The Scandal (Billionaire's Beach Book 4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,32
ranged on one of the couches watching TV. Essie wasn’t in sight, probably talking or texting with her boyfriend in private.
As he watched, Sara returned to the kitchen and then slanted a glance his way. Woops. Caught staring.
But damn, she looked so neat and dainty in her black-and-white checked dress. Was it any wonder he wanted to ravel a seam or loosen a button?
Though their last kiss hadn’t been the wild-tumble type at all.
Chewing on that uncomfortable thought, he stretched out on a lounge chair and turned his gaze westward, watching the orange disk of the sun slip into the silver-blue bath of the ocean. He shouldn’t have expressed doubt to Sara that there wasn’t a way off the train.
There had to be a way off the train.
Though her footsteps were quiet on the deck, he could sense her coming up behind him. Maybe it was the stirring of the air or the almost subliminal note of her perfume floating toward him, the one that caused him to sweat when he first entered his room after she’d been there. One day he’d lingered in the hall while she made his bed with fresh linen, and watching her slender hands smoothing his sheets and plumping his pillows had gotten his motor running as well or better than any kind of naked foreplay.
Now she placed a small bowl of mixed nuts on the narrow table beside him, followed by what looked like a gin-and-tonic. She’d caught him with the latter and a handful of the former the night before, post the last meal of the day.
And she’d remembered.
Another example of the nurturing that seemed to come so naturally to her. He wondered if it had been instilled in her at the fancy butler school or if it was an innate quality that was just part of Sara being Sara.
For a man who’d been raised without any such care, it should come as no great surprise that he found it damnably appealing.
Still…
Glancing over, he saw that she lingered on the deck, her gaze trained on the view.
“I’ve got three reasons we can’t go to bed together,” he heard himself say.
Three? Where the hell had that number come from? his cock protested.
She echoed its thoughts. “Three?”
Without an actual clear plan forward, he manfully carried on. “Yes, three. I’m a business guy.” One who had never conducted such a bloodless conversation with a woman about the pros and cons of fucking, true, but then again he’d never had a butler before, either. “I’m accustomed to boiling down complex issues into simple bullet points.”
Though her calm expression didn’t change, he thought it possible she was laughing at him behind her composed mask.
Shit. He cleared his throat. “It’s the paycheck problem, first and foremost. I sign yours, and there are rules about that kind of thing, right? I don’t want you to feel I coerced you.”
“Coerced?” Her eyebrows drew together. “That sounds like you think I’d…you know, do it for money.”
“No.” Christ. “That’s not what I meant at all.” Running his hand through his hair, he tried to think how it didn’t sound like that. “Sara…”
A ringtone trilled, and she pulled her phone out of her pocket.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, looking down at the screen. “I need to take this.”
Joaquin watched her return to the house and disappear in the direction of her quarters. He was still watching when she reappeared and, instead of walking back onto the deck, started wiping down the already spotless kitchen countertops.
On a sigh, he got to his feet and made his way to her. Lulu and RJ were still engrossed in their show and Essie remained wherever Essie had gone. Joaquin leaned against the island as Sara continued to clean, the swing of her hair obscuring her face.
He stared at the smooth skin at the nape of her neck and told himself he didn’t need to press his mouth there.
“Look,” he said, and cleared his throat again. “I apologize for saying something that came out like an insult to you.”
She turned to him. “It didn’t cast you in a better light. I don’t imagine you usually need an act of quid pro quo to acquire a bed partner.”
Would it be wrong to admit she’d lost him at quid pro quo? Those three syllables put her mouth into such distracting kissing shapes that his mind wandered away into a fantasy about how it would feel pressed to his again, and then on his chest, and shortly thereafter around his…