Her Perfect Getaway (13 page)

“You two go ahead. I’ll be fine
here,” he offered. Honestly, he didn’t think he could stomach
watching her like that over breakfast.

“Don’t be silly. I want to get to
know the man who was so fascinated with my daughter that he
followed her home from Hawaii. That he was able to take time off
from his job and fly thousands of miles for a few days.”

“It’s called summer vacation, Dad.
Max is a high school history teacher.”

Max got the idea David Black would
have respected him more for being a beach bum.

“We’ll just get
dressed,” Elizabeth said, holding her hand out to Max.

He had to circle the pass-through
bar and pass David to take her hand, and when he did, it was
shaking. He frowned at her, but she didn’t meet his gaze as she
pulled him back into the bedroom.

“Seriously, Elizabeth, if you want
to go to breakfast with your dad, go. Don’t worry about me. I don’t
want to make things uncomfortable between you.”

She shook her head, crossing to her
closet and pulling out a pretty summer dress. “No, it’ll be nice.
Besides, you just got here.”

“I’m perfectly capable of
entertaining myself. Trust me, no man wants to have breakfast with
the man who spent the night in his daughter’s bed.”

She blushed as she shrugged out of
the kimono and plucked a lacy bra out of the dresser drawer. “He’ll
wonder why if you don’t come. There’ll just be uncomfortable
questions about what you’re hiding.”

Max wrapped his arms around her and
dipped his head to her damp hair. “I’m hiding the fact that I don’t
want to keep my hands off you. It’s your father/daughter time.
Enjoy.”

She rolled her eyes when he
released her, and slipped the bra on. “Every day is father/daughter
time.” She pulled the dress over her head and turned her back so he
could zip it. “Please?” She met his gaze in the mirror.

He stepped back with a sigh of
agreement. He hadn’t considered meeting her family when he thought
about coming to her in Austin. But now, he guessed there was no
help for it. “I only brought shorts.”

“You’ll be fine. This is
Austin.”

***

It wasn’t fine. They ate at a
country club, and Max was the only man wearing sandals and shorts.
David Black could barely contain his contempt for Max’s casual
attire and attitude, which ordinarily wouldn’t bother Max, but her
father’s attitude sure wound Elizabeth tight. He’d never seen her
so fidgety and uncomfortable. When her father left the table to
talk to some friends across the room, Max leaned
forward.

“I can take off. You’re miserable.
You’ve barely eaten anything.”

“I want this,” she insisted. “It’s
just a little while longer, then we’re on our own, and I’ll show
you around the city.”

He sat back with a sigh, linking
his fingers through hers. She choked down some fruit and some juice
before her father returned. Max decided to go on the
offensive.

“Have you ever been to Hawaii, Mr.
Black?”

The other man’s lips flattened.
“I’ve never taken time to go on vacation. I’ve been trying to build
a business.”

“I’m sure that’s going well for
you, but you’re missing out on paradise.”

David shook his head. “Sitting on
the beach drinking mai tais is not for me.”

Max forced a smile. “For your
daughter either. She had me teaching her how to surf the very first
day.”

“Surf?” David
shot his daughter a surprised glance.

She gave a small smile and toyed
with her coffee cup.

Max tracked his touch up her arm.
“I tried to get her to hike Diamondhead with me, but we ran out of
time. We snorkled and swam a lot. Not much mai tai
time.”

“Just that one night on the
beach.” Her smile warmed when she turned to him.

He remembered, showing her the
constellations, holding her in his arms, being so hungry for her by
the end of the night that he couldn’t get her home fast enough,
making love to her in the hammock. He saw in her eyes that she
remembered to, and she shifted a little toward him.

“Are you coming to Haven’s
wedding?” Max asked.

David’s mouth twisted. “Another
week when Elizabeth will need off.”

“Haven is my friend,” Elizabeth
said softly.

Max leaned forward. “Elizabeth
mentioned it’d been awhile since she’d been on
vacation.”

“And you saw why. Things fell
apart when she wasn’t there.”

“One customer,” Elizabeth
murmured.

“We’re still building our
business. We cannot afford to lose even one.”

“We’ve been building our business
for ten years, Dad. I think it’s time to hire someone besides
Andrea and Jordan. At least another photographer.”

“All the money needs to go back
into the business. You know that.”

“I know we’re doing better than
you want to let on.”

David shot a glance in Max’s
direction. “Now’s not the time for this discussion.”

Her jaw tight, Elizabeth nodded,
then eased her chair back. “Max and I are going to go. There’s a
lot I want to show him. Thank you for breakfast.”

Her father looked like he wanted to
say something, but he didn’t. Max murmured a thank you before he
turned to follow Elizabeth out.

***

“You’re different
with him,” he observed when they were in the car.

She wrestled the Camry into gear in
her haste to leave the parking lot. “He’s not exactly forgiving of
weakness.”

“What weakness are you afraid to
show him?”

She looked across the car at him.
“Any. He’d see it as his mission to crush it, to make me tougher.
I’m not really a fan of his methods.”

“Yet you work with him every day.
Do you even like being an editor?”

She gauged traffic before pulling
out of the country club. “I owe him. It’s just been the two of us
for so long. I would hate to walk away from him now.”

“What exactly do you owe him
for?”

“For being there for me, after Mom
left. We were all each other had.”

“That’s not an obligation. That’s
family.”

“When your mother died, did you
and your father not become closer?”

“Sure, I guess, but we have our
own space. Makes a lot of difference in him seeing me as an
adult.”

