Eighteen

Dean took another sip from his pint, wondering what he’d said this time. The newly dubbed Mrs. Thompson—of the Mr. and Mrs. Thompson who’d registered at the guest house—had been prickly since their trip to the market earlier.

“Thanks,” Annie grumbled, barely looking at him before turning back to her food.

Maybe she was cranky because of all those vegetables she ate. He was tempted to offer her some of his steak but figured she might not see the humor right now.

All he’d said was that her hair looked cute. She’d done a good job with the cut. The silky, dark strands fell to just past her chin in those loose, sexy waves that were popular right now, framing her face and emphasizing the delicateness of her features. Except for her eyes, which looked enormous.

She had this vulnerable thing going that if anything made her look even hotter, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that. But definitely Bambi 2.0.

He’d been having a hard enough time keeping his eyes in his head since she walked into their shared room after using the hall bathroom—the guest house didn’t have en suites.

He’d never seen her dressed for dinner before, and she looked like a million bucks. Which was all the more impressive since he’d only given her a couple of hundred to buy the clothes she would need for a few days. She’d come back with an impressive stack of garments. And even though like most straight men he didn’t know shit about fashion, he knew enough to know that wasn’t enough money for anything designer. But somehow she’d turned a slinky black sundress, a black cotton wrap sweater, and thin black flip-flops into a fashion model straight off the pages of a glossy magazine.

He, on the other hand, had bought the first white polo and tan cargos he could find, as well as a few pairs of shorts, T-shirts, board shorts, and surprisingly—given that it was Scotland and not Coronado—a Baja-style sweatshirt.

Windsurfing was big on the island, and the big competition that Patsy had assumed he was participating in—the Tiree Wave Classic—was the longest-running windsurfing contest in the world. Not bad for a small Scottish island most people probably hadn’t heard of. But it explained the beach vibe of the place. “The Hawaii of the North” was what they called it. He wasn’t sure he’d go that far, but it had been a lucky pick.

Dean wasn’t a professional by any means, but he was a decent surfer and windsurfer courtesy of the years spent in Coronado and Hawaii. If the need arose, he would be able to fake it.

As for faking the laid-back surfer dude? For that all he had to do was harness his best Donovan impression. Maybe he should have looked for an ugly Hawaiian shirt in that secondhand store.

He watched Annie pick at her food while enjoying his pint of the local ale. As he’d chosen a small guest house that only served breakfast, the innkeeper had suggested the restaurant down by the harbor for dinner. It wasn’t cheap, but Annie deserved a nice meal after what she’d been through. He had a feeling that now that they were out of immediate danger, it was all catching up to her.

“You okay?”

She looked up at him. She had that surprised strange look on her face again before she lowered her eyes and blushed. “I’m fine.”

She’d been doing that all day. Ever since he’d walked out of the public bathroom minus the beard and longer hair.

Dean frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Or maybe not looking was the better question.

She glanced up again. Warily. “Like what?”

“Like I’m some kind of freak from X-Men?”

The blush deepened. She lowered her gaze again before forcing it back to his. She’d never seemed shy before, but that was definitely how she was acting.

“I’m just not used to seeing you without the beard and long hair. You look”—she paused for so long Dean started to feel self-conscious, which was an entirely new feeling for him—“different.”

Different? What the hell did that mean?

Maybe he was getting the cute issue now.

Dean found himself rubbing his chin, which was definitely self-conscious. Christ. What was he, seventeen? Why did he care if she didn’t like it? “It’ll grow back soon enough.”

“It’s not that,” she said quickly—maybe a little too quickly. “I like it.”

Suddenly he understood the blush and shy looks. Ah, shit. She was attracted to him. Given that he was feeling the same way, it probably wasn’t a good idea, but he said it anyway. “I feel the same way about your hair.”

He was glad he’d said it when she gave him a smile that reached all the way up to her eyes. He could get really used to making her smile like that.

As he was on a roll, he thought about mentioning the dress—the low-cut, tight dress that showed off a pretty spectacular chest and got even lower every time she leaned forward to take a bite—but he thought that might give too much away. Yeah, he was also a pig and not above taking cheap thrills where he could find them.

This place was too romantic anyway. A small table tucked in a corner, low light, sea view, intimate conversation . . . It wasn’t a date, but it felt a hell of a lot like one.

The problem wasn’t just that he was hot for her. He was hotter for her than he’d ever been for any woman in his life. So hot that the next few nights sharing a room with her—and not touching her—were going to be fucking torture. The kind of torture that would put last night to shame.

But even one cheap room and food were going to deplete his stash of cash quickly. They couldn’t do a his and hers.

Better not to think about that right now. “Tell me about your dissertation.”

She eyed him warily. “Really? Mr. Anti-Save-the-Whales is interested in my liberal, environmental agenda?”

He was interested in everything about her. Shit. He had to stop thinking things like that. “I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t. And I’m not anti-Shamu or environment.”

She arched a very pretty dark eyebrow. “I notice you didn’t say anything about the liberal-agenda part.”

He smiled, caught.

“I thought so! Well, to pay you back, I’m going to bore you senseless.”

