Fighting Dirty - Sidney Halston Page 0,40
down. “Get it off me!”
“You’re so damn cute.”
“Enzo!”
He put his hands on her shoulders to calm her down enough for him to get a look. Finding a small beetle on her shoulder, he removed the offending insect and then showed it to her, causing her to yell and back away from him. He discarded the beetle and then chased her around the beach for a few minutes until they were both laughing and rolling around the sand like loons.
“We always end up on the ground somehow,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but this time there are children around. Can’t exactly defile you right now, sweetheart.”
“Defile. Good word,” she said. “Is that what you’d like to do? Defile me?”
“Baby, you’ve got no idea.” He stood and helped her up.
“Then we’d better get going,” she said as she hopped up onto his back. “Let the defiling begin!”
—
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’m sexed out.” Jamie Lynn said. “Why are we even here?” she asked from the floor of one of his spare rooms.
At some point, while he’d been taking a shower because he’d complained he had sand in places one shouldn’t have sand, she’d gone to explore the rest of the rooms. When he’d found her, one thing had led to another, and he’d taken her on the floor of the spare room.
“This is where I defiled you, remember?”
“How can I forget?” She pulled up her shorts, which had never made it all the way off.
Enzo stood and helped her up. “I’m going to go to the Academy for a few hours. Want to come?”
“Nah. Mind if I stay and keep your movie theater company?”
“My movie theater would appreciate that,” he answered her. “I was worried you’d want me to take you home.”
“What would you have said if I told you I wanted to go home?”
“I would’ve tied you to my bed.”
She laughed. “Looks like I’ve brought out your kinky side, Pretty Boy.”
“Yes, I think you actually have, Ms. Calhoun.”
“I feel like our summer romance is coming to an end, like in The Notebook, and you know how that ended. Except instead of a summer romance it’s a really long first date and you’re not enlisting to go off to war.”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about, sweetheart.”
She rolled her eyes. “What I’m saying is that at some point I’ll have to go home and reality will set in.”
He brought her close and rested his chin on her head as they hugged. “Yeah, I know,” he said somberly. Neither spoke about the inevitable end of the date for the rest of the day and night.
—
It was Sunday morning and her ringing phone woke her. Blindly Jamie Lynn reached for it and flung it across the room. Enzo chuckled. “Baby, we’ve been hermits for three days. Maybe it’s important.”
In response, she grunted something unintelligible and snuggled even closer to him. The phone vibrated against the floor. Enzo stood, found her phone, and handed it to her.
She opened one sleepy eye and then the other. “Oh. Oh!” She sat up. “It’s Jonah. I have to take this,” she said, looking at Enzo expectantly.
If she expected him to leave the room or grant her privacy to talk to another man, she had another thing coming, especially after all they’d done in the last few days. The phone rang again in her hands. She hesitated before picking it up. “Hello?” She reached around for her T-shirt, which had made its way under the bed. While pressing the phone against one ear, she slipped on the shirt and walked out of the room.
What the hell?
Enzo’s chest tightened. He didn’t like to feel jealous. Hell, this was probably a first for him. Even when he found out Marianna had cheated on him, he hadn’t felt jealousy. He’d felt angry that she had lied to him. Bitter that he had wasted so much of his life with her. Even relieved because it was an out from the loveless marriage. But jealousy? No, not jealousy.
On one hand, he wanted to follow Jamie Lynn and eavesdrop on her call, but at the same time he wanted to trust her enough to tell him who this Jonah was. She was all about honesty, after all. A few minutes later she walked back to the room. He wished he knew her better so that he could read her expression, because this was a new one—it was happy and sad at the same time.
She stood by the door. “I…uh, I have