“Having fun?” Beka appeared next to him, paddling with him toward an incoming swell.
Marcus nodded, amazed as always by the way his heart lifted at the sight of her. Even now, with her hair pulled back in an untidy braid and dripping wetly over one shoulder, bright blue eyes squinting against the spray, she was more appealing than any glamorous movie star. There was something just so real about her. She still wasn’t his type, of course, but he had to admit, he was getting accustomed to having her around.
And if he’d been daydreaming about kissing her again, well, it wasn’t as though he was going to do anything about it.
He opened his mouth to answer her, maybe even to admit that yes, he was actually having fun, but the words never made it past his lips. Another surfer slid up on Beka’s other side, paddling over with effortless ease.
“Beka, darlin’, what an unexpected pleasure, to meet up with you on such a fine morning. Surely the gods are smiling on me today.” The stranger somehow managed to bow and paddle at the same time and look damned good doing it.
Marcus had a completely irrational urge to knock the other man off of his surfboard and hold him under the water for a minute or ten.
“Kesh!” Beka said, seeming delighted. “I didn’t expect to see you until tonight.”
Oh, great. So this was the guy she’d been seeing. The one she said she wasn’t dating. Maybe someone should tell him that, since Kesh was gazing at Beka with an altogether too-proprietary air. Funny he should just happen to show up. And the morning had been going so well too.
They all spent another hour or so paddling out and then riding waves back in, although it was clear that both Beka and Kesh were much more experienced and proficient at it than Marcus was. Rationally, he knew that was to be expected. Hell, he hadn’t been on a board in ages; really, he was doing damned well, all things considered, for a guy who’d spent most of the last twelve years in the middle of the desert. But he still hated that the other man was showing him up, doing fancy flips and turns, and generally being dazzling and handsome and charming.
Marcus shook his head, pushing wet hair out of his eyes as he headed back in to shore. He knew he was being irrational. It’s not as though he and Beka were a couple, or ever likely to be one. She deserved a lot better than a burned-out Marine with a sick father and a bad attitude. And there was no place in his life for some New Age wisdom-spouting surfer chick who lived in a painted bus, for god’s sake. It wasn’t as though he wanted to be with Beka. He just didn’t want some guy with an Irish accent and gleaming white teeth to be with her either.
Jaw tight, he laid his borrowed board upright in the sand and waited for Beka to finish riding her current wave. Her graceful form cut through the water as though she were a part of it, and for a moment he just watched and admired. As soon as she came in, he’d just tell her that he had to get back to the boat, and call it a day.
“A wonder to behold, is she not?” a lilting voice said in his ear.
Marcus practically jumped out of his skin. How the hell had the guy snuck up on him like that? For a moment, his heart beat wildly as he flashed back to a scorching-hot alley in Afghanistan—to a man with glinting black eyes and a viciously curved knife sliding silently out of a doorway, the smell of garlic and exotic spices and the dust underfoot, the sound of his own blood spattering onto the ground as they fought. Then he clenched his fists and jerked himself back to reality. He was home and safe. More or less.
“Yes, she is,” he said, his tone even. But he had a feeling the other man could sense how much he’d rattled Marcus, and was enjoying it.
You’re being an idiot, he scolded himself. You just don’t like him because he’s interested in Beka. That’s hardly fair, since you’re not.
“It is kind of you to allow her to accompany you and your father out on your ship,” Kesh said in the same casual voice Marcus had used. His eyes were aimed at the sea, and Beka, but his attention was firmly rooted onshore. “I find her current preoccupation misguided, however, and I think it might be best if you no longer encouraged it.”
Marcus folded his arms over his chest. “I think that’s up to her, don’t you?”
Kesh turned his head and gazed into Marcus’s eyes. Despite the fact that Marcus had about forty pounds on the other man, and was at least three inches taller, a slight chill ran down his spine. Not fear. Kesh didn’t intimidate him, no matter how much he might be trying to. More like that feeling he got when he saw a scorpion or a coiled snake or a great white shark; that visceral gut reaction that said predator.