Wicked Sexy

Cal knew everyone and everything on the island. His loud, crazy family, complete with numerous aunts and uncles, a mother and father and four sisters, still lived just up the road from Deep Dive, and Daeg had wondered if the appeal of diving for Cal was the silence. Not that Cal didn’t love his family—there was no getting around the fact he was fiercely protective of them—but getting a word in edgewise was a challenge, particularly in the big, rambling house with what seemed like a hundred rooms jammed full of people.

The Brennans had all but adopted him when he and Cal had met on the mainland at swim meets. He’d been an inner-city kid swimming in community pools. No dad in the picture and his mom working two jobs to make ends meet. When a car accident killed his mother, the Brennans took him in. No questions asked. Daeg appreciated that. He really did. They were the closest thing to a family that he had, but he didn’t want to field questions about his leg and his future, and they’d ask. Cal’s family always asked. Then they advised, argued and discussed. At length. Daeg needed some space.

“I see you’re camping out here in the back room,” he pointed out, and Tag grinned, acknowledging the hit. Tag might not have visited the island before this summer, but even he had guessed the dangers of the Brennans’ good intentions.

“It’s as well furnished as our San Diego place was,” he pointed out. The three of them had shared an apartment near the San Diego base, but the place had been little more than somewhere to crash between missions and none of them had bothered with decorating. The only furniture was a couple of futons and the racks where they stored their gear bags. They’d lived ready to roll out at a moment’s notice, and that had always worked well for Daeg.

Cal showed up and jumped into the conversation. “Congratulations. You’re now a happy resident of Sweet Moon.”

For the second time that day, Daeg took a trip down memory lane. While he’d never met Dani Andrews’s grandparents, he’d seen the couple a time or two. He’d also seen the place. From a distance. Yeah, he’d done his fair share of drooling from afar.

“That the only spot you could hook me up with?”

Tag smiled knowingly. The man had his suspicions about the blonde on the beach and Daeg’s current dress-code issues. “Problem with the digs already?”

“Be nice to our boy, Cal. Doesn’t Sweet Moon have a reputation for serving up happily ever afters? Maybe he’s not in the market,” Tag joked.

That was true. Daeg had more than enough on his plate, thank you very much. Hell, he’d had his hands full of trouble earlier today, and that was only part of the problem. Memories teased him. He instantly recalled Dani’s soft skin and the feel of her shoulders beneath his fingers. He was enjoying her right up until the minute she’d run out on him.

“Absolutely not in the market.” He swiped the keys to his Jeep from his desk. He’d leave the Harley in town for now; bringing both vehicles over on the ferry might have been overkill. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll go check in.”

His knee ached and he evened out his gait as much as he could as he headed for the door. He was off-kilter, the threatening rain putting a hitch in his stride.

“Time to catch up with the blonde on the beach?” Cal’s voice was all tease and no sympathy. They were back to normal.

Making a face at his partners, he left the command center.

He popped the roof off the Jeep and drove, enjoying the wind tearing past his face. The storm moving in had a smell all its own, the metallic warmth of the spray and the sharper bite of sea salt. He wanted to be out there, riding the waves and surviving that rough swim. The ocean would make him fight for every stroke. Damn, he missed that.

When Sweet Moon finally popped into view twenty minutes later, he almost didn’t recognize the motel. Time hadn’t been overly kind. The tiny front lodge was weather-beaten, the paint worn down to a seashell-pink color. Eight cabins were situated cheerfully around the main office, although a small army of stone cupids and amorous lawn ornaments arranged in precise rows had survived time’s test just fine. He had a sneaking suspicion that, if he counted, the cupids had actually been fruitful and multiplied.

The car sitting next to the building announced someone was in, so he parked the Jeep and headed for the office.

Home sweet home.

* * *

THE CORNY BELL Dani’s grandfather had strung up over the door jangled as the same person who’d torn up the drive too fast strong-armed his way inside. The door always jammed in damp weather, which Sweet Moon’s newest guest discovered as he forced it open with a muttered curse. She looked up with a professional smile and, well, there was Mr. Spec Ops and her own personal blast from the past. Daeg Ross. She hadn’t seen him in ten years, and now she’d seen him twice in two hours. What were the odds?

