She started to sit up but his heavy arm landed across her midsection, pinning her down. When he pulled her back against his body, his warmth enveloped her, effectively stopping her protests. She relaxed against him and muttered, “You’re still naked.”
“You’re still talking.”
“Why are you so grumpy? If anyone deserves to be angry, it’s me. You tossed me into the ocean after I told you I couldn’t swim. I almost drowned—”
“I know!” he shouted. “I know,” he repeated again so softly she barely heard it.
She turned in his arms to face him. The flickering firelight played off his chiseled features, but the expression on his face was impossible to read.
“I couldn’t find you,” he said at length. “I—” He stopped and lowered his forehead to her shoulder, burrowing his face in the crook of her neck. His breath was warm against her skin, but his words sank into her bones like a chill. “For about forty-five seconds, I couldn’t find you. I thought maybe you’d been sucked under the ship or the current had swept you away. It was the longest forty-five seconds of my life.”
She pulled back and lifted his chin with the crook of her finger. His eyes were bleak and guilt ridden. Good. “The next time someone tells you they can’t swim, do yourself a favor and take their word for it.”
She turned away from him then, giving him her back. She felt his gaze on the back of her head for a very long time before he relaxed and settled down behind her. This time, she didn’t protest when he looped an arm around her waist and pulled her close.
Sophie woke up to the smell of hot coffee, eggs, and ham. Her stomach grumbled as she stretched on the bedroll and turned over to face Jimmy. He crouched in front of the fire using a fork to flip a slice of the meat in a small frying pan.
“You’re very handy to have around, aren’t you?” She smiled up at him.
“Morning, darlin’.” His sexy half-grin told her his crotchety mood had passed.
“What do you have there?”
“Duck eggs and slices of canned ham.”
“I’m so famished I could eat seaweed.”
“That could be arranged.” Jimmy chuckled at the face she made. “Pull up a seat. Breakfast is almost ready.”
As she devoured her meal, he tossed a couple of handfuls of sand onto the fire to extinguish the flames before he sat back to nurse a steaming cup of coffee. The ham was too salty and the eggs were a bit greasy, but she didn’t mind it in the least.
When she finished, she set her plate aside and sighed with satisfaction. “That was delicious.”
“Glad you like my cooking.”
“How far will we have to walk to reach civilization?” She wasn’t looking forward to going into the jungle. Their last trek through the Jamaican wilderness hadn’t been pleasant, and the severe topography of the island was more than a bit daunting.
“It’s about a three-hour hike to Hell’s Gate.”
“Hell’s Gate?” She looked up at the looming mountain and felt like an ant about to traverse a boulder. Hazy clouds obscured its peak, adding a mystical quality to the place. “The name sounds appropriate.”
“Hell’s Gate is a pretty little Dutch village on the windward side of the island known for its quaint charm and wicked spiced rum. First things first, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Swimming lessons.” He stood up and offered her his hand.
She didn’t take it. “What do you mean ’swimming lessons’?”
“Damn it! You almost drowned last night, Sophie.” His voice cracked on her name and he shut his mouth for a moment to collect himself before continuing. “There’s no good reason for not knowing how to swim. You could have saved yourself and prevented me from shaving ten years off my life.”
She stood and faced him. “I’m sorry for scaring you, but you were the idiot who threw me into the water.”
“And I’m the idiot who’s going to teach you how to swim.”
“Forget it.” She took a step back.
He stepped forward. “Trust me, sweetheart. I’ll toss you in again if it will get you into the water quicker.”
They stared at each other, a silent battle of wills raging between them, one waiting for the other to make the first move.
The tension in the atmosphere shifted. Anger turned to physical awareness.
His eyes, so blue in the morning sunlight, matched the sky beyond his blond head. How could he not feel this inexplicable thing that crackled between them like a downed power line?
“How come you can’t swim, Duchess?” Jimmy said softly.
“I’d had a few lessons when I was six.” She paused to clear the lump in her throat before continuing. “But I wasn’t a strong swimmer. The summer I turned seven, my family took me to a wedding reception on a ferryboat. I was messing about on the deck when I fell into the river.”
“Where was your momma and stepdad?”
“My mum was in the loo and my stepfather and his friends, well, they just stood there watching me flounder. They didn’t want to muck up their party clothes. A waiter had to jump in and rescue me. I nearly drowned that day and I’ve been frightened of deep water ever since.”
“Fear is like wildfire. The longer it takes to put out, the bigger it gets. You should’ve gotten right back in the water and took more lessons before your fear got out of control.”
“My mum tried to make me go back to swim class, but I refused.”
“Well, I think it’s high time you gave it another shot.” He turned away and headed toward the water. His shirt came off first. Then his shorts. He wore nothing beneath his clothes and the sight of his tight, bare bum moving away from her enticed her to follow, but she stayed where she was.
“How about we make a deal?” he said over his shoulder. “If you let me teach you how to swim, I’ll tell you anything you want to know about me.”
“Anything?”
