Those lips that she’d kissed last night. Those lips that had charted a path down her body and left her quivering in his arms. She wanted to taste him again. To pretend that they were like Nick and Adler sneaking away to be alone and enjoy the simple romance of an evening at the beach.
She put her hand on the back of his neck as she went up on tiptoe, mesmerized by the thought of that kiss. He tipped his head to the side and she came closer. The warmth of his breath brushed over her mouth as he exhaled. She closed her eyes and his lips touched hers. A shiver went down her spine and she tightened her fingers on the back of his neck.
Swallowing hard as he lifted his head, he stared down into her face. Their eyes met, and she felt like...she wanted to believe that something magical passed between them. Something that would bind them together as a couple. But the truth was she was searching for that connection and she didn’t trust her chronic bad taste when it came to men. Didn’t trust her gut when it shouted to take him back to the room and make love to him all night.
She wanted to believe she could keep her wits about her, but she knew she couldn’t. She was lying to her best friend, lying to her parents and her sister. The one person she couldn’t lie to was herself.
She wouldn’t be that girl who fell for a pair of blue eyes that promised the moon and woke up in the sand underneath a cloudy sky.
She took a deeper breath as she stepped back. “I think I’ve had enough of the night air. I’m going to head back to the room.”
“Running away from me isn’t going to change anything,” he said.
She wanted to pretend not to understand what he meant but she wasn’t going to play games with him either. “I know that. But I need bright lights and reality instead of this.”
“This?”
“This...” She gestured to the sky and the beach and him. “I’m not living a picture-perfect moment that I’m going to share with my followers. This isn’t real. Any of it. And I don’t want to forget it.”
She pivoted on her heel and walked away from him. It was hard, but she knew in the moment that it was what she needed to do. She had to stay focused or she was going to lose control of more than her emotions. She was going to lose control of her life and everything she’d worked for would be gone.
* * *
Zac knew he should let her go. She’d been pretty damn plain when she’d said this was an illusion. But he wasn’t faking it. He liked her. He wanted her. He followed her, putting his hand on her shoulder to stop her.
“What?” she asked, her tone short and curt.
“You forgot one thing, angel face,” he said. “I’m real. You’re real. And neither one of us is lying about that.”
She chewed her lower lip and he remembered the last time she’d done that: when they’d made love the first time. He was no closer now to figuring out what was going on inside her head than he had been that night. And true, it had only been a week earlier, but it felt like they’d spent a lifetime together since then. He hadn’t wanted to believe that he’d ever feel like this about a woman...especially not one that he’d made a deal to date.
He hoped he wasn’t. And this wasn’t love, was it? Could it be?
It was lust. He was even comfortable labeling it affection and/or infatuation. But beyond that, the answer had to be no. They were in a business arrangement and only a fool would allow it to become too emotional. And despite what his brothers sometimes said Zac wasn’t anyone’s fool.
“I’m not calling you a liar,” she said at last. Her tone was serious and grounded, the kind of tone she’d used when she’d been meeting with her fans earlier in the lobby.
He didn’t say anything because he’d noticed that at times she would drop a leading statement and see how he responded. But he wasn’t sure what to say to her now.
“I’m talking about myself,” she said at last. “We have a contracted agreement and I know what I wanted from it. But here in the moonlight, holding your hand and just standing next to you, I guess I wish we didn’t have that. That we were just two people...”
He had thought that, as well. “Would you have spoken to me if you hadn’t needed me?”
She shrugged. But they both knew the answer was no. She wasn’t at the point in her life where she really wanted a man in it. He was starting to realize that. She liked him and he liked her but it was in spite of their agreement. Neither of them was ready for a serious relationship. He was leaving to train for the America’s Cup and she was launching a new line for her brand.
This pact they’d made for Adler’s wedding, that was all they had and neither of them should forget it.
“No,” she said at last.
“Me neither.”
“Why not?”
“You’re complicated, angel face,” he said.
“So?”
“I like it, you know I do, but the truth is, we’re here together because of some very unique circumstances.”
“So talking about what-ifs isn’t going to work,” she said. “I just feel myself wanting to believe this is real in my heart and my mind is warning me that it isn’t.”
He pulled her into his arms because he hated not touching her when they were this close, and he was tired of denying himself and letting her set the pace. “This is real, Iris. It’s just going to end when the weekend is over and we start drifting apart over the next three months. That doesn’t mean we won’t feel something for each other. I think it would be odd if we didn’t. All it really means is that we might look back and wish it had lasted longer...”
He wanted to add that there was no reason it couldn’t but that was more complicated than he wanted to be tonight. The wind was blowing off the water and the salt air was making him long to be back out on the deck of his yacht, challenging the elements and competing for his place in history.
But...
