Wicked: Whispering Cove, Book 3 (4 page)

“Keep the shirt.” He advanced. “You’ve no need to be afraid of me, Danica.”

The glide of her name, the way he turned three syllables into a seductive purr, had her panties going damp.

“You should know by now I don’t bite.”

Her knees weakened.

“That’s not the problem.” She stepped back. The stair rail leading to the deck, to escape, stopped her. She’d run out of space.

“What is?”

Her belly danced with anticipation as he closed in. If he touched her, desire would capsize her. “You’re a patient’s family member.”

“I’ll hire him a new doctor.”

“You’re not my type.”

“That didn’t seem to be the case three rounds of sex ago. I know it wasn’t for me.” He tossed the shirt over his shoulder and obliterated the remaining few feet between them. Gripping the rails beside her hips, he kissed her just below her right earlobe—a weak spot he’d discovered quickly. “I bet I can make it true for you again.”

Easily.

“Braydon, no.” She grabbed the T-shirt and hugged it to her chest like body armor. “It wouldn’t work.”

“Worked just fine if you ask me.” The callous on his index finger lightly abraded her neck and chest as he trailed a path toward the T-shirt. “We may as well enjoy the next few days.”

“I’m not talking about sex.” If she could stop at sex she’d be tempted to go along. Hell, she was tempted anyway.

“What else is there?”

“Everything. You’re an adventurer looking for a good time.”

“So?”

“You already said it. You’ll be moving on in a few days.”

“Then we’ll still like each other when we’re over. No time for bitterness.”

But plenty of regrets. Regrets of what wouldn’t be. Regrets of what she’d tasted but hadn’t been special enough to deserve permanently.

It had been whispered around town when Byron announced Braydon was coming back. He was wild and unsettled like his parents.
The boy will never be built for long term,
the townspeople said. He was proving them right with his own words.

“I’ll still be here. I’ll still want the same things in life.”

“I’m not seeing the problem.” He hooked the shirt with a finger and pushed it to the floor. “Fun in bed for a few days isn’t going to make you less desirable to the next guy.”

Ouch.
“And no more so to you.”

She bent to grab the shirt. Her chin bumped his erection. Long, hard, ready for another round. Her mouth moistened and her lips parted. Her pussy twitched.

He shifted, spread his legs a little. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Taking him in her mouth, sucking him, learning his most intimate taste would be so easy. Maybe he was right. Maybe they could have fun and go their own ways. Maybe agreeing to his terms would finally expel him from her mind and heart.

He cupped her chin and guided her gaze up. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth and his eyes glistened green, hungered, like the waters lapping at the boat’s hull. “There’s nothing wrong with this.”

Locking her eyes with his, unwilling to be swayed into suckling the hard-on so close to her mouth, Danica swallowed the desire, picked up the T-shirt and stood.

Braydon had no reason to see a problem. He wasn’t the one who’d been in love for almost twenty years. He could have a fling and move on to the next story, the next conquest, without a thought to the shattered heart he left behind.

She would always remember his touch. His kiss.

“Danica, what’s wrong with spending time together while I’m here?”

“Because you want to spend it with my face and body. You want to spend it having sex without messing it up with talk. You don’t want to spend it with me.” She wasn’t sure why it mattered now when it hadn’t during sex, or even where the courage to speak her mind came from. Maybe her shyness had blasted away when he took her to orgasm, but she didn’t regret her words.

“I don’t see another woman here, so I’m not sure who you think I’m asking.”

“Of course. You’re asking the easy mark who bowed beneath a stupid school-girl fantasy.” One good thing had come from the sex—she was no longer afraid to talk to him. “Well, the fantasy has been fulfilled. The crush is cured.”

If cured meant morphed into full-blown love that made her think the only way to end the pain would be to cut the organ out and feed it to the piranhas.

He stumbled back with his mouth gaping.

Needing the barrier, she slipped the shirt over her head and scrambled up the steps, starved for space. Quickly grabbing her shorts as she passed, Danica hustled off the boat with Braydon’s shirt brushing her mid-thigh and sought the safety of her little motor boat.

A thunk and a curse from the main cabin had her hurriedly untying the line and yanking the cord to set the motor to life.

He didn’t want the Danica who spouted obscure facts when nerves overtook her. He didn’t want the awkward geek who was still learning to be comfortable around people. He wanted the sex-starved blonde who’d indulged in a momentary release of inhibitions.

She’d known every bit of that when she’d had sex. And though the crushing girl inside her had hoped he might change his mind, the smarter woman had recognized the reality.

Danica headed the boat toward home, and when she felt she’d put enough distance between her and Braydon’s boat, she paused to put her shorts on. She’d call Ruth and Byron from home and claim a headache, but she wasn’t going to dinner.

No dinner. No Braydon.

She’d liked the woman she’d been in his arms, but there wouldn’t be another indulgence.

Pleased with her new resolve to avoid Braydon, she docked the boat at home and headed to the kitchen. The phone began ringing before she’d crossed the yard, so she took off running. She burst through the door and snatched the cordless phone from the cradle.

“Hello.”

“Hey, chickadee.” Byron sounded strong, unlike that afternoon when age had shaken his voice. “Where are you?”

“I was just going to call you.”

“You sound out of breath, girl.”

“A little. Maybe.”
Should’ve heard me an hour ago on your grandson’s boat.

“Well, catch it and get over here.”

“Listen, that’s why I was going to call—”

“Braydon will be here soon.”

“I’m not coming to dinner.”

“We’ll wait for you.”

“Give Ruth my apologies.” She plunged on before Byron could argue. “Make sure Braydon stays at your place tonight, give him no pain medications and check on him every few hours.”

“What are you going on about?”

“He may have a concussion.”

