“No. I didn’t see him at all. We never did learn what made him lose his bearings and drown.” He was
silent for a minute. “Probably, he’d taken a hit in the water and exhaustion did the rest, but all that wreckage swirling around down there didn’t help. I should have gone back down and dived for him.”
“You were injured,” she repeated quietly.
“I was the team leader. That was my job, my boy. Instead, Cal, the second swimmer, went down while I
lay there in the basket in a daze, thinking about my leg and the pain and wondering when we’d get back to base. While Lars was down there and none of us could help.”
Her arms crept around him, pulling him in. “That wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”
“Maybe.” He wished he could go back. Do it all over again with a different outcome. “But I still did
nothing. I didn’t even try. Instead, I lost a man and I won’t do that again.”
“Did anyone blame you?” Her voice was thick with emotion, but her arms didn’t let go. He let his head
fall back onto the couch, and soaked in the heat of the fire and her tender hold on him. He didn’t know when he’d gotten so cold.
Finally, he shook his head. “It was ruled an accident, but I blamed me.”
“Would Lars have blamed you for what happened? No way. Would you have blamed Lars if your
situations had been reversed?”
No way.
“You need to let it go,” she said. “When you jump, you can’t jump with this on your shoulders. An
accident is just that—an accident. You learn from it, and you go on.”
“Maybe.” He wanted to believe her. Somehow, his cozy fireside seduction had turned into an honest
heart-to-heart, with him spilling his guts. He didn’t know if she minded, but he was laying it on the line here. This was his dark side, and he didn’t like that part of himself, but she seemed to understand.
He wished he was that person, the one she was seeing when she looked at him, because he had a feeling
the man she saw was a bona fide hero.
“When do you go back? Your R & R, when does it end?”
The answer to her question should have been simple. And yet, he was unsure.
“I was planning to return at the end of July,” he said finally. His CO was expecting him, and he’d made his short-term status clear to Cal and Tag. There was no reason to rethink his decision, although he’d take every minute he could get with Dani. “Where’s the jerk?”
“Excuse me?” She straightened up on him and he bit back a laugh.
“The guy you booked the room for. Where is he?”
He’d bet that business just about killed her. Dani didn’t like failure. Didn’t tolerate failure. She was like him in that regard.
“We broke up.”
“And?” It wasn’t that simple. Couldn’t possibly be, or she wouldn’t be hiding out here on the island,
making erotic bucket lists. Since he’d shared, however, he figured it was her turn, so he made a “give it up”
gesture.
“Rick and I dated for three years. He gave me a ring six months ago and we were planning on a June
wedding.”
Huh. It was June now. She’d mentioned plans gone awry on the beach the day they’d reconnected, and
he hadn’t missed the “romance or bust” message the cabin screamed, but hearing her say those words still packed a punch.
“Yes, you guessed it. Welcome to my honeymoon.”
“What happened?” He leaned forward, away from the temptation that was her body, and speared
another marshmallow on his stick. He was certain her seduction scenario didn’t call for him getting his hands on her two minutes after he’d told her such a sad story.
She shrugged and snagged another marshmallow. “I caught him cheating,” she stated as if she were
broadcasting the weather report. “I showed up at his condo and there he was, naked, with another woman.
He claimed I wasn’t enough for him in bed, so I tossed the ring at him, turned around and walked out.”
“Did the ring hit him?”
She gave him a rueful smile. “Maybe I should have tried to fix things, but it was pretty clear to me that what we had was broken, Daeg. And I couldn’t fix it.”
“He was an idiot.”
“He was.” She leaned back, removing her marshmallow from the fire in order to inspect it. It was
perfect, a toasty golden-brown. He eyed his own. His marshmallow was blackened and bubbling on one
side—where he’d plunged his stick straight into the heat—and raw on the other. He liked it like that, so no worries. Or, he could steal hers. He liked that idea better, so he made a grab for her stick.
