The Love Shack (3 page)

Hell. She didn’t want his “feasting” to involve her friends or family, so he figured she didn’t want it to involve herself, either.
He
didn’t want it to involve Skye and mess up what she already was to him. Childhood friend. Charming correspondent. Survival technique.

So he shut down his baser urges and approached her with slow steps, smiling again. “Hey,” he said. “Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, too.” The strap of a backpack was slung over one shoulder and she let it slip down her arm as she returned her own smile. “I have coffee.”

He watched her pull out a silver thermos. “Is that an offer?”

She glanced up as she poured some steaming liquid into the cap. “How about a peace offering?” The smell of the brew wafted his way as she held it out. “I’m sorry about yesterday... I...I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Me, neither.” He took the small cup from her and brought the coffee to his lips. “Maybe we should start hanging out together in the wee hours of the night.”

She was rummaging in her backpack again, and he saw her withdraw an empty plastic container. Then she crossed to a large, high-and-dry flat boulder and sat down, dropping the pack near her hip. Gage followed suit, hoisting himself onto the rock beside her, then passing the cup of coffee in her direction.

After a little hesitation, she took it, and swallowed a small sip before handing it back to him. They shared the beverage and a companionable silence, each of them looking out to sea.

“I picked up your last couple of letters before I returned to the States,” he finally said. “I’m sorry you were worried.”

She kept her gaze on the horizon line. “I think it was because you wrote you had a new contact who was taking you to a region you hadn’t explored before. It sounded dangerous.”

He’d probably telegraphed his own unease. His internal debate over trusting the new guy had gone on for several days. He wasn’t stupid—journalists in that part of the world ran into all kinds of trouble, from muggings to murder. But the truth was, every footstep made in a war-torn country was a judgment call and the accolades went to those willing to take the most risk. It had seemed an acceptable trade-off at the time.

Gage realized that Skye was looking at him expectantly. “What?”

“I asked how that worked out—your new contact,” she said.

He hesitated. The wind whipped past again, propelling a lock of her long hair across his lips. It was silky-soft and smelled like a flowered breeze. Catching it between his fingers, he made to tuck it behind her ear.

She hunched away from him and grabbed the stuff herself, drawing it around her far shoulder. “Your contact?”

Thinking of Jahandar, Gage fought the urge to spit. “He turned out to be not so good.” Understatement.

They subsided into silence again.

“How’s your friend’s widow doing?” Skye asked eventually. “And her son?”

“Okay,” he replied, easily following her train of thought. Ten months ago, a colleague, Charlie Butler, had been abducted and held for ransom by the Taliban. His wife, Mara, the mother of a four-year-old, had been forced to navigate the complex maze of negotiation and counternegotiation along with the crisis management team hired by Charlie’s newspaper. The foreign correspondent community had done what they could, suggesting people to call and offering support, even as they’d kept the story out of the news. It was safer for the kidnap victim that way. “I’ll try to see them while I’m here. They don’t live far.”

“You could invite them to the cove. Sun and sand can be healing.”

Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping,
Gage mused, then turned his thoughts back to Mara and her son. No doubt they could use a dose of sun and sand. It had come down to Charlie’s next of kin—to Mara—to give the go-ahead on an American military raid to rescue her husband. He hadn’t survived the attempt. One of his kidnappers had shot him as soldiers stormed the compound where he’d been held.

“I’m glad Griffin has made the choice to stick close to his woman,” Gage said abruptly. “If you love somebody enough, you won’t chance putting them through that.”

“He loves Jane a lot.”

“He does,” Gage agreed, shaking off his dark thoughts and breathing deep of the clean, open air. “Speaking of love lives, how’s yours?”

Skye made a great show of screwing the empty cap back onto her thermos. “Oh, let’s not talk about me.”

“Why not? Did something go wrong with you and Dagwood?”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “Dalton.”

“Dalton, Dagwood.” With a vague wave of his hand, he dismissed his mistake. Fact was, Dalton felt like the mistake. He didn’t know the guy, but she’d written that he worked in commercial real estate. Probably wore a suit seven days a week and didn’t like to get sand or seawater on his feet.

“We broke up,” Skye said.

“Good—wait, what?” Gage turned to face her. “When did this happen?”

“A while back.” Now it was her turn to make an offhand gesture. “He still keeps coming around, but it’s over.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

She shrugged.

