he asked the question. Kendall looked into his eyes, but couldn’t get past the cocky grin.
“Are you flirting with me, Agent Vincent?”
“Am I?” He cocked his head to look at her. “What do you think?”
She thought she was being stupid, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Maybe you should do your own front.”
She moved to hand the bottle of oil back to him, but he reached up and caught her other hand at the same time. He brought the oil-coated palm up to his chest, just over the bulge of his pectoral muscle. His nipple was a blunt peak against the sensitive flesh along the bottom edge of her fingers.
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Kendall looked down to his hand holding hers to his chest, then back up to his eyes.
“This is a dangerous game,” she said.
“I thrive on danger.”
“Obviously. But I’m here to relax. Not get into more complications.”
He ran his tongue along his lips in a gesture she’d have found annoyingly contrived, had she not been so certain he was unaware he was doing it. “Who says it has to be complicated?”
“It always is, Vincent.”
He nodded once, slowly, then let go of her hand. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am right.” She wiped her greasy hands on her towel and picked up her iPad again.
“Maybe I’m just seeking an alliance with you because of misplaced guilt over what happened on the job.” His words sounded serious, but his tone was light and self-mocking. “Maybe this attraction between us has nothing to do with the way you look in that bathing suit.”
“Between us?” She rolled her eyes. “I never said there was any attraction between us.”
“Then why are you so worried about complications?” He lay on his back on the towel and slid his mirrored sunglasses back over his eyes.
He had her there. Kendall didn’t like being had. With a disgruntled snort, she grabbed up the bottle of oil. Kneeling beside him, she poured a generous handful onto her palm, rubbed both hands together and pressed them to the sun-heated flesh of his chest. With firm, swift strokes she passed her hands over the ridges of his chest and stomach, outlining every muscle. He had almost no hair on his chest at all…just a few strays around the perfect cocoa circles of his nipples and a thin line of black hair from his navel that disappeared into his trunks.
His skin absorbed the oil, every drop. She slid her hands one more time over his chest, pausing just a moment too long over his nipples and the hard ridges of his six-pack abs. She glanced up at his face, which was inscrutable, but his hands had clenched together behind his head.
Ask and you shall receive, she thought wickedly, and poured another palmful of the oil. She covered his thighs, one at a time, passing over the crinkly hairs until they glistened. Then she continued down, over his knees and calves, with a quick coating for the tops of his feet. When she sat back to admire her handiwork, the sun gleamed on every exposed inch of his skin, turning the caramel into an almost amber gold.
She couldn’t force herself to look at the bulge in his black swim trunks. “Is that enough?”
“Yeah.”
She waited for him to say more, but when he didn’t, she went back to her book. Despite the well-written prose and vivid descriptions, she couldn’t manage to get back into the story. Her mind kept calling up images of Vincent and bottles of oil…and no black swim trunks to get in the way.
Chapter 4
Her meeting with Dr. Marge went as well as could be expected. Despite the psychiatrist’s somewhat goofy demeanor, the woman really knew her stuff. She dug right to the heart of Kendall’s problem—her feelings about Dan Whitney.
“Do you think you’d feel better or worse if your relationship with your partner had been a good one?”
Kendall toyed with the pen and paper on her lap and thought of what Vincent had said about her feelings for Dan. “I’m not sure.”
Marge steepled her fingers under her chin. “I’m going to go out on a limb here, Kendall. I think the reason you’re having such a hard time adjusting is because part of you is so relieved you don’t have to work with him anymore. And part of you thinks he got just what he deserved.”
“He was a pompous ass,” Kendall said. “But he didn’t deserve to die.”
“No.” Marge sat back in the comfortable