40-Love - Olivia Dade Page 0,83

public and sublimated our unacknowledged sexual tension through harder-than-necessary serves and the ogling thereof?”

He grinned. “That’s the one.”

“Isn’t that how all functional adults deal with their issues?”

At her dry response, he huffed out a short laugh. “Let’s pretend that’s true.” He sobered. “My point is, we screwed up. Both of us. We hurt each other, because we’re only human.”

“Your ego is superhuman. At least when it comes to your penis.”

He ignored her snark. “Then we got over it. You and Belle will get over this hiccup too.”

She bit her lip. “I hope so.”

“I’m sure Belle doesn’t expect you to be perfect. I certainly don’t. You shouldn’t expect it of yourself either.” His dimples reappeared. “God knows you shouldn’t expect me to be perfect, despite my current boyfriend ranking.”

She raised a single eyebrow, purely for his entertainment. “Trust me. I don’t.”

“So try not to worry about your friendship with Belle, okay?” His face compressed into a sudden scowl. “And forget what Jeremy told you.”

Again, he’d spat out her ex’s name, for reasons she couldn’t completely parse. Maybe his anger was on her behalf. Maybe it was born from jealousy, or in frustration at how her past complicated their present. Maybe all of the above.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a practical person, and there’s nothing wrong with how you handle emotions.” His statement did not invite argument. “You’ve already—”

He broke off, and it was her turn to wait. To stroke his bristled cheek and ease him through whatever he needed to say.

“The things I’ve talked about with you, I don’t…” His jaw worked as he found the words. “I don’t talk to anyone else like that. It’s helped me. More than you know. You’ve helped me.”

“If so, I’m glad.” Lightly, she kissed the furrows on his forehead.

“Not if so, you stubborn woman—”

Then they were mock-wrestling on the bed, his every movement careful of her joints despite his growls and declarations of imminent mayhem. He tickled her until she wheezed with laughter, and then he kissed her, and then they were flinging clothes to the floor, grateful to trade hard words for easy pleasure.

Afterward, she felt better. Lighter and looser, and not just because of the orgasms.

But as they lay clasped together on the rumpled sheets of her hotel bed, she wondered whether he’d defend her quite so vigorously, quite so sincerely, if he knew her better. If he knew her longer. If he knew her in her daily life, rather than on vacation.

Maybe he’d—they’d—want to take whatever lay between them and extend it past the next week. Maybe they wouldn’t.

But if he did, if they did—

What then?

What would he think of her then?

Twenty-Three

“Belle was finally willing to talk about it this morning.” Tess absently gathered a handful of sand and let it sift through her fist in the water, her other hand resting on Lucas’s raised knee. “She said I could tell you what happened too, since you weren’t likely to spread the story to anyone important. Also, she said you’d be worried because I was worried.”

True. Undeniably true.

He was impressed, frankly. Despite his limited interactions with her, Belle evidently understood how he felt about Tess better than Tess herself seemed to. He was working on that, of course, but time was slipping away just as fast and just as inevitably as the sand between Tess’s fingers.

Four days. In four days, she was taking the ferry to the mainland, and he had no idea when she’d return, if ever.

He wouldn’t think about that now, though. Not when she was sitting beside him on their secluded sandbar, no one else in sight, water rushing around her torso and deliciously round arms in gentle surges. The sun was nearing the horizon, and the sky had unfurled banners of pink and gold, bathing her profile in warmth.

“So what’s the story, then?” With his forefinger, he traced shapes on her thigh underwater. A heart. A star. A crescent moon. A second heart, one with his invisible initials inside. A sun, its unseen rays as warm as the sweet curve of her cheek. “Why did she leave?”

He turned slightly toward Tess, admiring her one-piece swimsuit for the thousandth time in the past half-hour. The swoop of its neckline dipped low, exposing the deep shadow of her cleavage. The green of the suit, bright as the grass at Wimbledon, flattered her pale skin, turning it creamier than ever. And with the water’s eddies, the little skirt on the suit was floating up and away from her thighs.

Since her