Tryst (8 page)

I tested out the width of the wood by wrapping my arms around it. My hands didn’t meet so it was fairly large. I backed up a few steps and took a running leap at it. The plan was to jump on it and
, using my arms and legs, wrap myself around it and then shimmy up.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. I bounced off like I was a basketball thrown in a lousy shot. With an oomph
, I landed on my back in the sand.

I stared up at the blue, cloudless sky. How in the hell did these things happen to me?

Taking a different approach, I wrapped my arms and legs around the pole and then tried to climb it that way.

Can I just say I learned two things:

1. I hated cats.

2.
I had no idea how strippers “worked” a pole because it wasn’t easy.

I released the pole and stood staring up at the cat. He gave me a pitiful meow
, and I rolled my eyes. “Sure, now you want my pity.”

There was really only one thing to do. Call the fire department. Maybe they would send out some hot, muscle
-bound guy with a ladder that I could ogle as he saved the day.

“Ha!” I told the cat. “Who has the last laugh now?”

I turned away, toward my house to get my cell phone. I heard the sound of a slamming door, but I didn’t bother to turn and look.

“What the hell is going on out here!” roared a vaguely familiar voice.

I stopped in the sand.

It couldn’t be…

“Who the hell are you?” he roared.

I spun on my heel.

Blond hair flopped into his eyes, unshaven jaw, chiseled cheekbones, hulking shape…

It was the guy from last night.

I could only pray he didn’t recognize me.

“My cat is stuck
.” I pointed up at Salty. “I was just going to call the fire department.”

“You just can’t stay out of trouble
, can you?” He crossed his arms over his very broad chest. His very naked, smooth chest.

Holy
suntanned muscles.

So much for him not remembering me. “It’s not my fault he raced up that pole like some circus act.”

“He was no doubt trying to get away from you,” he muttered, staring up at Salty. Then he looked back at me. “That’s
your
cat?” he asked, his voice filled with doubt.

“It’s my Aunt Ruth’s cat
.” I clarified. He didn’t need to know she wasn’t my aunt. “I’m housesitting for her.”

“You’re living next door?”
He said it like it was the most annoying thing in the world.

“I’m just visiting.”

“Yeah?” He sauntered over toward me. The wind off the water blew around us, ruffling the blond hair around his head, and I couldn’t help but notice the way the muscles in his very well-defined chest shifted as he moved.

Instead of staring at his rock-hard body
, I looked at his face, taking in the features I wasn’t able to see last night.

His eyes were blue. Like a deep ocean blue. His skin was tan, the kind of tan one only got from living at the beach
, and judging from the lightness of his eyebrows, he was a natural blond. He looked like he was born and raised in the sand. His skin was smooth and his biceps were round and solid.

He drew closer, towering over me like he was some giant and I was his dinner. Those beautiful blue eyes were narrowed and from this distance
, I could see they were slightly bloodshot.

Maybe he was an alcoholic. But weren’t alcoholics friendly?

“Let me fill you in on how things work around here,” he said, stopping so we were practically toe-to-toe.

His breath didn’t smell like alcohol. It smelled like coffee. The big
, fat jerk had coffee and I didn’t.

“This is a quiet stretch of sand. All the people in this area live here, year round. We mind our own business
. We stay out of each other’s way. We definitely do not let our cats loose and then come out on the sand at the crack of dawn, bellowing like some kind of crazy person.”

“What are you, like
, the beach police?” I retorted. I held up a hand. “No wait, I know. You’re neighborhood watch.” I couldn’t help it. I giggled.

Judging from the dark scowl on his face, he wasn’t amused.

I sighed, he was totally ruining my whole “new day” approach to life this morning. “I have no intention of disturbing your peace. It’s the reason I’m here too. I’ll just call the fire department, get my cat, and we won’t have to see each other ever again.”

I spun to go inside and get my phone. Just like last night
, he stopped me. This time, instead of taking my wrist, he palmed my hand, pulling me back around. I yelped and pulled my hand away, shaking it a little as if to get rid of the pain.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” he asked, his voice losing some of its annoyed, sarcastic edge.

“Nothing.” I sniffed, tucking it beneath my other arm against my side.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He ran a hand through his blond hair, pushing it away from his face. Damn, his eyes were blue.

“It’s okay.”

Carefully, he reached out and pulled my hand away, to hold it out between us. In the fleshy part of my palm under my thumb was an angry-looking splinter. The skin was red around the edges and slightly puffy. In the center you could see the sliver of wood buried in my skin.