Call him nosy, but he couldn’t let it go at that. They’d shared quite a bit of themselves through their letters. “What was the trouble?”

A flush suffused her face. Her wet tongue came out to paint her upper, then her lower, lip. Gage watched the nervous movement, aware he was getting aroused again. Damn. And damn her for the hesitation that had his hackles rising, too.

“Skye?”

“We...uh...” She cleared her throat. “There were some physical problems.”

Dumbfounded, he stared at her. He’d expected to hear the guy was married. Or maybe two-timing Skye with some other single woman. But...physical problems? What the hell did that mean?

Without thinking, he slid close and gripped her upper arms to turn her toward him, a sharp urgency driving him. “Did he hurt you? I’ll kill him if he hurt you.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t him. He didn’t hurt me.”

Gage frowned, searching her face for the truth. “Okay. Good.” Then, driven again, he yanked her close and buried his face in her hair, breathing in more floral sweetness. “You scared the shit out of me for a minute.”

It took another of those minutes for him to realize she was stiff in his hold. God, he thought, releasing her to put some distance between them. She probably considered him nuts. He
was
nuts, because he could still feel the imprint of her delicate form against his chest, the soft mounds of her breasts snuggled against his pecs. His cock throbbed and he shoved a hand through his hair, trying to push from his mind how good she’d felt in his arms.

Fuck. He needed to get laid, whether or not it insulted Skye’s prudish sensibilities. Not that she’d have any reason to know about who and what he did between the sheets. He could be discreet.

Though he wondered about his erection, because it was still upright and clamoring for immediate action.

Gage shot to his feet. “I should get back. Give Griffin a call.” If his brother refused to go babe-trolling with him, maybe Jane had a friend who was up for sexual adventure. Because that was exactly what he needed.

Skye stood, too, her plastic container in hand. “See you later.”

“What are you doing today?”

“This and that.” Then she crossed the uneven surface at her feet to peer into the nearest tide pool. “First, I’m gathering some sea lettuce.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a bright green seaweed—looks just like lettuce.”

“I know what it is, I just don’t know what you want with it.”

She sent him a smile. “I’m going to eat it in a salad. Want to come over for dinner tonight and share it with me?”

“Tell me you’re not going to serve it with sea cucumber.” They were unattractive orange, sluglike creatures, about as long as a man’s hand, with a bumpy, leathery skin.

Her gaze went back to the tide pool. “I think I see one or two of those in here, as well.”

He made his way over to take his own look. “You don’t really eat them.”

“I don’t really eat them.” She leaped over a nearby pool to approach yet another. “Oh, here’s an octopus.”

Who could resist an eight-armed animal? Gage walked toward her, sliding a little on some slimy surf grass covering the exposed rock.

“Be careful,” Skye admonished.

He shot her a grin. “Thanks, Mom.” Upon reaching the edge, he squatted for a better view.

Skye mimicked his position. They were shoulder to shoulder. Her arm lifted, and she pointed toward a small underwater cavern below the surface. “See?”

Gage studied nature’s temporary goldfish bowl. It took him a moment, but then he saw the creature, its brown-speckled body about the size of his fist. As they watched, one of its tentacles drifted out and explored the rock overhead. It touched a bright green anemone, which immediately drew in its petals. A trio of starfish, one orange, one brown, one rose, clung to another shelf of rock nearby, huddled close to each other. A small sculpin fish wiggled about the sandy bottom on its own mission.

“Beautiful,” Gage said, turning his head to give Skye another grin.

Her head turned, too, and she smiled back.

Beautiful,
he thought again, gazing into her face, then homing in on that soft, tender mouth. Her smile slid away and it was so serious now. So seriously in need of a kiss.

Gage leaned forward.

Skye scrambled back, stumbling as she rose. He shot up, too, taken aback by her sudden movement. Her left heel caught on a jut of rock, and the right sole of her slip-on canvas shoe slid on a patch of surf grass. Then she was falling, going ass-first into one of the larger, deeper tide pools.

She didn’t submerge all the way, but managed to come to a stand, wet from the neck down. They both stared at each other a moment, and then she burst out laughing. “So much for my dignity,” she said, apropos of nothing and between bouts of laughter. “I feel like an idiot.”

“You look like one, too,” Gage confirmed and leaned down, palm outstretched to help her out. After a moment, her wet hand met his and he pulled, her light weight making it nothing to get her back onto land, water streaming from her clothes and puddling at her feet.

