When she let her hand fall back into her lap, he covered it with one of his own. He was immediately struck by the disparity of sizes. Where he was broad-palmed and thick-fingered, she was soft and small and delicate.
Her skin was baby soft and cool beneath his touch. But it warmed up quickly, as if her blood raced to the surface to be closer to him. Or maybe his blood was hot enough to warm them both.
She used her free hand to push her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose and stared at him in surprise. Touching her was something he had rarely allowed himself to do before her proposal. And something he’d avoided altogether since.
But he wanted her to know how sincere he was now. He wanted her to understand that he meant every single word with every single fiber of his being.
Of course, it was a catch-22. Because when he was touching her, it was nearly impossible to remember any words.
“And you’re not attaching enough importance to it,” he told her quietly, pulling his hand away and settling it back into his own lap. “Which is why I can’t do what you want me to do despite the fact that my sixteen-year-old self is calling me a frickin’ idjit and punching me in the dick.”
“You know,” she mused, staring out at the waves so that he was gifted with a view of her 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 built for the open sea. Speedboats, on the other hand? Thanks to their shallow hulls and relatively small fuel tanks, they fared better in the calm waters around the islands.
For one of them to be this far out was like finding an Easter egg under your Christmas tree. In a word, strange.
Her first instinct had been to go to Wolf with her concern. But she hadn’t been ready to face him again so soon after their tête-à-tête. She could only be around him for short periods of time before she forgot why they weren’t permanently attached at the mouth. She supposed that was partly due to the fact that, like everyone else on the islands, he ran around in shorts and tank tops that showed off all those lovely muscles and all that lovely tanned skin. But it was also because his eyes were strangely intense, so dark and shiny that every time she looked at him, they threatened to suck her in. Like a black hole.