DAEG WAS LIKE a tidal wave that kept on coming. And he was right. He had a reservation, and Sweet
Moon couldn’t afford to pass on a paying customer. Somehow she’d survive his—she checked the
computer again—six-week stay. She grabbed a key off the hook on the wall and stood up.
“Cal booked the bungalow,” he offered, backing away from the counter so she could step around it
without crashing into him. Now that he’d won this battle, his words sounded like some sort of consolation prize. Too bad she wasn’t feeling conciliatory.
“I’ll do my best to get over it,” she said drily. She pushed open the door, stepping outside, and he
followed. Too close. Too large. Heat radiated off that powerful body. She needed to establish who was in charge here. This was her motel. Her space. Not his.
His boots crunched over the gravel as he walked beside her, and she practiced the fine art of denial by busying herself with the room key. Number eight. Good. Six cabins between herself and temptation.
Stepping up onto the porch, she slid the key into the lock with a practiced flick of her wrist. “Here you go. Number eight. Well, good luck with everything. It was nice seeing you again.”
Duty done, she tried to back away, but she came into contact with a hard male chest. That kernel of
anger she’d been nursing since he’d shown up at Sweet Moon’s office grew. He didn’t get to come here and
do as he pleased.
He’d had his chance ten years ago and he hadn’t taken it.
“Show me the room.” That husky rumble in her ear made her think about kissing him again—and more.
He wasn’t touching her, not really, but he could. The question was, did she want him to?
Temptation beckoned.
She stepped into the room and glanced around. “Meet your cabin,” she announced. “One bed, one
bathroom. Housekeeping comes in daily. If you need anything, you’re welcome to try the front desk.”
The bed dominated the room. Someone—likely her grandmother—had draped the huge four-poster
with an obscene quantity of white gauze and piled the headboard with fussy pillows. All that fragility made Daeg look impossibly large and masculine. As he examined the space, the playful tease disappeared. “You don’t have something simpler? ”
“Nope,” she said, enjoying the edge of discomfort in his voice. “And the offer still stands. I’ll find you another hotel. One more to your taste.”
“This will do.” He tossed his duffel onto the bed. The bag was military issue, an olive-green canvas as rough and tough and frayed as he was.
She forced her attention away from the bed, unable to hide her surprise. “You’re really going to stay?
Here?”
“Sure.” There was no missing the gleam in his eye as he turned to face her. “You want to tell me why
you kissed me today and ran?” His eyes held a whole lot of curiosity and desire, and remembering how
he’d kissed her had her dreaming of a repeat performance. Time certainly hadn’t made Daeg Ross any less of a man’s man. That was plenty of spec ops soldier.
Daeg watched her, waiting for his answer.
She was here for the summer. He was here for the summer. Her hormones were saying that there was
no reason for them not to be together—at least for the next few weeks. Rebound sex, her mind whispered.
Think about it.
“Turn about is fair play?” she suggested.
He frowned as he connected the dots. “Kissing me was about your prom night?”
“No,” she corrected him. “It was about your kissing me on the beach ten years ago and then taking off.”
He was completely focused on her, and she’d bet he knew exactly how many feet separated them—and
how long it would take him to close the distance. “I didn’t realize one kiss was an invitation to stay.”
“You didn’t want to stay,” she pointed out. In fact, he’d left the island the very next day. Their kiss had been amazing and the only good part of her evening, but she wasn’t telling him that now.
“You were a girl.” He made a move toward her and she threw up a hand.
“Stop right there,” she ordered and he paused. He should have looked silly, surrounded by the cabin’s
kitschy romantic trappings. He wasn’t the sort of man a woman associated with tulle, and yet he’d never looked more male. Yep. He was getting to her again.
And he wasn’t done talking yet.
“Where did you think that kiss could go? And I had no business kissing you in the first place.”
“But you did.”
He ran a hand over his head. “Yeah. I did.”
“And then you hightailed it off the island. Never called. Never wrote.” She tossed him the keys and he
caught them reflexively, his fingers closing over the metal. “I got the message. You need anything else, you call the front desk.”
“I had commitments,” he said, ignoring her invitation to wrap things up. “I’d enlisted. My recruiter
would have been all over me and rightfully so if I’d missed my dates.”
“So you had no business kissing me?”
“Agreed,” he snapped.
“Fine. But it’s not happening again.” She turned on her heel, laying a course for the door. She was done
here.
4
THE SANDY TRAIL leading to the beach was steep, and Daeg heard Dani coming before he saw her.
Long, tanned legs in a pair of denim shorts followed a shower of gravel and a feminine voice. The summer heat was still lingering despite the forecast calling for rain. Swimming weather—as Dani with the towel slung over her shoulder clearly agreed.
One lap to go, he drove himself forward through the water. When he reached the far edge of the bay,
right before the open water started, he dived for as long as he could. The week since he’d checked into Sweet Moon was one more week of training and strengthening his knee, though it still bothered him far
more than he liked.
Dani was waiting for him when he pulled himself out of the water and dropped onto the sand beside
her. Crossing his arms over his chest, he began a series of fast sit-ups. Flexing his stomach muscles until his elbows hit his knees, he sank into the familiar burn of the descent as he let gravity do the work, dropping his shoulder blades to the sand. Then up again. He had to do more than fifty-two in two minutes, yet, in fact, a hundred was barely average. He’d do better.
She was quiet as he completed his two minutes, and then she asked, “You always work this hard?”
He liked how her eyes lingered on his stomach as she spoke. He stopped and rolled onto his side.
“I need to fix this.” He gestured toward his leg. There was no hiding the scar, anyhow. Not that he
wanted to. No, what he wanted to do was use the leg like he once had.
“In one week?”
One summer. One chance to make the team again. “My guys are out there, seeing action, so that’s where
I go.”
“So that’s a definite on re-upping?”
Triceps bouncing, he pushed up fast and hard on his arms for his first push-up. One. He lowered himself, a fist’s distance from the sand then surged upward. Two. “That’s the plan,” he said finally, when he’d done the set. “Although Tag and Cal aren’t.”
Deep Dive was Cal’s dream, not his, but there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for his friend. Coming back
to help him get his business off the ground was a given. Cal had had his back since their first dive together.
“They opened that new shop, Deep Dive.”
Deep Dive was far more than a dive shop. “They specialize in advance training for divers and do rescue
and salvage jobs. They also offer the usual set of bread-and-butter dives to local hotspots.”
“Where do you fit in?”
That was the question. His teammates had decided to call Discovery Island home. He’d made a cash
contribution and the temporary commitment to leading a training course or two when he was on leave, but he wasn’t ready to settle down. Not yet.
“I’m lending a hand,” he replied finally. “I’ll take experienced groups out on open-water dives and push the hell out of them to make sure they know what they’re doing. And I’ll wrap the current course and head back to San Diego and my unit.”
He’d ship out and life would resume its routine.
Switching onto his back, he looked up at her. Carpe diem.
“Come with me. We’ll go find more of that ice cream. Take another walk.”
“You eat ice cream on a regular basis?” Her eyes examined his body again and parts of him liked her
attention just fine.
“I like sweet things.” His imagination worked overtime coming up with all the ways she’d be sweet.
What would she let him taste and how far could he go? “I always have.”
She stood up, snatching her towel from the sand. She must have decided against the swim. Or picked
up on the sexual tension humming through his body because, yeah, she was bolting on him. “No ice
cream.”
“Why not?”
She smiled at him and, yes, that was one mean smile. He liked that spunk in her. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “Our dating wouldn’t go anywhere.”
“Ice cream,” he stated plainly. “I’m asking for one cone—not the next fifty years of your life.”