Rescuing Her Seal(14)

Well. She knew how to flirt after all. Or she was serious. Either way… “Is that an official request?”

“Ha. I was kidding. And maybe a little jealous of Thora,” she admitted. “Men gravitate to her all the time, and she’s the kind of girl men readily gather up into their arms. I’m not.”

God, could the woman be any more of an open book that was impossible to read?

“Come on. You’re killing me. Really? No man has ever swept you off your feet?”

Smooth, moron. That was literally what she’d just said. But she didn’t seem bothered by his idiocy and simply shook her head.

“I should probably shut up, right?” she asked with a self-deprecating laugh. “Way to make myself sound appealing. Not that I’m trying to! I mean…”

She trailed off and managed to look so miserable that he couldn’t stand it. “Lilah.”

She glanced over her shoulder to where he’d stopped dead in the center of the walkway and turned, brows raised. Maybe he should clue her in that her T-shirt had pulled a tiny bit off center to show a sliver of her silky bra strap. It was pink. Nice. Which was exactly why he kept his mouth shut about it.

“Let’s get something straight,” he said instead. “There is no good reason that you haven’t had more experiences you can handle. You deserve them all. Romantic ones. Sexy ones. Men skywriting your name in hopes you’ll glance in their direction. A hundred flowers delivered to you every day for a week.”

Her gaze never left his as she listened to what was God-honest truth like she’d never considered any of this before. Which was crap. And a complete indictment of his gender.

“I thought you were going to pick me up,” she murmured, clearly disappointed.

Which stabbed him right through the heart. “Make no mistake. I’ve got that one tucked away where it won’t get lost. I’ll pull it out when the time is right. But now ain’t it.”

If he put his hands on her at this moment, all bets were off.

“Okay,” she agreed so readily that he groaned.

Didn’t she know how this worked? She was supposed to ask him to put his hands on her, and if she did, he totally would.

This race was going to make him insane.

“Shampoo bottle,” he croaked.

Once they had that in hand, then he could maybe deal with the undercurrents swirling between them. She clearly had no idea how much he wanted to make good on tasting her. The question was what she’d do with it when he introduced her to the concept.




Guilt still gnawed away at Lilah’s nerves, which were already frayed from Fitz. He laughed, she jumped. He touched her, she flinched. He breathed on her, she shivered. Getting some traction on this race didn’t seem likely if that’s how it was going to be.

Surprisingly, the shampoo bottle practically fell into their laps. At last, something that was going their way. “112 times” referred to the room number—and she had no small amount of pride to have been the one who figured that out. A race official stood outside 112, handing out little plastic bottles emblazoned with Shores Resort at Green Cay. A clue was tied to the neck via a red ribbon.

“That was too easy.” Fitz gave the shampoo bottle the evil eye.

He’d moved his sunglasses to the top of his head, and she definitely liked it better when he had them over his eyes because then she didn’t know when he was watching her. When he did that, her bones dissolved.

“Maybe don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?” she suggested.

“I’m not. I’m just thinking it means the race part of this race has more weight than I was anticipating. If the clues are this easy, they’re expecting us to be fast. Which means we’ve got to step it up if we want to win.”

Well, there was that. Lilah tucked the shampoo bottle into her shoulder bag, and they raced back to the boat. On the way, Fitz got the text message they’d been waiting on. Thora was checked into the hospital and they were running some tests; when they got some results, Jack would let them know. Lilah breathed a little easier at the news.

“Um…” She glanced over the dash and mounted navigation system. The symbols and gauges and such might as well have been in Greek. “Do you know how to drive this thing?”

“Well, that’s just insulting,” he drawled and crossed his arms to lean a hip on the driver’s seat.

Dang it. She should learn to keep her freaking mouth freaking shut. “Oh, right. Navy.”

He shrugged. “Or the fact that I learned to navigate the mouth of the Mississippi before I was ten. This thing? Piece of cake. Though I’m super flattered that you weren’t worried about Jack’s ability to be your chauffer.”