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“Off-limits,” he repeated, implacable.
Still, she couldn’t help being aware of all the pretty women they encountered as they continued to stroll through the streets. More than one female looked at Gage, clearly appreciating his lean good looks and confident gait. A Pilates posse, a small group of women dressed in Lululemon exercise gear and carrying coffees, gave him speculative, sidelong looks. Pairs of office workers in tight suit skirts and sneakers slowed their lunch hour power walks as they passed him by. One nubile young lady, distributing flyers for a new restaurant, made a point of scrawling her number on the piece of paper before handing it to him.
Making the thumb-and-pinky “call me” sign, she grinned as he absently stuffed the sheet into his pocket.
“You’re missing a lot of opportunities,” Skye chided him. “You shouldn’t let my presence stop you.”
He shot her a dark look. “Are you trying to annoy me?”
Maybe. Though she was more annoyed at herself at the surge of ugly green jealousy she felt when she thought of him gorging on anyone. “I don’t know what’s put you in such a mood,” she mumbled, trying to cover her own.
“I need lunch,” he said, then halted, his gaze fixed on a small café across the street. “And God provides.” His tone was nearly reverent. “Fish tacos.”
In minutes they were at a tiny table, both with an iced tea and a plate of tacos in front of them. The lightly breaded white fish smelled delicious and tasted even better cocooned in a small warm corn tortilla and garnished with cabbage, grated cheddar cheese, a spoonful of tart white sauce and a squeeze of lime.
He held one taco high. “The young goose is a good swimmer,” he said, like a blessing, then ate it in three big bites. An appreciative moan followed.
Smiling, Skye tilted her head at him. “Better now?”
“Almost.” Round two went down as quickly as round one.
Her eyes widened as she lifted her first to her mouth. “Until now, I don’t think I had an accurate understanding of the depths of your appetite.”
He glanced up. “You didn’t get a hint last night?”
Skye stilled, remembering the hot look in his eye when he’d fed her ice cream. But surely that had been her imagination—if not projection. Still, her hand twitched, and her taco dropped back to her plate, its contents scattering. Glad for the distraction, she bent her head and busied herself scooping the ingredients back inside the tortilla.
“Maybe we should talk about it,” Gage said, his voice low.
Embarrassment burned up her neck toward her face. Did he mean... Did he suspect... Her brain stumbled over uncomfortable thoughts. When he’d left her house the night before, she’d hoped he’d not noticed the effect he had on her.
The way he was still affecting her.
“Skye?”
She still didn’t want to look at him. But she did, faking a puzzled expression. “Discuss? There’s nothing to discuss.”
And to her relief, he let it go. She didn’t want to squirm through any conversation he’d want to have about her misplaced interest. In her sloppy clothes and scrubbed face, they both knew she wasn’t Gage Gorge material. No need to make them both uncomfortable by spelling it out.
After lunch, they returned to Crescent Cove. Skye pulled into the driveway behind her beach house. The ride back had been silent and, on her side, filled with awkwardness. Gage, however, remained an enigma. For all she knew, he stayed quiet because he was tired, or bored or thinking of that woman whose number he had in his pocket.
“We have to talk about the attraction,” he suddenly said.
Startled, Skye whipped her head toward him. “Huh?”
“Don’t think I didn’t realize.” He pinned her with those bright turquoise eyes.
Damn. She supposed the notion of fooling him had been a pipe dream. An experienced man like Gage would know when a woman was...was drawn to him.
“It was there in the room with us last night, big as life, and I’d like to get past it, Skye. It’s not—”
“Don’t say anything more!” Clearly it was not a feeling he reciprocated. Who could blame him? She knew what she looked like—colorless and camouflaged in baggy clothes. That’s the way she wanted to be, needed to be. Still, the whole situation stung her pride.
Gage cleared his throat. “I’m only trying to say that I—”
“Have really been out of touch for too long. Or your head has been turned by the attention you’ve received since you got back.”
“What?”
She gathered her self-respect around her like a cloak. “Not every woman in the world falls for you, you know.”
