The Crow Bar had passed hopping an hour ago. Jace pulled the Dos Equis lever and filled three glasses in a row without spilling a drop, which earned him an extra five from the ladies who’d ordered the beers. He took the bill as well as the not-so-subtle slip of paper with either a phone number or a room number written on it in purple ink. Hard to tell without actually looking at it, and that’s when he realized he didn’t even want to glance at it.

It was automatically nope. Wow.

“Thanks, ladies.” He flashed them a smile, pocketing both the tip and the scrawled message because he wasn’t in the mood to hurt anyone’s feelings.

The numbers burned against his thigh. As soon as the girls turned away, he fingered the white scrap out of his pocket and tossed it. As turning points went, he’d expected a little more fanfare. A feeling like everything had changed—for the better. Instead, all he had was a moment of panic.

He was in way deep with Stella. And she wanted to keep things open. How messed up was that?

He watched Stella serve the long table by the open wall, expertly placing drinks in front of each customer with a friendly smile that never faltered. Once, their gazes met across the room, and she glanced away far too quickly.

She had him as nervous as a cat suspended over a tub of water. Sure, she’d actually spit out the word date without any prompting on his part. But he wouldn’t put it past her to cancel at the last minute. Maybe she’d thought about it overnight and realized she did want marriage and babies, just not with Jace, who was still too young and still sticking numbers in his pocket.

And maybe some—if not all—of his mental flogging was his own conscience wearing a Stella costume. It wasn’t against the law to want something different for the future, but sometimes the past turned it into crime.

When he looked up next, a wall of testosterone nearly bowled him over as half his teammates crowded up against the bar, grinning at him as if they’d just heard the best joke. Fortunately, they had some femininity along for the ride to dress up the place.

Charlie had a possessive arm slung around Audra, a total nonnecessity since there wasn’t a man in the place who would dare glance at a woman who was within a two-foot radius of him when he was in the zone. The former lieutenant commander breathed badass whether he meant to or not.

Miles held hands with his girlfriend, Lale, which was more his understated style. They were together but not in everyone’s face about it, though as a former Miss Turkey on a major pageant circuit, Lale definitely gave Audra a run for her money as one of the most attractive women in the room. After Stella of course. She beat them all by a sexy long shot.

It had been a while since the guys had come by the bar. There’d been a lot of tension flying around Duchess Island lately, and it had gotten in the way of the easy solidarity he’d always had with his brothers-in-arms. Or rather his partners.

Maybe that was at least half the problem. They’d come home from Iraq and suddenly weren’t in the business of keeping each other alive anymore. He’d had a hard time figuring out the new dynamic. The others had adjusted pretty well and didn’t seem to have a lot of patience for the fact that Jace was still working on it.

“Look what the cat coughed up,” he offered casually, content to keep things friendly until he had a reason not to and leaned on one palm as he jerked his head at Dex, who stood behind the couples. “Flying solo tonight, compadre?”

“Yeah.” Dex shrugged broad shoulders, earning more than a few sidelong glances from the various groups of women scattered around the bar. “Emma’s in a crappy mood and kicked me out of the house. Since she was in the middle of blaming me for the watermelon she’s carrying around under her shirt, I figured I could make myself scarce with these clowns for a few hours.”

“Is that what women do when they’re pregnant?” Jace asked noncommittally. He’d learned not to side with either party when it came to marital disputes. “Blame the father for it?”

And out of nowhere, he transposed himself into that situation, arguing good-naturedly with Stella while she grew their child. He could see it so clearly that it was like a memory instead of a vision, and it panged through his stomach with something that felt like longing instead of revulsion.

Where the hell had that come from?

Dex rolled his eyes and snagged a barstool that a dude had just slid out of, positioning it in front of him. He held it steady as Audra and Lale perched on either side of it, seemingly happy to share the lone seat in a crowded bar.

“Apparently only when the hormones hit,” Dex said when the girls were settled. “Normally she’s pretty easygoing.”

He looked so miserable that Jace almost slugged him on the arm to cheer him up or something.

“Jack too good for the Crow Bar now?” Jace asked and cleared his tight throat. All the baby talk was doing a number on him, obviously. Stella should never have brought that up.

“Couldn’t leave Thora behind.” Charlie mimed cracking a whip. “She can’t drink or be around cigarette smoke, then neither can he. He didn’t seem too torn up about it.”

