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He lifted another towel off the pile she’d laundered for him on Friday, and hooked it round his waist. Covering up the growing erection. She reached for the towel to yank it off, but he snagged her wrist.
“Nuh uh.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Her heart bounced into her throat. “That can wait till later. I want to take you out, on a date.”
“A date? What for?” She grinned, determined to tease him and ignore her erratic pulse. “Please don’t tell me that Tyrone Sullivan, the big bad attorney and all around super stud is a romantic?”
He chuckled, despite the strain on his face. “It’s not romance, it’s self-preservation.” Turning her ’round, he gave her bottom a light pat. “Now go get dressed. We’re getting out of here before you kill me.”
She felt that odd bounce again as they got dressed together in the small bedroom. She didn’t need Ty Sullivan to take care of her. But it wouldn’t do any harm to let him do it for a few hours. He seemed to need it. Probably all part of his Catholic guilt/shining armor routine. Ty couldn’t help caring for women, for people. It was why he was so good at his job. It wasn’t significant that he seemed to need to care for her. It was simply part of his personality—after spending his formative years minding his younger siblings, and trying to protect his mother.
As long as she didn’t need him to do it, it didn’t really matter what he needed. And a date seemed charming. And would be something new to explore.
Because she was fairly sure she’d never actually had a date before. She’d been far too wayward and self-destructive after her parents’ death to ever do anything as quaint as let a boy take her out. What harm could it do letting Ty take her out now? It wouldn’t be a real date, because they already knew she was a sure thing. And that lots more hot sex would be involved when they got back to the barge. Also, she’d come perilously close to breaking her no-cuddling rule. Having an audience for the next couple of hours might not be a bad thing.
Once they’d gone through the marina security gate, she strode off across the parking lot, having figured out where he was probably taking her.
He grabbed her hand, tugging her to a halt. “Hold up, where are you headed”
“Aren’t we going to see a movie?” The marina parking lot backed onto a multiplex, so she had assumed a movie would be the obvious place for their date. And she was in the mood for something violent and dark and edgy, preferably without any lovey-dovey bits.
Drawing her towards the SUV, he clicked open the locks. “I’ve got a better idea. How about we go to Coney Island?”
“The amusement park?” The buzz of excitement hit her unawares.
“Yeah. We could grab a couple of Nathan’s Famous, ride the Cyclone, neck on the Wonder Wheel and then take a stroll along the Boardwalk, maybe take a turn on the karaoke. What d’you say?”
The buzz peaked. “That sounds wonderful, as long as you promise not to sing.” A bit too wonderful really, but she would deal with that later. Right now she was itching to find out what Nathan’s Famous were exactly. “I’ve never been to an amusement park before.” Her heart kicked under her ribs, at the childish anticipation in her tone. “It’s been on my bucket list ever since I was six.”
“You’re kidding? Not once? How come?” He sounded so astonished, she felt hideously gauche and a little embarrassed that she’d revealed so much. Here was the evidence she was the pampered little, rich girl everyone—including him—had accused her of being.
“Don’t look so surprised. It’s not my fault I had a hopelessly posh upbringing. The nanny would take Seb and I to all the museums and galleries while we lived in London, but my parents wouldn’t have been seen dead in an amusement park. I remember Seb tried to persuade them once to let him take me to Disneyland when we were in Paris for the Easter holidays.” She hesitated, the long forgotten memory of Seb before the accident, when he had been her adored fun-loving, big brother instead of the cold, forbidding stranger he had become, bringing with it the sharp pang of grief. “But they said no, because they felt it wouldn’t be suitable, or particularly educational.”
Her entertainments as a child had been so carefully vetted and always so cerebral and sophisticated—the few family outings her parents had time for invariably part of their official duties—a garden party in the grounds of Buckingham Palace; the opening night of a play at the National Theatre; a performance of Bizet’s Carmen at the Paris Opera House; even a pre-Christmas shopping trip with her mother to Harrods one year had been to open the newly refurbished Food Hall. How funny to think, she had once been so good at being on her best behavior.
“It all sounds so ludicrously pompous now, doesn’t it,” she added. “Especially when you think of the sort of things I got up to after they’d died.”
“It doesn’t sound pompous. It sounds sad. And kind of lonely. What about after they died? Why didn’t your brother take you to Disneyland then?”
Zelda shielded her eyes against the dying light, trying to assess Ty’s reaction. Why did he sound so serious?
“Seb packed me off to a succession of boarding schools not long after the funeral, where I proceeded to behave so badly I was never permitted to go on any outings. And once I was finally free of school, I was tempted towards the sort of amusements that you don’t find in parks. Does that answer your question?”
“He sounds like a selfish bastard.”
“Who?” she asked, puzzled by the spike of anger.
“Your brother.”
Zelda frowned, dropping her arm. She didn’t need to see Ty’s face anymore
. And she really didn’t want to see his anger on her behalf. Because it might bring back the pointless yearning that had dominated so much of her adolescence, to have someone like him, someone older and stronger, care about her. To shelter her and protect her, and protest her innocence when the Mother Superior and her evil minion Iggy accused her of stealing the wine when she hadn’t.
And it was far too late for that.
Maybe Seb had abandoned her emotionally, at a time when she had needed him. But she was all grown up now. And she’d had to force herself to stop using all the things she’d lost that fateful day thirteen years ago as excuses to explain the mess she’d made of her life since. Ultimately, you had to own your mistakes, or you couldn’t correct them. All Ty’s sympathy and anger would do now was make her feel like that lonely, isolated, defenseless child again. When she wasn’t.
And anyway, Ty’s anger wasn’t really about her. This was just his white knight complex talking. It had to be.
“Seb can be a beast. You won’t get any argument from me there. But he isn’t selfish, he’s damaged. The accident damaged him. He was driving the car, and I think he blamed himself. Maybe that’s what messed him up, because something certainly did. But frankly, I don’t really care anymore.” Because she couldn’t afford to care—because trying to hold on to her brother, trying to understand why he didn’t care about her anymore, had damaged her, too. “So I guess if anyone is selfish in this scenario it’s me,” she added defiantly.
