, and deadpanned, “You’re a total asshole.”
If anything, that just made him laugh harder. He plopped down onto the sand beside her and nudged her shoulder. “That was some performance today. I admit, I fell for it hook, line and sinker.”
Emma snickered beside him. “That was pretty priceless. The great and powerful Brant Stone, in the hallway pleading with his lowly assistant to come out of the bathroom. You almost sounded human.”
“You stayed in there forever; what were you doing? Updating your Facebook status?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’d never give you airtime on my social media. I don’t want any of my friends to know who I work for . . . meaning you. My high school reunion is coming up and I don’t need that kind of embarrassment. If you must know, I read Star magazine from cover to cover and slept for the last ten minutes. I would have stayed longer but someone on that floor has a bladder the size of a pea. I guess it was asking too much that she go to another floor. There’s no way I would have been that persistent about trying to get into a bathroom someone had been in for half an hour.”
Beside her, Brant chuckled in agreement. “So do you live around here? You must if you’re using the beach in this area.”
Emma ignored his question, instead asking, “What are you doing here? Why in the world would you be walking on the beach in your suit? That seems uptight even for you.”
Brant pointed to his house. “Unfortunately for you, I live over there. It looks like fate brought you to my stretch of beach.”
Emma snorted. “Fate, huh? I could think of a few words to describe it, but that isn’t one of them.” Then she seemed to notice that he looked completely wiped out. “Bad day at the office, Mr. Stone?”
His easy smile turned to a scowl. “You have no idea. It started off badly when my assistant played me and then went to hell in a handbasket when said assistant went home because she was . . . sick. Everyone in the world needed something immediately today, and I couldn’t find anything in her complicated filing system.”
“Good grief, Brant, what is so hard about organizing by colors? Didn’t you learn your primary colors in school? You surely went somewhere like Yale or Harvard for kindergarten, so you must be a fairly intelligent man. Think outside the box for once.”
“Think outside the box, huh? I’ve seen you struggling to find files as well. We both know you only do it to piss me off.”
Emma gave him her best innocent look. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” She rolled over on her stomach and shut her eyes. Brant knew she was just trying to ignore him but damn, did she have any idea what seeing those firm butt cheeks peeking out of her black swimsuit was doing to him? He hated like hell that she turned him on more during an argument at the office than most women did in bed.
He had to battle the urge to lean over and swat her sweet ass. It would almost be worth the slap he would suffer to see the stunned expression on her face. He dug his fingers into the sand before he could give in to the urge. If she wiggled just one more time, though, all bets were off.
She could only figure she had been born under an unlucky star. First, her mother had started the day off by urging her to get a boob job; Suzy had encouraged her to torture Brant by crying when he said something sarcastic, which had worked like a charm; and then, out of the entire Myrtle Beach area, she had picked the patch of sand in front of his house to play hooky. What were the odds of that happening? Now she was lying on the sand beside him in a bikini that she had outgrown years ago and trying her best to wish him away. The bastard even looked pretty freaking hot sitting next to her in his expensive suit and Italian loafers. She could barely admit it, but in some strange and totally wrong way, he turned her on. She would have to have been blind not to notice the size of his cock as it rested against the leg of his dress pants in the office. She had almost swallowed her tongue the first time she saw the outline when he was leaning back in his chair. Once something like that had been brought to your attention, it was damn tough not to look again . . . and again.
The man looked like Christian Bale and had the body of Channing Tatum; how could she be expected to resist admiring a man like that? The fact that she made it through every day without going to the restroom to masturbate was something she was rather proud of. If he would just sit there and look good, they would get along great. But whenever he opened his mouth, things went bad in a hurry. She would deny it with her last breath, but there were days that he made her so hot, she wanted to put a strip of duct tape over his mouth and screw his brains out. One of the big things that had stopped her so far besides common sense was imagining that morning-after scene. He would probably roll over, give her that sarcastic smirk that he wore so well and start listing everything she needed to improve upon in bed. She would then completely lose it, finally kill the man, and hope that her years of watching CSI would pay off.
“I can practically hear the wheels in your mind spinning from here,” Brant said.
She groaned before saying, “Are you still here? Please go away; I’m on my own time now.”
“Awww, what’s wrong, cupcake? Are you still upset over your telephone call this morning?”
She flipped over on her side. “What are you talking about?”
Brant looked pointedly at her chest before giving her that familiar smirk. “You know, the issue with your asset size.”
“Oh my God,” she groaned, “isn’t this sexual harassment?”
Not looking the least bit alarmed, he said, “I think the amount of harassment that goes on between us is decidedly heavier on your end.”
“I’m not the one sitting here talking about your ‘size.’”
Grinning, Brant said, “Touché, Miss Davis.”
She knew it was childish, but she scooped up a handful of sand and dropped it all over the top of his expensive shoes. She knew that some of it had to be running down the inside of his shoe. She watched for his reaction and was surprised when he continued to smile at her, almost indulgently. What was wrong with him today? He was a lot more relaxed than usual, almost like nothing could get to him. Maybe he was high.
As she looked at his wavy, brown hair blowing in the breeze, she again had the feeling that she knew him from another place or time. Since the first moment they had met, she had been racking her brain trying to figure out where their paths could have possibly crossed before she started working for him at Danvers. So far, she hadn’t come up with anything. She was born and raised in Florida and, as far as she knew, he had always been a South Carolina guy. It drove her nuts when she felt like something was on the tip of her tongue and she couldn’t come up with it. He sure didn’t look like any of the guys she had dated. Fate hadn’t been that kind to her in the romance department. It had to be that he reminded her of someone she had met in passing. She decided to ignore his reference to her breasts and instead swatted at him with her hands. “Shoo, go on back home, boy. I’m sure there are more people you need to torture somewhere. Call Declan or Ava. They have to talk to you since they’re family.”
“But you’re so much more fun. I was stuck at the office all afternoon in near hell. You owe me.”
“Oh brother, is this where you demand that I walk to your house and fix you dinner? Maybe make your bed and clean the house?”
Emma tried not to stare when he stretched, pulling his shirt tightly across his broad chest. He jumped smoothly to his feet and extended a hand to her. “It’s time for you to call it a day.”
“I wasn’t serious,” she snapped.
“Cool your jets, sweetheart. I’m not asking you to come home with me. I try to avoid verbal abuse in my home. It’s getting late, though, and you don’t need to be on the beach alone.”
Emma opened her mouth to argue before noticing how much the traffic had thinned out around her. She hated to admit it, but he was right. She didn’t usually linger on the beach alone at night. She ignored his hand and got to her feet much less gracefully than he had. She grabbed her cover-up and thought she must be imagining things when Brant’s eyes seemed to linger on her body. “How about another day off . . .”