Yeah, because he’d finally married the love of his life after a decade of pretending they were just friends. Jack was making up for lost time with his pregnant wife. Evan and Rachel’s absence was understandable given that he was a recovering alcoholic. To Jace’s knowledge, Evan had never set foot in the Crow Bar and never would.

“What’s your poison?” Jace called while eyeing the line of customers behind his teammates. The guys would stand around and yak for an hour if he let them, and there were lots of credit cards out there without tabs started.

“Margaritas for Audra and Lale,” Charlie said. “And beers for the rest of us. Can’t water that down, right?”

The wink his roommate shot him shouldn’t have put Jace’s back up. But it did, right along with the half-assed comment that he might be cheating customers. “We don’t water down drinks at the Crow Bar, and I’ll thank you not to toss around unfounded allegations about the quality of my service.”

Charlie threw up his hands, fingers spread. “Whoa. Where did that come from?”

His shock was reflected in the faces of the others. Except Miles, who calmly shook his head. “Custer, you need to get laid or something, man. We’re not the enemy.”

“What are you saying?” Jace cocked his head and made a conscious effort to uncurl the fists that had spontaneously formed as his temper absorbed the brunt of Miles’s asinine statements. “That you’ll stop being a jackass if I go find a girl to screw? Not likely.”

Lale’s scowl didn’t make the scene any less tense, and he half thought she might come over the bar after him. Clearly even she assumed Jace should just take whatever his teammates dished out, but that was not happening. They needed to learn a thing or two about how he expected to be treated.

“Jace,” Audra broke in quietly. “They’re just messing around.”

“This is my place,” he told her succinctly, the rein on his temper tightening as that reality drove itself home the moment the thoughts formed and left his mouth. “The one I’ve carved out on my own, where I’m respected as an equal partner. Anyone who dogs on it owes Stella an apology. And me.”

With that, most of the red leached out of Jace’s vision. This was his place. Not in the sense that he owned it, but it was his niche, where he belonged. He was happiest here because it was his alone, where he’d succeeded without anyone watching his back. As a SEAL, he’d welcomed that, needed it. But no one was shooting at him in Freeport. He could fly solo here without fear—and he liked that.

“An apology?” Charlie lifted a sardonic brow because he still didn’t get it, obviously. “What for? It was a joke.”

Audra jumped up from her shared barstool and put a slim hand on her man’s shoulder, giving him a back-off vibe that Jace appreciated. “Babe, you guys do have a habit of not taking him seriously, and he’s calling you on it. Listen to what he’s saying. He deserves that, right?”

Her smile went a long way toward diffusing the situation. Charlie sighed and ruffled his spiky blond hair. “Yeah, okay. Sorry.”

Jace nodded and didn’t hesitate to clap the hand Charlie stuck out. The man could destroy every one of the bones in Jace’s fingers without breaking a sweat, and the point wasn’t lost on him that he’d stood up to his former XO and lived. Charlie had saved his ass more times than Jace could count. But this was where the hero worship stopped and Jace started saving his own ass.

“You know I’d follow you into hell and back again, man,” Jace said with as much humility as he could squeeze into his voice. “Say the word. I’ll be there. I just need you to glance over your shoulder occasionally and see that I’m not the same kid I was back in Coronado, still soaking wet from the drown-proofing exercise you laid on me.”

“I get that. It’s a fair request. You’ve definitely gotten a little more seasoned than I’ve given you credit for.”

New respect dawned in Charlie’s gaze, and it put about an inch on Jace’s spine, serving up validation he hadn’t even realized he’d desperately needed.

If Charlie St. Croix could see—and admit—that Jace had changed, grown, Stella would too. It was time to have a serious talk with her about the future. And if she tried to cancel their date tomorrow, he’d figure out how to make that work too. The only thing he couldn’t work out was how to deal with the fact that he was pretty sure he wanted something more than a temporary fling. If she didn’t, would she even consider a scenario where he still worked for her afterward?

She didn’t cancel.

Jace knocked on the door to Stella’s apartment, shocked that his phone wasn’t vibrating with an endless stream of text messages containing phrases like “something came up” and “rain check.” The fact that it wasn’t had thrown him off-kilter. He had nothing planned, which normally wasn’t a bad thing. Spontaneous fun was more his style anyway, but he’d had so many obstacles to leap with Stella that working through his strategy had become his default.