“I probably terrified some poor little sea creature,” she said, turning around to inspect the still-sloshing surface of the pool.

Gage’s gaze got stuck on her backside, the thin linen of her clothing now transparent and plastered to her skin. Oh, God. She had the sweetest—the
sweetest
—of high, firm asses. His favorite kind.

Then she spun back and the fabric was only the frailest of veils here, too. He could see every lovely line of her: the delicate framework of her collarbone, the gentle slope of her breasts with their cold-hardened peaks, the flat plane of her belly between her hip bones, the gentle rise of her sex.

Gage flashed hot all over. He could have used his cock as a hammer.

“We should get you back home,” he said, poleaxed by the strength and insistence of his physical reaction.
Want to have her,
his body was demanding.
Got to have her.

And Gage had this worrisome premonition that no other woman would do.

CHAPTER THREE

S
KYE
HAD
MADE
A
DATE
with Polly for a caffeine boost in the form of an afternoon latte at Captain Crow’s. Her friend was already seated at the bar, blowing across the top of her overlarge cup as Skye approached. “How are you?” she asked.

Polly responded with her usual cloudless smile, “Me? I’m good. I’m always good.”

Settling herself onto a stool, Skye glanced around. Starting at about four o’clock, the place would fill with people demanding beer and cocktails, but it was relatively quiet now and there was someone new attending the espresso machine.

He turned and started toward her. “What can I get you, Skye?”

She frowned. He was in his mid-twenties, with shaggy dark hair and a skinny build. His face wasn’t familiar. “I’m sorry, do I—”

“Oh, you probably don’t.” He appeared suddenly self-conscious. “I’m Steve. I went to college with Addy...Addison March, who stayed at the cove last month? We met here for drinks one time and she showed me the Sunrise Pictures stuff.”

“Oh. Sure.” A grad student in film studies, Addy had cataloged the memorabilia in exchange for a first look at the complete collection. “But did we meet then?”

The barista was a little red in the face now. “No, no. I think she pointed you out to me, that’s all. Can I make you a latte, as well?”

“Yes, thanks,” Skye said, then watched him hurry toward the big machine at the end of the bar.

“Just another of your admirers,” Polly murmured.

“What? No! I don’t even know that guy.” And she didn’t want to know him, because he gave off a weird enough vibe to make her stomach knot. Though to be fair, these days all men gave off a weird vibe to her.

“Well, Gage Lowell seemed very attentive yesterday. I saw him with you in your yard.”

“You were the one he was paying attention to. He told me he thinks you’re cute.” And then she’d warned him off with a rabid intensity that made her squirm a little, remembering it.

“I hate that word,” Polly said, suddenly looking as if she’d swallowed something sour. “Cute. I think it’s preventing me from having a fulfilling love life.”

“I thought it was the word
perky
that was to blame. At least that’s what you told me last week.”

“I’ve rethought that. I’m a kindergarten teacher. Perky is part of the job description, so I can’t wish it away.”

The barista was back. He placed Skye’s drink in front of her but was called over to attend another customer before he could strike up more conversation. She blew out a relieved breath that disturbed the froth of foam layered over her drink like coastal fog. “We both know your biggest stumbling block to a fulfilling love life is Teague.” Though she’d yet to admit to it, her best friend had it bad for a man who considered Polly his best friend, too.

The other woman’s scowl made it clear she wouldn’t be confessing today, either, even as a telltale flush crawled up her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, then pinned Skye with a stare. “What’s yours?”

She blinked. “My biggest stumbling block? Uh...how about that I’m not seeking a fulfilling love life?”

“Well, you’re not seeking an unfulfilling one, either,” Polly grumbled. “Why is that? You haven’t been out with anyone since giving Dalton the boot, and that was months ago.”

“He’s been calling again,” Skye confessed, sidestepping the subject. “What makes a man unable to take no for an answer?”

“Maybe you just haven’t found the right man to ask the question. I get that you don’t want Dalton in your life. But what if some other guy—say some other guy named Gage Lowell who insisted on having that dance the other night—came on to you and—”

“Gage would never come on to me.” That wasn’t what had happened this morning at the tide pools, was it? They’d been side by side, gazing into the water. and then they’d been gazing into each other’s eyes.

