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She’d grown up, too, though. She’d left the island behind her and earned her finance degree from UCLA. She’d analyzed risks for Fortune 500 companies and then suggested ways to manage those risks, earning her way to the top of the consulting firm she worked for. Right now, however, the biggest risk of all was standing in front of her, and she refused to let him leave her tongue-tied. “Hello, Daeg.”
“Dani.” Her name was a rough growl on his lips. Was that a hint of something deeper in those watchful eyes of his? He was eyeing her, she realized, like she was dangerous.
The sensation was intoxicating.
And infuriating.
She hated how anger and desire competed inside her, leaving her uncertain and wanting. Mostly, she wanted to leave him standing there alone on the beach. Daeg Ross was wicked temptation, but as she reminded herself again, she’d grown up a long time ago. Maybe this meeting was a chance encounter, a handful of seconds soon over. But then his eyes were taking in her body, making her insides clench with need, and that definitely made her mad. How could he just look at her and the years fell away?
She wanted more. More memories. She should be the one to leave this time, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He’d upended her whole world ten years ago with a simple kiss, but she still hadn’t learned her lesson.
The fact was, she still wanted Daeg Ross.
* * *
SHE WATCHED DAEG the entire two weeks of his leave, never getting up the nerve to approach him. He was five years older than she was, but decades older in terms of experience. She knew that. She knew there were at least a dozen good reasons why she shouldn’t go near him.
But she hoped.
And when he found her walking on the beach that night, after her prom date ditched her, she was glad. The whispers about his rough past before he’d come to the island didn’t scare her. He was big and sun-darkened, his hair cut close to his scalp with military precision. All the time he’d spent training in the water had given him broad, powerful shoulders, and she wanted to put her hands on those shoulders and hang on, because she knew he could take her with him, take her somewhere special.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” Daeg told her, and concern filled his voice. “It’s late, Dani-girl.”
That smoky voice aroused her past a point of no return. “I don’t care.” She didn’t. Tonight was supposed to be magical and yet her date had been a dud, showing more interest in his friends and their bootleg six-pack of beer than in her.
Daeg looked down at her, and she wondered what he saw. “You should.”
“It’s late.” She used his own words on him. “You should walk with me.”
He frowned, but wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. At first, their bare feet splashed through the surf. She’d ditched her heels back where the steps cut down from the road to the sand, but her dress dragged in the water. She’d chosen the dress for its lavender color, the color of crocuses and bubble bath. The yards of tulle and sequins had winked at her from the rack in the store. When she’d tried it on she felt like a princess.
So far, the night had yielded none of that magic.
Later, she wasn’t sure if she’d stopped to check out the stars and everything else had just happened—or if she’d dropped her head back, turned toward him.
He groaned something—her name, she’d decided afterward, replaying the memory of it in her mind—and the arm around her shoulders brought her impossibly closer toward him. She went willingly into his arms, her body pressing into his full-on. He bent his head and his mouth met hers.
This was what she wanted, what she’d been waiting for.
Daeg’s mouth was everything she’d dreamed about and more. Some delicious, new sensation tugged at her.
He took charge of their kiss and her. When the incoming surf caught the backs of her knees, her mouth opened on a gasp and he swept inside. The rough, masculine taste and texture of his lips and tongue sent an unfamiliar pleasure rocketing through her.
He guided her from the water and down onto the sand. Covering her, he cupped her head gently in his hands as he devoured her mouth. Don’t stop, she begged silently, entranced by the feel of him, the weight of his big body pressed against hers.
He kissed her and kissed her and she didn’t know where the kiss might have taken them because she recognized instinctively that he was as lost as she was, but then the surf broke over their feet. The cold water was a shock. She shivered and he cursed, rolling off her.
“This is a bad idea, Dani. Go home.”
Confused, she reached for him, but he shoved to his feet. He held out a hand to help her up. However, he was back to being a stranger.
A stranger she’d kissed on the beach.
She had sand in her hair, on her legs. The sodden weight of the dress pulled at her and she didn’t feel like a princess anymore. The magic abruptly vanished from the night.
“Go home,” he repeated harshly. “You drive here, Dani?”
Mutely, she nodded.
“I’ll follow you home,” he said. “Make sure you get inside okay.”
“And then?” She needed there to be something more. Tonight couldn’t end like this.
He shrugged and then shook his head. “There is nothing more, Dani. This was just a kiss.”
* * *
TEN YEARS LATER, on the same beach, the man of her dreams was watching her again, and he sure didn’t sound as if their parting had done a number on him. Of course, he’d been every bit as eager to get off the island as she’d been to stay. She’d lost count of the number of states she’d lived in growing up. Her father would move them to New York one year for a big real estate deal, followed the next by Florida for a condo development her father had been sure would be the investment of a lifetime. Six months after that, they’d headed to Nevada because the Florida project was bankrupt. Ranches in Wyoming, a ski resort in Vermont... Her father had tried them all, ending, of course, with California because the Golden State had a white-hot real estate market. Summers on Discovery Island had been the one sure, stable thing in her life.
He scrubbed a hand over his short hair. “It’s been a while.”
