One brief pink bikini, check, showings acres of pretty stomach, hips defined in a way that would get any man’s imagination working overtime, and more than a bit of cleavage. And one black tank suit, its sides and back scooping low. He knew what the legs would look like, too, when she took off that little skirt. They’d be cut almost to her waist. It was one hell of a costume.
He looked at it, and then he looked at her, and at her twin. Yeah, they were a sight to behold.
After that, he sighed, set his cup down on the table, and said, “Unless that’s what you want to wear, you can go back in and change. We’ll tell the boat to wait.”
His mother gasped out loud, then said, “Jace!” as if he’d worn his hat to the dinner table or mocked his dad’s CO.
“They’ve switched round, Mum.” He addressed Paige. “If this is a test, I pass. I’m always going to pass, so if it’s entertaining you, go on and do it. But I suspect you’ll like wearing your own costume better, or you’d have bought the same as Lily in the first place.”
The woman in the pink bikini said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Lily.”
“Sure you are. Show us your thighs.”
His mum said, “Jace” again, in despair this time, and he ignored her.
A toss of a blonde head, a yank at a filmy pink sarong that didn’t cover much at all, and there it was. A puckered scar where a bullet had passed. A through-and-through. The mark of her courage. “Satisfied?” she asked him.
He sat back and took another sip of coffee. “Yeah, baby. I am. And you should be, too.”
Lily said, “I told you, Paige. It’s body language. He reads it like a dog.” Then she turned a faint pink that matched her own costume much better than the black one she was wearing and said, “Not literally a dog, Jace. Sorry. Just as well as a dog.”
Now, everybody was laughing but Rafe. “Never mind,” Jace said. “Decide if you’re changing, because this boat’s coming, and the crew has a timetable.”
When they waded out through crystal water and climbed aboard the bright-yellow vessel with the help of a deckhand, Jace was holding hands with a woman in a black swim costume, and he may have been feeling a little smug, too. She said, “This looks very cool.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hope so. Want to sit on the edge and go fast?”
“Can I?”
“Yeah. You can.” He perched on the inflated side of the boat with her, and she told Lily, “There are three spots this side. Climb on beside us.”
Lily hesitated, then Rafe took a spot on the opposite side, and she said, “Sure,” and perched herself on the other side of Jace.
Jace said, “Go on, Willow. Hop up beside Rafe.”
His cousin, a pretty, fragile redhead, made a face and said, “Bit scary for me. I’m sitting on the benches.”
Jace’s parents sat there, too. The skipper showed the others how to hold onto a strap between their legs and said over the noise of the purring engines as they motored out of their sheltered little cove, “We’ve got two 500-horsepower engines here, and we like to have a bit of fun once we’re out on the water on the way to our snorkeling spot, so hang tight. If I do this right, you’ll go home today with your ears blown back and a new hairstyle. Everybody ready to go fast?”
Jace hadn’t been wrong. He’d wanted to give Paige a special day, and for Paige, that didn’t mean a stroll on the beach. It meant surfing another powerboat’s wake, flying through the water at fifty kilometers an hour, zigging and zagging and doing it again until Paige was breathless, laughing, whooping. Until her fist was pumping the air with the joy of speed and the exhilaration of not knowing what would come next. Exactly where he wanted her.
The skipper steered the boat fast around an island, then slowed and nosed his way into a deserted bay where the turquoise of the water was interrupted by paler patches. “Got some of the prettiest fish you’ll ever see here,” he announced. “And snorkels and fins for you so you can go see them. Oh, and…” He pulled down an overhead compartment. “Self-service noodle bar, in case anybody needs extra help floating. Wouldn’t want to miss a chance at snorkeling with a sea turtle. We’ll be getting in the water as well, and we’ll see if we can round one up for you.”
Foam noodles, exactly as ordered. The deckhand was pulling open bins of snorkels and fins, and Paige was standing up. Whoops. Jace pulled her back down, grabbed the water bottle the skipper handed him, and said, “Better hydrate first.”