“Skye—”
“Your ego is overinflated, Gage. I wouldn’t be so foolish as to...to want you. There’s no way that a woman who looks like this—” she indicated her sweatshirt and wrinkled pants “—would imagine herself with a man like you.”
And on that undignified note, she dashed from the car.
* * *
GAGE TRIED LIGHTENING his expression as he turned toward his sister-in-law-to-be. The scowl he erased was more commonly found on his twin, who had always been the deeper, moodier of the two—at least until Griff had found his Jane. “Wedding stuff going okay?” he asked politely, wrapping his fingers around his beer.
Griffin laughed at him from across the table on Captain Crow’s deck. “Yeah, you’re so interested in the details.”
The couple had arrived at Beach House No. 9 an hour ago to take measurements for...something. Okay, Gage had tuned out the particulars, and only tuned back in when they’d suggested a happy-hour visit to the bar up the beach. His mind had been occupied by other things.
Reaching over, Jane squeezed his hand. “Don’t mind him. Wedding stuff’s going fine. Tell us about your day. What did you do?”
Gage shrugged. “Went shopping with Skye.”
“Oh,” Jane said, her forehead creasing. “You’re spending time with her, then?”
“Some.” Though today’s excursion might be the last occasion. Damn woman made him and his ego both feel like asses for his attempt at discussing that little tug running between them. Had he been wrong about the reciprocal sizzle? He thought not, and if so, then he hadn’t been wrong to address it.
Skye was his lodestar and his talisman, and he didn’t want to compromise those by infusing sex into their friendly, caring relationship.
Except, he reminded himself, feeling another scowl coming on, she didn’t seem to care for him all that much. Tipping back his head, he took another sip of beer. His gaze landed on a pretty girl sitting alone at a table not far away. Their gazes met, and a small smile curled the corners of her lips.
He liked her light brown hair, lifted from her neck in one of those messy updos.
He liked her V-necked blouse that was low enough to reveal a hint of cleavage.
He liked the fact that she seemed to like him back, so different from the prickly woman who’d practically stormed from her car after making clear she considered him an arrogant so-and-so.
Why was she his lodestar again?
What he needed, much more than that, was a sex star. Okay, it didn’t have to be nearly that stellar. He just needed someone with whom to blunt this horny edge. He acknowledged the pretty lady with a dip of his beer, grinning as her long eyelashes fluttered in a half bashful, half teasing manner.
Griffin groaned. “Get a room, bro.”
“Got a room,” Gage said, letting his gaze drift back to his brother. “Gotta get a woman now.”
“Well, have the decency to wait until Jane and I leave, okay?”
His brother’s fiancée had that little pucker between her brows again. “I thought you were, uh, spending time with Skye.”
“That was then.” Now he wanted to forget the annoying, infuriating, insulting female. Your ego is overinflated, Gage.
Jane’s frown deepened. “But, Skye—”
“Look, can we not talk about her?” If he had a chance of getting laid, he had to pretend she didn’t exist. The memory of her naked earlobes, her flower-water scent, the way her nose wrinkled when she used that god-awful phrase, the Gage Gorge, was attempting to interfere with the satiation of his very normal, natural, nothing-to-feel-ashamed-about needs. “I’m declaring this table, this whole night as a matter of fact, a Skye-free zone.”
Griffin and his woman exchanged glances Gage didn’t even try to interpret. Instead, he signaled the waitress for another beer and sent over a whatever-she’s-having to Updo. When his twin and Jane finished their drinks and made their goodbyes, he was gratified to see the pretty stranger get to her feet and approach his table.
Yeah. Screw the afternoon. The evening was going to end so much damn better for him.
Several hours later, Gage squinted, trying to bring the hands of his watch into focus. They wouldn’t stay still. Lifting his wrist, he addressed the man standing on the other side of the bar. “Does this say it’s wiggly time?”
He frowned, because that sounded really idiotic. How much had he had to drink? To clear his head, he sucked in a breath, and a delicate scent he couldn’t forget entered his lungs. “Damn woman,” he groused. “She can’t even leave my air alone.”
“What’s that?” the bartender asked, stepping closer. “I didn’t hear you, friend.”
“That’s what we were supposed to be,” he told the man. “Me ’n’ Skye. Friends.”