“It’s just a splinter,” I told him, trying to pull my hand away. “Demon cat
- three, Talie - zero.”

“Demon cat?” he mused, the corner of his lip lifting. He had full lips, the kind that were good for biting.

It took me a moment to answer because he was cradling my hand in his while smoothing his thumb around the area where the splinter was. His touch was beyond gentle yet self-assured, like he knew what he was doing. Little prickles of pleasure raced up and down my legs because even just that slight touch from him was so very good.

I cleared my throat. “That cat hates me.”

That statement earned me a full-on grin. His straight, white teeth flashed, and a dimple appeared in his chin. From this close up, I could see the roughness of the stubble growing along his jaw. Out here in the sun, it looked golden, as if to highlight his already perfect face.

The cat made a pitiful sound and I looked up. “I better go.”

I tugged my hand back and he let go, turning around to walk away. But he didn’t go back up the steps to his deck. Instead, he leapt onto the pole and started to climb. It was just unfair he could do that and I couldn’t.

I expected Salty to react to him the same way he did me. Yeah, no. He gave another pitiful meow and allowed the man to lift him up and perch him on his shoulder like a parrot. Seconds later, he was striding back across the sand to me
, with a happy-looking Salty.

“Thank you,” I said, reaching out for the cat.

He hissed and growled.

I snatched
my hand back and scowled. “See!”

He chuckled. The sound brushed over my body
, setting it to tingle. “I’ll carry him.”

I led him onto the deck and toward the sliding door
, which was still open. My OJ was sitting forgotten on the arm of a lounge chair. I pushed the door open a little wider and turned to get the cat, but he was much closer than I expected. I collided with his chest and the cat. He reached out to steady me and rolled his eyes.

“You are a disaster.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He stepped around me to put Salty on the floor
, who immediately ran off into Ruth’s bedroom. I hoped he hid there the rest of the day.

“So do you have a name?” I asked. “Or should I just keep thinking of you as the rude guy next door.”

“Gavin,” he supplied. “You’re Talie?”

I nodded. “Well
, thanks, Gavin,” I said, trying out his name on my tongue. “I won’t disturb your peace anymore.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that.”

I made a shooing motion with my hand, hoping he would get the point. He grabbed the hand with the splinter and said, “You need to get that out before it gets infected.”

“Will do.”

Instead of taking me for my word, he slid the door shut behind him and then towed me along into the bathroom.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m getting this out.”

“I can manage.”

He barked a laugh. “No, you can’t.”

I really didn
’t like being treated like some child who had no clue. I was a grown woman. I could take care of myself.

I spun around to rush out of the room
, but he caught me around the waist and lifted me off my feet like I weighed nothing more than a seashell.

“Hey!” I gasped.

My bottom hit the bathroom counter and he stepped between my legs. I lost the ability to think. I glanced down at the way my pale knees looked framing out his tight, toned waist. My heart started to pound as I glanced at the board shorts he wore. They hung low, exposing a deep V shape low on his waist. I didn’t know what those lines were called, but I had a serious hot flash thinking about licking them.

Gavin seemed completely unaffected by my closeness as he opened up the medicine cabinet beside my head and withdrew a pair of tweezers.

“I’ll do this,” I said, trying to take them.

“Shh,” he shushed. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, so you’re an expert splinter remover?”

His eyes flashed up to mine. “I’m an expert at a lot of things.”

Oh my.

Did I mention I ha
dn’t had sex in six months? It was this moment when my body decided to remind me of that and how utterly sexy this man was.

No!
I told myself.
No, no, no.

“Don’t fidget,” he said, palming my hips and stilling my body. I hadn’t even realized I was moving.

He lifted my hand and turned it palm up. Then he pinched the skin with one hand (which hurt really bad!) and used the tweezers to pluck out the splinter. He got it in one try.

He held it up between us and I noted it had some blood on the end.

“Ow,” I said.

He smiled.

My stomach fluttered uncontrollably. “Thanks.”

“Might want to wash that off,” he said, motioning toward it. There was a small bead of blood welling in the center.

I hopped down off the counter and washed my hands, ignoring the sting. When I was done, I glanced in the mirror. My hair was almost completely dry, and despite being outside on the windy beach, it wasn’t a knotted mess.

Instead
, it waved around my head naturally tousled and beach ready. A few of the ends were still flipping out, but it appeared they were styled to do just that. My cheeks were flushed and Gavin was the reason.

