Flirting With Temptation (13 page)

“I just thought it’d lessen the shock of it for him if he had a chance to prepare. I mean, think about it, Babette. When he saw you down there, he’d probably assume you came to see him for yourself. To hear you explain that you want to get him back with Kitty, when he didn’t even know about your new love doctor position, would probably knock him sideways. And with Jeff, well, you never know how he’ll react to things. So I thought we’d warn—I mean tell—him.” She paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Ethan to call.”

Babette tried to put herself in Clarise’s place, and she realized that if it’d been her sister walking into this situation, she’d have tried to soften the blow too. “No, it’s okay. I’d have probably done the same thing, and I should’ve realized that you would’ve asked Ethan to let him know I was coming. But now I’m wondering, if he knows I’m here, why hasn’t he made an effort to find me? To tell me to leave, if nothing else?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I was surprised. I figured even if you hadn’t found him, he’d have found you. He is a bull-by-the-horns kind of guy, you know.”

“I know.” That was one of several qualities the two of them had in common, along with their stubborn streaks, and their pride.

“Well, after you talk to him, give me a call and let me know how it goes.”

“I will.”

They said their goodbyes and disconnected, then Babette contemplated the reasons Jeff hadn’t found her yet. A couple came to mind. The first was that he wanted to sit back and enjoy watching her attempt the impossible, trying to get him back with his ex-fiancée. He’d let things run their course, see how she worked this new career, and then be a part of her first failure.

But that didn’t feel like Jeff. He was hard-headed, like she was, but he wasn’t cruel, which made Babette think that perhaps the second reason he might not have looked for her might be the more plausible of the two. And of the two, Babette would rather him be cruel. Because the second reason he wouldn’t have looked for her was simple—he didn’t care. Didn’t care about Kitty, and didn’t care about Babette.

She stood, crossed the room and moved onto the balcony, where she gripped the top of the railing and inhaled the warm salty breeze. The wind made her eyes water, or Babette told herself that was why they were watering. She wasn’t going to admit that this venture was a failure, not yet. Never in her life had she stuck to a commitment. Never had she made anything work. But the love doctor business was different; it was her means to make a change, to show her family, the business world, and herself, that she had what it took to succeed. But if she failed with Kitty Carelle, then she could kiss her business move into Birmingham’s social elite goodbye.

Of all people, why did Kitty’s ex have to be Jeff?

Babette suddenly felt the need to get out. To leave the condo and get air. Even though the place was expansive, and even though she could take in the beach from the balcony, that wasn’t enough. She felt as though the walls, and the world, was closing in, and was going to snuff her out completely. The reality of her circumstances floored her.

She turned from the balcony, moved mechanically through the condo and exited.

Within minutes, though her mind was still worrying over how she was going to accomplish the impossible, she was breathing a little easier, the warm Gulf breeze enveloping her completely as she walked across the sand toward the water.

Typically, she wouldn’t think it all that safe for a woman to walk on her own down the beach after dark, but this portion of Destin was well-lit from the resorts along the shore, and she’d make sure not to go too far, just enough to enjoy the luxury of a beautiful beach on a gorgeous night. She’d been working nonstop over the past few months, and she really hadn’t taken time to stop and smell the roses, or in this case, the salty breeze.

She hadn’t taken time for men either, or sex, and that fact became blatantly obvious when she caught herself noticing all of the cuddling couples also enjoying the perfect night. It’d been a long time. Way too long. And seeing Jeff’s newest lady on the balcony hadn’t helped. He apparently hadn’t been a long time without sex, at all.

She headed toward the water and walked along its edge, the waves occasionally creeping across the smooth portion of the sand and trickling over her feet.

One of those cuddling couples walked toward her, and she looked out toward a ship in the distance to let them have their privacy. Their bodies were completely in sync, curving naturally against each other with every step. It didn’t take much to read them. Babette could define it with one word—love.

“I think I’d like that too,” the woman said as they neared Babette. The man stopped walking, leaned toward her and kissed her, and Babette wondered what it was that the woman thought she’d like. Whatever it was, it certainly made him happy. The kiss was still going.

