Romancing the Alpha: An Action-Adventure Romance Boxed Set

by Zoe York

  There were sunsets. Chance encounters. The kind of tiredness that comes from time in the sun and fresh air. New faces and the stories that came with each of them.

  “Maybe you’re the smart one,” Seth said, looking at his brother. Maybe Tobin hadn’t been wasting his life, the way their mother always complained that he did. Tobin never stressed, never rushed to meetings, never failed to enjoy life.

  His younger brother’s eyes sparkled at his comment. “Wish I had a tape recorder for that one.” Then he grew more serious. “Do things happen for a reason? I don’t know. But I do know that when they do, you can’t just go along for the ride. Remember what he used to say?” He pointed the knife toward the photo on the opposite wall.

  Seth could hear their grandfather’s gritty voice as if he were sitting across the cabin. Dream, then go out and do something about it.

  Tobin waggled his eyebrows toward the front cabin. “Just sayin’.” Then he went back to work, grabbing a handful of spaghetti and tossing it into the pot.

  Dreams. Chance encounters. Serendipity. Seth stared off into the universe in the bottom of his wine glass.

  Go out and do something about it.

  His gaze wandered to the door separating him from Julie, and he worked his jaw from side to side. Here he was, taking advice from his dead grandfather and his little brother, the ski bum. How messed up was that?

  “You’re the expert in wild flings with women you barely know,” he whispered to Tobin. “Why the hell can’t I get over it?”

  Tobin laughed. “Doesn’t count as a fling if you fall in love, man.”

  Part of him reeled at the thought; the other part sighed in a pathetic, dreamy way. Which probably meant it was love, because what else in life gave a man that mixture of terror and thrill?

  He poured himself another swig.

  Julie took a good long while, so long that he started to wonder if she needed help. He was halfway to the separating door when it popped open and she stepped out in a clean bikini — the yellow and blue one — and a different pair of khaki shorts. God, she was something. Sports jock mixed with beauty queen mixed with nerdy academic. What other woman combined all three?

  “Just in time!” Tobin called. “Who’s for dinner?”

  Seth looked Julie up and down, and just like that, his appetite was back.

  “Me,” Julie said, looking right into his eyes.

  “Me,” he whispered, looking right back.

  — TEN —

  Apparently, Julie had an appetite, too. Seth watched her chow right through Tobin’s spiced-up version of spaghetti bolognese, then went through seconds and wiped the bowl clean with a piece of bread. She laughed right through Tobin’s stories and marveled as the stars arched overhead on a perfectly peaceful night. But she didn’t meet Seth’s eyes, not for longer than a second, nor did she move any closer into the narrow strip of space he’d been careful to leave when they sat next to each other. All in all, she was doing a great job avoiding the unavoidable, just as Tobin was doing a great job sticking to harmless topics and offbeat jokes.

  No questions about what the hell was going on, no demands. She wasn’t ready for it; both of them could sense it. Even though his brother had every right to ask, he didn’t. Tobin kept the tone light and easy, building up her trust, her confidence.

  And here Seth had spent the past thirty-one years of his life thinking his little brother was complete dead weight. Go figure.

  “Two surfers are getting ready to paddle out to a break. Know what they say?” Tobin winked at Julie.

  “What?”

  “The first guy says, ‘Guess what? I got a new longboard for my wife!`”

  “And the second guy says…?” she prompted him.

  "‘Great trade!’"

  As usual, Tobin folded into chuckles at his own joke, but even Seth had to smile when Julie did. Exhaled, actually, when he saw that she didn’t hang too closely on his brother’s every word. No fluttering of eyelashes, no loud giggles. The charm machine that was his brother wasn’t making any headway tonight, just like Tobin hadn’t made any headway the very first time they’d met. It was Seth she fell for. Just like he’d fallen for her.

  Hard. Fast. Deep.

  Seth blinked at Tobin. The guy who normally went after every girl — any girl — was keeping a careful distance. Entertaining, not seducing, for once in his life. Tobin even had the tact to take the dishes at the end of dinner and disappear into the galley, leaving Seth and Julie alone.

  Still, thirty-two feet of boat was a little too little space for all that he and Julie had to discuss.

  “Hey,” Seth ventured, nudging her thigh. The first contact they’d made all night, and it made his skin tingle. His heart, too, because she didn’t pull away. “How about we head to shore?”

  She looked at the little spit of land, her face showing both temptation and fright. He felt exactly the same way: desperate for time alone with her, terrified where their conversation might lead.

  He nudged her again, pulling out his ace. “Come on, it’ll be an adventure.” Then he caught himself and added, “A small, safe one.”

  She laughed, and her hand slid across his arm just like he remembered it doing their first time around. “Okay.”

  And they were off in the dinghy, slaloming through the shadows that marked coral heads. He cut the engine ten yards off the beach and let the little inflatable coast in.

  “Land ho,” he said, very quietly. It was a tiny island, but it felt like a major landfall after all they’d experienced that crazy day.

  He stepped into ankle-deep water and Julie followed suit. A born sailor; his grandfather would have approved.

