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He tried to hide his smile. “I came in second place to Mary Beth Cooper. Although,” he paused for dramatic effect, “seven years later I got my revenge when I beat her out for senior class valedictorian.”
She laughed.
“It’s my turn to guess,” he said. “You were a good student, but not straight-As. The teachers liked you, but you always talked too much so they had to ding you on the behavior grade. When it was your turn to pick teams for dodge ball you always picked the kid that no one else wanted and if anyone gave you flack about it you put them in their place because you couldn’t stand the bullies.”
He was completely correct. Not that she was going to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. “Smugness does not look good on you, Luke Powers.”
“Sure it does.”
She rolled her eyes.
“And, last but not least,” he added, the humor gone from his voice now, “all the guys had a secret crush on you but you had no idea because you have no clue just how gorgeous you are. Especially in a little red bikini.”
Oh, boy. First, he’d tried subtlety and then he’d been direct and now… Now he might as well throw her down on the bottom of the boat and do her. She wouldn’t mind, actually. It would make things so much easier if he’d just make the first physical move.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she joked, mostly because it was the first thing to pop into her head and because she sucked at taking any kind of compliment.
“Just the ones I take out on my boat,” he said easily.
She laughed and it came out like a snort again. Sarah had never wished for an evening to either end or to go on forever. He began clearing up the food. She tried to help him but he waved her away. “Drink up the rest of your champagne. It’s almost dark and we should get going.”
Luke secured the picnic basket and raised the anchor. The ride back to the Destin marina was fast but, by the time he’d moored the boat, the sun had long since set. Despite it being August, the wind coming off the water made it chilly enough that Sarah shivered. Or maybe it was a bad case of lust and nerves combined.
“I’ll see you at the house?” she asked Luke, since they’d both driven their own cars to the marina.
“Sure.”
“I have an early morning which means I’ll probably be in bed when you get home.”
He nodded and she felt her throat go dry. Why did she suddenly feel so stupid? It was like the instant something came out of her mouth she wanted to take it back.
“Thank you for today. I had a lot of fun.”
“Me, too,” he said.
She got in her car and drove off but the shivery sensation had dulled into something she couldn’t put her finger on. Except to say that after a day that could only be described as completely fun and wonderful she felt the opposite of what she should.
Sarah walked into a dark house. If Luke was coming straight home, he’d probably only be a few minutes behind her. There was only the one bathroom so if she wanted to shower, she should do it now.
She tossed her shorts and tank top into the laundry bin and peeled off the still slightly damp bikini, then rinsed it out in the sink and hung it to dry. She didn’t think she could ever wear it again without seeing the look on Luke’s face when he told her how gorgeous she was. If he did indeed say that to all the girls then he must have a slew of women madly in love with him.
Not that she was in love with him. No way. But she realized now that what she’d felt for Christopher was the nursery school version of what she was feeling for Luke. Sure, she’d been attracted to Christopher. What she felt for Luke, however, could only be described as Lust with a capital L. Just once she wanted to know what the big deal was. To experience the kind of crazy passion she’d thought only existed in romance novels.
She quickly showered and washed her hair, towel dried it and was about to—
The sound of his truck pulling into the driveway made her freeze.
In just a couple of minutes, he’d walk through the front door. She could easily be in her bed by then and avoid seeing him until tomorrow at the earliest, or she could do something wild and crazy and totally not like her at all. He wasn’t looking for a relationship and neither was she. In just a few weeks, Frida and Ed would be back from their trip and Sarah would be on a cruise with her mother. It was a perfect scenario, really.
Before she could think too hard she ran to his room, closed the door behind her, and slid beneath his sheets.
* * *
Luke got into the shower, lathered up, then let the hot water run over his head. Maybe if he stayed in here long enough he’d cool down some. He’d never been so wrong about a woman in his life. His gut told him that Sarah wanted him as much as he wanted her, and he’d given her plenty of opportunities today to take their relationship to the next level. But she’d shot him down. Not once, not twice, but three times. Hard on the ego, to be sure, but it was time to accept that, for the first time in his life, his instincts had failed him.
The hot water eventually ran out, not that it had done much good, so he got out of the shower and dried off. He went to put up his towel but there was that hot little red bikini of hers hanging on the rack, staring him straight in the face. Did the woman have no mercy? There had to be some other place to dry the damn thing.
He squelched the urge to rip the bikini off the towel rack and toss it into the garbage can. He was a grown man, for God’s sake. He could handle a little sexual frustration. Okay, so maybe it was more like a lot of sexual frustration. But, as she liked to remind him, he was thirty-seven, not some randy teenager. Although, if he was being honest with himself, right now he felt a whole lot more like the latter.