He also wanted Iris. He wanted to keep her in his arms and hold on to her until the winds and time forced him to leave her. That was something he knew he couldn’t really have.
As much as he wanted to hold her in his moment, when the sea called, he’d answer. Winning the America’s Cup with his own team had long been a dream of his. Something he needed to do to prove himself, to show his old man what he was capable of.
She reached up and touched his face. There was a hint of sadness to her smile and he knew she had come to the same realization that he had. No matter how much they both might want to believe that they should have more with each other, the contract they’d signed was all that either of them was willing to give.
He’d thought of her as a siren leading him astray, but he realized that he didn’t want to disappoint Iris. He needed to be his best self and that meant that he couldn’t detour from his chosen path because she wouldn’t detour from hers.
She needed him to be the man she’d met. The man who was a sailor and a competitor and whose life was on the sea. Not in Boston or wherever her career took her.
He leaned down to kiss her because he knew that these four days were really the most intimate time they would have together, and the pipe dream of more time was hard to let go. But in his heart and soul, he knew that was the only option. He’d taken her up on her indecent proposal never guessing that he would ever feel anything this strong for her or that the thought of leaving her would cut like a knife.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and he knew that no matter what, he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from making love to her over the next four days. They might both know that their relationship would end but he needed to give them enough memories to keep them company over the long dark nights that lay ahead.
* * *
She wanted to pretend it was a fluke, that their one night together hadn’t changed her forever but she knew it had. Sitting at the table with Adler and Nick tonight had just driven home to her how much she wanted everything about her and
Zac to be real. She didn’t want it to be just for the weekend and just for show. He’d been funny and charming and just so damn real that it had driven home how wrong her search for a partner had gone up until that point.
He complemented her in a way no one else ever had. A part of her knew it had to be because she wasn’t trying to impress him. She knew he wasn’t going to leave her alone in a hotel room the way that Graham had. She was paying him to be with her.
God. How humiliating would it be if that ever got out? But she had no regrets. Being with Zac had shown her a side of herself she hadn’t even realized she’d been burying.
It was hard to realize what was missing until she’d found it. She pulled back from the kiss but didn’t want to. She liked the way he tasted and it felt as if it had been years instead of a week since they’d kissed.
He kept his hands around her waist. When he turned to shelter her from the wind, she again felt her heart melt just the tiniest bit. He held her as if she were precious to him and she realized that despite the fact that she ran a multimillion-dollar company and she could hold her own with anyone on the planet, it was nice to have someone hold her and shelter her.
She reached up to touch his face, felt the light stubble that was starting to grow on his jaw. In his eyes, she thought she saw the same heaviness that troubled her.
“I know I said no sex, but would you be upset if I changed my mind?” she asked.
He threw his head back and laughed, and she couldn’t help smiling. She loved the sound of his laughter. He held nothing back when he did it.
“Uh, no, angel face, I wouldn’t mind at all. In fact, I think I’d be downright ticked if you didn’t.”
“Good. I mean you did say there wasn’t anything I could ask you to do that would make you uncomfortable.”
“There’s something in your tone that’s making me think I shouldn’t have issued a blanket challenge to you like that,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have,” she quipped but she knew he was safe. She wanted him to herself but would never do anything that would make him feel ill at ease. He had given her a freedom she hadn’t realized she’d denied herself. And it was making her regret that she’d waited so long to find it.
She’d never thought sexual confidence was something she needed in her life. But since being with Zac that one night, she was already a different woman. She wanted to see what happened if they made love twice.
How would that change her?
She was ready for it.
“This is our last night before everyone is here,” she said. “Our last night as a quasi-anonymous couple. What should we do?”
“Something daring and not in the rule book?” he asked.
She took a deep breath. She wasn’t worried about his suggesting a three-way the way Graham had or that she wear a dildo and take him from behind. That wasn’t the kind of man Zac was. In fact, she was excited to hear what he suggested.
“Yes.”
“Hmm... Want to take my grandmother’s yacht out and make love on the deck with just the sea around us and the moon and stars watching overhead?”
She inhaled sharply, already picturing him nude on the deck of a yacht. She was the tiniest bit afraid of water... But they wouldn’t be in the water, and the chance to be the woman with him on the yacht—sharing his world—was too powerful to resist.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
He took her hand in his and led the way back up the beach toward the marina. He talked to her as they walked, telling her about his earliest memories of sailing. “It was my gran who first took me out on the ocean and let me get behind the wheel. She taught me about the jib and the wind and how to harness it. She made it seem okay that when my father bellowed and yelled, I ran and hid.”