She was wrong. She didn’t bore him at all. It was fun listening to someone who truly loved what they did.

She told him how she’d switched majors after the Gulf Oil spill, and how she wanted to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

Dean remembered some of the pictures of the dead wildlife after the disaster—dead birds and dolphins coated in crude oil. They’d been disturbing, but given some of the things he’d seen as a SEAL, they hadn’t made much of an impact.

When you’d seen men blown apart by an IED or seen heads explode like watermelons from a gunshot, the loss of a few birds didn’t seem that important.

But through her eyes, he realized that wasn’t the way to look at it. Valuing human life more highly didn’t mean that nothing else had value. Senseless loss was senseless loss. And someone who cared deeply about protecting living things big and small from that should be commended, not dismissed.

She’d been willing to put herself on the line by getting on that ship. He might not have been one hundred percent behind the method, but he could admire the action. Maybe they were more alike than he wanted to think.

“I wasn’t just interested in what happened right after the spill,” she said. “That was easy to see. I wanted to prove that even when the oil is dissipated and ‘cleaned up,’ there are lasting effects. I was looking at the levels of different types of PAHs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” she translated, although he knew what they were, “which are commonly found in crude oil in Gulf fish—particularly tilefish, since they’re bottom feeders, where the oil eventually settles—at various distances from shore and morphological changes in heart structure.”

In other words, changes to the actual form or structure of the organism. “Did you find any?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Enough to put in question the current thinking on how far is ‘safe’ for offshore drilling operations.”

“So what’s next?” he asked. “More lab research?”

“I thought so. I’ve been offered a position at a private research lab.”

“But.”

She smiled, realizing he hadn’t missed her hesitation. “I’ve been gone for eight years. My mom wants me to go back to Florida for a while.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. I love lab work, but I miss being out in the field. The lab sometimes feels a little detached.”

She stopped talking when the waiter interrupted them to take their plates, refill her wineglass, and ask if they wanted dessert.

She shook her head, and he ordered another ale, not ready for the evening to end.

When the waiter left, she looked at him apologetically. “I’ve been talking all night. What about you? I don’t even know where you went to school.”

He wasn’t surprised by the assumption. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. It was the first time, however, that he cared about the reaction.

He wasn’t embarrassed. College hadn’t been for him, and God knew, he’d learned more as a SEAL than he ever would have in the classroom. But she had a PhD. In his experience, the more educated the person, the more biased about the value of education—whether warranted or not—and the more likely to equate not educated to not intelligent. More than once after telling a date he hadn’t gone to college, he’d heard, “Wow, but you seem so smart.”

“I went to JC for a few semesters, but it wasn’t for me.”

If she was surprised, she hid it well. Instead she seemed curious, studying him with an intensity that made him want to squirm a little. “College isn’t for everyone. They seem to have a much better grasp of that here,” she said, referring to the UK, where it wasn’t necessarily assumed that after secondary school you went to university (or “uni” as it was called). “With the exorbitant cost of tuition, I think kids should be weighing that decision a lot more. Your parents must have been happy not to have all that debt.”

She’d meant it lightheartedly, and he didn’t want to make her feel bad, but he also wanted her to know the truth. At least as much as he could tell her. “My dad wasn’t around, and my mom didn’t have money.”

Nor would she have given it to him if she had.

She seemed to sense that there was more—a lot more. But didn’t press, probably because she knew he couldn’t tell her. “I’m sorry.”

He dismissed the sentiment with a shake of his head. “Don’t be. I got over it a long time ago.”

“Is that why you went into the navy?”

He nodded. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

He’d spoken without thinking.

“Then why did you leave?”

“I . . .” The frustration of the situation was eating away at him. He couldn’t tell her anything, but he didn’t want to outright lie to her. “I can’t talk about it, all right?”

She seemed to understand, although he could see she wanted to ask more. “You never thought about going back to school to become an officer?”

“Hell no!” The words were out before he could stop them. He might be a Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator—a petty officer—but he was still a ground pounder. “Paperwork and politics aren’t my thing.”

She laughed. “Understatement of the evening. You don’t have a politic bone in your body, which you need to rise up the ranks. You are all about hard truths and saying what’s on your mind.”

He knew what she was talking about. “I’m sorry, Annie. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way. I was pissed.”

She shook her head. “No. You had every right to say what you did. I was naive, and I should have asked more questions. I’m just sorry that I got you messed up in all this.”

He wasn’t. He should be, but he wasn’t. And that scared the shit out of him.

•   •   •

Soap made lousy makeup remover. Annie stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, but it wasn’t the dark circles she was worried about. What was she going to do?

She liked him. She liked him a lot.

Tonight had been nice. Actually it had been better than nice. It had been pretty close to a perfect first date. Which was all the more ironic because it hadn’t been a date at all.

Maybe after what they’d been through, it was understandable that Dan was so easy to talk to and that being with him felt so natural. But that didn’t explain the constant hum and buzz of awareness that made her feel as if there was a magnet drawing them closer and closer together.

The magnet was physical attraction, she told herself. Physical attraction that had gotten a hundred times worse after he walked out of that public toilet earlier.

Someone should have prepared her.