  Together, they hauled the dinghy up on shore and considered the little spit of land. One hundred yards of sand, palm, and coconuts wasn’t much space, but in the moonlight, it seemed to go on forever.

  “Oooh!” Julie pointed up. “A shooting star!”

  Make a wish, he could practically hear her think. He knew exactly what he wished for, so he did. Sent that wish right up to the stars without even pausing to think what kind of sap this sailing gig was turning him into. Wishing on stars? Getting hung up on a woman? Appreciating his little brother? He wasn’t just thousands of miles from home — he was a different man.

  “Julie, we need to talk,” he said, even as she strode away from the dinghy. “Wait…”

  Tiny bits of coral crunched underfoot as he followed her. Palm fronds swished overhead, hanging at steep angles. Julie took three more steps then stopped. Her hair fell back as she tipped her chin up, and the set of her shoulders told him she’d rather not talk about any of it. Not about today, not about the past.

  He expected a comment about black holes or nebulae or the craters of the moon, but she was quiet. And then he realized why. Why her face was glistening, her eyes squeezed shut. He saw her swipe at the tears, heard her mutter a curse at herself.

  “Julie?”

  He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her that even tough-as-nails archaeology jocks were allowed to cry. Kiss her ear and promise her that somehow, he’d make everything all right.

  “You okay?”

  She flapped a hand at the horizon as if she wanted to divert his attention there. “It’s so beautiful.” And it was: the endless ocean, the indigo sky.

  “So why are you crying?”

  Her hand did the jitterbug and her voice shook. “I’m all mixed up.”

  No kidding. He was, too. The chase. The gun aimed at her back earlier in the day. Sitting through dinner with a thousand questions and no answers. Being this close to her again.

  The next thing he knew, he’d closed the distance and folded her in his arms. Pulled her back into his chest and felt her take a long, deep breath then settle against him with a sigh.

  God, it felt good to hold a woman who didn’t need much holding. To smell Julie’s special scent again, a blend of rain forest-fresh skin and coconut-shampoo hair. To feel her heat. To wipe away the tear
s and put his cheek against hers.

  Absolutely perfect. Even the tears, because he knew Julie wasn’t one to open up often. And she was doing it for him.

  Trusting. Relaxing. With him.

  She sniffed a little and wrapped her arms over his, making the hug tighter. Even when she shook her head and muttered at herself, she stayed close.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “Seth, I barely even know you.”

  He turned her slowly so he could look her in the eyes. “You know me better than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  It was true. Sometimes he thought she knew him better than he knew himself. Because for years, he hadn’t been living so much as filling a role. The responsible older brother. The good son. The business jock. Fresh air and salt water had slowly scoured those superficial layers off, and even he was surprised what was showing underneath. A guy who could spend an hour watching the clouds move overhead. Who could look at the horizon and not need to know exactly where he’d go next.

  A guy who could fall in love in the space of one week. Not just with anyone. With her.

  She lowered her head to his chest but didn’t let go of him. “I don’t even know where you’re from.”

  “Boston,” he shot right out, ready to do anything to convince her. “Lexington. Next?” He waved an impatient hand. What was it going to take to convince her he was serious? “Ask me. Ask me anything.”

  Her face lifted and said, That’s not the point.

  He stepped back and set his feet wide like he was about to push a big boulder up a very steep hill. “I like coffee black and tea white. I like soccer over football. Thrillers over nonfiction. I hate skim milk.”

  She stared, so he went on.

  “I grew up with my brother and a basset hound named Cleo. We always went sailing with my grandfather in the summers — us and our cousins. On Serendipity—” he pointed across the water “—which is why he left it to us. Me, Tobin, and our other cousins. And you know what? He was totally right. We were getting out of touch with each other. And with everything else.” He waved a hand at the night sky, the inky horizon, the ocean. Back home he never even knew what phase the moon was in; out here, he could feel the pull of the tide, smell the slightest shift in the wind.

  “We were supposed to have a little sister, but she was stillborn.” It hurt a little to say it out loud, but it felt good, too. His family never talked about it, and that was wrong. It had taken him years to understand why his parents came home from the hospital looking so hollow, why they’d clutched him that tightly. Why he and Tobin had each reacted the way they had: Seth becoming the dutiful older son, trying to make things better for parents who would never be consoled, while Tobin became a rebel without a cause, insisting on living large and loud just to spite death.

  On the other hand, maybe it hadn’t taken him years to figure that out. The sea had unwrapped those mysteries for him within the space of a couple of weeks. Funny how time and space could clean out the mess of a man’s head.

  “Her name was Linda. And no, my parents never got over it.”

  Julie’s jaw dropped.

  He went straight on before his throat closed up on the choke building in the back. “In eleventh grade I got caught smoking behind the gym and was suspended for a week. My closest brush with the law — until now.” He tried a little smile. “The first woman I ever slept with was my best friend’s older sister, the summer she was back from college. Brenda. She had a snake tattoo around her belly button no one was supposed to know about.”

  Julie’s eyebrow shot up.