No problem. After clearing the air last night with Charlie, Jace was riding high. Whatever she threw at him today, he could take it.

The door swung open, and he forgot his own name, how to breathe, and what those things on the ends of his hands were for. Because holy hell—Stella was wearing a bikini top and a sarong knotted over her hips. Not just a bikini top like it was an ordinary swimsuit. It was the color of red velvet cake. Painted onto her body. Made of some kind of fabric that looked wet. It pleaded for his fingers, and he wanted to take a large bite out of her and not stop.

When they’d talked about a date, he’d envisioned hitting a casual restaurant along the beach for a light lunch. Now he couldn’t envision anything except backing her into the apartment and peeling those scraps of fabric from her breasts with his teeth. His fingers flexed, reaching automatically for the sarong knot, desperate to get started untying it so he could see if she had a matching dark red, wet, fabric bikini bottom under it.

“Uh…,” he rasped and cleared his throat. Didn’t help. Still felt like he’d swallowed chalk and gasoline at the same time. “You um… didn’t mention that you were planning to make my brain stop functioning in the first five seconds.”

There was so much of Stella’s skin on display that he couldn’t soak it all in. Surely she didn’t appreciate the fact that he could hardly peel his gaze from the swath of flesh along the lines of her top, but come on. The triangles weren’t miniscule, but neither did they cover everything, and that tiny bit of breast peeking out slayed him. A woman didn’t wear something like that in anticipation of a man politely focusing on her face.

She let a smile bloom, and it had just a trace of wicked laced through it. “I’m not much for spoilers.”

“Lucky for you I’m a fan of surprises.” Or at least he would be as soon as he got some feeling back in his numb tongue. Wicked was not a thing he normally associated with Stella. Maybe she had a little more fire under the hood than he would have assumed, and if that was part of the surprise, then he was the lucky one. “So we’re going to the beach?”

“If that’s okay. I feel like I missed out by not doing that last time it was on offer.”

That must mean he was doing something right, and her admission put a huge grin on his face. “You didn’t miss out on anything. There is no limit to the number of rain checks you get.”

Fortunately, he kept extra clothes of all varieties in the waterproof lockable compartment on the boat because… well, he hadn’t needed a spare set in a while, and that was the extent of how much he wanted to think about that.

After a quick side trip for the necessary date attire, Jace folded the blanket under his arm that Stella had snagged from her apartment and then held her hand as they walked to the public beach about a quarter of a mile from the Crow Bar. She hadn’t donned a cover-up for the trip, a major detail that he fully appreciated, but as signals went, he wasn’t sure what hers was telling him.

Green light? Or eat your heart out? The bikini was the color of a big fat stop sign after all, not one normally associated with “all clear.”

“I’ve been thinking about our conversation,” she said as they crossed the street at the light and clambered over the dunes via a rickety wooden bridge.

“Which one, where I said I was a big bad wolf and I couldn’t wait to eat you?” He waggled his brows. “Funny coincidence, I was thinking about that too.”

Unfortunately, the public beach was not a great spot to make good on that. But if this date went the way he hoped, she’d be inviting him in when he walked her back to her apartment later.

“No, dummy.” She swatted his arm with her fingers, pink staining her cheeks, which he shouldn’t like so much but did because that was the Stella he’d fallen for.

Or rather… the one he wanted naked and under him as quickly as possible. He wasn’t falling for her. Not like that, with all the significance attached that she didn’t want. More like… he was falling for the idea of her naked. Yeah. That was it. Naked and panting his name, like he’d envisioned a million times or more.

Except lately he’d thought more about the feel of her in his arms as they’d stargazed.

“The conversation about your marketing plan,” she said, oblivious to the fact that his lungs had gone so tight it was a wonder they hadn’t squeezed out through his navel. “I insist on paying you for it. The work is brilliant and top-notch. It’s better than what I could have gotten from a professional marketing firm.”

“Well, only if you insist,” he murmured, ridiculously pleased that she’d even brought it up again, let alone piled on unsolicited compliments. “I’m happy to work for sexual favors.”

She laughed like he was kidding—and he mostly was. Kind of.

“I was thinking more like five thousand.”