“Has it?” she asked sweetly, instead of telling him to get lost. Something about Daeg Ross sent her straight back to her younger self. That part of her wanted to tease, to coax or to even hurt him the way he’d hurt her.
The adult part wanted to kiss him again.
Her taste in her men was clearly suspect. The guy she’d been engaged to for two years had become Mr. Wrong. And he’d excused his own infidelity by claiming she was terrible in bed. No matter how she looked at it, her love life was either a disaster or a disappointment. Take your pick. She was supposed to be on Discovery Island having hot, raunchy honeymoon sex in Sweet Moon’s finest suite. Instead, she was holding down the fort while her grandparents sailed down to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a cruise to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. They were undoubtedly having hot, raunchy second-honeymoon sex—which she was so not thinking about.
No more men, she insisted. Eventually, when she was ready to put her ex-fiancé behind her and start dating again, men like the soldier facing her wouldn’t make her list. Military men were outrageously built and beautiful, but they’d never be keepers. They shipped out, moved on and did everything but stay.
He peered down at her, and those eyes of his were hard. He’d seen things, done things. Those tours of duty had changed him. Well, she’d changed, too. She wasn’t that innocent girl walking along the beach.
Not anymore.
“Ten years,” he said, as if their timeline—or lack of one—was a challenge he was throwing down. “It’s been ten years, Dani.”
Numbers had always made sense to her. She was an actuary, which meant she turned risks into something you could calculate. In her world, loss was a formula and all you had to do was hold enough assets in reserve to offset those losses. Daeg lived in a different world, by different rules. Where she calculated risks, he took them.
Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know you were counting.”
Counting implied caring, and he’d never cared about her.
* * *
DAEG HADN’T COUNTED. Not every minute. But he thought about her more than he should have. He’d wanted to come back here to Discovery and finish what they’d started. He’d wanted to push that cupcake of a gown down her body. Touch her. Learn every lovely inch of her, inside and out.
She’d been too young.
She was a woman now. No longer a girl. She’d have had lovers. He captured her hand in his, entwining her pale, slim fingers with his. He noticed she didn’t have a ring.
“You’re not married.” Thank God. There were rules even he wouldn’t break. His lovers had been women who were only looking for the same thing he was. Casual, fun affairs featuring hot sex with a side of companionship. He liked waking up next to someone in bed and he wouldn’t rule out settling down eventually. Someday. At some point in the future when his body gave out and he couldn’t make the cut to be a rescue swimmer. But that wasn’t today.
“That’s none of your concern.” Anger flashed in her eyes. She tugged on his hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
For a long beat, he hung on. She was strong, but he was stronger. “It does.”
“To me, maybe.” She shrugged. “But whether or not I’m married doesn’t mean a thing to you, Daeg Ross.”
She was right. Whether she was married or not shouldn’t matter to him. But the lack of a husband, a boyfriend, someone who had claimed her for his own and whose claim she had welcomed—that would mean she was available. His body went on alert, adrenaline pumping through him like it did before he made a jump. She didn’t have to be off-limits. He could pursue her, kiss her, touch her.
He could strip off that cute bikini of hers and bury himself deep inside her.
He could make the biggest mistake of his life.
The words came out of his mouth, anyhow. “You’re back for the summer?”
“I’m out at Sweet Moon.” He knew the place. Her grandparents had run it for years, booking romantic cabins with four-posters and fireplaces. It was the kind of place a man took a special woman.
He’d never spent the night there.
“Important occasion?” He kept his voice deliberately light.
She shook her head. “Not anymore,” she replied, giving him a wry smile. “But my grandparents reserved a cabin for me, so here I am.”
“His loss,” he growled, and her eyes widened as if he was some kind of mind reader, because he’d put two and two together and come up with the correct answer. “Whoever he was, he messed up.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly, making it clear she had no intention of giving him the details about what had brought her here alone to Discovery Island. “It’s over. Water under the bridge. Things happen.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But maybe I can make it up to you? What about ice cream?” he asked. He definitely needed to work on his social skills. “I may not have been back here in years,” he coaxed, “but I still remember how good the ice cream is.”
She eyed him cautiously, her brown eyes examining him. He didn’t know what she saw, but it must have been something good because she nodded and a slow smile lit up her face. “I can let you do that.” She paused, toying with the strap of her tote bag.
He gestured toward the ice cream shack at the far end of the beach and started walking. The muscles in his knee knotted, putting a hitch in his gait.
“You okay?” Dani’s expression was all worry.
“Leg’s fine.” He wasn’t fielding questions, not today, so he returned the conversation, what there was of it, back on her. “We need to worry about you. First thing you do when you hit the beach? You lose the sandals.” Stopping, he pointed at her sandy flip-flops, holding out his hand. “You can’t be comfortable in those things. Let me carry them.”
She hesitated, clearly not sure if she wanted to hand over her shoes or jam them into her bag, sand and all. When she looked down at her feet, as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing, his gaze followed hers. The nail polish on her toes was perfect—more proof this was her first day on the beach.
Leaning in closer, he caught a whiff of coconut-scented sunscreen.
