blue beach shirt. Clad only in white trunks, he was enough to make any woman sit up and stare. His broad chest was powerfully muscled, with a wedge of thick, dark hair curling over the bronzed muscles down to the trunks that covered lean hips and led down to legs like tree trunks. He was the most fascinating man Nikki had ever seen, and she couldn’t help the stare that told him so.
He chuckled at the expression on her face. “They do wear swimming trunks in Georgia?” he teased.
“Huh? Who?” she murmured.
“Men.”
“Uh, oh yes,” she stammered, flushing. She pulled her chair out into the sun and stretched out on it to drink in the warm, bright sunlight.
Cal stretched out beside her on his own chair with a heavy sigh, his dark eyes sliding down the length of her slender body in the clinging white bathing suit.
“That’s the only thing I’ve seen you wear that suits you,” he remarked.
She turned her head on the lounger and met his dark, searching gaze with an impact that sent tremors like miniature earthquakes through her body. Without the civilizing veneer of outer clothing he was as sensuous as a cologne commercial.
“I can hardly go around in a bathing suit all my life.” She laughed, trying to make her voice sound light.
“That’s not what I meant,” he replied. His eyes swept over her critically. “That deep, low neckline gives you more fullness, and the color brings out your tan and those fantastic eyes. Your legs are your main asset—long and smooth and delectable.”
She swallowed nervously. He made her feel positively threatened. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep from folding her arms across her small breasts.
“Don’t look so embarrassed,” he said gently. “You’ve got a good body, small breasts and all, but you could dress it better.”
Her face went rouge red. “Cal!” she burst out.
He threw back his dark head and laughed. “My God, talk about repressed areas... Don’t you date at all?”
“Well, yes, I do, but most of my dates don’t give blow-by-blow accounts of my measurements,” she said, exasperated.
“You make me feel a hundred.” He sighed musingly.
“How old are you?” she probed gently, her eyes wide and curious.
“Does it matter?” he countered, his eyes watchful.
“No. I’m just curious.”
“I’m thirty-eight,” he replied, and for an instant time seemed to hang while he waited with impatient interest for her reaction.
“Well?” he prodded shortly.
“What would you like, a rousing cheer?” she asked with arched brows. “Congratulations on having escaped middle-aged spread? An invitation to do a centerfold...?”
His face relaxed into a muffled smile, and he lay back down, shaking his head.
“Better watch out,” she warned under her breath. “That’s the second time you’ve smiled in five minutes. Your face may break.”
He drew in a deep, relaxed breath and smiled a third time. “You make me feel as if I’ve only started breathing again, Georgia,” he replied quietly. “I’m finding light in my darkest corners.”
“It’s the atmosphere, not me,” she denied, stretching. “You just needed a push out the door.”
“I’d like to know about the flood,” he said after a minute.
She opened her eyes, riveting them to the curling white foam against that crystal clear aquamarine water, to the swimmers knifing through the silky water.
“We’ve had flash floods all my life,” she began slowly. “But the dam always kept them from amounting to much. It was sturdy and had withstood floods for forty years or more, so nobody worried about heavy rains. Until three weeks ago,” she added quietly. “The dam broke in the night, and water shot over it like water over the falls, one man who saw it happen told us later. Tons and tons of muddy water swept along the riverbed, overflowed and washed over a subdivision on its banks. One of the victims was my best friend, Leda Hall. I got there,” she said, her voice going light, “just as the rescue people were dragging her out of a pile of debris that had lodged under a bridge downstream.” Her voice broke, and she waited until it steadied before she spoke again, with images of that horrible morning flashing like specters through her mind. “She was covered with mud, like something barely human. But the worst of it was when one of the neighbors said that they’d heard screams from under that bridge for hours after the impact. I...I couldn’t stop thinking that she might have been hurt, and in pain...but nobody could find her in the dark, you see,