Chapter 1
Joshua
Allison lay sprawled on one of the deck chairs. The rhythmic lapping of the waves against the side of the yacht had lulled her into sleep. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the smoothness in her face and forehead—all those little frowns and furrows relaxed while she spent time in dreamland.
I also couldn’t tear my eyes away from the rounded perfection of her ass, or the teeny tiny little strings holding together her silver bikini. The day was deceptively cool, the ocean breeze mitigating the heat of the sun. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t getting burned. Maybe I should wake her and offer to give her another layer of sunscreen.
I shook my head, laughing at myself. Any excuse to touch her. I’d just lathered her up less than an hour ago.
Her phone buzzed on the table next to us and she stirred, automatically reaching for it. She checked the screen and glanced over at me. “It’s Jess,” she said. “I should probably take this. We’ve texted, but not actually talked, for weeks.”
“No problem,” I said, taking a swig of my beer.
“Are you even alive?” Jess’s voice was clear through Allison’s phone, and I walked across the teak decking to the other side of the boat, trying not to eavesdrop.
The yacht had been a good decision. I could use it for business weekends, company retreats, and, of course, spending time with Allison. It was large enough that I could bring on a small crew if I wanted, but small enough that I could take it out on my own if we weren’t going far. This trip, we were staying close to land. We’d anchored out a few miles from Ocean City for the Fourth of July weekend, wanting to escape the crowds and the heat.
The biggest draw, however, was having Allison all to myself for an entire weekend.
“You haven’t been home in days,” Jess was saying. Apparently the far side of the deck wasn’t enough distance to keep from hearing the conversation. “The ‘find my phone’ thing says you’re out in the middle of the ocean.”
Allison stretched, turning over. She caught me checking her out and grinned at me. Her sleepy, sun-kissed smile heated me to the core. I shifted in place, adjusting myself. We’d just had each other on that lounge chair not two hours ago, and I was ready to go again.
“Sorry I haven’t checked in,” she said to Jess. “I am out in the ocean, though.”
There was a pause on Jess’s end. “How?”
“Well, when Joshua found out I’d never been out on the water, he bought a boat.” Allison smiled shyly over at me. I held up my beer and mouthed Want one?
She shook her head, mouthing, No thanks.
Jess laughed. “Like, a sailboat?”
“Um, no. Like, a yacht.”
“What?” Jess’s squeal was so loud I almost dropped my beer.
Allison laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, it’s a piece of shit. Not even half the length of my last boyfriend’s, um, yacht. But still, the gesture was sweet. He gets points for that, at least.”
I stalked over to stand in Allison’s sun. She looked up at me with a cock-teasing smile on her face and widened her eyes in fake innocence.
Silence from Jess’s end. “He’s there and you’re teasing him, aren’t you?”
Allison giggled. “Maybe a little.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll let you get back to your romantic ecstasy,” Jess said. “But I want full disclosure when you come home. All the details. From the length of his yacht to what kind of drink you’re sipping right now.”
Allison glanced over at the table next to her lounge chair. “A margarita,” she said.
It looked like she needed a refill, so I headed back under the shade of the overhang in front of the cabin. The wide sliding glass doors were open, allowing the ocean breeze to flow freely through the cabin.
I mixed Allison’s drink, reveling in the cool feeling of the crushed ice seeping through the glass. It was amazing how far Allison and I had come, all the time we’d spent together. She was still getting accustomed to living my kind of life, with luxury weekends and expensive dinners, and now, the yacht. I lived to watch her delight when I unveiled the latest fancy surprise.
When I went back on deck, she was off the phone. I stood over her again, pretending to be intimidating. “Ms. Mahoney,” I said.
“Yes,” she squeaked.
“You wouldn’t tell your friend the length of my…yacht, would you?”
She arched her eyebrows at me. “Well, dear, it’s not like I’ve actually measured.”
I grinned. “Maybe I’ll let you, later on. But right now, you look like you can use some more margarita, and some more sunscreen.”
She took a sip of the drink I’d brought her and turned onto her stomach, purring, “You just want an excuse to rub your hands all over me.”
I leaned down and licked the edge of her earlobe, then took it gently between my teeth. “I don’t need an excuse, darling.”
She gave a quiet gasp. Chuckling, I squirted the lotion onto her back and began rubbing it in. She was so soft, so perfect. I kept rubbing, imagining the romantic evening I had planned for her out here. Fireworks, hors d’oeuvres, some sex, some more sex…
“You’re paying careful attention to the area around my bikini bottom,” Allison observed, interrupting my thoughts.
“Have to be thorough,” I said. I dipped my fingers just under the silvery fabric and gave her a little pinch. “Flip over onto your back.”
She did as I asked and I worked over her arms and legs, her stomach and shoulders. She moaned with pleasure. “I still can’t believe you bought a yacht.”
“We talked about boating once,” I said.
“I know. On our very first date. You said you used to go out a lot when you were a kid.” Her eyes were closed, fluttering in pleasure while I rubbed her up and down.
