Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (8 page)

She opened her eyes. “What Prashant says.”

“Oh,” Slade said in a puzzled tone. He glanced from her to Prashant. “He likes you, I think.”

“Prashant? That’s doubtful.”

“He certainly came running when he saw us talking. Defending his territory, maybe?”

The observation was too ridiculous to be worthy of reply, and Karma was saved by Prashant’s settling down on his own mat at the front of the group and welcoming them all to the lesson.

Prashant began the class by chanting an Om. “Allow yourself to go with the flow, and then you will find what you’ve been looking for,” he said afterward with reverence.

“I’ll be damned if I think that’s going to get me a wife, which is what I’m looking for lately,” Slade muttered under his breath. Karma threw him a reproachful look.

“Well, don’t I have you to find me what I’m looking for?” he whispered.

“Go with the flow anyway,” she whispered back.

Prashant coached them through a few simple warm-ups. With Slade beside her, Karma, for the first time ever in yoga class, found it difficult to concentrate. As they progressed through various poses, he doffed his shirt, revealing
a torso that was leaner, harder, and more muscular than she could have imagined. And she had been imagining it plenty, starting from the first moment she saw him.

It was an intense class, and the members of the group, most of whom were intermediate students, flowed from pose to pose with little recovery time in between. Sun Salutation, Warrior, Downward-Facing Dog…and Slade, who seemed to be struggling valiantly to keep up, looked slightly more musclebound with each pose. Musclebound was not good with yoga. Flexible was good. Agile was good. Slade seemed to be neither.

“Are you doing all right back there, Slade?” Prashant asked once, and Slade replied with what looked like a grin superimposed on a grimace. “Fine,” he gritted through clenched teeth, but the next pose, a backbend, drew an incredulous intake of breath from him as he lay on his back and attempted to lift himself up.

“Karma, you are the best at backbends. Will you please demonstrate?” suggested Prashant.

“Well, I—” she began, but Mandi said, “Yes, Karma, do!” and was rapidly echoed by Jennifer.

All eyes were upon Karma, but the only ones that mattered in that moment were Slade’s. He lay on his mat looking up at her with a challenging grin, and all she could think at the moment is that if they were in bed, this is what he would look like—well-muscled and fit, his grin fading into passion as he reached for her and pulled her down across his body, the better to kiss you, my dear.

“Backbends are important,” intoned Prashant, breaking into her reverie. “They help our bodies release emotion in a positive way.”

“Wouldn’t backbends be good for me?” Slade urged. “Since my chakra is blocked, I mean?”

He might have something there, but the thing that finally decided Karma was that if she were in a backbend pose, she wouldn’t have to look down at him and thus wouldn’t
be tempted to reach over and unbutton his jeans, a behavior that surely would be frowned upon.

Karma forced herself to lie down on her mat; she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled as she firmly planted her hands behind her ears and her feet flat on the floor. While inhaling the next breath, she hoisted herself up into a backbend, keeping her eyes closed and wishing she’d never invited Slade to class. Slowly she walked her feet in a bit closer and arched her back even more, thrusting her breasts up. She knew that the quickly inhaled breath next to her came from Slade, and too late she realized that she was exhibiting more of the very thing that he probably wanted to see if Jennifer were correct in her thinking. Karma was wearing a thin exercise bra along with tight shiny leggings. Neither did anything to disguise her womanly attributes. This could be good. This could be bad. But all she could think about at the moment was that she wanted to get out of this pose.

As she began lowering herself to her mat, she was horrified to hear the separation of stitches somewhere along her front. Then she felt a quick rush of air in a private place and realized with horror that her leggings had split somewhere south of her belly button.

Thump!
She hit the floor abruptly and sat up, yanking her mat up to cover herself.

“Excellent,” Prashant was saying. “Only next time do not come down so quickly. You could get dizzy that way.”

“Oooh, Karma, did you rip your new leggings?” Mandi said in a loud voice.

“Oooh, Karma, that’s too bad,” echoed Jennifer.

