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Maybe she wouldn’t.
It depended on Chad’s duty schedule and how much free time he had. Ellie planned to spend as much time as possible with her brother, but when Chad was busy, Daniel might be fun to hang out with. He apparently knew the island well.
Perfect. A vacation flirtation.
Something to laugh about over coffee with her colleagues when she got home.
“Ellie.”
Even knowing this scene for exactly what it was, and knowing that Daniel was getting ready to exercise his best come-on, when he said her name like that, low and a little bit rough, Ellie shivered.
Make that sizzled.
“Umm?”
“I…” He cleared his throat. “Uh, where are you from?”
Was that shyness she heard? Couldn’t be. Didn’t fit the image.
“Texas,” she said, and slowly turned her head from her study of the sea so that she could look at him.
What she saw made her breath catch. “S-San Antonio,” she added in a husky whisper.
“Ah.” His gaze never left her mouth. “Would you mind if I kissed you?”
He had to ask? “Please,” Ellie managed to breathe. Her eyes fluttered shut.
But it wasn’t Daniel’s lips she felt next.
The stroke of gentle fingers brushing the side of her face took her completely by surprise before their trail down the contours of her jaw lured her into a sensual wonderland.
Warm, firm, but infinitely light, his thumbs traced the slope of her nose and traveled on to outline the fullness of her lower lip.
Her lips parted in a silent plea for more.
“God, you’re beautiful,” Daniel whispered.
Perhaps he whispered.
By now his light caress had Ellie’s senses so adrift she didn’t know if he actually spoke. Only her sense of the tactile still operated, working overtime as her body gave birth to nerve endings born singing beneath this man’s hands.
His fingers whispered that her skull was perfect, her skin flawless, her facial muscles works of art. Ellie knew she was lovely because those fingers said it.
They twined through her hair, combed slowly through it to its ends, and she understood her hair was a silken glory, a perfection of color and texture.
When Daniel’s thumbs traced the curve of her ears, brailing their contours, the geography of their hills and valleys and hiding places, she became aware that he’d found paradise.
Lifting her face to give those magical hands greater access…she felt one of her earrings hit her shoulder.
Shocked, Ellie opened her eyes. Dear God in Heaven! What was she doing?
This was no tropical interlude. The man had her emotions zinging in another way completely.
Daniel, too, looked dazed.
“Are you out of your mind?” she snapped at him, rearing back. “I said you could kiss me. Not—not t-touch me. Look what you’ve done. You made me l-lose my earring.”
Frantically, fighting tears she couldn’t explain and angry at herself for being such a sensual pushover, Ellie searched for the silver flower, using her fingers to lightly brush the sand between them, trying not to disturb it overmuch—and trying not to remember another set of fingers that had also lightly brushed, but disturbed very much indeed.
The hibiscus blossom she’d placed in her hair earlier in the evening dropped to the sand, but she swatted it away.
Why was she crying, dammit?
She couldn’t find the earring.
Had she only imagined it falling? A subconscious warning, perhaps? Reaching up, she touched the lobes of her ears just to make sure it was truly gone. It was. The other was still there, however.
Taking it out of her ear, Ellie dropped it in the pocket of her skirt so she wouldn’t lose it, too, then slowly, carefully stood, trying not to shift any more sand than she must.
As she rose, the lost earring tumbled to the sand.
Snatching it up, she turned to face the man who’d sent her emotions careening out of control.
How dare he presume to…to do what he did! She’d only given him permission for a little nothing kiss between two strangers, a meaningless acknowledgment brought about by a lovely tropical night, not…not something else altogether.
Something that made her want to turn her face into Daniel’s broad chest and weep.
How dare he!
But before Ellie could utter a single heated word, her tirade died from lack of direction.
Daniel wasn’t there.
Like the irresponsible bum he was, when the going got rough, he simply left.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” she muttered darkly, borrowing Gram’s favorite saying.
Gathering her sandals, Ellie stomped through the sand to the street and headed for Chad’s apartment.
Why didn’t I leave when I could? Daniel thought, and groaned silently.
By now the party was dead; only a few “cousins” remained, picking up paper plates and cups, talking and laughing quietly.
Watching them from his usual place among the hibiscus, he would have kicked himself if he could. For whatever reason, freedom was within his grasp and he’d traded it for the company of a pretty girl.
Heck, she wasn’t even that pretty.
Beautiful, though, when she smiled. And tonight she’d smiled just for him.
How long had it been since a beautiful woman smiled for his benefit?