She’d felt as if she’d been hit by the proverbial freight train. Her tough, grizzled longshoreman had turned into a clean-cut, all-American tall drink of gorgeousness. He was every bit as good-looking as she’d feared—maybe more so.

He had a great jawline—strong and masculine but not overly Neanderthal square. And with the beard gone, she could really see his mouth. On anyone less masculine looking it might be sensual, but on him it was just . . . sexy.

Pretty much everything about him was sexy. And every time she looked at him, her heart stopped a little and she remembered exactly how it had felt to have him kissing and touching her.

This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

Annie splashed her face with cold water from the tap, but it didn’t help. She still felt flushed.

She knew better than to blame it on the wine. It was him. Her. The blasted awareness between them.

Realizing she’d dawdled in the no-frills but clean little girls’ room long enough to get ready for bed—bed!—she gathered up her discarded clothes and limited toiletries and padded barefoot back down the hall toward the room.

Their room.

God, she had to stop thinking like that.

It was a small guest house. Four rooms shared two hall bathrooms—a women’s on one end of the long hall and a men’s on the other. Annie wasn’t sure, but she thought they might be the only people staying here tonight. She hadn’t heard any sounds behind the other three doors she passed to get to room number one, which they’d been given.

It was more like being in someone’s house than a hotel. Although the bathroom had been white utilitarian—stand-up shower, toilet, towel bar, hamper, and small pedestal sink—the rest of the house was an explosion of Victorian. She hadn’t seen so many doilies, flowers, and dark wood since her grandmother died. Even in the hall the decoration was dark maroon carpet and mauve-colored rose wallpaper on the walls.

She stood outside the bedroom door. This was ridiculous. She was being silly. It was the twenty-first century. There was no reason to make such a big deal about this. Two adults could sleep in the same room. She didn’t need to get weird about it. They’d slept in the same room last night.

In separate beds.

They would still be in separate beds, she told herself. The large king bed that dominated the room had given her a moment of panic when she saw it. But then she realized it was actually two twins that could be pulled a few inches apart—apparently a typical setup in this part of the world.

There was only one duvet—they were supposed to be married, so they could hardly ask the room to be made up as twins—but it was big enough so that there wouldn’t be any touching. Not that touching was a worry anyway. He’d made it pretty clear last time that he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything.

God, she was being such a girl! Did she have to overthink everything? He probably hadn’t given the sleeping situation more than a passing thought.

Man up, she told herself, and opened the door.

Manning up lasted about as long as it took for him to turn from where he stood at the window and take in her apparel with a glance.

She’d found a three-quarter-sleeve sport-jersey-style nightshirt that went to her knees. It was far more modest than the shorts and tank she’d had on yesterday, but from the way he was looking at her, she felt as if she’d walked in wearing a silk teddy.

Although with the level of heat penetrating from those steely eyes, she probably would have felt naked in one of her grandma’s old flannel nightgowns.

Maybe she hadn’t been the only one overthinking.

But when he clenched his jaw and hardened his gaze—lifting it from her bare legs and feet—she knew it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to act on whatever this was between them.

Suddenly she realized he was still wearing the polo and khakis that he’d worn to dinner. “You didn’t change?” she asked, feeling as if she’d just shown up to a party and was the only one dressed in costume.

“I need to go out for a little while. Go ahead and get some rest,” he said, all Mr. Business again.

In other words, don’t wait up. “Where are you going?”

She was beginning to read the little signs in his expressions, and this one said “curtain is down.” Granite curtain, and good luck lifting it.

“There’s something I have to take care of. It’s nothing for you to worry about, okay?”

What choice did she have? She nodded, feeling unaccountably hurt. She knew that he didn’t have any obligation to tell her anything. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want him to.

If anything it was a harsh reminder that this little escapade didn’t mean anything. They might be temporarily stuck together, but in case she’d been under any illusions—which she might have been—as soon as he could be unstuck, he’d be going solo.

He’d made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t want her along. He’d promised to help her, but she knew that was all she could count on.

She wasn’t a girlfriend. She wasn’t a wife. She wasn’t anything.

One mind-blowing, never-felt-anything-like-that-in-her-life orgasm didn’t mean anything. She certainly didn’t have any kind of claim on him. Where he went was none of her business.

Maybe he was tired of her and needed a break. For all she knew he was going to a pub to drink and find someone he did want to pursue something with. He was a man. A very good-looking man, and he’d had more than one or two looks in his direction tonight as they left the restaurant and bar. If he wanted to pick someone up, she was sure it wouldn’t be difficult.

“All right,” she said in as normal a voice as she could manage. “Good night.”

She put her things down in a pile on the dresser and walked over to the bed. Choosing the side that was the farther from the door, she crawled under the duvet, pulled it over her shoulders, and turned on her side to face the wall.

There was a long pause where she was tempted to peek and see if he was looking at her. If he wanted to say something.

But she didn’t. A moment later, she heard him walk to the door, flip the light, and lock the door.

Then all she could hear was the sound of her own heart beating.

She lay there for a long time. Alone in the dark with nothing but her thoughts to occupy her, she felt the emotions of the past two days finally catching up with her.