Her libido started singing hallelujah while her brain backpedaled furiously. He was not supposed to be here. She’d kissed him and left him on the beach. And that had been the end of that particular adventure. He did not get to come where she was staying.

And yet he was now strolling toward Sweet Moon’s front desk as if he owned the place. That lazy grin of his told her he was really glad to see her.

No way.

Kissing Daeg Ross on the beach had been an impulse, a dumb one. Letting him get any closer for a longer period of time would be risking disaster.

Why Sweet Moon? Why, of all the hotels and motels on this tourist-crazy island, had he picked hers?

She’d spent summers on Discovery Island with her grandparents, followed by her senior year of high school, the year she’d taken that cruel but delicious beach walk with Daeg. Her father had been developing a resort property in Jamaica and decided that a construction site was no place for a teenage girl. That was her father, though. Good-looking and charming, he was fun to be around, but he loved a good gamble—real estate or the stock market, he’d always been searching for the next big thing and was always on the move. Her summer months on Discovery were an oasis of peace and stability, a handful of weeks when she wasn’t speculating what her father would do next or where he’d take them. This was her refuge. The one place she could count on to remain the same.

“No vacancies,” she snapped before he said a word.

Instead of leaving, he rested his forearms on the counter and looked over at her computer monitor. The antiquated booking system at Sweet Moon’s had been the first thing Dani had tackled. In the week she’d been on the island so far, she’d researched and installed a new software package. She’d also worked through her grandparents’ highly personal style of bookkeeping and created an organizational system that would not only move Sweet Moon’s into a more current century but be something her grandparents could run. Keeping busy was good. Productive, even. It also kept her from thinking—too much—about her AWOL honeymoon. It also meant that her computer screen depicted, in a highly visual and easily understood graphic, just how many vacancies Sweet Moon currently had.

“Not a problem,” he told her. “I already have a reservation.”

“Go elsewhere.” She carefully pressed the keys to activate her screensaver.

“Paid in full,” he added cheerfully.

Daeg was another Mr. Wrong, she was sure of it. He was as eager to roam as her father, although Mr. Wrong had never seemed so sexy. Or so tempting. Still, since she’d already been burned once, she wasn’t looking for a ring from Daeg Ross, but she could have a few nights—or weeks—of really hot sex.

Maybe celibacy wasn’t the answer.

Maybe it was like if she gorged herself on sweet things, her brain—and her stomach—would get the message. Too much sugar made you sick. Although was it possible to even have too much sex?

Daeg’s presence took up the entire room. Those broad shoulders beneath the faded cotton T-shirt and powerful forearms did a number on her senses. He was tanned from spending time outdoors—in the water—and she wanted to explore him inch by inch and see just how far that sun-kissed goodness went.

A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You’re stuck with me, Dani. Face it.”

Being stuck with Daeg Ross was a fantasy come true, she had to admit. He was 100 percent sexual satisfaction and she should refund his money. Instead, she was calculating the odds of sharing some mind-blowing time with him.

Those were some heated odds.

“Sweet Moon runs the risk of being stuck with you,” she corrected, turning back to her computer to divert her wild imagination back to safer ground. “Very temporarily.”

* * *

DANI ANDREWS DIDN’T walk away from him this time.

She was direct. No games. Daeg liked that. He’d know exactly where he stood with her...on his way out of here, if she had her choice.

He also counted one, two...three laptops in addition to the outdated desktop model, bookended by a stack of computer manuals half as tall as Dani was. Precisely organized cans of mechanical pencils and stacks of Post-it notes marched down the right side of her workspace. She’d transformed Sweet Moon’s front desk into her own command center. Tag would love it. He’d kissed a computer nerd.

A computer nerd who believed she could get rid of him.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes.” She went right back to working on her computer as if their conversation was done. “You are.” Her index finger hit the return key with a particularly vicious downstroke. “There are multiple other places on Discovery, all with vacancies. Pick one and I’ll transfer your reservation.”

She pushed and he’d pull.

“No.” He leaned in closer. “I have a reservation already. Right here.”