“He was,” she repeated, swatting his hand away. “I get that. Now. But I spent weeks being mad and upset about the breakup.”
He wanted to hurt someone—preferably her fiancé. Instead, he settled for spearing another
marshmallow onto her stick.
“So as I told you, I’m here for the summer,” she began, veering off in another direction. He wondered
if she had any idea how sexy she was. Or if she’d watch him with that hot gaze of hers. “And we’ve
established you’re here for a while,” she continued, oblivious to the sensual daydreams wreaking havoc
with his equilibrium.
“As such.” She paused, then plunged in. “I think we should explore this. See where it takes us.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sex,” she said firmly. “I think we should have sex.” The mischievous smile on her face dazzled him.
“As many times as we can before the summer is over.”
“I’m re-upping,” he warned, just in case her words were code for something else. He didn’t think so—
Dani Andrews didn’t pull her punches and he respected that—but he needed to make sure.
“You’re already Mr. Wrong.” Her fingers walked up his chest. “Therefore, you’re absolutely perfect.”
He spluttered.
“Too blunt?” she asked.
“No.” He nipped her ear, kissed her cheek, and her eyes widened. Now she was the one off-balance.
“You’re perfect, too.”
“Perfectly wrong,” she said, sounding delighted.
SHE’D ROLL OVER in her bed in the middle of the night and not bump her feet against Rick’s. An
empty space in the bed, an empty space in her heart. She hadn’t seen it coming, either. How he’d pulled away, was no longer interested.
In hindsight, she’d missed the telltale signs. His emails had gotten shorter and shorter, the texts coming less often, and forget the phone calls. It had been all, “I’m out of coffee—can you stop and get some?” No more, “Your voice is so sexy—I just wanted to hear you speak.” Okay, so maybe that last one had been
pure fantasy, but still. Rick had been all work, work, work as he grew his insurance company from a
family-run business to a major player in the industry, and she’d given him the space he’d suddenly craved.
Space he’d filled up with someone else.
Rick certainly hadn’t seen her when he had been there. He’d looked at her, obviously, but he hadn’t seen her. She’d dropped a fortune on expensive lingerie and he hadn’t blinked. Daeg Ross, on the other
hand, saw her. He noticed the little details and watched her as if he was a starving man and she was a feast.
She took a deep breath. “This isn’t going to turn into anything long-term. Just so we’re perfectly clear.”
“Got it. We can’t pick up where we left off ten years ago.”
“No. We can’t.”
“But we can have sex,” he said cheerfully, “since you asked so nicely.”
Kiss him.
Don’t kiss him.
She’d made her choice. Putting her hands on his shoulders, she leaned into him, licking the sticky
marshmallow from the corner of his mouth. He stilled beneath her touch, all that muscled hardness and
masculine power beneath her palms. He tasted good, wild and sweet.
“Dani?” Her name was a rough growl.
“Hmm?” she whispered back.
He took the roasting stick from her hand and dropped it on the table. She didn’t move, just waited for
him to come to her.
“Give me a second chance,” he said against her mouth. “Give us a second chance.”
She wasn’t a risk taker. She evaluated other people’s risks, and he was one risk she wouldn’t be able to manage. Odds were high that eventually he’d run because he wasn’t the kind of man who stuck around.
Oh, he’d do it nicely—he’d be mustered up, called away on a mission—but he’d leave in the end. She
studied his dark eyes watching hers.
This would be just sex for as long as it lasted.
Her actuary professors had hammered the lesson into her: two risks were always better than one. It
spread out the risk. If she got into bed with Daeg Ross, he could be disappointed. She hadn’t wanted to believe her ex’s claim that she was a boring lover, but it was a possibility. Just a small risk there, she believed. The bigger risk was that one night wouldn’t be enough with Daeg.
“A second chance at what?” she asked, since she needed to be sure.
His hand cupped her cheek, stroked a teasing path along her jaw. “At this. Us. Kissing you.”