The Price of Scandal (Bluewater Billionaires) - Lucy Score Page 0,72
fingers down over my chest to my stomach. “Your shirtlessness makes a compelling argument.”
“Let me take my shorts off,” I volunteered.
She laughed. A real laugh, and I felt a brightness in my chest.
“You should do that more often,” I told her.
“What? Sweat all over the floor?”
“Laugh.” I kissed her again, enjoying the salt and softness. She was spectacular.
“Steve,” she said, putting her hand on my chest.
“No. Derek.”
“No,” she laughed. “Steve. I have to feed Steve. He doesn’t like it when I’m late.”
Steve was eight feet of hissing alligator at the end of a long lagoon dock marked “Steve’s House” in the center of the enclave.
“So that’s really an alligator with a prosthetic leg,” I asked, observing the reptile as it opened its massive jaws.
“It is. One of the residents had his lab print a 3-D stump for him. Poor guy lost it to a boat propeller and kept swimming in circles. He couldn’t be released into the wild, so we let him stay,” Emily explained. “Ready, big guy?”
She held a rotisserie chicken over the railing. I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my gym shorts and snapped a picture.
“Has he ever eaten any residents?” I asked.
Steve hissed as if offended, and Emily tossed him the chicken.
He snapped it up with one prehistoric lunge. I got him mid-jump.
“We have a deal. He gets fed every day as long as he doesn’t snack on any Bluewater pets. He’s pretty chill.”
“I’ll have a mai tai, sweetheart!”
I whirled around at the flash of color, and feathers alighted on the dock’s railing.
“Hi, Frank,” Emily said wryly.
“Nice tattoo, shithead,” the fat parrot said.
“Am I hallucinating right now?” I asked, fascinated.
“I’m afraid not,” she told me. “Frank is our free-range jerk. His previous owner was an asshole. As you might have guessed.”
“And now he lives here in Bluewater?”
“His previous owner died—bar fight, surprise surprise—and Frank here escaped the animal rescue that came for him. Bit the animal control officer in the ear and took off. He ended up here when the landscaping started going in.”
“And you let him stay?”
“What are you lookin’ at, dickhead?” Frank asked Steve, bobbing his colorful head.
The alligator hissed his response.
“We haven’t figured out how to get rid of him,” she confessed.
“Nice tits!” Frank squawked before buzzing Steve and flying off toward the beach.
“You know, I’m never bored around you, love,” I told her.
She bumped my shoulder, and together we strolled down the meandering path that led back to her house. The greenery was lush in the early morning sun. Established palms created a natural canopy above us. Oleander, bougainvillea, and other glossy green plants formed a lush, jungle-like underbrush that made everything feel secluded. Despite the multi-million-dollar mansions tucked behind greenery and gates, Bluewater felt like a deserted paradise.
Alone in some tropical paradise. As far as trysts went, this one was going down in my history books. Though I wished Emily would give me some clue as to how she felt about last night.
Our romantic seclusion was interrupted by a pink jogging-suited senior holding hand weights and puffing hard as she speed-walked toward us. There was a significantly younger, muscled man following her in a golf cart, shouting instructions through a bullhorn.
“Morning, Mrs. Esteban,” Emily said.
“Looks like someone had a good night,” the woman said with a knowing smirk. She had a flower bandana tied over her pewter curls. Ten-karat diamond studs bobbed in her ears.
Emily gave her neighbor a guilty smile. Mrs. Esteban peered over her bifocal sunglasses and gave me a saucy wink.
“Less flirting. More walking,” the tanned trainer shouted.
She picked up the pace, and the golf cart whirred past us.
“You live in a very strange neighborhood,” I said.
Emily laughed. We were quiet for a few minutes as we wandered in the direction of her home. My muscles were warm, and my body felt deliciously loose and well-used.
“About last night,” she began.
Finally. My patience had run its course, and I’d been thirty seconds away from demanding to have a “let’s label this thing” conversation. “Yes?”
Emily stopped on the path and tentatively wound her arms around my neck. “It was good. Great.”
And or but. I couldn’t tell which way she was leaning.
“And?” I prodded, hopefully.
“And I think I’m onboard with revisiting it.”
I picked her up, lifting her feet off the path. Relief was a bright beacon of light in my chest. “I’ll pencil you in,” I teased.