“What?” she said. “I don’t need water. I need to get in the water. Look how clear it is.”
“No,” he said, feeling a little desperate. He should’ve done this back at the house, but he’d wanted her to have the fun of the ride first without thinking of anything else. “This is, ah, especially good water. Right, Lily?”
Lily looked startled, as well she might. Across the boat, Rafe dropped his head into his hand and shook it, and Jace scowled at him. Yeah, Rafe could’ve done it more smoothly. But it wasn’t his girl, and it wasn’t his day. Paige was just going to have to make do with Jace.
Lily must have taken pity on Jace, though, because she said, “I’m sure Jace is right. It’s pretty warm, Paige.”
Paige finally took the bottle, drank down half of it, handed it back to Jace and said, “There. Satisfied?”
Rafe was laughing now. Jace gave up. “Oh, look,” he said. “What’s this?” He was just glad nobody was videotaping him.
Paige finally saw the rubber bands holding the piece of paper in place. “Oh,” she said. “Is it a note?”
“The paper’s pink,” Jace pointed out. “I thought that would be a giveaway.”
“I’m sorry.” She was already pulling at the rubber bands, going too fast in her haste, and Jace took the bottle from her, rolled the bands down, and handed her the paper. “This went much more smoothly,” he told her, “in my ops plan.”
She was smiling, and then she wasn’t. She read aloud:
I promise you it won’t be futile
If you search amongst the noodles.
“Amongst the… noodles?” Paige asked. “Is that some kind of fish?”
“Mate,” Rafe said, looking pained. “Never tell me that’s your best effort.”
“Oi,” Jace said. “You try to find a rhyme for ‘noodle.’ I couldn’t use ‘poodle.’ We’re on a boat.”
“Quiet, Rafe,” their mother said. “I think it’s very sweet.”
Lily was all but bouncing up and down. “Paige,” she said. “The noodles. The pool noodles! We have to search among the pool noodles!”
Paige jumped up so fast, she nearly hit her head. The two of them had a dozen of the huge foam rolls down onto the deck as fast as you could say it, with everybody else laughing and moving out of the way. Paige was sorting through them, but Lily said, “Oh! Oh, I found it! Here!”
The note was taped onto a pink one. Jace had tried to make it at least a bit trickier by camouflaging it. Lily handed the foam noodle to Paige and said, “I should let you do it.”
“Nah,” Rafe said. “You should both do it. Heaps more fun to watch.”
Lily glanced at him sharply, then snapped her mouth shut with a not-Lily expression on her face, and Jace looked across at his brother and sent the message. Seriously, mate? No. Rafe ducked his head, and Jace got it. Message received.
Good.
Once again, Paige was ripping at the note. When she finally got it loose, she read aloud again.
You make me feel like a king,
So what you seek is in the ring.
Pink’s the color of some coral
Not just for things that are floral.
Rafe looked like he was either going to be sick or laugh. He didn’t do either, fortunately.
Paige said, “What ring?” She didn’t look frustrated, though. She looked thrilled. Jace hoped.
Lily said, “It’s a treasure hunt. He’s made you a treasure hunt. Oh, it’s so sweet. We’re keeping these notes. I mean, you are.”
Jace looked at his mum and said, “Twins, hey.”
She said placidly, “Yes, darling. I got that,” then held a hand out to Lily. “I’ll put them in my bag. I have a plastic zip bag in there. That way they won’t get spoilt.”
“Time to get in the water, baby,” Jace said. This had all seemed too easy when he was making up the clues, but he suspected she was halfway to tearing the boat apart. He was going to have to nudge her along like a sheepdog.
Never mind. You did what it took.
“Oh,” she said. “OK. Oh, gosh.” She put her hands in front of her mouth. “I’m a little bit excited to be breathing through a snorkel.”