My eyes met his in the mirror. We stared at each other for one long
, charged second. Suddenly, this bathroom seemed too small. The sparks between us were so tangible it felt as if we couldn’t all fit in this space. Overwhelming energy burst around us, and a fine tremor started in my hands.

“I’m going to go,” he said, breaking our eye contact first.

I nodded without moving. He left without delay, almost like he was running and couldn’t get out fast enough.

I didn’t bother to chase him down.

I was too shocked to move.

Talie

Two days later, I got up with the sunrise to walk along the sand. All the best seashells could be found early, as the tide was just going out.

I was hoping to find a shark tooth. Not the ones that everybody finds, the small black ones with the sharp end and jagged side. Those seemed like a dime a dozen. I wanted to find a truly remarkable one. As big as my palm, something that showed me just how big the world out there was.

Before heading outside, I dressed in a navy-blue tankini with a plunging neckline (Claire said if I refused to wear a bikini, the tankini had to be sexy) with turquoise trim. I added a thin, white linen cover-up dress with a rope tie around the middle and grabbed a large-brimmed turquoise hat to keep the sun off my face.

Salty and I
had settled in a hate-hate relationship that included me feeding him and him showing me his displeasure before running off to hide for most the day. The last thing I did was put on a pot of coffee to brew so the rich, dark wake-me-up in a cup was ready when I got back.

Outside
, the sun was low in the sky, white, puffy clouds were tinted pink, and overhead the sky was already a brilliant blue. The sound of ocean waves crashing against the shore was like music to my ears. It was so loud it drowned out most of my thoughts. And the ones that were most persistent, the thoughts that threatened to bring down my mood? I let the breeze carry them behind me to be lost out to sea.

I wandered down the beach, pe
eking up at Gavin’s beach house as I walked past. It was a blue house with white shutters. It looked very similar to Aunt Ruth’s, but it appeared bigger. Propped against the back sliders was a large surfboard. An image of him wet and glistening atop a board in the center of the deep sea made my stomach flip over.

The guy was an ass
, but damn he was sexy. He made my pulse race in ways I’d never experienced. And it was hard not to replay the splinter scene over and over again in my head. How one moment he could be acting like a first-class mule and the next touch me with such gentleness was a puzzle. If I wasn’t careful, he’d give me a serious case of whiplash.

Not that I was going to see him again. The way he
’d left so abruptly the other day and then not resurfaced from inside his house since was proof of that.

Not that I was looking out the window or watching his house from my deck or anything.

That would just be stalker-ish.

I turned my attention
back to the task at hand: splashing my feet in the surf, clearing my head, and searching for shells and shark teeth. The last thing I needed to think about was some guy. That would only just get me hurt again.

Claire said Blake called looking for me the day before. She told him I wasn’t home and she’d give me the message when I got back. He was going to be waiting a while before I got back. I snickered to myself as I picked up a beautiful white shell.

Joanna tried to call me once as well, but I let the call go to voicemail. I walked into a long stretch of shells and I forgot everything except the feeling of the sand between my toes and the wind in my hair.

I didn’t find the shark tooth I was hoping for, but I found many other beautiful shells, so many that I had to use the end of my dress as a makeshift bucket to hold them.

The sun was much higher in the sky when I wandered back toward the beach house. The wind seemed to be stronger than earlier and the tide wasn’t as low as before.

I was wading through the water when my toe struck something in the surf. The water rushed out, making me feel like it was going to tug me into its depths as it went
, and I saw the rounded top of a conch shell. It looked fully intact, and excitement skittered through me.

I released the hold I had on my hat and bent to retrieve it just as a strong gust of wind whipped by, lifting the hat up off my head and sending it backward.

I let it go, instead keeping my grip on the shell as a wave crashed practically on top of me and pushed me over. I shrieked and fell sideways, taking in a mouthful of salty water. I sputtered and pushed myself up, grappling for the ends of my dress that held all my treasures.

I managed to catch most, only losing a few. Dripping wet and tasting
nothing but salt, I rushed ashore before another wave could push me over.

I wasn’t watching where I was running and I hit a solid wall and bounced back. Before I could fall again, two hands reached out to steady me. “Most people take off their clothes to take a swim,” Gavin quipped.

Still holding the ends of my dress with one hand
, I pushed the saturated ends of my hair away from my face. “Ha-ha.”

“You lose something?”
He held up my hat.