Someone slid onto the stool beside his. His head still bent over his watch crystal, he pitched his voice toward the newcomer. “Are you another pretty woman? ’Cuz there were two...no, three sitting there before you.”
“Is that what you’re waiting for?” a voice said, low.
“Apparently not,” Gage grumbled, “since I’ve sent three—or was it four?—on their way.”
“So many,” the person beside him murmured.
The bartender spoke up, a helpful note in his voice. “It was Ladies’ Night. He kept opening his wallet.”
“And yet I still couldn’t cinch the deal,” Gage added glumly. With bleary eyes, he stared at the TV screen over the bar. When had Letterman lost so much of his hair? “I must be getting old, too.”
“Or maybe more discerning.”
The moralistic tone sent Gage’s head swinging to the side. His mood, already on morose, slid straight to grim when he saw it was Skye on the next-door stool, wearing another of her circus-tent sweatshirts and a pair of jeans. “What the hell are you doing here? I declared you off-limits.”
“I didn’t get the memo.”
“Blame me, bud,” the bartender put in. “I knew you were staying in the cove and I called her when I wasn’t sure you were good to drive to your cottage.”
“I walked here,” Gage said.
“Okay. But I’m not sure you’re good to walk to your cottage, either.”
“Of course I...” His voice dropped off. To be honest, he couldn’t feel his toes.
“Give us a couple of coffees, will you, Tom?” Skye asked. “Black, a little sugar?”
When the mugs were set in front of them, she picked hers up and gave him a sidelong glance. “I’m off-limits?”
“In more ways than one,” he muttered, taking his own long swallow of the strong brew. Even if she smelled like damn heaven, he wasn’t interested in her in the way he was interested in other women.
“What’s that?”
He took another drink of coffee. “Look, I didn’t want you around when I...when I...”
“Went on a gorge?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “We discussed that terminology, didn’t we?”
“Sorry—”
“Because it’s probably what ruined my evening. I had Updo in the palm of my hand. Halter Top claimed she could tell I was going to get lucky tonight by reading the foam on my beer. Tiffany—”
“Oh, so at least you bothered to find out one of their names.”
He frowned at her. “It was engraved on the heart-shaped pendant she wore around her neck.”
“What a guy.” Skye rolled her eyes. “That’s not her name, that’s the jeweler it came from.”
“As I was saying,” Gage continued, “every time I was on the verge of suggesting we retire to No. 9 for some private...conversation, I would hear your goddamn prissy voice in my head.”
“I thought it was the margaritas,” the bartender said, pausing to top off their mugs. “That’s what you blamed it on before.”
“Skye can take responsibility for that, too,” he said, using the logic of the inebriated. “Because it had to be a woman who decided to screw around with the perfection of tequila, triple sec and lime juice. Flavored margaritas are clearly a female invention.”
“What are you talking about?” Skye asked, looking between him and the bartender.
“Mango margaritas were the special tonight,” Tom explained. Then he plopped a glass in front of her and poured inside the last icy dregs from a blender. “I don’t think they’re half-bad, myself.”
Gage stared at the orangeish concoction as if it were a snake. He could smell the sticky sweetness from here. Just as pumpkin could take him back to Thanksgiving and peppermint to Christmas, breathing in the mango-redolent air sucked him straight to another time and place. He closed his eyes and felt the grit of dirt on his palms and the sick, uneven thud of his pulse in his ears. His throat closed, rebelling against swallowing, and his belly cringed as he imagined the thick liquid splashing into its aching depths.
“Gage? Gage!”
His eyes flew open and he stared, uncomprehending for a moment, into Skye’s face. “I imagined you a million times down there,” he said absently, “but never could pinpoint your features.”
“What? Down where?” Her brows drew low. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, as if he could shake off the memory like a bad dream. “Never mind.” That glass of mango marg still sat there, mocking him, and he slid from the stool. “It’s time for me to get out of here.”
At his first step, he stumbled a little. “Gage.” Skye put out her hand.
He brushed it aside, heading for the exit. “I’m fine.”
She dogged his footsteps. “I’ll go with you to No. 9.”
