Ride the Tide (Deep Six #3) - Julie Ann Walker Page 0,13
chaotic had cast a spell over her. She was enchanted by it.
And maybe that’s what attracted her to Mason too. His natural dichotomy.
He was huge and powerful. Could break a person’s neck in two with little more than a flick of his wrist. But he also had a bulldog he doted on. Like, doted on. So much so that the man should buy stock in baby wipes, because he went through a container a day cleaning Meat’s copious wrinkles to ensure none of them chafed or developed yeast infections. And he painted. With watercolors. Sitting on a stool with a little easel and everything.
Just like the sea, he was a crazy mishmash of strong and gentle, calm yet capable of meting out great violence should the need arise.
She shuddered as she remembered that night on Garden Key when a group of armed men in the employ of a desperate oilman stormed the island, bent on kidnapping the teenage girls who were camping there and selling them to some lecherous desert sultan in exchange for fixed crude prices. Goose bumps broke out over Alex’s arms when she thought back on how Mason and Bran had come to the rescue like the heroic mother-effin’ Navy SEALs they were.
Knowing the men she worked for were retired spec-ops badasses was one thing. Seeing them employing their badassery had been something else altogether.
In fact, she hoped never to see them doing it again. Because talk about Scary. As. Hell.
She still had the occasional nightmare about Garden Key. Although, the times when the bad dreams came to torture her were growing fewer and farther between. Thanks to Doc.
Snatching the pack of strawberry Pop-Tarts she’d pilfered from the galley, she tore open the wrapper and slid one of the sweet-tasting pastries from within. She offered the remaining treat to Chrissy, who waved her away with a “No thanks” and then added, “How the heck do you stay so skinny, eating the way you do?”
“Hobbit blood,” Alex declared around a mouthful of sugary goodness. “This here”—she waved the Pop-Tart in the air—“is what my people like to call elevenses.”
Chrissy laughed and then laced her hands behind her head. For a while, she was quiet. Then she said, “I get it, you know.”
“Get what?” Alex asked around another bite of Pop-Tart.
“Why you can’t stop staring at Mason. He’s one steely eyed man of the sea. Plus, he’s got thighs like tree trunks and arms like Vin Diesel. I bet you could have sex with him without ever touching the ground.”
Alex snorted. “I’d love to put your theory to the test. But in case it wasn’t obvious, he wants nothing to do with me.” And yet more than once she’d wondered if it might be possible to run through the house naked and—whoopsie!—fall on his penis.
Chrissy rolled onto her side and propped her head in her hand. “I find that hard to believe.”
Alex frowned. “Why? You heard him back at the hotel bar, getting his panties in a twist when he thought I was flirting with him.”
“You were flirting with him.”
Busted. “Fat lot of good it does me,” Alex grumbled.
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Alex felt her brow beetle. “What do you mean?”
“It’s the same way you look at him. Like you’d like to cover each other in chocolate syrup and lick each other clean.”
The imagery was enough to make Alex shiver despite the warm sea air that washed over her arms and teased the hem of her shorts. “How long has it been since you went to the eye doctor?” she asked skeptically.
Chrissy frowned. “Are you saying I’m blind?”
“That or seeing things that aren’t there. But even if what you say is true, which it’s not, it doesn’t matter. Because despite how many times I’ve told Mason that all I want from him is a little of the old in-and-out, he doesn’t believe me. He’s convinced himself that what I’m truly after is a happily ever after. I think the distance between my lips and his ears is just too vast.”
“And because he’s convinced himself you’re after a happily ever after, he’s doing his level best to stay hell and gone from you,” Chrissy surmised, rolling onto her back and stretching out her long, tan legs. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Most of the men I’ve known are serial monogamists at best or commitment phobics at worst.”
Alex nodded and found herself turning things over in her mind. Replaying every word she