“Canceled.” She pointed toward the door. “Your exit awaits.”

He snorted. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Funny,” she said sweetly. “It’s never been difficult before.”

He wanted to kiss her again. To hold her in his arms and tuck her protectively in place. He wouldn’t give in to that urge, but it was hard. He liked her fiery, liked the snap in her eyes and the outrage pinking her cheeks. She noticed him when he made her mad and he could do something with that.

“Are you referring to earlier today—or to our last date, ten years ago?”

She didn’t answer his question. Instead, she just hit him with a fact. “That wasn’t a date.”

“Near enough. You, me, a romantic stroll on the beach. Our first kiss.”

That night was a lost opportunity. If he could have, he’d shake himself for letting her get away, even if she’d been so very young and the possibilities had scared him. He was older now. Fear had no place in his life. And he definitely wasn’t letting her get away again.

“I can stand here all afternoon. And let me repeat, you are not getting rid of me that easily.”

* * *

DAEG WAS LIKE a tidal wave that kept on coming. And he was right. He had a reservation, and Sweet Moon couldn’t afford to pass on a paying customer. Somehow she’d survive his—she checked the computer again—six-week stay. She grabbed a key off the hook on the wall and stood up.

“Cal booked the bungalow,” he offered, backing away from the counter so she could step around it without crashing into him. Now that he’d won this battle, his words sounded like some sort of consolation prize. Too bad she wasn’t feeling conciliatory.

“I’ll do my best to get over it,” she said drily. She pushed open the door, stepping outside, and he followed. Too close. Too large. Heat radiated off that powerful body. She needed to establish who was in charge here. This was her motel. Her space. Not his.

His boots crunched over the gravel as he walked beside her, and she practiced the fine art of denial by busying herself with the room key. Number eight. Good. Six cabins between herself and temptation.

Stepping up onto the porch, she slid the key into the lock with a practiced flick of her wrist. “Here you go. Number eight. Well, good luck with everything. It was nice seeing you again.”

Duty done, she tried to back away, but she came into contact with a hard male chest. That kernel of anger she’d been nursing since he’d shown up at Sweet Moon’s office grew. He didn’t get to come here and do as he pleased.

He’d had his chance ten years ago and he hadn’t taken it.

“Show me the room.” That husky rumble in her ear made her think about kissing him again—and more. He wasn’t touching her, not really, but he could. The question was, did she want him to?

Temptation beckoned.

She stepped into the room and glanced around. “Meet your cabin,” she announced. “One bed, one bathroom. Housekeeping comes in daily. If you need anything, you’re welcome to try the front desk.”

The bed dominated the room. Someone—likely her grandmother—had draped the huge four-poster with an obscene quantity of white gauze and piled the headboard with fussy pillows. All that fragility made Daeg look impossibly large and masculine. As he examined the space, the playful tease disappeared. “You don’t have something simpler?”

“Nope,” she said, enjoying the edge of discomfort in his voice. “And the offer still stands. I’ll find you another hotel. One more to your taste.”

“This will do.” He tossed his duffel onto the bed. The bag was military issue, an olive-green canvas as rough and tough and frayed as he was.

She forced her attention away from the bed, unable to hide her surprise. “You’re really going to stay? Here?”

“Sure.” There was no missing the gleam in his eye as he turned to face her. “You want to tell me why you kissed me today and ran?” His eyes held a whole lot of curiosity and desire, and remembering how he’d kissed her had her dreaming of a repeat performance. Time certainly hadn’t made Daeg Ross any less of a man’s man. That was plenty of spec ops soldier.

Daeg watched her, waiting for his answer.

She was here for the summer. He was here for the summer. Her hormones were saying that there was no reason for them not to be together—at least for the next few weeks. Rebound sex, her mind whispered. Think about it.

“Turn about is fair play?” she suggested.

He frowned as he connected the dots. “Kissing me was about your prom night?”

“No,” she corrected him. “It was about your kissing me on the beach ten years ago and then taking off.”

He was completely focused on her, and she’d bet he knew exactly how many feet separated them—and how long it would take him to close the distance. “I didn’t realize one kiss was an invitation to stay.”

