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“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
This afternoon, they lay in lounge chairs by one of the pools, pretending to be a couple in love. They were fairly sure they had found out all they needed to know about the Masters brothers. They’d booked a boat tour the next day to see if they could find out more about the marina and how it functioned. For now, there was nothing to do but relax.
“Hey, Boss Man,” Jennie said, cracking her eyes open to peek at Chad while she swirled her empty drink at him. “Wanna swim over to the bar and get me another daiquiri?”
After three strawberry daiquiris, she was a little tipsy. She was probably being a little too uppity with her boss, even for her, but they had both let down their guard quite a bit.
He lowered his sunglasses and leaned over her on the lounge chair. His body almost entirely covered hers and his face was right in hers. She could feel the heat coming off of him, and damn if that didn’t go straight to her legs.
Well, not her legs. Between her legs, really. Right where it counted. His mouth was an inch from hers and she had to fight not to reach up and close the distance. Not to see what would happen if she simply gave in to temptation and tasted that mouth.
When he spoke, he cranked her body heat up without any effort at all. “Now, Jen, what will people think if they hear you call me Boss Man?” he asked quietly.
She licked her lips. “That we’re into kink and role playing?”
As usual, the sexy rumble of his voice when he spoke so softly to her sent her body spiraling out of control. She itched to reach out and touch his chest. It was hot and tanned and just a little sweaty from the searing Florida sun. She knew it would feel heavenly under her fingertips, the hard cut of the muscles under the satiny taut skin.
She didn’t notice the tiny moan that slipped from her lips until it was too late to stop it.
She saw Chad’s eyes burn hot and dark for a second. Her breath caught at the intensity in his eyes and she felt his whole body coil and tense above her.
And then he pulled back. Jennie watched as he slid into the water and cut clean strokes across the pool to the swim up bar. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and groaned.
That was stupid. How did that cliché go? She was playing with fire and she was going to get burned? Yeah, that she believed.
One more week.
Chapter 13
Two other couples waited on the dock when Chad and Jennie arrived for their boat tour. They would be going to a quiet bay to swim—although he expected Jennie to stay in the boat for that given her fear of the fish. After that, they’d go to a quaint restaurant along the coast for lunch, and later tour a local market where they could shop for local touristy junk, before being taken back to the resort.
Jennie stood with the small group and began to do her chit chatty thing while Chad sat on one of the benches and watched her. She had on a red bikini and a brightly patterned wrap tied around her waist. She leaned her head back and laughed at something one of the other couples said and Chad couldn’t resist.
He reached out and looped an arm around her waist, pulling her down onto his lap. She yelped while the other women cooed over his romantic gesture. One woman swatted her husband on the arm and scowled at him.
“You never treat me like that anymore,” she said, drawing a laugh from the group.
“They’re newlyweds,” her husband said. That earned him another whack.
Chad could barely pay attention. His arms were around Jennie’s bare waist. Her skin was so soft and smooth. It was silky and creamy and it begged for his touch. If they weren’t in public, he wouldn’t have been able to control himself.
And yet, she seemed unaffected. She settled back in his arms and chatted with the other couples about their experiences at the resort, asking what they’d tried so far, which restaurants they liked the best, and more.
When their tour guide came and got them loaded onto the boat, he relinquished his hold on Jennie momentarily, but pulled her down on the bench seat next to him in the boat.
He let one hand trail up and down her velvety back as Jennie started to work the tour guide for information. Somehow, she struck up a conversation about wanting to work as a tour guide in a marina just like this.
The next thing Chad knew, she’s getting information about busy seasons and slow seasons, how many trips the marina did in a day, and what the tour guides were paid.
It never ceased to amaze Chad. People would turn over their bank statements to Jennie if she asked them to. The guy didn’t look the least bit fazed by her questions and she’d somehow managed to draw the other couples into the conversation as though it were completely natural.
He should be contributing in some way, but there really wasn’t a damned thing he could add. So, he sat back and watched the way the sun glinted off her strawberry curls. He watched the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed and the way she leaned toward whoever was talking and looked at them as though they really mattered to her.
That’s why she was so good at this. People wanted to connect with her. They were drawn to her. Chad was an expert on the topic of being drawn to Jennie.
He’d been drawn to her since the first time he’d spotted her at Sutton Capital. He had gone to ask Jack a question. He was having a bad day and was hurried and stressed, but he turned the corner and spotted Jennie at the desk outside Jack’s office and froze. And, then she looked up at him and smiled. That smile cut right to his heart every time she graced him with it.