But a thousand pretty women could have smiled at him for years to come if he’d just had the presence of mind to leave the damned cove.
He’d known the place for what it was, but just like the first time, he’d let it seduce him again.
Trap him again.
Daniel sucked in a breath he didn’t actually have.
Ellie!
She’d run through the shallow water when he was chasing her. But she’d done it in all innocence. Surely the waters of the cove wouldn’t punish her for that.
Scanning the garden as far as he could see, Daniel searched for her, wishing he could somehow literally beat the surrounding bushes.
But though he examined every corner of the yard and beneath every shrub and tree within his field of vision, he saw no trace of a woman with hair the color of moonlight and a smile to rival its glow.
He wouldn’t even consider that she might be trapped elsewhere. If the force in the cove was just, it kept its curse only for him.
Yet somehow tonight he’d been released for a while, Daniel thought, a fact offering a glimmer of hope that he would be again.
And if he was…when he was…he was outta here.
In the meantime he had something new to think about. What color, he wondered, were Ellie’s eyes when the moon didn’t wash them to silver?
Chapter Three
On the excuse of checking the coals in the barbecue grill, Ellie let herself out the sliding screen door of her brother’s apartment. A gathering of marines and their significant others could be overwhelming.
But here on the patio it was another of the perfect tropical nights Hawaiians considered a norm. An almost full moon rode low in the sky and, upwind, the light breeze carried the scent of flowers she didn’t know the name of.
The night was perfect, all right, but it reminded her of Daniel.
Deliberately Ellie stepped downwind to the grill to get a good whiff of burning charcoal, her peaceful mood vanishing at the thought of the man on the beach whose touch turned her to flame.
The cad. Okay, it was an old-fashioned word, but a perfect description of the…bounder.
Perfect. That word again. She was sick of it.
Forty-eight hours ago, on a perfect tropical night on a perfect tropical beach, a man with a perfect face and perfect body had made a perfect fool of her. He’d taken her perfect flirtation and turned it into a…a perfect fiasco.
After three years of careful control, Daniel had blind-sided her, making her heart remember things she didn’t want it to remember, making her body feel things she didn’t want it to feel.
And the heck of it was, he hadn’t even kissed her.
When she’d come back to Chad’s apartment after the debacle on the beach, she’d been fiercely glad of that. But it hadn’t stopped her traitorous mind from wondering what the man’s kiss was like.
Still, if she wanted kisses, there were a couple of single marines in the group behind her who would be glad to oblige, she was sure.
Somehow, though, she doubted it would be the same.
Lifting her face to the moon riding a drifting cloud, Ellie knew she’d been out here long enough. After all, her brother had thrown this shindig so she could meet some of his buddies. It was also a sort of last “oo-rah.” Many of them, like her brother, would deploy to Okinawa shortly.
As she turned to reenter the apartment, however, Ellie glimpsed a shadowy figure sitting at a picnic table just beyond the range of light shining through the patio doors behind her.
A tenant from one of the other units, perhaps? But most of them, also marines, were at her brother’s party.
Yet there was something about the vague shape…
Ellie walked toward the picnic table. With at least ten good men in the room behind her, she had no reason to be afraid.
Once close enough to get a look at the seated figure, though, her heart lurched. She halted abruptly.
Daniel!
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
From where he sat, the man had certainly been able to see her when she came outside. But he hadn’t said a word.
Holy grief, was he stalking her?
“There’s a whole platoon of marines in there,” she informed him tightly, nodding toward the low-level noise behind her when he didn’t answer right away. “I suggest you leave while you’re still in one piece.”
“Love to,” he replied, not moving.
“Well, go on.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “If you don’t leave, I’ll…I’ll—”
“You’ll call in the artillery,” Daniel said, sounding tired. “Go ahead. Maybe that will work.” He stood.
In the moonlight Ellie saw his faint, bitter smile. It was the saddest thing she’d ever seen.
But remembering the man’s effect on her at the beach, she froze her melting heart right back up again.
Still, when Daniel stretched and rolled his shoulders as if he’d been sitting too long, her gaze couldn’t help but follow his rippling muscles.
He wore the same bathing suit he’d had on two nights before, she noticed. Or was it boxers?
A thought that revved her imagination into overdrive.
It was definitely time for this man to hit the road.
“Look,” she began with a growl….
“Hey, El. Who you got there?”
Chad had come up behind her and now put out his hand like the friendly Texan he was. “Chad Simms, Ellie’s brother,” he said.
“Daniel Morgan,” Daniel replied.