Babette slowed her pace and tried to hide the fact that she very much wanted to know what they were talking about. But they’d deepened the kiss even further, their bodies so close now that there wasn’t any light between them, and she simply couldn’t walk that slowly without drawing attention to the fact that she was eavesdropping. Apparently Rose’s spy fetish was contagious.

Sighing, she ventured a little closer to the waves, which slapped her feet almost nonstop as she walked. Her new path made it easy for her to spot seashells washing along the shore. One glistened in the moonlight, and she bent down and picked it up, then rubbed the excess sand away with her thumb before slipping it in her pocket. Several more shells were scattered around it, but those weren’t to her liking, so she kept walking.

After bypassing additional clusters of seashells, she saw another one that stood out, capturing the moon’s light and reflecting it, and she made her way toward that one and added it to the other one in her pocket. By the time she made it to the cove, well beyond the end of all the resorts, she had a pocket full of shells, and she’d walked way farther than she’d intended.

Besides the moonlight, there was no illumination on this section of the beach, but Babette liked that about the cove. No, she hadn’t intentionally walked here, but she wasn’t naïve enough to think that perhaps she hadn’t walked directly here subconsciously. She and Jeff had made love here several times, and each time had been incredible. She gazed at the water glistening in the darkened cove and could almost feel the warmth of his body entering hers.

Had he brought Kitty here too? She thought of Kitty’s shiny blond hair, and the way every single hair seemed to fall into place, her beyond-expensive clothes and her I-look-good-and-I-know-it attitude.

No, he hadn’t brought Kitty here. Kitty wasn’t the sex-on-the-sand type. She wouldn’t have liked the risk, wouldn’t have liked the sand, wouldn’t have liked the wildness of exploring each other thoroughly beneath the stars. And Kitty wouldn’t have even considered getting naked and hot and writhing with Jeff in this cove the way Babette did. She remembered the way the warm water felt moving against their naked bodies, and the way she’d totally lost herself when he kissed her in the moonlight.

Overcome with the intensity of that particular memory, she didn’t realize she was no longer alone. Not until the man who was merely a few feet away cleared his throat.

“It’s me. Don’t be afraid,” he commanded.

Like hell. Babette could run pretty fast, but she had no doubt the tall, muscled creature beside her could run faster. With no other beachcombers in sight, she had no choice but to try to slow him down if she wanted a halfway decent chance of making it back to the resort area of the beach first. With full survival instincts in motion, she brought her leg up and to the side, delivering a sharp, hard heel to the crotch. She was rewarded with a thick, guttural grunt, and the bastard stumbled backward. Then she sucked in a big breath, started to run and prepared to yell . . .

Except the sound of her name, and the familiar voice emitting the sound of her name, stopped her cold.

“Damn it, Babette!”

She whirled around to see Jeff, shaking his head and glaring at her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.

“What am
I
doing? What do you think you’re doing? Coming out here in the dark and sneaking up on me!” She backed away, lost her footing, and fell butt-first into the cove, then yelped when her seashells cut into her side.

The ass had the nerve to laugh, and she glared. Standing, she slapped at her wet, sandy behind, then fished out the shells that had broken and dropped them in the water. “What are you doing out here?” she demanded. “I thought you had plans.”

He’d turned enough that his face was clearly visible in the moonlight, and Babette noticed one sandy brow inch upward. Damn, she’d said too much.

“What made you think I had plans, Babette?”

“You always have plans,” she said, and it sounded like a pathetic response even to her, so she promptly reverted to the previous subject. “And why are you out here sneaking up on me?”

“I didn’t intend to sneak up on you. I had no idea you were here,” he said, then before she could argue, he added, “I mean in the cove. I knew you were in Destin, but I didn’t know you were in the cove.” He ran a hand through his hair, and Babette forced her eyes not to venture toward his biceps, flexing with the action. “I went for a walk and ended up here,” he explained. “I wasn’t looking for you.”