“I’m surprised you remember all that.”
She swatted at my hand but missed because her eyes were still closed. “It wasn’t that long ago.”
I sat back on my own lounge chair, the tips of my knees almost brushing her side. What a miraculous woman. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I’m not used to this. I’m not used to someone paying attention, listening to what I’m saying.”
She opened her eyes and gave me the softest, most open look I’d seen on her face yet. “I just want to know more about you,” she said.
I gave a little laugh. My private life had hardly ever been private. With my rich parents, my mom always out in society, we were always interesting to reporters. I wasn’t a celebrity, but the media had always paid attention to my family. They backed off a bit after my mother’s death, but often came circling around again when they didn’t have anything better to report on. “There’s plenty to learn. You can read the articles online, and see all kinds of photos of me from when I was a kid until now.”
“None of that’s real,” Allison said, making a chh sound. “I read some of them, before we started dating. They never said anything real. I didn’t even think those girlfriends were real.”
I sobered. “They weren’t.”
Not for the first time, I thought about how easy she was to talk to. She was real, unlike those other women I’d dated. Spending time with her was like having another great friend. A friend who could make me lose all control and come with a fierceness I hadn’t known existed.
“So tell me something real.” She sat up and shifted her chair so it would support her back.
I leaned back into my own chair and took another swig of beer. “Like what?”
She sipped her margarita and watched me. “I know you went boating as a kid. What else did you like?”
“Horses,” I said, without even pausing. “But I don’t ride anymore.”
“Did you stop riding horses after your mom died?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was just too hard.”
“She must have loved the horses very much to try to save them like that.”
Suddenly it was hard to breathe. I didn’t like thinking about it, didn’t like remembering it. How my mom, unable to bear the thought of the horses burning alive, had rushed out to the stables. Our getaway ranch was miles from the nearest town. There’d been a lightning storm. My dad called the fire department as soon as he’d seen the smoke, but he and Mom knew it would be at least forty minutes before they arrived. By then, the horses would be gone. She’d rushed out there while Dad screamed at her to stop. Jamie and I stood at the window, looking out, watching the horses leave the barn, waiting for our mom to follow. She never came out of that barn.
So no, I didn’t want to think of how my mom died. If I ever thought about her, I made sure the memories were the early, fuzzy ones. The ones where she dressed up in the evenings and kissed me and Jamie goodbye before heading out to another society dinner.
“I never told you about how she died,” I said. “I never talk about my mom, and especially how she died, if I can help it. Who told you?”
She looked up at me, as if worried she might’ve taken the conversation too far. But I nodded, just interested in what she had to say. I didn’t mind that she knew. It was easier this way, actually, because it meant I didn’t have to be the one to tell her the details.
“Someone told me at your dad’s party,” she said. “Your dad, actually. He talked to me about her a little.”
“Wow, you got him to talk about her?” Dad talked about my mom even less than I did.
She touched my shoulder, and I immediately felt her comfort and compassion. She was talking to me, and healing me, at the same time. “He actually seemed kind of eager to talk about her. Maybe enough time has passed, that he’s ready to talk.”
“Or maybe you’re just a really great listener.” I pulled her over to my lounge chair. She was still holding her margarita, and a drop sloshed onto her bare stomach. I leaned down to lick it and she giggled. “Mmm,” I said, “sunscreen.”
“If I’m a great listener, it’s because you’re easy to listen to,” she said, settling against my arms.
She squinted against the sunlight that blinked off of the chrome railing. I took of my sunglasses and perched them on her nose. “Thanks,” she murmured. “I bet I look hot in these.”
“You look hot in whatever you’re wearing. And especially in whatever you’re not wearing.”
She laughed. The conversation was reminding me of how we first met and got to know each other. “Remember all those messages we used to exchange on Scintilla?”
She smiled, nuzzling closer to me. “Of course I remember.”
“Now we just text.”
“It’s much easier,” she said. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It always bugged me how I had to click through email windows to get to my Scintilla messages on my phone. It was easy on the computer because I could just have the site open all the time. Um, not that I did this at work. I was hard at work of course, not waiting for your messages.”
I laughed. “Uh huh.”
Her face, pressed in close to my chest, turned a delicious pink color. I loved when she was just slightly uncomfortable, thrown off her game. Those were usually the moments she was the most open and vulnerable, the moments when I felt like I could be her knight in shining armor.
She continued, “But it got me thinking, Scintilla needs an app. I can’t believe it doesn’t have one, actually.”
I shook my head. “Let’s not go there. Leading some of the software development was supposed to be Jamie’s job, and I’ll just get pissed off that he didn’t get it running, and he never even brought up the idea of an app.”
“You’re right,” she frowned. “Let’s not go there. Not tonight.”
After his apology a couple of weeks ago, Allison and I had talked about Jamie. It sounded to me like she was okay with his apology but she hadn’t wanted to discuss it. She seemed to want to forget everything about him. I didn’t blame her.
“Still,” I said, “an app is a really great idea.”