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Tessa rolled her eyes and took another drag. “What’re you doing here? I thought this place was off-limits to the Taggerts. Anyone with your last name who drives through the gates takes the chance of being drawn and quartered.”
Weston laughed. At least she wasn’t dumb as a stone. “Maybe it’s time one of us checked out the competition.”
Again she looked at him with those incredible blue eyes, then lifted a shoulder as if she didn’t really give a damn what he or any of his family did. “Suit yourself.”
“Waiting for someone?” He sat next to her on the ledge and expected her to move a little, to put some distance between her body and his, but she didn’t. Instead, she sucked hard on her cigarette, then shot smoke from the corner of her mouth.
“I guess.”
“You don’t know?”
“That’s right. I don’t know.” Defiance hoisted her chin upward a notch, and he saw beyond the false bravado and pride to a younger and more vulnerable girl, an instant of insight into what made Tessa Holland tick. She blinked, and her hard shell was back in place, an armor in which there was a tiny chink.
“Is someone coming for you?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you need a ride?”
She smiled and flicked her cigarette into the lit pool. The butt sizzled, bounced in the foamy swirls, and disappeared beneath the waterfall. “I might.”
“Where do you want to go?”
She hesitated a second, then arched perfectly shaped blond brows. “Maybe I don?
?t care.”
His mouth twitched into a smile. She actually had the balls to defy him. “Maybe you should.”
“What do you have in mind?” Her voice was low and intimate. She was playing with him, and he loved the game. It was one he understood, one he performed well, one in which he was always the victor.
“That depends on you.”
“Does it?” She stood suddenly and hauled a fringed black bag over her shoulder. With a final glance of disdain at her father’s resort, she said. “Okay, then let’s go. You can give me a ride up to Seaside.”
“What’s there?” he asked and her smile brightened the night.
“What isn’t?”
Harley was late. Claire, pacing on the dock where his father’s sailboat was moored, was just about to give up on him, not just for the night, but possibly forever. That thought caused a chill in her heart and raised goose bumps on her arms.
“Oh, Harley,” she whispered, feeling like the fool her sisters had accused her of being.
Sweet, perfect Harley had changed. He’d become distracted lately, willing to call and change their plans. When they’d first started dating, he couldn’t get enough of her, and nothing, nothing had been able to stop him from being with her. His father’s ranting, when Neal had found out, had fallen upon deaf ears; his older brother’s warnings had only made him bolder; and his sister Paige’s whining complaints had seemed to add fuel to the fire of his passion.
Claire, too, would have done anything to be with him in those first few mind-spinning weeks. He was kind, sweet, charming, and he adored her. He’d given up everything, his old girlfriend included, and suffered his father’s wrath and his brother’s taunts because, he’d vowed, he loved her. And she had believed him with all her young, naive heart.
But things had changed, she thought now, as she leaned against the rail of the pier and looked into the dark water where the string of lights suspended overhead was reflected in bright bobbing pinpoints on the inky surface. She felt it in the air, that change, like the turn of the wind, a quiet alteration in his need to be with her.
Her mistake had been making love to him. Ever since that one afternoon when they’d crossed the invisible line of true lovers, a barrier they’d sworn not to step over, their relationship had changed.
They’d been alone, canoeing, and had stopped at a small cove on the north shore of the lake. Harley had brought along a bottle of wine he’d swiped from his father’s cellar. Together, with the summer sun warming their skin, they’d drunk, toasted each other, swam, splashed, laughed and kissed, delirious in their love.
Claire had never felt so light-headed, never so much as tasted any alcohol before, but there was something magical about that late afternoon, and she’d thrown caution to the soft wind that had brushed against her cheeks and ruffled Harley’s black hair.
Harley was bolder, more intense than he had been, and Claire’s thinking was a little muddled. His kisses had deepened, become demanding, and she’d willingly opened her mouth to him, let him skim her slick body with his hands. His fingers slid brazenly beneath the top of her swimsuit, and he’d discarded the scrap of fabric in a quick, deft move, as if he’d done it a hundred times before. Holding her close, treading water, he kissed her breasts above and beneath the surface. She tingled and a warm ache spread deep inside her.
“Put your legs around my waist,” he’d ordered gently against her skin, his eyelashes studded with droplets of lake water. When she’d complied, wrapping her thighs around his muscular torso and lying on her back, her breasts bare to the warm summer sun, he’d whispered, “That’s a girl,” and kissed her abdomen. She was floating, drifting on a cloud of sensation as he carried her to the shore and began nuzzling her breasts in earnest, touching, sucking, creating a hot whirlpool deep in her center. He guided her hand to his crotch, groaned, and swore his undying love. He kicked off his trunks and she saw him naked for the first time. His erection was stiff and ready and scared her a little, but he was already peeling off the bottom of her suit.