“What?” Byron’s normal lightheartedness erupted with tension.

“It’s a long story.” One she wasn’t telling anyone. “He can tell you. Enjoy the night with Braydon.”

“Ruth is warming the bread.” The old man was insistent.

In fact, he was as set in his way on this as he’d been on walking to meet Braydon earlier. She adored the old guy, but his wife could deal with him tonight. “I’ll come check on you tomorrow.”

“Come check on me now. Braydon, my boy…” The line clicked off as hard as Byron’s definitive command.

Danica hated to disappoint Byron or Ruth, they’d always been kind to her, and she loved them like her own, but she was going nowhere near Braydon.

He wanted short-term fun. She would accept nothing less than long-term settlement.

They were opposites in every way, and sex was not going to erase those differences. She’d been allowed to eat a slice of her fantasy. The delectable temptation had been left standing on a forty-foot sailboat. Naked.

Chapter Three

“What do you mean you didn’t give him the itinerary? How’s he supposed to know about the happy hour or the post-reunion breakfast?” Victoria Hayes, owner of the Whispering Salon, pulse monitor of all rumors and the only popular girl Danica had ever called a friend, lowered the dryer over a woman’s head. Even at seven thirty in the morning, her salon was a hub of activity and gossip.

Danica pushed her glasses up her nose and wished again they could’ve met almost anyplace else. Someplace not populated with parrots. Small town or not, people wanted to look their best for the reunion and incoming company. And they all loved to talk.

“I’m sorry, Vic.”

“You promised… Didn’t you go to his boat?” Victoria whispered through her teeth as they moved toward the supply-room-slash-back-office with a large window overlooking the main salon.

“I know, and yes, I went.”

“Do I have to do everything myself?”

“Oh please.” Danica pfft’d. Any guilt at not completing her errand as Victoria’s messenger vanished. “I’ve easily put in as much legwork for this reunion as you.”

“I gave you those pretty new purple glasses as a thank you.”

Danica adjusted the frames with delicate studded flowers again. “And I love them, but I’m not your girl when it comes to boat-side invites.”

Danica lowered her voice, not wanting the entire town to start gossiping about her and Braydon. Hell, it had taken the townspeople three months to stop concocting possible motivations for her new hair and waxed brows.

Victoria pulled her into the back room, away from the eavesdropping women with metal curlers covering their heads and heightening their antennae. As if the minimal privacy would stall loose tongues.

“Did you lose your nerve? Can you still not talk to him, because I thought after your lunch with him yesterday…”

Danica’s neck heated and her stomach clenched with the reminder of lunch. His touch on her hand, the brush of his ankle against her leg—they’d only been tastes of his lures. Her lip quivered with excited embarrassment. She hadn’t been as obvious as the famous Meg Ryan scene, but an orgasm in the town’s busiest restaurant? She was surprised wedding announcements hadn’t been posted.

“You still can’t talk to him?” Victoria’s shock registered closer to yelling-whisper than supportive understanding.

“I can talk to him.” She pulled at the back of her T-shirt sticking to her suddenly sweaty back.

“Then why doesn’t he have the information?”

“Email it to him like you did everyone else.” The defensive edge in her voice suggested a deeper hang-up so Danica softened her tone before continuing. “We…”
Don’t mention kissing or sex.
“There was an accident.”

“Byron says Braydon’s email is unreliable.” Vic’s eyes narrowed. “You’re leaving something out.”

A lot!
“He got hurt. I had to stitch him up.”

“What did you do?” The question burst from Vic’s mouth in the hands-on-her-hips-scolding-mom tone she pulled off so well.

A sea of curious women turned to face the office window. Danica lowered her voice and hoped Vic would take the subtle hint. “Nothing. And how do you not have children?”

“You did something. I’m still waiting for a worthy man, and you’re evading. What did you do?” She enunciated the question more slowly.

“It wasn’t my fault.” Danica’s lips twitched. Now that she wasn’t in emergency mode, it was funny. “After he fell overboard, he bumped his head on the frame’s door.”

Victoria swallowed an unattractive snort. “You bashed him with a door?”

“It was an accident.” The salon patrons had turned back to their beginning positions, but several heads were cocked at a listening angle.

“As I recall, you used to have a lot of those around him.”

“No fair. I’ve spilled nothing, and if he hadn’t had the music so loud he’d have heard me coming.” Several heads turned toward her, attracted by the return of her defensive tone. As if they hadn’t already formed opinions.

“Whisper me this. Whisper me that,” a woman’s oversexed voice greeted a new customer. “Your happy ending will be anything but whispered.”

Vic’s customers laughed. Danica chuckled at the salon’s latest upgrade which had greeted her with a different, but no less provocative message. “Is there something you want to share with me, Vic?”

“Whhaaaat? I like my toys.”

“Too much sharing. I don’t want to know about your toys.”

“Then you shouldn’t ask.”

“Danica!” Lynda Crawford, the town’s stress magnet, rushed forward with fretfulness riddling her tone and anxiety kinking her grandma curls tighter. “Thank goodness I’ve found you. I’ve been calling and calling.”

“What’s wrong, Lynda?” Danica wondered if Lynda’s curls would unwind if the woman learned to relax.
Nah.

“It’s Rodney. I think he’s broken his arm.” She grabbed Danica’s arm and tugged her toward the door and her husband.

“You should have called 9-1-1.”

“I called you.”

Danica rested her hand over the elderly woman’s and patted her comfortingly. “Where is he? What happened?”

“He fell off the ladder cleaning the inn’s front windows.” Lynda’s anxious accent twisting
windows
into
winduz
had Danica smiling with fondness.

Lynda and Rodney owned the Rumrunner Inn, and no matter how old they got, he insisted he could do the upkeep himself.