delicate profile, “when someone says ‘It isn’t you, it’s me,’ what they really mean is ‘It’s you.’”
“No.” He shook his head. “It really is me. I respect you too much to—”
“Oh, please.” She huffed after turning back to him. “Just admit the truth. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
He blinked in confusion. “Truth about what?”
“About not wanting me that way. About not being attracted to me.”
That was so far beyond the truth—like in an entirely different galaxy—that he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Damn it, Mason! This isn’t funny!” Her scrunched-up nose drew his eyes to the sprinkling of freckles across her high cheekbones. He wanted to lean forward and kiss each and every one of them.
Instead, he sobered and said, “Alex, you gotta know I think you’re wicked smart and killer funny even when you’re not trying to be.”
“You’re the only person I know who can insult me while complimenting me.” Her mouth flattened into a straight line.
He added, “And you have a natural beauty that makes me wanna paint your portrait every time I look atcha.”
“Yeah,” she snorted. “Paint my portrait but not diddle me until I’m dizzy.”
The thought of doing exactly that was enough to make his dick swell inside his swim trunks. “Bullshit, woman. You’re off-the-charts fuckable.”
The way she shook her head made her wild hair fly. She wasn’t buying what he was selling. “If that’s true, why aren’t we knocking boots belowdecks right now?”
He regarded her for a full ten-second count, wondering how much to reveal. Then he figured, Fuck it. “Maybe ’cause once we started, I wouldn’t wanna stop.”
Her unblinking stare glued itself to his face. And for the first time in her life, it appeared Alexandra Merriweather was at a loss for words.
Chapter 5
11:01 a.m.
Talk about bad timing.
Chrissy had walked up behind Mason and Alex at the exact right moment to hear Mason’s last statement. And boy, what a statement it was. Her own heart did a little flutter, and her mouth hung open for so long she feared a seagull might decide to fly in and take up roost.
She resisted shooting a fist in the air, because…I was right! I was right! I was right! She wanted to sing it like Adele. Rap it like Snoop Dogg.
Deciding the speedboat could wait, she spun on her heel, hoping to slink back into the cabin unobserved.
“Chrissy?” Mason’s deep voice stopped her in her tracks. She winced hard enough to hurt her cheekbones.
Lifting her hand, she waved over her shoulder without turning. “Sorry for the interruption. Please go back to your regularly scheduled programming.”
“We’re finished here,” Mason said and that had her hesitantly glancing over her shoulder.
From behind the lenses of her glasses, Alex stared at Mason with eyes the size of monkfishes. And even though her mouth was open and her throat was working, no sound emerged.
Then she shook her head and picked up her book so she could whack Mason’s arm with it. “No, we most certainly are not finished! If you think you can say something like that and then just walk away, you’re out of your chowder-eating mind!”
“Chrissy.” Mason ignored Alex and pointed to the binoculars Chrissy had clutched in her hand. “You sure everything’s okay?” His thick New England accent made the word sure sound more like shah.
She grimaced at Alex, her expression saying I suck! I know!
The look Alex sent in return said she was imagining setting Chrissy’s right eyebrow on fire with nothing more than the power of her mind.
Chrissy mouthed sorry before answering Mason. “It’s probably nothing. But there’s a speedboat following in our wake. I thought it was…you know…weird.”
After her conversation with Wolf, she’d taken herself out to the swim deck at the back of the boat to try to untangle the many feelings she had surrounding his admission that he liked her. Apparently it was a day for confessions… Yay, team! But before she could do that, she’d become distracted by tiny plumes of white in the distance.
A quick glance through the binoculars brought the plumes into sharper focus. The boat creating them was too far away to make out clearly, but she recognized the rooster-tail effect.
A speedboat.
She’d lived in the Florida Keys her whole life. She could name every kind of shell there was, could identify which way the currents were running just by studying the wave action at the surface, and could recognize a good cluster of oysters from a bad one. She also knew that sailboats, ocean liners, and cargo ships were