“You haven’t been on the island long, have you?”
“A week. What gave it away?”
The pristine beach tote and the perfect polish were his first clues. “No tan lines,” he said.
“Being pale is an occupational hazard. I work in an office. It increases my risk of dying from heart disease because I’m too sedentary, but decreases my risk of contracting skin cancer. At least the sun is a controllable risk.”
“Wow.” That was a first.
“Too much?” She made a face. “My day job is as an actuary. I only moonlight as a beachcomber.”
She toed off the shoes, shaking loose a small avalanche of sand. He captured the flip-flops, which looked ridiculously feminine in his hand.
She looked over at him. “You have any other suggestions for me?”
Did he ever. Indecent suggestions a decent man would never say out loud.
Because he wasn’t looking for a happily ever after. Getting serious and marriage weren’t something he’d ruled out for himself in the future—the very, very distant future. As it was now, he was away for months at a time on missions he couldn’t discuss. So Others May Live. That was the rescue swimmer’s motto, but it made commitment difficult.
And since he didn’t do forever, he shouldn’t be looking at Dani Andrews and wondering if she’d taste as good as she had the last time he’d kissed her.
Trouble.
She’d taste like trouble.
She was too sweet, too innocent even all these years later. She’d never faced real danger, never experienced the missions he had. That made him fiercely glad. She was safe because he’d done his job, and he’d keep her that way, no matter how badly he wanted to kiss her now that he had her close again. The breeze from the coming storm tumbled her hair around her face and shoulders.
He needed to let her go. He needed to wrap up this conversation and walk away. Again. Instead, he took a step closer, brushing up against her with his body. He was close enough to feel the heat radiating from her. “First storm of the summer’s arriving soon,” he said, brushing her arm briefly because he couldn’t take being this close and not touching her.
When a really violent storm blew in, the hotels opened up their conference rooms, ballrooms, whatever, putting down mattresses and offering bottled water for the locals. Sometimes the safest course of action was to put a kind of wall between yourself and any incoming storm. That could work for any number of things, he reminded himself.
She scanned the horizon. There were still several boats out on the bay. “It doesn’t look too bad. All those boats—they still stay here and ride out the storm?”
“Depends.” He pointed to a slim aluminum shell bobbing up and down just a few yards offshore. “Right there you’ve got your basic panga-type boat—aluminum sides, no cover, fifty horsepower motor.” He shrugged. “Not bad for a casual fishing trip inside a harbor or near shore, but nothing I’d want to trust my life to out on the open water. A bad storm’s going to toss one of those right up on the beach here if the owner doesn’t yank it out first. Then you’ve got your bigger boats.” He touched her shoulder lightly, directing her attention to a handful of larger vessels anchored farther away. “If the mooring’s good, those boats might ride it out. Bumpy as hell, but as long as they don’t get hit by debris, they’ll still be there in the morning. Then,” he said, smiling wide, “you’ve got your biggest boats.”
“Biggest?” She laughed, and he tried to ignore the urge to lean in and kiss her.
“Yeah, biggest. As in my boat’s the biggest. Perfect for your average midlife crisis or deep-sea fishing. Those guys hire the likes of me to pull the boat and get her under cover. Or, if they’re too cheap to pull the boat before the storm hits, they hire me after the fact to go salvage the pieces. You like sailing?”
She pursed her lips. “No. I don’t really care for the water much. Are they safe?”
“Enough.” He pushed the memories back. “I’ve pulled more than one captain out of the water.”
When she tilted her head, the question was clear in her eyes, so he continued. “With spec ops,” he explained. “After I left here, I did a couple tours with a helicopter sea-combat squadron as a rescue swimmer. We worked the Middle East and then Guam. I was the guy who jumped out of the chopper.” Was. He could still go back. He’d only been here three days and it wasn’t too late to re-up if he got his leg in fighting condition.
“It takes a brave person to do something like that.” She glanced at him up and down. He’d like to think she lingered on the good bits, but he wasn’t going to kid himself. “Are you all right?” she asked finally.
“Never better. This is just a little R & R.” The first day of spec ops training, he’d learned the “I am all right” signal. If you weren’t all right, you were off the job because otherwise you were a liability to the team. As long as a man could stay in the water, he was okay. He could keep on getting the job done.
He eyeballed their destination. The ice cream shack was coming up fast. Too fast.
“How about you? Is this trip all pleasure?” he asked, because he didn’t want to be done talking with her and couldn’t explain why. Stepping up to the order window, he bought two cones. The place only had the one flavor—chocolate and vanilla twisted together in a little cone. Her fingers grazed his as he handed her the napkin-wrapped cone, brushing aside her thanks for the cone before dropping a large bill into the tip jar.
“I had a vacation planned.” She looked down and fiddled with the tie on her bikini. “But now I’m helping my grandparents out, so business as well as pleasure. They’re on a cruise celebrating their fiftieth and I’m holding down the fort while they’re away. They were going to hire a temp from an agency, but I was here so...why not do it myself?”
“You’re walking on the beach.” He grinned at her. “The summer’s not a total loss.”