Jace laughed out loud. He still felt nervous. He still felt sick, truth be told. But sometimes, being nervous was the price you paid for the big steps, the important ones. “Lily will swim with you,” he said. “Keep you afloat.”
The two of them did exactly that, moving like they were one body. Jace waited until the deckhand, a blond fella named Chris, had somehow managed to locate a sea turtle, and then enlisted Rafe to help Chris round the little group up to take a look. After that, he swam fast to the boat and told the skipper, “Toss it to me.” When the bloke did, he swam a little ways away from the group around the turtle, launched his floating message-bearer, and hoped Paige would find it before it drifted to shore with the tide.
It took forever, of course. Everything did when you were waiting. But finally, when Jace had not-watched hundreds of colorful tropical fish swim through forests of coral and waving beds of anemones, he saw a blonde head surface, then propel herself farther out of the water for a better look before nudging the swimmer next to her and going for the ring.
The pink ring. The pink plastic ring floating on the water, with a pink note in a ziplock bag duct-taped to its side.
They had to go back to the boat to read it. Once they were aboard, though, and everyone had their towels, the skipper waited patiently until Paige had the note out of the bag and was reading.
When you are upon the land
The clue is hidden near the sand.
Over the rocks and down again,
A ring is waiting ’round the bend.
“Better,” Rafe said, “but Keats still isn’t quaking in his boots.”
“Yeah, mate,” Jace said. “You’re just jealous that you don’t have my literary talents.”
Paige said, “Jace. This is just too cool. I can’t believe you did this.” She was clutching the note like she didn’t want to let it go, but finally, she handed it to his mum, and the skipper took off again.
Fifteen minutes, and a straight shot almost all the way onto the nearly pure quartz sands of Australia’s most stunning white-sand beach, all seven pristine kilometers of it. A few yachts moored offshore and no other commercial vessels, because almost none were allowed here.
“Whitehaven,” the skipper announced. “Best beach in Australia. We’ll spend some time ashore. We have a lunch for you, and I think there may be drinks sorted as well. Need to check that out.” He winked at Jace, but Jace was having trouble winking back.
He’d parachuted into combat more times than he could count. He’d done mission after mission into hostile territory, cleared areas building by ambushed building. But he’d never done anything more frightening than this. He waded ashore behind the others, saw Paige take Lily’s hand and tug her toward the outcrop of rock to the right, where a secondary cove would hide them from view, then grabbed Rafe, said, “Give us a hand, mate,” and doubled back for Chris and Bobby, the skipper. And started to unload.
“Five minutes,” he said. “Hustle.”
Paige didn’t run, even though she wanted to. Jace was sending them around the island? There was a reason. She scrambled over the rocks with Lily, taking care with her bare feet, until her sister turned to her and asked, “Are you ready for this?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I think I must be. Jace took me for a look at jewelry the other day,” she finally admitted to Lily, “and I thought, maybe… And then, no, and anyway, I thought, ‘You’re crazy. You’ve both been divorced. Why would either of you want to do this again? But it doesn’t feel the same. The first time I did it, it was almost like a joke. Like fun. This doesn’t feel like a joke. This feels…”
“Real,” Lily said. “It feels real, because nobody could be more real than Jace. He’s a wonderful man, Paige. He is. You did good.”
Paige smiled at last, then didn’t, because her smile was too wobbly. “I don’t think I did much.”
“Yes, you did,” Lily said. “You took your chance. It wasn’t easy to believe. It never is, not by now. But you did. You said yes.”
Paige didn’t answer, because they’d rounded the little point, and she saw something up at the edge of the rocks, where the beach ended and the bush began. Something pink. She said, “Up there,” and they scrambled in their swimsuits over hard rock and pockets of firm white sand, cool under their feet even on this hot day, all the way up to where she could grab the pink plastic ring. Which had, of course, a note taped to it.
The beginning comes after the end
As love can grow between good friends.
I pray your heart is truly mine—
My own is yours for all of time.