Dollars? He gulped air and tried to swallow at the same time, which resulted in a coughing fit that earned him a whack on the back from Stella that barely registered. Her fist glanced off, and she rubbed at the side of her hand.

“You should maybe work out some more if you’re going to try that,” he advised when his throat cleared because he had to focus on something other than the thing fluttering through his heart. “It’s too much. I can’t accept that.”

“You can so,” she argued, and a line appeared between her brows. “I’ve worked with marketing firms before. I know what quality looks like and what it costs. Shut up and let me do what I know is the right thing.”

If he took the money, it would go a long way toward funding a move to Freeport. And suddenly that was all he could think about. He could leave Aqueous Adventures and never look back. For weeks that was all he’d dreamed about. Except after last night, he’d turned a corner with the team. He felt good about standing his ground, good about how a man he respected as much as Charlie had looked at him. What would Charlie say about a guy who gave his word, even signed a formal agreement that said Jace was an equal partner in the Duchess Island venture and then bailed?

But then he’d had such a sense of pride when he’d called the Crow Bar his place. No, he didn’t own it in the sense that Stella did, but maybe he wanted to. It was a huge step up from the nebulous bar-manager-type position that he’d originally thought would give him the sense of permanence that he’d sought. Now Stella was all wrapped up in the middle of everything, and suddenly he wasn’t sure how getting involved with her was going to affect his chances of making all his dreams come true.

And taking her money felt like a transaction best suited for someone on his way out the door. You didn’t offer money to someone who was a partner because the workload was already shared by default.

This was way too heavy of a subject for what Jace had envisioned for the afternoon. “Let’s table that for now. This is a date, not a business meeting.”

And the irony of the fact that he’d been the one to tie the two together first, not her, wasn’t lost on him.

The beach wasn’t crowded at first. Usually by this time of day, towels and beach chairs dotted the sand as far as the eye could see. The cruise ships that came into port docked not too far away, and tourists flocked to the public beach since the resort beaches were blocked by boulders, ropes, and other various mechanisms designed to keep nonguests out. But they’d gotten a rare reprieve as the cruise ship slips were all empty.

Jace spread out the blanket and threw himself down on it before the breeze off the water blew it away. Stella was a little more graceful about it, settling cross-legged near the edge of the blanket to apply sunscreen to her pale skin.

“You know that’s what I’m here for, right?” Jace told her as he treated himself to the visual of Stella smoothing lotion into her milky shoulders.

“I thought you were here to provide eye candy,” she said and swept him with a once-over. “So I’m confused why you’re still wearing a shirt.”

“Because I’m slow and stupid,” he returned and whipped off his T-shirt with one hand. If Stella wanted to stare at his chest, he was more than happy to let her do that until her eyeballs fell out. “You can rub sunscreen on me then.”

Her pupils flared as her gaze wandered across the expanse of flesh he’d uncovered. “Looks like you’ve never met sunscreen to me.”

He glanced down at his sun-kissed skin, which was pretty darkly tanned, and had to laugh at her assessment. “It’s slick and cold and makes me all sticky. But if you’re the one putting it on me, I would be a convert in a second.”

“Let’s see,” she murmured and scooted over to kneel at his side. Their gazes locked as she squeezed a little of the lotion into her palm. She breathed on it a little to warm it up. And then she squirted a huge dollop straight from the tube onto the dead center of his chest.

Cold flashed along his skin, and a yelp tore from his mouth. Geez, had she kept that stuff in the freezer? She laughed, looking pleased with herself.

“Playing dirty, are we?” he asked with raised eyebrows as the lotion started dripping down his pec. “Two can play that game.”

He plucked the bottle from her grip and tossed it, then snagged her hand to plant it in the middle of the white mess. Palming her hand in his, he guided her fingers along the contours of his torso, watching her as they smoothed in the lotion together.

Her touch put a funny hitch in his gut. Maybe because they were on a public beach that wasn’t crowded but definitely wasn’t private. They couldn’t strip down and get busy right here, but the slow, sensual glide of their hands along his skin heated him differently than anything he’d ever felt before.

When he guided her lower on his abdomen, she didn’t protest, letting her fingers dance along the ridges of the six-pack that he worked on religiously every morning before breakfast, usually with brutal crunches that hurt by about the fiftieth repetition. The last fifty he did while picturing Stella’s face as she touched him there, and yes, the reality was worth every last second of it.