“You didn’t want to stay,” she pointed out. In fact, he’d left the island the very next day. Their kiss had been amazing and the only good part of her evening, but she wasn’t telling him that now.

“You were a girl.” He made a move toward her and she threw up a hand.

“Stop right there,” she ordered and he paused. He should have looked silly, surrounded by the cabin’s kitschy romantic trappings. He wasn’t the sort of man a woman associated with tulle, and yet he’d never looked more male. Yep. He was getting to her again.

And he wasn’t done talking yet.

“Where did you think that kiss could go? And I had no business kissing you in the first place.”

“But you did.”

He ran a hand over his head. “Yeah. I did.”

“And then you hightailed it off the island. Never called. Never wrote.” She tossed him the keys and he caught them reflexively, his fingers closing over the metal. “I got the message. You need anything else, you call the front desk.”

“I had commitments,” he said, ignoring her invitation to wrap things up. “I’d enlisted. My recruiter would have been all over me and rightfully so if I’d missed my dates.”

“So you had no business kissing me?”

“Agreed,” he snapped.

“Fine. But it’s not happening again.” She turned on her heel, laying a course for the door. She was done here.

4

THE SANDY TRAIL leading to the beach was steep, and Daeg heard Dani coming before he saw her. Long, tanned legs in a pair of denim shorts followed a shower of gravel and a feminine voice. The summer heat was still lingering despite the forecast calling for rain. Swimming weather—as Dani with the towel slung over her shoulder clearly agreed.

One lap to go, he drove himself forward through the water. When he reached the far edge of the bay, right before the open water started, he dived for as long as he could. The week since he’d checked into Sweet Moon was one more week of training and strengthening his knee, though it still bothered him far more than he liked.

Dani was waiting for him when he pulled himself out of the water and dropped onto the sand beside her. Crossing his arms over his chest, he began a series of fast sit-ups. Flexing his stomach muscles until his elbows hit his knees, he sank into the familiar burn of the descent as he let gravity do the work, dropping his shoulder blades to the sand. Then up again. He had to do more than fifty-two in two minutes, yet, in fact, a hundred was barely average. He’d do better.

She was quiet as he completed his two minutes, and then she asked, “You always work this hard?”

He liked how her eyes lingered on his stomach as she spoke. He stopped and rolled onto his side.

“I need to fix this.” He gestured toward his leg. There was no hiding the scar, anyhow. Not that he wanted to. No, what he wanted to do was use the leg like he once had.

“In one week?”

One summer. One chance to make the team again. “My guys are out there, seeing action, so that’s where I go.”

“So that’s a definite on re-upping?”

Triceps bouncing, he pushed up fast and hard on his arms for his first push-up. One. He lowered himself, a fist’s distance from the sand then surged upward. Two. “That’s the plan,” he said finally, when he’d done the set. “Although Tag and Cal aren’t.”

Deep Dive was Cal’s dream, not his, but there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for his friend. Coming back to help him get his business off the ground was a given. Cal had had his back since their first dive together.

“They opened that new shop, Deep Dive.”

Deep Dive was far more than a dive shop. “They specialize in advance training for divers and do rescue and salvage jobs. They also offer the usual set of bread-and-butter dives to local hotspots.”

“Where do you fit in?”

That was the question. His teammates had decided to call Discovery Island home. He’d made a cash contribution and the temporary commitment to leading a training course or two when he was on leave, but he wasn’t ready to settle down. Not yet.

“I’m lending a hand,” he replied finally. “I’ll take experienced groups out on open-water dives and push the hell out of them to make sure they know what they’re doing. And I’ll wrap the current course and head back to San Diego and my unit.”

He’d ship out and life would resume its routine.

Switching onto his back, he looked up at her. Carpe diem.

“Come with me. We’ll go find more of that ice cream. Take another walk.”

“You eat ice cream on a regular basis?” Her eyes examined his body again and parts of him liked her attention just fine.

“I like sweet things.” His imagination worked overtime coming up with all the ways she’d be sweet. What would she let him taste and how far could he go? “I always have.”