He looked back at her again and grinned. “Within reason.” When he’d waded into the water up to his thighs, he put his hands together above his head and dove cleanly into a wave.
Sophie stopped when she was ankle deep and waited for Jimmy to resurface. He came up for air about ten feet away from her. “I am not skinny dipping.”
He slicked his hair back before turning around. The sun glistened off his blond head, as droplets of water rolled down the broad expanse of his tanned, muscular chest.
“Why not?” he said with a chuckle.
“Why not what?” she asked, completely forgetting the direction of their conversation and her own name for a moment.
“Getting naked. It’s only you, me, and the fishes. I’m feeling lonely.” A grin tugged the corner of his mouth. “You know what they say, ‘one naked person’s an exhibition, two’s a party.’” He waggled his eyebrows and laughed outright.
She frowned. “Who says that?”
“I don’t know. Somebody. Come on now.”
“Fine,” she said and whipped the oversized T-shirt over her head before she chickened out. “Something else to tick off my bucket list.”
His laughter faded as he watched her intently. She moved just far enough into the water to comfortably crouch down beneath the surface up to her neck.
“Now what?”
He grinned. “Now you learn to float.” He moved beside her and guided her shoulders, gently urging her to lie back in the water. “Just relax.”
His hands lightly supporting her, he instructed, “Breathe deep and exhale. That’s it. You’re a natural.”
The tips of her breasts peeked out of the water. The tightly pebbled nipples drew Jimmy’s gaze more than a couple of times, but it didn’t linger too long. He was all business as he taught her how to float, tread water, and finally swim.
She was surprised at how quickly the basics came to her. Before long, she was even holding her breath underwater without panicking.
When she came up for air this time, she noticed how far they’d drifted from shore. She put
her foot down to stand and slipped under the water. Too deep. The murky haze distorted her vision. She reached out for Jimmy, but her hand slipped through his shadowed shape as if he was an apparition. Prickly spikes of fear ran down her spine. She kicked out furiously, determined to save herself but going nowhere fast. A pair of strong hands fastened around her waist and pulled her up.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jimmy said. His arms were still around her.
“Bloody hell, I sank.”
“You all right?”
“I think so.” She was suddenly hyperaware of the feel of her breasts pillowed against his hard, hair-roughened chest.
“You know how to tread water now. Let’s see you do it.”
When he released her and moved back, she felt bereft. She did as he asked though because it was quite literally sink or swim.
“The important thing is to stay calm and don’t panic,” he was saying. “You panic, you drown.”
“Stay calm and don’t panic,” she repeated. Treading water in the softly rolling surf, she said, “I feel safe with you. I know you won’t let me get hurt.”
“Concentrate on what you’re doing.”
She should have just left things as they were and been glad he was taking the lesson so seriously. She’d taken a huge chance the first time she’d had unprotected sex with him. She wasn’t even a hundred percent certain she wasn’t already knocked up. That thought alone should have put a damper on her lustful feelings. Was she actually feeling lucky enough to take that risk again? She wasn’t a gambler, but she was beginning to understand what addiction felt like. Wanting something desperately despite knowing the consequences. The sexual tension from earlier hadn’t dissipated and the erotic swimming lesson had only ignited her blood even further. Biting her bottom lip, she wondered if there was a support group for women who had slept with Jimmy Panama and couldn’t get him out of their system.
“Have you ever done it in the ocean?” she said.
His chin came up a little as he squinted at her curiously. “It?”
“Sex.”
“Lesson’s over.” He turned away from her and started to swim toward the shore.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“We’ve got a long walk ahead of us. I’d like to make some tracks before noon.”
“You said I could ask you anything if I let you teach me how to swim.”
“Within reason.”
“I thought it was a perfectly reasonable question. What happened to ‘one’s an exhibition, two’s a party?’ What happened to that guy?”
He stopped swimming and looked back at her. His crotchety mood was back with a vengeance. “Do you really want to go there right now?”
She looked away, equal parts embarrassed and sexually frustrated. In the distance, the cascade of palm trees trickling down the steep slope of the mountain swayed in the breeze. Puffy white clouds had replaced the eerie haze that had clung to the peak in the post-dawn hours. Except for a pair of powerboats farther up the coast, the island appeared to be deserted.
She looked at Jimmy and lifted her chin a notch. “What if I do?”
“I can’t do this, Duchess.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“You shouldn’t want this. With me. With no protection. You don’t want to end up like your momma, do you?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “You mean pregnant and abandoned? My mum lied about that, remember?”
“Yeah, but do you want to be the woman in that scenario? The woman you thought your momma was, because I’m that guy, sweetheart. I’m the guy who walks away when this is over and leaves you in the dust to deal with the consequences alone.”
“At least you’re honest about it.” She swam past him with sure clean strokes. “Thank you for reminding me who I was dealing with.”
He was absolutely right. There was no future for them. How could there be? They were from two different worlds. Getting pregnant by this man would be an enormous complication to her life when it was complicated enough already. And getting too attached to him, well, now that would be utterly disastrous, wouldn’t it?