  He was building momentum now, so why not roll on with this out-of-control train? “I’ve never been outside the US or Mexico. Never done it in the back seat of a car. Never had the guts to break out of the mold until I did this trip. And I never met anyone like you.”

  He gulped. Silence closed in as the sea breeze fluttered his hair. His fingers plucked at the hem of his shorts. Damn, where had all that come from? He closed his eyes and wondered how soon Julie would demand that he take her back to the boat, back to solid land, and kick him out of her life once and for all.

  But there was nothing but the sound of his own near-panting breath and the swish of the waves on the beach. Then a gentle hand on his cheek and a soft, moist touch on his lips, and Julie was in his arms, hugging him tight. He clamped his arms around her and went limp with relief.

  The kiss got wider, deeper, hungrier, and then she pulled back, her hands fisted in his shirt. “Some speech, sailor.”

  He put his hands over hers and smoothed them flat against his chest, relishing the connection. “I never wanted to hurt you. Never wanted to leave you.”

  She leaned her forehead on his shoulder and stroked his back in silence.

  “So what happened?” she whispered at last. “That Friday?”

  — ELEVEN —

  What happened? Seth ground his teeth together. They’d nearly lost the boat because of Tobin’s mistake. Even now, he could flay his brother’s hide. Then again, as captain, he was just as much to blame for not being more tuned in.

  “The weather,” he started.

  Julie snapped back and slapped his arm, her face taking on an angry hue he could see even in the moonlight. “Don’t give me some story about the weather. It was perfect. Blue sky, no wind.”

  He put his hands up. “No, not that!” His voice was too loud, too sharp, though, so he started again. “Listen, it’s true. There’s a thing called a north swell.”

  She stuck her hands on her hips and drew her lips into a thin line, but at least she hadn’t turned her back and stomped away. Yet.

  “North swell,” she said with a scary lack of intonation in her voice.

  “Yes, a north swell. Look, the ocean is always moving, right?”

  She made a face that said he had ten seconds to get to the point.

  “Wind pushes the sea into waves, and big storms make big waves. So big that even when the storm dies out, the waves roll on.” His hand undulated in the air to demonstrate, which was good, because her focus went there and away from his chin, which she looked about to clobber. He swung his left hand toward his right in little scooping motions, like the wind stoking the waves. “And if you keep some wind direction acting on those waves — that swell can travel thousands of miles and eventually come up in a totally different place.”

  “Like here? Santa Marta?” she asked dubiously.

  “Like Santa Marta.” He nodded. “I was coming to meet you, just like I said I would — Jesus, I wouldn’t have missed it! — but that’s when we noticed the boats leaving the harbor. Not one or two boats, but all of them. Even the local fishing boats were hauling ass. Jim from Dreamtime motored past us on his way out, saying ‘When are you getting the hell out?’ We had no idea what was going on until then.” Seth dared to reach out to her shoulder then — the uninjured one. “I was supposed to be watching the weather, but I was…” He groped for the right word, because distracted would never fly. “Busy with you,” he finished. “Not thinking about anything else.”

  He paused, because shit, did that sound like he was only thinking of sex? He rushed on, willing her to understand. “Stupidly, I let it slide. Tobin said he’d check the weather, but he didn’t. And all of a sudden we had eight hours’ notice to get to the next spot with decent shelter from the waves coming in from the north.”

  She cocked her head at him, and he pointed west. “Cayo Largo, over there.” Funny how a couple of months of sailing could give a guy an internal compass. “Which was seven hours away and filling up fast with boats.” His heart beat faster, just remembering the race to get to shelter in time. To save his grandfather’s boat before it could be dashed against the shore by that killer swell.

  “So what happened?” She looked anxious, like she’d lived the moment with him. In a way, he wished that she could have, because it would have helped to have her around. Someone with a good head on her shoulders — unlike his brother. Someone whose presence alway
s managed to calm him, the way her touch always did.

  He exhaled, both in reliving the moment and from the rush of his words. “We got in after everyone else and barely got the anchor down before it went from a not-so-bad eight-foot swell to a crazy fifteen-feet — and counting. We were way at the back of the pack in deep water. Stood anchor watch, the both of us, for twenty-four hours, with the engine running in case things went bad.” His eyelid twitched just at the memory. “Outside the anchorage, the swell built to twenty-five feet in a couple of hours, and it worked its way in. In the end, we did okay. A couple of the other boats dragged and went aground. The rest of us pitched in to help them, but that took two days.” Two long days in which all he’d wanted to do was get the hell back to Julie before she left. And then it got worse.

  “But even when the swell went down, a storm hit. That was Tuesday. We upped anchor and got to another anchorage with better wind shelter and sat out fifty-knot winds there. Three days of that crap.” He wrung his hands in the air. “Believe me, if I could have gotten back, I would have. But first the storm, then the sea was still a mess, then—”

  “Seth.” She squeezed his arm.

  He froze. This was where she’d slap him and say goodbye.

  ”Seth.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed, because he deserved whatever she had to scream at him.

  “I get it, Seth. I believe you.”