“Yeah.” He dipped his chin. Then he looked up to give her a rueful smile. “So when you asked if one bad deed could obliterate a lifetime of good, I guess my answer is...I sure as shit hope not. I plan to work really hard to make sure the scales are tipped in my favor by the time I shuffle off my mortal coil.”
“Ugh.” She frowned at him playfully. “Just when I think I can’t like you any more than I already do, you go and say stuff like that.”
As difficult as it’d been for him to admit to the thing he was most ashamed of, that’s how easy it was for her to make him feel better about it. One sweet word out of her mouth, combined with the glow of affection in her eyes, and he felt a small sense of absolution.
“Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “You like me. But you don’t like me like that.”
She stared at him for a good five second count. Then, “Who told you that?”
His heart screeched to a stop so hard, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see skid marks across his chest. “You did that day we flew through the storm. You said all you felt for me was friendship, and for me to assume anything else made me a, quote, supercilious ass.”
“Well, what was I supposed to say?” Exasperation raised her voice an octave. “I wasn’t going to sit there with a dejected expression on my face while you told me you didn’t want me.”
“That’s not what I said!” He realized he’d raised his voice when it echoed out over the beach. Modulating his tone, he added, “Nothing could be further from the truth. I do want you. I have since the first moment you set foot on Wayfarer Island.”
“Well that’s the way I took what you said.” She waved a hand through the air. “And so yes, I called you a supercilious ass and told you all I wanted was friendship. Can you blame me for trying to save just a little bit of my pride?”
“But that’s not true?” Something was wrong with his lungs. They’d stopped working. “You do want me?”
“Duh.” She rolled her eyes as if she’d never heard a more idiotic question.
At first, her answer didn’t sink in. Then it did, and...Boom! Boom! BOOM! It was like the field of flak had gone ape-shit. His heart raced but no blood got to his head. His lungs worked like bellows but no air filled his chest. Adrenaline fired through his system, lighting up every nerve, every synapse until...
A sudden sense of calm settled over him. A sense of...inevitability.
Mia Ennis wants me. She wants me.
All his reservations and reasons for holding himself back from her were... Well, they’d gone the way of the dodo bird since she wasn’t looking for a relationship. Since all she was after was something quick and dirty and fun, and he knew just the man for that.
“You realize you’re too good for me, right?” He turned his head and watched her through narrowed eyes.
“Pah-lease.” She snorted. “If anyone is too good for anyone, you are too good for me.”
“How do you figure? You’re educated. You’re classy. You come from money and—”
“Let me stop you right there.” She raised her hand. “Coming from money doesn’t make a person good or bad. As for being classy, what does that even mean? That I like expensive skincare products? Have you seen my complexion?” She pointed to her face. “I’ll be as wrinkled as a prune by the time I’m forty if I don’t take care of myself. And having an education doesn’t make a person smart. Some of the dumbest people I know have degrees. On the other hand, one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, you, didn’t even graduate high school and had to sit for his GED.”
“You...” Everything inside him got really quiet, and really, really still. “You think I’m smart?”
He’d never had a woman call him smart before.
Sexy, handsome, hung... Those were the things women said about him.
“Are you kidding?” She laughed. “Spiro...” Once again, his name on her lips had tiny, effervescent bubbles of pleasure sparkling through his veins. “You’re a Navy SEAL, a pilot, a treasure-hunter, the founder of a soon-to-be charity. You can fix anything with moving parts. There isn’t a piece of software out there that you can’t troubleshoot. And your guacamole is five times better than Bran’s and he’s the chef. You might be the most accomplished man I’ve ever met. There isn’t a single subject you can’t talk on. I mean, you might not be an expert on everything, but you know something about most things. And if that’s not smart, I don’t know what is.”
When he continued to stare at her in disbelief, she cocked her head. “You really don’t see it, do you? You’re still stuck in the past, stuck thinking you’re that gangbanger from West L.A. But you left that guy behind a long time ago. Now you’re...everything. Everything a man should be, brilliant and strong, honest and loyal, brave and thoughtful. Those are the reasons I want you. Well, and because I look at you and feel like smiling for no apparent reason, or maybe you’re the only reason I need.”
Then she did it again.
She gifted him with one of her radiant smiles.
And he believed her. Or, at the very least, he believed that she believed what she’d said because she didn’t possess the acting chops to fake that level of sincerity.
She wanted him, but not for his face or his body. She wanted him for him, for the person he’d been working so hard to become since leaving Los Angeles.
The last little bit of steel encasing his heart melted away. And in its place was a throbbing, red-hot ball of lust mixed with tenderness and passion and an emotion he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Mia Ennis wants me. She wants me.
This time, when those two sentences rang through his head, they held a whole new level of meaning.
“What about Doc?” The words burst out of him like they’d been shot from a cannon. She frowned. “What about him?”
“I thought maybe you two—”
“Seriously?” she interrupted. “You thought me and Doc?” When he nodded, she snorted and shook her head. “No way. I mean, I like Doc. I think he’s a good guy when he isn’t all butthurt about lawyers. But we’re friends. Just friends.”
“That’s what you said about us.” He couldn’t help reminding her.
“Well, with him, I mean it,” she declared staunchly.
And there it was, the last reason why he couldn’t have her had been swept away.