This was her problem in big flaming red letters. She couldn’t photograph people because she didn’t know how to interact with them. There was a fundamental piece of human experience missing from her life, and the absence of it translated into inferior pictures.
Perhaps she’d found a muse in this unlikely candidate who—she was pretty sure—had been flirting with her. Maybe just this one time she could throw the risk dice and not crap out.
Eventually, Fitz managed to tear his attention from Lilah long enough to order two beers. Dark, because anything else smacked of incivility.
Then he had to seriously consider dropping to his knees to propose to the woman when she took a sip and said, “Wow, this is really good.”
“You drink dark beer?” Quelle surprise. And that was saying something considering basically everything about Lilah Houston had knocked him upside the head from the moment she’d opened the door.
“Not until today. But I like it.” Her dark eyes peeked out from under long and lush lashes, and he couldn’t stop imagining what she’d look like flushed with arousal.
To be fair, she’d started it with all the talk about tasting her, which immediately planted a fair amount of longing in a place that would be very difficult to dislodge. Plus his gut was screaming Red Hot Virgin Alert, or at least close enough to it that she needed someone—him—to introduce her to everything. Pretty much nothing else was getting through the thick layer of awareness that had dropped over him.
Just as he was about to dive into a very long conversation about all of the ways she could have responded to his taste-test-volunteer comment, Jack and Thora picked that inopportune moment to join them.
Fitz bit back the long string of curses.
“You started the party without us?” Jack’s arm draped possessively around Thora’s waist, which gave a whole new meaning to the concept friends with benefits.
She still looked a little worse for wear, so maybe the arm was strictly to keep the woman off the ground. But he didn’t think so. After getting a text proclaiming that Thora was sick, Jack had almost torn an ACL in his haste to scramble off the boat he’d piloted from Freeport to Duchess Island.
“You must be Thora,” Fitz said with a pointed glance at Jack, who rolled his eyes and passed out the intros. Which was only fair since he was the linchpin of this operation.
“Fitz? Is that short for something?” Lilah asked as if it had just occurred to her to wonder.
“Fitzhugh,” he supplied readily. “It beats all of the other nicknames I’ve been given over the years.”
“Like what?” Lilah managed to transform that into a real question instead of small talk, which he appreciated in the face of the odd circumstance of suddenly feeling like a third wheel from the moment Jack had gotten his hands on his tawny-haired friend.
Jack snickered. “Chipmunk is my favorite.”
“And Jackass is my favorite of yours,” he shot back before his so-called friend served up Fitz’s first name on a platter in explanation. Theodore was a fine name for a president, and/or a fat chipmunk, but not for a SEAL. The guys had oh so much fun with it.
“I’ve never had a nickname,” Lilah confessed so forlornly that Fitz instantly started thinking up a few. Luscious Lilah was leading the pack, and there was no doubt that if he actually got her naked and breathless he could think of a few more.
She had the cutest little slice of pale stomach peeking through the space between her top and short skirt, and that was absolutely the perfect spot to start sampling the taste of her skin.
Probably he should stop being such a perv and let it alone. The woman clearly wasn’t the type you screwed around with on vacation, no harm, no foul, as you both jetted back to where you came from with fond memories and no strings.
That was the only kind of fling Fitz had any interest in. Or rather had any right to have an interest in, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing. SEALs made for crappy significant others, and Lilah seemed like the type who expected a guy to call the next day, or she’d have a lot more notches on her bed post.
It made her much more attractive than he would have credited.
“What’s the plan?” he threw in during the pause. If Thora intended to be ill some more, Fitz intended to hit the beach. Maybe Lilah could be persuaded to join him, preferably in a skimpy little swimsuit that would leave all her untasted skin readily accessible.
No. Bad boy. Bad, bad idea.
“Thora still wants to participate in the scavenger hunt,” Jack answered immediately. “We’ve already got the boat rented, and I bought food. So we’re good to go if you guys are.”