She stood up, snatching her towel from the sand. She must have decided against the swim. Or picked up on the sexual tension humming through his body because, yeah, she was bolting on him. “No ice cream.”

“Why not?”

She smiled at him and, yes, that was one mean smile. He liked that spunk in her. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “Our dating wouldn’t go anywhere.”

“Ice cream,” he stated plainly. “I’m asking for one cone—not the next fifty years of your life.”

Dani looked skeptical. He was fairly certain she was running scenarios in her head, counting the possible outcomes and risks. He knew that sharing a second cone would be more than a quick, sweet treat. The question was, did she?

“Going for ice cream counts as a date. Are we dating? Because I was under the distinct impression that we’d already covered that—and ruled it out.”

“It would be fun,” he countered. “Take a chance. Jump on in.”

“Do you like doing it?” Her teeth worried the full lower lip. “Jumping?”

“Sometimes jumping is the only way to get the job done.” It had never occurred to him to not jump.

“That’s a hard way to live.”

Nothing worth doing came easy, and he always loved a challenge. He had a feeling the woman sharing the beach with him understood that—she just found her challenges somewhere else.

She continued. “So what happens if—when—you jump in and you can’t pull the other person out?”

The memory flickered to life. He’d already had his backside hoisted into the chopper and the mission had been a routine rescue. He and Lars had put the survivor in the basket and sent him up. Daeg had gone next because of the hit he’d taken in the water, making him incapable of a climb he’d done hundreds of times before.

And then the ocean had sucked Lars under as their spotter barked curses and directions to Tag. Too late. Lars had disappeared beneath the tsunami’s deadly debris-filled water. Cal had signaled he was going back in and dived. Dived and dived again, until Cal hadn’t had the air in his tank to keep going. The chopper, too, had been dangerously low on fuel.

They’d all given up and flown away. Knowing Daeg had left a man behind, who wouldn’t be coming home, crushed him.

Hell. No.

He forced his eyes open. Having Dani in his sights was better than rehashing the past, and he wasn’t going there again. Not today. Instead, he stood up, holding out a hand to tug her up. She hesitated, then accepted it, wrapping her fingers around his.

He glanced down to where they were temporarily joined and damn if he didn’t find that small bit of contact sexier than any of the dates he’d had in recent years. She was trusting him not to let go.

“Rescues don’t always succeed,” he admitted when the silence stretched out between them for too long. “When I got this souvenir for my leg, that was one of those times everything went wrong. I jumped with a partner and we got the survivor in the basket.”

Her fingers tightened on his, but she didn’t move.

“No swimmer gets in the basket before the survivor.” Flashbacks aside, he’d replayed that afternoon a hundred times in his head. “That was the one thing that went right. We were in the Indian Ocean, got there fourteen hours after a tsunami hit. The water was a mess, still churning with destroyed boats and other crafts, but we’d set the basket down where she seemed clear.”

“But the water wasn’t clear?”

“Not even close.” The current had picked up, that first bump against his legs a nauseating wake-up call. He hadn’t known if he’d struck something, or a living and breathing something that would surface and take a chunk out of him. “The circumstances made it impossible to see. A piece of some kind of strong metal fence tore through my leg and there I was, bleeding all over the place. My partner signaled for the basket, put me in and I got out alive. Less than a minute later, he went under.”

The tsunami had wrecked a number of coastlines. All that mud and churn. Torn-up wood, dead animals and cars. Stuff that had once been a part of people’s lives, but was loose in a deadly flood. Shock had had him good by the time he’d reached the bird’s floor.

He hadn’t realized until much later that the pilot had been circling and circling, searching for the missing swimmer until there’d been no more fuel and therefore no more time.

“Surgery followed by eight weeks of rehab back in Japan, then shipped stateside. I’ll be fine by the end of summer. Strong again.”

“And then you go back.”

“Yeah. I think so.” No, he was certain. The rest of his team was waiting for him and, as soon as he could pull his own weight, he’d be there. Right now, though, he was a liability. He hated that truth, but he couldn’t shake it. He wouldn’t be helpful to anyone in the field, not with his leg the way it was. And never mind his head.