She’d experienced another spurt of that hot, anxious panic that made her skin burn and her heart beat too hard in her chest. Flustered, she’d had the strange idea that he was about to kiss her and something low, somewhere below her belly button, had clenched—more panic, she supposed. And even as she struggled to stay calm and dignified, her nerves had sent her staggering back.

Foolish Skye.

This whole conversation was foolish. “Do we only have men to talk about?” she asked Polly. “I feel as if I’m at a seventh-grade slumber party.”

“Did I put your bra in the freezer?” her friend demanded. “Have we divvied up which member of the latest boy band will take which of us to the prom?”

“Ah.” Skye smiled, reminiscing. “I always wanted the devilish-looking one. All the rest of the girls went for the blond or the lead that looked like he should be class president.”

“What band are we talking about?” Polly asked, lifting her cup for a sip.

Skye did the same. “It doesn’t matter. They’re all made up of one of each type. And my favorite was always the guy who looked like trouble.”

Polly slid her a sly glance. “He might not be in a band, but Gage looks like trouble to me.”

“Why do you keep bringing him up? He is the most commitment-averse man I know. He doesn’t stay in one place long enough to have two-night stands.”

“You don’t have to have a
relationship
with him. My God. It’s summer. He’s here for a few weeks. Have a fling.”

A fling with Gage Lowell? Skye felt herself flush, thinking of his tall body, his wide chest, the intense turquoise-blue of his eyes. He’d held her hand, his fingers lean and sure, and now she thought of them working at buttons, undoing clasps, baring skin. That spot below her navel clenched again, just as it had by the tide pools.

“Think about it,” Polly continued. “It’s been so long since you’ve had sex.”

Gage. Sex. Skye pushed her latte away, not wanting to add caffeine to her already jittering insides and that low-belly clenching. How she wished Polly had not brought it up, not put those images in her head, not made her think about all she couldn’t have.

With anyone.

* * *

“I’
M
REALLY
HERE
,” Gage said as he sat on Captain Crow’s deck beside his twin, watching the daily 5:00 p.m. ritual. A man in board shorts stood at the base of a ten-foot pole poked in the sand. He blew a long blast on a football-sized conch shell. Then it was the raising of the flag—a blue rectangle of cloth printed with the internationally recognized shape of a martini glass.

Lifting his beer, Gage toasted the fluttering scrap of fabric. “To cocktail hour.” Then he clacked his bottle against Griffin’s. “Dogs bark but the caravan moves on.”

Griffin ignored that bit of Arabic wisdom and narrowed his gaze at his brother. “You don’t have a camera.”

“As usual, your powers of observation are staggering. No wonder you won that big hairy prize for your reporting.”

“Why don’t you have a camera?” his brother persisted, paying no attention to the teasing.

Gage shrugged. He couldn’t explain to himself his disinterest in having near what for years had been an extension of his own body.

“Something’s wrong,” Griffin said flatly. “Damn it, I knew something was wrong. I’ve known it for weeks.”

Gage took a slow swallow of beer. “Where’s your evidence? I’m here, I’m whole—”

“You’re without a camera—”

“I don’t have one with me all the time.”

“Yes, you do, unless you’re having sex. And that’s only because you told me it inhibits naked women. They worry they might become the subject of your camera’s eye.”

“And I don’t want to waste my time with inhibited women, that’s true. Life’s too short.” He took another swig of his beer, enjoying the warm air, the cool breeze off the ocean, the happy, drinking people around them.

Griffin stayed silent, but Gage could feel his considering stare. “And why are you just sitting there—no drumming fingers, no fidgety knees?” his twin finally asked. “I’ve never seen you sit this still your whole life.”

“Maybe I’ve learned some patience.” Cramped quarters and no way out of them could affect a man. When his brother made a scoffing sound, he pointed his bottle at him. “You’ve changed, too. Good God, you’re engaged.”

Griffin narrowed his eyes. “You’re avoiding my questions.”

“Ask one that makes some sense.”

“Why Crescent Cove?”

Gage blinked. He hadn’t seen that coming. “You’re getting married here at the end of the month.”

“You didn’t know that when you booked No. 9 as Fenton Hardy.”

“Does it really matter?” The notion had been seeded by Griffin, he supposed, when his brother had told him he’d decided to take three months at the cove to write his war memoir. But Gage had to admit that there’d been something else—some
one
else cementing the deal.

Even before his two weeks in hell, he’d had this itch to visit Skye-with-the-unnecessary-
e.
He smiled, thinking about her.

