His stride toward the door stuttered. “Um, assuming you want to see me again?”
Why did his particular combination of lasciviousness, sweetness, and vulnerability knock her already-problematic knees out from under her?
“I want to see you again,” she told him, and the tense lines across his forehead vanished.
His kiss, gentle and warm and devastatingly affectionate, made her even later than she already was, and she simply couldn’t bring herself to care. Not even a little.
When they finally exited his apartment, they walked to her room holding hands, making their way along a sidewalk already crowded with early-bird beachcombers and through a lobby teeming with loudly chattering families headed to and from the breakfast buffets. His secure grip didn’t falter. Not when several of his coworkers glanced at her with raised eyebrows after greeting him. Not even when one of the twenty-something female guests, a woman who’d apparently taken tennis lessons during her vacation, did the same.
Tess didn’t fret about those sidelong stares either. Maybe people were simply surprised to see Lucas claiming a girlfriend so publicly. Even if she was wrong about that, even if their reaction was specific to her, a forty-year-old male tennis instructor sleeping with a twenty-something ingénue wouldn’t raise a single brow. And she wasn’t ashamed of her size. Not one bit. Not at this point in her life.
No, her Lucas-centered worries had nothing to do with the opinions of outsiders. Just a hard-eyed assessment of two disparate lives that had, however improbably, intersected for two weeks. Which didn’t mean those lives would or should intersect again, outside of these specific circumstances.
Those were concerns for later, though. For now, she would ignore her looming departure in favor of thinking about the light brush of his thumb over her knuckles. The casual way he immediately pushed the call button for the elevator instead of suggesting she take the stairs. The sly satisfaction in his grin as he crowded her into the corner of that empty elevator and claimed her mouth once more, his tongue demanding and hot.
By the time they reached her room, she was lightheaded with the rush of his proximity and single-minded attention but trying not to show it. The man already looked entirely too self-satisfied for her liking.
Unsure whether Belle would be in any state to greet guests, Tess knocked on the door with an unsteady hand instead of using her keycard. Belle responded right away, swinging open the door and regarding them both with a smirk.
“Couldn’t drag yourself out of bed any sooner, huh?” Belle stepped aside and let them enter the room. “I was starting to wonder whether we’d miss our ferry.”
“An early-morning tour of the mansion was a terrible idea.” Tess grinned at her friend as the door shut behind them. “Why didn’t you plan our day better, Belle?”
Belle tipped her face toward the ceiling, as if beseeching the heavens for patience. “Get everything you need into your backpack, Ms. Come-On-Belle-We-Should-Get-Up-Early-To-Beat-the-Heat-and-Have-More-Time-On-the-Mainland Dunn.”
“You can see why I changed my first name to Tess,” Tess told Lucas.
At Lucas’s huff of laughter, Belle’s baleful stare lowered to Tess. “Because of you, I rose before the actual sun while on vacation, which I consider a violation of my constitutional rights.”
“She probably hasn’t had coffee yet.” Tess let go of Lucas’s hand, located her backpack in a corner of the room’s little closet, and dumped the bag onto her double bed. “Without caffeine, you could say she’s not a morning person. Much the same way Joan Crawford was not a wire hangers person.”
Belle bit back a smile. “Less flirting with Sparky. More packing.”
Lucas emitted a small, pained sound.
As Tess dropped sunblock, a hat, and the guidebook into her backpack, she considered his nickname. “Sparky? I like it.”
“Thank you. I thought it had a certain ring.” Belle donned her own sun hat and adjusted it in the closet mirror, tipping the floppy brim up a smidge.
“I call him Mr. Perky,” Tess said to Belle. “Well, part of him, anyway.”
This time, Lucas groaned loudly.
So did Belle. “I don’t want to know.”
“Interesting.” Tess added a bottle of water to the backpack. “I’m pretty sure that’s not what you’ll be saying once we’re alone, Ms. Give-Me-All-the-Details-the-More-Salacious-the-Better-and-Maybe-Draw-Some-Stick-Figures-Too-So-I-Can-Picture-Everything-More-Clearly Cantner.”
“Tattletale.”Her friend flapped a hand in the direction of the closet. “Pack, woman.”
So Tess did, throwing everything else into her backpack with much less care than usual while Lucas and Belle sat on the edges of the beds and watched. As soon as she changed her shirt in the bathroom, all three hurried out of the room, the door swinging shut behind them with a bang that made Tess wince.
Despite both women’s protests, Lucas carried their backpacks on one shoulder. On his other side, he promptly reclaimed Tess’s hand, squeezing it gently whenever she glanced his way. Which she did, often. Too often.
Together, they hustled to the dock, fast enough that Tess and Belle became breathless.
Then…silence. They’d arrived with five minutes to spare, and the woman who coordinated the ferry’s arrivals and departures was off talking to someone on her cell a few feet away. No other guests seemed to be leaving on this particular ferry, maybe because they’d chosen later activities and flights home.
“I’m going to wait”—Belle reclaimed her backpack and pointed to a weathered wooden bench—“over there. Have fun, but try not to get arrested for public indecency before the ferry arrives, okay?”