“I think,” Paige said, keeping her voice steady with a major effort, “that this means we go back.”
There was something on the beach now that hadn’t been there before. A white shade canopy set on poles, with a white-skirted table beneath it.
Paige barely noticed the others arranged behind the structure. She saw Jace standing under that canopy on the blinding white sand, dressed in his swim trunks, a navy-blue T-shirt, and nothing else. There was a bottle of champagne on the table. A vase of pink roses, too. And she wasn’t doing a good job of coordinating her feet with her breath. Good thing Lily had her hand.
When they got close, though, Lily dropped it. “You’ve got this, sweetie,” she told her sister. “You have beautiful wings. Go on and let yourself fly.”
Paige wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. Lily was holding her note and her pink plastic ring. All she had was herself. And Jace.
She walked up to him, put her hands on his forearms, looked up into his beloved, hard face, and said, “Thank you. You’ve given me a beautiful day. And I love you.”
“Baby,” he said with just the ghost of a laugh, because she could tell he was nervous, too, “I haven’t even done it yet.”
“Yes,” she said. “You have. You took a woman who was scared of so many things, and made her feel like she could have them. That she deserved them. I was scared to trust. Scared to feel. And so very scared to love. You made me feel safe. You made me feel beautiful.”
“Then,” he said, “I’d better do this. Because I want you to know that you are safe, and you are beautiful. I want you to have a way to remind yourself, when you forget, that somebody loves you more than life.”
He was doing it. She’d never had this. She’d never had anything close. And she was going to cry.
Jace, on a knee. Jace, pulling a box from a pocket and opening it.
It was the ring from the jeweler’s shop. The one beside the pendant, the one she hadn’t dared to look at. Pink gold, the band carved by a patient, expert hand and studded with tiny diamonds. And a pink sapphire, rare and beautiful, sitting like a rose in the midst of tiny diamonds that sparkled like dew on petals. Like grace and strength. Like everything a woman could wish for.
“I love you,” Jace said. “And I promise that I always will. I can’t give you the moon and the stars, but I can promise you this. As long as I have breath, you’ll be what I breathe for. As long as I have strength, you’ll be what I hold strong. And as long as I have life, you’ll be why I’m living it.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t help it. She was going to cry. “I can’t… say anything that good. I can’t… think.”
“Well, to be fair,” he said, those lines crinkling around his blue eyes in the way she loved, “I practi
ced.”
She laughed, a choked sound. He was still holding the ring, though, and she needed to wear it. She needed to hold him, and to kiss him. So she said, “Could you just… pretend I said something that perfect? And ask me the question, so I can say yes?”
This time, he laughed. “Then here we go. Hold on for it. I love you, baby. Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I only have one word, but I hope it’s the right one. Yes.”
He slid the ring onto her finger, and it went there like it was the place it was meant to be. She put her hand over her heart, laughed again, and said, “It’s here now. Those words… they’re going to be in my heart forever. And I’ll love you just that long. Just that hard. I promise.”
“I’ll take that promise,” he said, standing up at last, taking her in his arms, and twining his fingers through hers, so the ring winked between them like the pledge it was. “And I’ll take you.”
Available May 1, 2018: TEMPTING AS SIN (Lily & Rafe’s story)
Once bitten, twice shy.
Rafe Blackstone may play the sexiest werewolf superhero to ever melt women's… hearts… on the big screen, but Lily Hollander has already been bitten by an actor, and once was enough. So when Australia's favorite son walks into Sinful Desires, Lily’s lingerie store, she's not impressed. Especially when Rafe displays his overprotective streak in defense of his brother--and aims it at Lily. Or, rather, at her identical twin.
Lily may seem like the softer side of the twinship, but nobody messes with her sister. Rafe can take his assumptions, mistaken identity and otherwise, right out her door again. Starting now.
Are you allowed to hate your future almost-brother-in-law, if you do it really, really quietly?
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Guilty as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 1) Page 37