“I—I think I’d better go change clothes,” Karma said, running the words all together and hoping she wasn’t wearing the panties with the lace panel in front. They would reveal too, too much.

She scrambled
to her feet, clutching her mat in front of her as she sidled sideways toward the door. Slade was staring at her, his eyes wide, a devilish grin on his face. Without a single word to him, she turned and darted inside the building.

“Unfortunate,” she heard Prashant murmuring. “Shall we try the backbend one more time and then rest for a few moments in Child’s Pose before our final relaxation?”

Karma slammed the door behind her and looked down. Sure enough, more of her was exposed than Slade Braddock needed to see. She owned one pair of lace panties, only one pair, and guess what?

She was wearing them tonight.

Unexpectedly she burst into tears. Prashant was right—backbends promoted the release of emotion. Too bad that in her case, backbends made her blubber.

S
LADE DRAGGED HIS ACHING
carcass along to the Blue Moon’s lobby after the class. He was still reeling from his meeting with someone who had claimed that she was his Friday night date, a woman who had introduced herself as Jennifer Something and looked so artificial that she terrified him. He couldn’t believe that Karma would set him up with someone completely wrong for him, someone that he would never in a million years take home to introduce to his parents. He’d fled as fast as it was possible to flee without being downright rude.

Goldy hunched in her chair behind the desk, knitting. She blinked at him over the top of her half-glasses when he entered the lobby.

“How was the yoga class?” she asked brightly.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that I’m feeling freer all the time.” This was not necessarily untrue, though what he was feeling freer about was pursuing Karma. She might not be the sort of woman he had hoped to find in Miami Beach, but she had certain—attributes, all of which had been more in evidence tonight than at any previous time.

“I received a lot of energy in the class,” he offered
helpfully.
And a novel view of Karma,
he thought to himself.

“That’s good,” Goldy said, and she beamed.

“There are a few things I’d like to discuss about it. About the expression of this energy, I mean. But Karma won’t answer my knock.”

“Maybe she’s not in her apartment.”

“She left class early. Did you see her go out?”

“No, I didn’t see Karma leave. Not that I would, necessarily. Not if she went out the back. She often slips out that way to walk on the beach, especially when she’s feeling all mellow from yoga class. The door’s down that hall.” Goldy inclined her head toward her left.

“Thanks, Goldy,” Slade said. He grinned at her, and she grinned back.

“You know, Slade, I seem to recall that you live on a boat.”

“At the moment, that’s so,” he said.

“Karma has need of a boat. She wants to scatter her aunt Sophie’s ashes at sea.”

Goldy’s intent was not lost on Slade. She was giving him another boost, a clue as to what he could do to capture Karma’s attention, possibly even her undying gratitude.

“Like I said, Goldy, thanks. I owe you.”

“Remember, you can’t escape your Karma.” She winked.

He winked back before loping off down the hall.

The door at the Blue Moon led to a narrow alleyway that culminated at a boardwalk leading down to the sand. The beach at this hour was deserted except for a lone figure walking along the high tide line about a hundred yards south. Karma.

He jogged to catch up with her. As he approached, she wheeled around, startled. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted. Her hair stood out around her face and seemed to
snap and crackle with energy. He thought he had never seen anyone more beautiful in his life.

The breakers were rolling in at a fast pace, giving rhythm to the night. This part of Miami Beach seemed far away from the hoopla of South Beach night life.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, stopping dead in her tracks.

He thought he saw the tracks of tears dried on her face, but perhaps he was mistaken. “I came to offer my services,” he said.

Karma started to shake her head, but on the off chance that she wouldn’t object, he captured her face between his hands. “Or rather,” he added, captivated by the confusion this brought to her eyes, “the services of my boat.”

“I don’t need—” but she stopped talking in midsentence, all the better for him to explain.

“So you can scatter your aunt Sophie’s ashes,” he said gently, moving his head closer and tilting it into kissing position.

“How did you know about that?” she breathed, and her breath was sweet and soft upon his lips. Her eyes were deep and unfathomable, and she didn’t pull away.

“When a person opens himself up and begins to receive energy, all sorts of things happen,” he murmured, and then he kissed her.