Unfortunately, his explanation only reminded Babette that she was quite irritated over his apathy toward her visit and her purpose, to get him back with Kitty. “Why
haven’t
you been looking for me, if you knew I was here and needing to talk to you? You had to know I was trying to catch you at the condo!”

“Maybe because I knew what you were going to talk to me about, and I’m not interested. You’re wasting your time, Babette, so you might as well go home.”

Go home? Go—home? “Not in this life. I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it.”

“You can’t play Love Doctor for me, so you might as well give Kitty back her money. Go home, Babette.”

No way. She was
not
giving Kitty back her money; she needed that money. And she was going to do her job. The Love Doctor was the first thing she’d done right in a very long time. It was the only thing that she’d actually stuck to for more than eight weeks, the only thing she’d
wanted
to stick to for more than eight weeks, and she wasn’t ready to throw in the towel because Jeff was telling her to go home. Nothing was going to stop her from making this work. “I’m not going home until you at least talk to me about giving her another chance.”

“Not happening.”

“Why not?” Babette was frustrated that she hadn’t noticed any body language signals when he mentioned Kitty. She should’ve been concentrating on those, instead of on the man. She’d have to watch that throughout the remainder of her stay.

“Nope. It’s my turn for questions now,” he said. “Why were you out here walking on this section of the beach at night by yourself? You’re smarter than that, and you weren’t even paying attention. I walked up, and you didn’t even see or hear me, and I’m not exactly on the small side.”

Oh no, he wasn’t small; in height, at six-foot-two, or in other areas, which she suddenly remembered with extreme clarity. She was glad that they only had moonlight illuminating them now, or else he’d know that she was blushing. She casually moved her hand to her face to disguise the potential change of hue. Then she remembered the body language interpretation of her hand on her face, that she wanted him to touch her there, and she jerked her hand away.

He noticed. “Babette, are you okay?”

“I was fine until you sneaked up on me.”

“You’re lucky that it was me. What if it hadn’t been me that came up on you out here like that?” He was standing rather awkwardly, she noticed, and she rather triumphantly remembered her heel to the crotch.

She looked at him,
there
, and asked, “Did I hit paydirt?”

“Not enough to make my voice higher, but yeah, you were close enough to make me reconsider my approach in the future.”

She smirked. “What did you expect?”

“I expected you to recognize my voice. I didn’t expect you to attack.”

“You should’ve said my name sooner.”

“Like I said, I thought you’d recognize me, and I did say your name.”

She shrugged. “Not before I got a heel to your jewels.”

“I said you were close. It wasn’t a direct hit.”

“I’d have gotten it right the second time.”

He smiled, white teeth glistening in the moonlight, and her mind tripped over another time when he smiled at her in the moonlight, and in this cove. “There wouldn’t have been a second time.”

“Says you.”

He stepped closer, so close that Babette’s chest tightened, and he asked again, “What were you doing out here?”

“I went for a walk to think about how I was going to talk to you about Kitty, and I guess I walked farther than I intended.” Not a total lie, but mostly.

He nodded, but his eyes told her he didn’t buy it. And the moonlight did magical things to the turquoise in those blue eyes. It was almost tempting. Too tempting.

She swallowed. Hard. Then, because the air around them seemed to thicken, she blurted, “What were
you
doing out here? Something go wrong with the perky brunette?”

Okay. That last part shouldn’t have made it from her mind to her lips, but there it was, out there, and she braced for his response.

Both brows lifted this time, and she could tell that she’d surprised him. Well, nothing wrong with that. He’d sure surprised her tonight. “I’m assuming you’re referring to Kylie, but exactly when did you see her?”

“She was on your balcony,” Babette said, taking an interest in the sand at her feet, rather than looking at those eyes. She pushed her toes through the wet mush, made a little path and watched the water trickle through, then she patted it back down with her other foot. Anything to keep her busy, and to keep from looking up. Maybe he’d forget what they were talking about.

And maybe she’d grow wings and simply fly away from this uncomfortable situation.