Northern Rebel Daring in the Dark - By Jennifer Labrecque Page 0,37
swallow, though, when you’re in it. Do things ever take you by surprise?”
He’d been caught off guard once, but he’d learned quickly. “Not anymore. I can’t afford any surprises in my work. So I’ve learned to be thorough and anticipate every possible angle.”
“So, what exactly do you do in the Marines? What’s your job?”
“I’m a demolitions expert. If it’s designed to blow up and hasn’t, I go in and either blow it up or defuse it.”
“No margin for error there.”
“Exactly. That’s why I work hard to ensure no unanticipated events.”
Delphi uttered a sound of delight. “Oh, Lars, look!”
For a moment he stood transfixed by the look of childlike enchantment on her face. It reflected unguarded, unfettered joy. Hard to believe this was the same woman who’d been so closed off on the plane the day before. “The dragonflies—aren’t they incredible?”
He dragged his attention away from her. A dozen dragonflies, give or take a few, skimmed the water and flew in figure eights over the bank. “That’s too cool. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen dragonflies.” They simply hadn’t been part of the world where he’d been.
“It’s almost like magic,” she said, a breathless note in her voice.
He almost laughed, and then something about the place, the woman, the moment, struck him as otherworldly. As if she, this, was some kind of magic. He shook his head slightly to clear the notion. He’d obviously needed more of a recharge than he’d realized if he was susceptible to that kind of thinking, even momentarily.
“Yeah.” Magic didn’t exist, but chemistry was a very real aspect of his world. The chemistry behind explosives. The chemistry between him and Delphi. That was real and tangible. The sexual response arcing between them, drawing them to one another, even now, was real and physical. So, the dragonflies were nice but he wasn’t buying into any magic thinking. “Since this is a magical spot—” the look she shot him said she knew he was indulging her and scoffing a bit but she’d indulge him because she was right “—we can watch the sunset from the shore. Or did you want to go for a swim?” The sun was steadily sinking toward the horizon. It wouldn’t be long before it was dark. “I brought a couple of towels. We can sit on them if you go with option one, or use them to dry off afterwards if you want to check out the water.”
She wore a slightly dreamy expression, her face bathed in the glow of the last vestiges of the day. And he knew the same way he’d known with Liam that he was seeing a glimpse of the woman she’d been before her trust and career had been wrecked. She’d been a stranger before, because he knew. That knowing rattled him.
Delphi slid her backpack from her shoulders. “I think the water would be nice. It’s not every day that you can swim in a thermal lake at sunset in the middle of Alaska with dragonflies dancing around you. Let’s go for it.”
He’d thought they were just flying around doing what a dragonfly did, but okay. She began to undress very matter-of-factly. By the time Lars dropped his backpack and pulled out the towels, Delphi had her shoes and socks off.
He shouldn’t stare, but he couldn’t seem to look away as she unzipped her jeans. Her bright green panties surprised him, but it was her pale shapely legs that knotted his gut. She stepped out of her pants and pulled her T-shirt up and over her head in one fell swoop. Damn!
“Voilà,” she said with a bit of a smirk.
Once again, she’d caught him by surprise. She stood there in a modest one-piece bathing suit. He had been expecting a bra and panties and the little devil knew it.
That blew his “anticipate and not be caught unaware” mantra all to hell.
“I thought you didn’t have a bathing suit with you.” Somehow it was disappointing to think that she’d lied to him, even if it was just a trivial matter of clothing.
“I didn’t.” She flashed a smile his way. “I borrowed one of Skye’s.”
“Ah.” She was talking about her friend, the town doc. Skye was the redhead married to the pilot. “It’s very conservative.”
It was the same cut competitive swimmers wore, no plunging necklines or ruffles. And oddly enough, that made it all the more of a turn-on. It didn’t scream look at me, which made him look all the harder. She was compact and not exactly