“Oh, you are so smooth, aren’t you, Ashton?” She didn’t even think about her slip of using his first name. “Is that how you justify cheating? Do you say that it started out friendly, and then that somehow things got out of hand? Are you really that guy?”
His eyes narrowed the longer she spoke. She was ticking him off. Good. She’d rather have him mad at her than lusting after her. Especially when she wasn’t immune to his charm.
“Are you finished, Savvy?” He was eerily calm. She nodded. “Fine. Now it’s my turn to speak. Yes, I find you attractive, and, yes, I can see us setting off some fireworks in the bedroom. But, no, I don’t cheat, not ever.”
“So you weren’t about to kiss me the other day?” She decided she wasn’t going to back down. It was better to get it all out on the table now.#p#分页标题#e#
“Yes, I was. But I would have stopped at that.”
“Are you proud of that?” She was beginning to lose some of her cool all over again.
“It was just going to be a little kiss,” he said, as if she were being unreasonable. “No biggie.”
“So you wouldn’t care if your fiancée shared a little kiss with another man?” she asked.
His reaction wasn’t what she’d expected.
“You know what?” he said, his lips twitching. Then he waited.
“What?” she finally demanded.
“I don’t think I would.”
He took a step toward her, and that’s when Savannah decided she’d better cut her losses and get the hell out of there. She’d been strong. She’d said what she needed to say, but now it was time to go.
There was the real possibility that she was going to get out on the ocean. And she wanted to be on that boat when the next cruise sailed. So there wouldn’t be any more goading of her boss. That meant she needed to stay at least twenty yards from him at all times.
Shouldn’t be too hard.
Chapter Five
There were very few times when Savannah actually wanted a beer. For the most part she was a wine drinker, though she hadn’t been about to admit that to Weston — and when the day had been just a bit too much, a nice cocktail hit the spot. But beer was only for special occasions.
A beer was great when the sun was out and the heat scorching. The flavor just burst in her mouth at that point. Also at baseball games. She had to have a hot dog covered in relish and mustard, plus a light beer to wash it all down. And for some reason she loved a cold one on New Year’s Day. That was a bit problematic, because it was winter outside then, and she’d normally drunk a few cocktails the night before. So the other times made sense, but she wasn’t sure about the first of January. Oh, wait! She was far from an alcoholic, but that probably fell into hair-of-the-dog territory.
Today had been a scorcher — beyond a scorcher actually, topping out at ninety-three with too much humidity in the air and not enough wind from the ocean. It was normally in the nice and cool seventies this time of year on the islands off of Washington state.
Not now. And it was just her luck, wasn’t it? Especially when her crappy boss had her doing crappy ass work, to use a technical term. But there was a positive ending to all the sweat and curse words that had dripped from her this afternoon. Yep. It was a nice, icy-cold, fully refreshing Corona Light with just a little lemon. Sometimes she wanted a can, and sometimes a bottle. Just depended on what brand she was drinking.
Sitting in a comfortable lounge chair on the upper deck of the boat she was living in, she could watch the stars grow brighter in the skies, and hear the waves crashing against the shore. It didn’t get any better than this.
That was until her bottle was empty and then, in place of the soothing sounds of the ocean, she was hearing raised voices — and they were coming nearer and nearer.
Savannah knew that she should climb down the ladder and go below deck into her private room. But that’s not what happened. After all, she had to be careful around those ladders. She dropped from her chair, flattened herself out against the flooring, and peeked between the slits to watch as Ashton strode down the docks with a very irate Kalli on his heels.
And on her own heels too. As Kalli continued screaming, one of the woman’s inappropriately high heels — at least inappropriately high for a dock with large cracks in between each board — got caught, and down she went, straight to her well-bred knees. Splat!#p#分页标题#e#
And it looked painful.
“Ashton!”
That wasn’t love in her tone. Ashton looked back at his fiancée and paused. The two of them were far too close to Savannah’s boat now. If either of them turned, they would spot her.