She bristled. “You don’t know me
well enough to know that about me.”

He blew out a breath. “You’re
right. I don’t. I just—I’ve seen you happy and I’ve seen you
unhappy.”

“People are always happy on
vacation, especially when one hasn’t been on one in
awhile.”

“People are not.
You can trust me on that.” He settled back against the door. “Are
you a happy person?” Why hadn’t it occurred to him to ask
before?

She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t
think about it. I put my head down and carry on.”

“What do you mean you don’t think
about it?”

“I think it doesn’t matter if
you’re happy or unhappy. You do what you have to do.”

Spoken like an unhappy person. What
had he done here? “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to get our bathing
suits and go to the closest thing I have to a wave.”

***

"What kind of man can just drop
everything on a whim? You'll always be the adult in the
relationship."

Elizabeth wished her father's
words, whispered when Max had gone to the buffet, didn't gnaw at
her as she sat on the lounge chair beside the flowrider pool and
watched Max carve through the water on the boogie board. The grin
on his face was just like an eight-year-old boy's, which only
reinforced her father's words. She didn't want to be the
responsible one. She'd been responsible all her life. But on the
other hand she didn't want another man like her father, a man
who would take over everything. If there was the slightest hint
that Max was somewhere in the middle...

What was she thinking? Just
because a man flew halfway around the world to see her didn't mean
she could start thinking of a future here. Maybe she was just
catching Haven's wedding fever.

Max exited the flowrider pool and
dropped to the lounge chair beside her, dripping and happy. He
leaned over and kissed her.

"I wish I could get one of those
at the house."

"Why, when you have the
ocean?"

“
Well, you don’t.
Do you come here a lot?”

“
I’ve never
been.”

His eyes widened. “And it’s this
close to your house? Not even as a kid?”

“
My dad’s been
buried in his work since I can remember. I don’t think he even
knows this place exists.”

“
And your
mom?”

“
She left a long
time ago and never looked back.”

He kissed her again, tender this
time. “Then you need to do it all today. Let's go on the water
slide. Come on."

***

Elizabeth could
barely make it across the parking lot to her apartment after
all those trips up the water slide stairs. Max, however, still had
all the energy of a puppy. He grabbed her around the waist and
pulled her close once they were inside. He set the bag of barbecue
they'd picked up onto the pass-through bar and pressed a kiss to
the side of her neck. His fingers got busy with the tie at the back
of her neck and he filled his hands with her breasts.
She sighed as he nudged her toward the couch, his
fingers rolling her nipples. He dropped onto the couch and reached
for her, pulling her over his lap.

“You were the most beautiful woman
at the park today.”

“Don’t be silly. There were all
those young girls.”

“Hey.” His grip shifted to her hips
and tightened just enough to get her to look into her eyes. “You
were the one I couldn’t take my eyes off of. You.”

He waited until she smiled before
he kissed her, his mouth hot and eager, his fingers sliding down
her spine into her bikini bottoms.

He’d made love to her almost every
day for a week, and still he managed to find her most erogenous
zones—the very base of her tail bone, the crease between her bottom
and thigh. She shifted closer so her breasts rubbed his chest and
her cleft pressed against his growing erection. He broke the kiss
to trail his lips down her throat, latching a moment on the curve
between her neck and her shoulder, caressing that sensitive area
until she moved her hips against him.

He slipped his finger into the leg
of her bottoms and inside her in one fluid move. She gasped and
pumped against his hand. He added another finger, then another, and
closed his mouth over her nipple. She cried his name and clutched
his head, holding him to her.

“Don’t make me come like
this.”

He released her breast and looked
up. “I want to make you come as many ways as I can think of. Hell,
I wanted to do this at the park, but it was a little too
family-friendly.”

She laughed, a little breathlessly,
as he pressed his thumb to her clit.

The stroking of his fingers, his
mouth on her breast, the scent of him surrounding her, all of those
built the orgasm inside her, wrapping tighter.

“You’re so wet. Listen how wet you
are,” he said against her skin, and when he circled her clit one
more time, she flew apart, arching her back, thrusting against his
hand, feeling her body clamp around his fingers as release swamped
her.

The next thing she knew, his cock
nudged at her entrance.

“Condom,” she managed.

“Taken care of.” He guided her hand
to the base of his shaft so she could feel the sheath. “Ride me,
Elizabeth.”

With a shift of her hips, she
brought him into her, igniting desire she thought spent as he
stretched her, stroked her inner walls. She pressed close so that
her clit rubbed against his groin, against the rough hair there,
before she began to move.

She hooked one hand around the back
of his neck and bent her body so she could watch him slide in and
out of her. God, she was wet, and she loved the sound their bodies
made, the rhythm, the slapping of flesh. He curved one hand around
her ass and the other around her breast, and watched
her.

“Max. Don’t,” she protested,
wanting to cover his eyes.

“Are you kidding me? It’s the most
beautiful thing I’ve seen, you fucking me.”

Again, his words made her melt, and
she moved against him with a little more desperation, bringing him
harder into her, deeper, angling her hips.

“Touch yourself,” he
urged.

The blush heated her whole body. “I
can’t. I’m not coordinated enough.”

“I’ll help. Touch
yourself.”

Because the idea appealed more than
she wanted to admit, tightening her nipples, sending another wave
of wetness to her core, she hesitantly slid her free hand up her
thigh and between them, parting her cleft and finding her swollen
clit.