“
What are you doing out here?” I asked and took the hat, dumping all of my shells into it, and then let my cover-up fall back into place.

“I live here
.” He spread his arms, gesturing to the beach. The action drew all of my attention to his body. I didn’t think he ever wore a shirt. Once again, he was wearing dangerously low-slung board shorts. The fabric was wet from the water and the added weight dragged them down until I could see the area leading toward his most manly place and how the skin there wasn’t as tan as the rest of him. There was no trail of hair like Blake had. Gavin was completely hairless and smooth. I bit my lip, wondering if he was as cleanly groomed beneath his shorts as he was everywhere else.

“Talie?” I heard him say, but his voice was far away
. My attention was seriously diverted to other places. His abs were lean and cut. It was definitely obvious he spent time surfing because his body showed off the work. His skin was damp and glistened slightly beneath the early morning sun.

“I didn’t think you ever came out of your house
,” I replied and then wanted to kick myself.

He lifted his eyebrows. “You’ve been watching for me?”

I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment.
Idiot
, I told myself. “Of course not,” I snapped. “I was just noticing how peaceful the last couple days had been and the fact that you
weren’t
in them.”

“I’m out here every morning to surf. You’ve just not noticed me until today.”

“So you’ve been watching me?” I said, smug.

He grinned and didn’t bother to deny it. My entire body flushed. The fact that he watched me meant he liked what he saw… right?

“That hat of yours is like a neon sign. It’s kind of hard not to notice.”

So much for thinking he might like the way I looked.
Bummer
. Yes, I know. I said I wasn’t going to worry about a guy. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want him to enjoy the way I looked.

“It’s not that bright,”
I muttered and looked away, back into the water. Surprisingly, the conch shell was still there, the water parting over it as it moved.

“Hold this,” I said and pushed the hat containing all my shells into his arms.

“Would love to,” he said dryly as I waded back into the water to retrieve the shell. I’d never found a whole conch before and I really wanted to get it.

The shell was partially
buried in the wet sand, which was the reason it hadn’t washed away yet. Because the bottom was open, it acted like a suction cup against the packed wet sand. Bending at the waist, I plunged both my hands into the cool, brackish water and tugged. It didn’t lift on my first try, and of course, another wave crashed right where I was standing. This time I braced myself and didn’t fall over, but I did stand there for a long moment waiting for some of the water to drain away. As it did, the surf rushed around my arms and legs, spraying me with water drops.

The sensation of rushing water was interrupted.

A sharp, stabbing pain followed by an intense burning, kind of like my arm was on fire, made me cry out. I jerked back to get away from whatever was hurting me, and I caught a glimpse of a large jellyfish being tugged away by a wave.

I stumbled backward, the pain fairly intense
, as my brain processed the fact I was just stung by the creature.

Just as I was about to fall, a pair of warm, solid arms wrapped around me from behind. I took immediate advantage of his nearness and leaned against him, giving all my weight for him to support.

“What happened?” Gavin said against my ear.

“I think a jellyfish just stung me,” I said, my voice low and strained. The burning and stinging was very intense
. It hurt a lot more than I thought a sting like this would.

“Only you would find an angry jellyfish,” he rumbled.

“Hey—” I started to argue, but the words fell away. I was in pain, damn it.

“Where did it get you?”

I raised my arm to inspect the spot where it burned. There was a large, bright-red welt and a rash spreading down around my wrist. In the center of the reddest area, something was sticking out. I freaked out and began waving my arm. “Get it off!” I screeched. “Get it off me!”

“Talie,” he said firmly, interrupting my meltdown. How could he be so calm? “It’s the tentacle. It stuck to your skin when he got you.”

“I don’t want it there.”

He chuckled. “I got that.”

I started at it with my fingers to yank that sucker out, but he stopped me. “That’s just going to hurt worse.”

I glared at him. Gavin tucked my hat with the shells in it under his arm and then reached for me. He lifted me easily, swung me up into his arms and cradled me against his chest.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

Secretly, I freaking loved the feeling of him carrying me as if I weighed nothing at all.

“Do you know first aid for a jellyfish sting?” He stared down at me. The deep azure penetrated me down to my very core.

I shook my head.

“Well, I do.”

With that he set off across the sand, passing by the surfboard lying near the wooden stairs
, and began climbing them without even breathing heavy.

I blinked past the burn in my arm and looked up at
the familiar sight of the white house with blue shutters. It drew closer the more he walked.

He was taking me to his house.