She sensed him close behind her, swimming in her wake. When they reached the shallows, she said over her shoulder, “I have to say, I’m a bit surprised a man like you would let his conscience get in the way of great sex.”
“Maybe I’m not thinking with my dick for once in my life.”
“Ha!” she said. “I suppose there’s always a first time for everything.”
But there was the proof.
He wasn’t the guy in the other scenario.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“I can’t change your mind about coming dress shopping with me, April?” Greenlee turned her silver BMW onto Casa Linus’ cobbled driveway.
April was gathering her book bag from the floor between her legs. “I’m not in the mood.”
“I thought you’d want something new and cute to wear to the homecoming dance.”
“I’m sure I have a dress in my closet I haven’t worn yet.”
“What’s wrong? You’ve been quiet all day. I can tell something’s bugging you.”
April shook her head. They were only halfway to the house, but she was already reaching for the car door handle. “It’s not important.”
“Look, your boyfriend’s here.”
Mr. Rios’ lawn service truck was parked in front of the garage. A middle-aged Hispanic man was standing in the truck bed, handing down large bags of red mulch to Damian Rios.
Shirtless and glistening with sweat, he reached up to take the next bag and his lean back muscles rippled beneath the surface of his bronzed skin.
Greenlee honked the car horn.
“Stop. What are you doing?” April tried to pull Greenlee’s hand away, but she was too late.
Both men looked over.
“Checking out the front view, what do you think I’m doing?”
When Damian waved, heat flushed April’s face.
Greenlee lowered her sunglasses. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Chad doesn’t even have abs like that.”
Chad Wilcox was the captain of the football team. He’d been Greenlee’s on-again-off-again boyfriend for three years until she recently decided to start dating older men.
Greenlee pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and gave April a wicked grin. “Hard labor does a body good. No wonder you want to go slumming.”
“I have to go.” April got out of the car and slammed the door.
Greenlee lowered the passenger side window. “Come on, April. You can’t be serious about this guy. He shovels cow shit on your vegetable garden for Christ’s sake.”
The older man glanced at the car again.
Damian made a show of straightening the stack of mulch bags beside the driveway. If he had heard, he pretended not to.
April prickled with embarrassment. She leaned into the car window and said in a harsh whisper, “Damian works three jobs because he’s saving up for college. He won’t always be the gardener’s son.”
Greenlee lowered her sunglasses and gave April a pitying look over the rim. “You keep telling yourself that, honey, and you’re not going to like how your life turns out.”
Greenlee slid the glasses back on and put the BMW in gear before she peeled out of the driveway. April jumped back out of the way and watched Mr. Rios’ truck follow the sports car down the drive.
Feeling disappointed that Damian was gone, she started for the house. She stopped short when she realized he was standing beside the mulch stack alone watching her. His liquid brown eyes were wary and a little sad.
She dropped her book bag and started across the stretch of driveway that divided them.
Who was she kidding? More than a driveway divided them. And yet, in this moment, she didn’t care. She was tired of hearing the word no. In the eighteen years of her privileged existence, she hadn’t heard the word very often. Not many people said no to the boss’ daughter, not even the boss.
Damian’s face lit with surprise when she rushed the last few steps and flung herself at him. He caught her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“April, I—”
“Shh. Just kiss me.”
“But—”
She reached up on tiptoe and cut off his protest with her mouth. She might still be a virgin, but she knew how to kiss. She knew all the tricks to drive a man crazy. Where to rub. How to grind. What to whisper. When to mewl and groan and pant. Poor Damian didn’t stand a chance. He came up for air and reached down to hold April’s hips away from his. “Stop. Not here. Not like this.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. “What? Oh, right, come with me.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him along the side of the freestanding garage to a semi-secluded spot in back. “You’re right, this is much better.” She turned in his arms and kissed her way down his hairless chest until she was kneeling in front of him.
Damian leaned back against the wall, dazed and breathless. “What are you doing?” he asked when she began unfastening the front of his jeans.
She looked up at him and smiled. “What I’m best at.”
When she dragged his zipper down, he grabbed her hands to still them. “No! April, I don’t want this. Well, I do, but not like this. Just stand up. Please.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Come here.” He helped her to her feet and slid his arms around her waist.
“Why did you stop me?”
“I want you, April, but not like this. I want to take you out. Like on a date. We haven’t even been on a date.”
“I don’t have to eat dinner with you to know I want us to have sex. I already like you and I know you like me.”
She wriggled against his erection, and he sucked in a breath.
His hold tightened. “Stop it.”
“Why?” She placed tiny kisses along his jaw.
“Go with me to the homecoming dance. Be my date.”
She pulled back and looked into his solemn eyes. Unable to give him the response he wanted to hear, she said instead, “Do you want to see my tits?”
“April!”
“What?” She laughed. He didn’t.
“You didn’t answer my question. Will you go to the dance with me?”
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