“I thought you were going to cancel,” he murmured, drinking in the heat and appreciation plastered across her expression. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“I thought about it,” she confessed. “But then I remembered that we’re just having fun. There are no rules. We can hang out, and I can kiss you if I want. If I want to flirt, that’s okay, but it’s okay if I want to take it slow. Right?”

He almost groaned out a no, but that would undo all the beautiful stuff coming from her mouth. She was relaxing into this notion of no expectations so slowly. Obviously, she’d never had that before, and he was going to do what worked for her or die trying. “That’s right. I like sex. I plan to make sure you like it too. But until then, this is exactly what I want to be doing.”

“Exactly?”

“Minus the unexpected chill of sunscreen straight from the bottle,” he said with raised eyebrows. “So don’t get any ideas.”

Her laugh was short-lived. She paused in her perusal of his muscles, nearly making him growl with frustration because she’d been headed south, and that part of him could benefit from a little stimulation. No rules didn’t mean no touching, and he had a large towel that would cover everything nicely.

“Jace, I haven’t had sex in a long time,” she blurted and shut her eyes fast. Like she was embarrassed.

“Hey.” He sat up and didn’t even care that her hand fell away. He cupped the side of her jaw and brushed her cheek until her eyes opened. “That’s okay. Why wouldn’t that be okay?”

“You know, because.” She waved a hand around in the air, which told him absolutely nothing. “You’re you.”

“And I have a tattoo across my forehead that says I only like women who have had a lot of sex recently?” he suggested cautiously. More barriers. And he wasn’t dumb enough to think he could wade through this one successfully without a lot more information because he had no clue what the right thing to say was. So he went with the truth. “It’s not all about sex between us.”

She froze, and the sudden confusion crowding into her expression did not bode well. “It’s not? What’s it about then? I told you I wasn’t relationship material.”

He blinked. The swirl in his gut was not helping clarify things for him either. So what was she saying—that it was all about sex and that was preferable?

“What I meant was—” I like who I am with you. My chest hurts when I first see you, and I miss you when I can’t be in Freeport. But he couldn’t say that. He didn’t want to say that because what the hell did all that even mean? “We work together. We’re saving the bar together. Sex is just a super awesome bonus.”

“And we can still walk away and not let it affect anything,” she prompted, and the edge in her voice warned him that he better agree. Though walking away was not anywhere on his horizon.

“Yeah, of course.” He cleared his tight throat, because what wasn’t great about that? It meant he didn’t have to worry about whether getting involved messed up anything with the bar. “That’s how this works. Sex is just part of the fun, and when it’s not fun anymore, we go back to standing shoulder to shoulder as we sling shots and martinis across the bar. Like always.”

Her smile went a long way toward easing the tension. On her side. “Good answer. I need that, Jace. I can’t… I mean, I’ve never had a—you know. A one-night stand. You’re the expert here.”

Wow. That was a backhanded compliment if he’d ever heard one. Suddenly the image he’d been trying to shed took on a whole new light, and he wasn’t sure he liked the shape of the shadow it cast. But what were his choices here? Embrace his skills or don’t. One got him a naked woman, and one didn’t.

“Who said anything about one night?” He grinned, and it was only half-faked at this point because he didn’t have any room to be morose about a woman who was demanding to be led astray from whatever boring relationships she’d had in the past.

Her eyes widened comically. “You mean we can have more than one?”

“No rules.”

Scouting around for his sunglasses, he stuck them on his face before she clued in that he wasn’t sure what had just happened. Somehow she’d gotten him to agree that they were going to have a lot of sex while they were having a lot of fun, it was going to be meaningless, and then they were going to go back to being coworkers only whether he liked it or not.

The fact that he’d been spinning it that way because that’s what she’d needed wasn’t lost on him. What was the big deal? That described every relationship he’d ever had with a woman. He just didn’t like how it hollowed out his chest to put Stella in the same category.

He and Stella had a connection, like he’d never experienced before or even knew existed probably because he’d never slowed down long enough to notice.

Ironic. The woman who had forced him to reevaluate everything about how he interacted with the opposite gender was the same one demanding that he treat her like one of the crowd. Which was impossible.