As soon as his mouth touched hers, he wanted her. He wanted her with all the passion and depth of a man in full pursuit even though he warned himself again that she wasn’t his type. Yet the image of her nipples straining against the fabric of that brief top she’d worn to yoga class was burned into the part of his brain that governed reason and good sense; he wanted her. Perhaps this lustful feeling was the ultimate expression of the energy he was experiencing?

Slowly his
lips explored hers, and before he knew it his tongue was seeking new territory and his hands were tangled in her hair. She was a full participant, her tongue meeting his, her teeth nibbling at his lower lip, her hands pressing against his back to draw him closer.

When she pushed him away it was with less conviction than he had expected.

“You’re a client,” she said, the words approximating a gasp of passion. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“If you’d like, I’ll resign as a client,” he said. “I could be just plain Slade Braddock, man on the loose.”

She braced her hands against his chest and shoved, forcing him to take a step backward.

“More like Slade Braddock, man on the
make,
” she said.

“Anything wrong with that?” he asked amiably.

“You’re supposed to go out with Jennifer on Friday night.”

“She told me. What if I don’t want to go?”

“That will get me in trouble with Jennifer, not to mention Goldy, who is her aunt. Don’t do that to me, Slade.”

“Goldy is the one who told me you might be on the beach.”

“She may not know that Jennifer has dibs on you.”

“I have free will. I can see—or not see—any woman I please. So do you want to go out in the boat with me or not?”

“A houseboat isn’t something you’d take out to sea,” she said, casting a look in his direction. He didn’t know the meaning of that look, but it was definitely not one that said
go away,
so he kept walking along beside her.

“
Toy Boat
has a dinghy,” he told her.

“So you’re planning on rowing out to sea? That’s not advisable, you know. The waves can get pretty big offshore.”

“Maybe it isn’t called a dinghy. I don’t know because I’m not that experienced a boater. It has a motor.”

“And what
strings are attached to this offer?”

“Absolutely none. Maybe while we’re in the boat we could talk about freeing me up. Maybe we could talk about freeing
you
up.”

He saw her rolling her eyes. “I’m as free as I want to be,” she said. She swiped at her nose with a tissue that he hadn’t realized she carried in her hand, increasing his suspicion that she’d been crying.

“Maybe that’s the problem. You need to feel attached to someone,” he said hopefully. She could be lonely, he supposed. She could be shedding a few tears because she had no one to walk with on the beach on a beautiful and romantic night such as this one, which could play into his purpose really well.

“I don’t think I want to be attached in the way you’re thinking about.”

“Perhaps you need to free up your chakras, all seven of them. Have you ever thought about giving yourself permission to feel, Karma?”

She shot him a skeptical glance.

Realizing that this line of discussion wasn’t going any further, he changed the subject. “How far do we walk? When do we turn around and go back?”

She seemed on the verge of smiling when she looked up at him. “Why? Too much exercise for you, cowboy?”

“Not at all,” he said firmly, wishing suddenly that she could observe when he and Lightning, his prize quarter horse, were cutting cattle. She’d see that he was a superior athlete, an experienced horseman. He was out of his element in sea-sand-sky territory, that’s for sure.

“I usually stroll to the next lifeguard station, then head back. You’re welcome to go back now, if you like. These walks of mine are usually solitary.”

“Too bad,” Slade said.

“Not really. Solitude is good sometimes.”

“Karma,
when a woman looks like you, acts like you and kisses like you, there’s no reason to be alone.”

She emitted an exasperated sigh. “Maybe I want to be alone. Maybe I like it that way.”

“And maybe I’m the king of Siam, but I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think there is a king of Siam anymore. For that matter, there’s not a Siam anymore. It’s called Thailand these days.”

“You get my point,” he said.

They had almost reached the lifeguard station, and Karma slowed down. She drew a deep breath before speaking. “I know what you were looking at in yoga class tonight when I was doing that backbend, and I might as well tell you that unless you concentrate on being centered, you’re not doing your blocked chakra any good.”