Iris caught her breath as he talked about his childhood. She’d heard from Adler that August Bisset wasn’t an easy man to live with. Adler rarely saw her uncle, but Zac had grown up underneath his roof and his upbringing was so different from Iris’s. So foreign. Her parents had wanted them to achieve but nothing had been more important to them than making sure that she and her sister were loved.
Something that Iris realized she’d taken for granted.
She stopped Zac when they were on the slip about to board his grandmother’s yacht, the Day Dream.
“Changed your mind?” he asked.
“Not at all,” she said, hugging him and pulling him closer to her so she could whisper in his ear. “Thank you for being you.”
He squeezed her close for a long minute and then let his arms fall to his sides. He didn’t respond and she hadn’t expected him to. She knew how hard it was to live with someone so demanding, and the fact that Zac had made the relationship with his father work by going his own way was more impressive than he knew. He hadn’t chosen the easy path; he’d moved halfway around the world and started over. He thought he was a man who always looked for the horizon because he was running but she knew now that he did that because he was harnessing the bluster he’d inherited from his father and charting his own course.
She wished she could chart a course that would keep her by his side and didn’t even care if that made her seem weak. She liked him and she wanted to keep him in her life but she had no idea if that was something that was even possible.
Eleven
Piloting the small yacht out of the marina at night was as familiar to him as the back of his hand. Once he’d gotten them out into Nantucket Sound, Iris stood in his arms at the helm of the boat. He steered them far away from the lights of Nantucket until it felt like they were the only two people left on earth.
And knowing that tomorrow he’d be surrounded by his family and there would be all of the activities of Adler’s wedding party, he wanted to make this night last forever. As much as he prided himself on being the anti-Bisset Bisset he knew once he was with his brothers and sister that he’d fall back into the role that he always played with them and, of course, he had the added role of being Iris’s boyfriend for the weekend.
But tonight they were Zac and Iris. “I almost wish we were living in a different time. I’d spirit you away on the high seas and we’d stop wherever we hit land, and no one would know who we were.”
“You’d run away with me?”
“Hell, yes. Would you?”
She thought about it too long and he knew the answer was no, no matter what she said. Of course, Iris wouldn’t run away. She wasn’t about running away. She was about making a plan and then following it until its end. No matter what.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “The sea just calls to me.”
But it was too late to pull back that feeling even though he’d tried to cover it. He’d always know he’d thrown out something that was real and she’d drawn back. He reminded himself that she was a very attractive woman who had decided to hire a man for the weekend instead of finding a real boyfriend.
His thoughts were ruining the night. He needed tonight to be a happy memory for both of them, but maybe it was Nantucket or just thinking about his family that had soured him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I want to say yes, but I’d be so freaked out about not knowing where we were going and not having a plan that I’d make you miserable. Do I want to be with you...?”
She stopped talking and turned in his arms as he hit the anchor release button and was about to turn away from her. She put her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest right over his heart.
“More than anything,” she said. Her voice was low, but he still heard her.
“Then why do you hesitate?”
“I’m afraid,” she said, then let out a deep breath that sounded like a sigh. “I can only let my guard down because I know whatever I do you’re not going to leave me. And if we started really dating, I’d let the pressure of that expectation overwhelm me. I know that makes me sound shallow.�
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“No,” he said. “It doesn’t. It makes you human, angel face.”
She looked up at him then and he didn’t care that she knew he wanted to run away with her. He could make whatever excuses he wanted to, he was going to miss the hell out of her when their arrangement was over and he started his training for the America’s Cup. He’d go because that was his life, but he’d always look back to this moment and this night with her.
“Want to skinny dip?” he asked, because if he didn’t do something, he was going to say all kinds of things that would scare her so much it would send her swimming back to shore.
“I’m afraid of the water.”
“I’ll protect you,” he said. “But no pressure if you don’t want to go in.”
She chewed her lower lip. “How about if you skinny dip and I stand on the deck and watch?”
“Will you be naked?” he asked.
“I could be,” she said. “Seems only fair if one of us is going to strip down, we both should.”
“It does,” he said, trying not to let himself fall a little bit more for her. There was so much daring inside her but she was afraid to let it out except in little controlled bursts. And he had to admit that made her all the more attractive.
He took her hand and led her to the deck of the yacht, then waggled his eyebrows at her as he took off his shirt and then his pants. He stood in front of her in his boxer briefs and put his hands on his hips. “One of us is a bit ahead of the other one.”
“One of us is just wearing a thong under their dress,” she said, untying the halter neck and letting the dress fall from her.
His breath caught in his throat as he stared at her beautiful nearly naked body. She stood there in the light of the full moon and the illumination provided by the running lights and reached up to undo the clasp that held her hair back. Her hair spilled down over her shoulders and she lifted her arms as the gentle summer breeze blew around them.
Her One Night Proposal (One Night Book 4) Page 10