Across the table from him, Griffin groaned. “All right, who is she?”

“Who is who?”

“You’re thinking about some girl. You’re thinking about boning some girl.”

Gage frowned. “Don’t say it like that.”

“That’s how
you
always say it.”

“You want me to talk that way about you making love with your Jane?”

His brother hooted. “You’re calling it ‘making love’ now?” His two fingers put little scare quotes around the term. “And by the way, if you insult Jane in any way, shape or form, I’ll kick your ass. And then she’ll do it all over again, only harder. And with sexier shoes.”

“Whoa,” Gage said, tilting his head. “You’ve really fallen for her.”

Griffin’s expression softened. “Best thing that ever happened to me. I was...messed up when I got back. She helped me find my balance again. She
is
the balance.”

Gage nodded. Griffin’s yearlong experience embedded with the troops in Afghanistan had been harrowing, he’d known that.

His brother hesitated, took another long swig of beer, hesitated again. “I’ve been seeing a counselor.”

“Finally,” Gage said, faking relief without missing a beat. “Good to know you’re getting some professional assistance for that little premature ejaculation problem you’ve always had.”

Griffin’s grin broke quick, felt sweet. “For PTSD, smart-ass.”

Gage merely nodded, careful not to offer judgment or advice. “Helping?”

“Yeah.” Then he grinned again. “Though regular sex isn’t bad for the cure, either.”

“Which reminds me,” Gage said, frowning. “Did you have to tell Skye about the Gage Gorge? Jesus!”

His brother laughed. “I don’t remember relating that odd little quirk of yours.”

“It’s not a quirk. It’s a...it’s a...” He glared across the table. “You like sex, too.”

“Yeah, and committed sex is the best there is,” his twin said, smug.

“Oh, come on.” It was Gage’s turn to scoff.

“Think about it. You get to know her magic switches and it’s a sure thing time after time after time.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Oh, it can be a fast bump or a slow ride and everything in between. I set up these little challenges for myself. Forty-five minutes of just kissing, say, or using only my index finger to get her off. My ultimate goal is to take her there by hot whispers and above-the-waist touches only.”

“Now, that just sounds like work, bro.” Though he shifted in his chair, finally restless.

“Not when you’re doing it with someone you really care about. It’s the one-night stands that sound like work after that.”

Without Gage’s permission, images formed in his mind—not of Griff and Jane, thank God—but of dark hair and green-and-amber eyes, delicate breasts and a spectacular booty. Then he saw himself closing in for that kiss and the way Skye had leaped away from him—as if he were toxic.

As if she was spooked.

“There were some physical problems.”

She’d said that, and he’d gone all caveman, ready to bust Dagwood’s chops if he’d hurt her—which she’d denied. So why had she said it?

He turned to his brother, in sudden critical need of an answer. “What’s it mean when a woman claims she and a man had some ‘physical problems’?”

And this time it was Griffin who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—reply. And Gage who felt in his gut that something was very, very wrong.

* * *

T
HE
SUN
WAS
LOW
IN
THE
SKY
when Skye stepped outside her cottage to the miniature lemon tree planted in a pot near the side of her house. Fresh citrus slices would keep moist the piece of salmon she was planning to grill on a cedar plank. She wrapped her fingers around one of the ripe fruits, then yelped when a man suddenly came around the corner.

“Dalton!” She clutched the lemon in both hands at chest level, over the startled beat of her heart. “What are you doing here?”

He was handsome, well built if not tall, smooth-looking in a summer-weight suit, white shirt and gold-and-brown diamond-patterned tie that mirrored the dark honey of his hair and eyes. “A man can’t visit the beach on a summer evening?”

She lifted an eyebrow.

His smile was white. A little rueful. “A man can’t visit the woman who unceremoniously dumped him on a summer evening?”

“I didn’t—”

Now he raised a brow.

Skye pressed her lips together, wishing she could honestly deny it. Still, their relationship had been more of the casual dating kind, as opposed to steady and heading for something more. At least to her mind. It was only after she’d said she wouldn’t see him any longer that he’d appeared so seriously interested.

He put a foot on the pathway to her front door, even as she pressed her shoulders against its pink-painted wood surface. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asked.

She’d not willingly allowed any man into her place in months. “I’m just getting ready to fix dinner,” she said.

He waited as if he thought she’d extend an invitation, then shrugged. “I’ll take you out. We can go to that place in Laguna—”