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She vowed to try. “I’ve never been scuba diving,” she said, resuming their conversation after the servers had left. “I do ski occasionally. Nothing more than bunny trails. That’s all I have the courage or the balance for, I’m afraid. I’m not much of an athlete.” Unlike him.
His gaze dropped to her shoulders then traveled down and Celeste had to suppress a shiver of awareness. “If you don’t mind my saying,” he began. “You’re clearly quite fit.”
It was downright silly to feel as giddy as she did about that compliment.
“I do a lot of yoga. It helps center me. I started in college.” Thank goodness she had. Between the stress of her job, the long hours, and the continuous mess that was her family life, she needed the release and quiet peacefulness of the practice.
“Makes sense.” Reid offered her one of the lobster tails. “I’ve never tried it, but I hear some of the poses can be very physically demanding.”
“Oh, yes. Definitely. Some of the more challenging ones can have me breathless with my muscles screaming and sweat pouring over my skin while I hold the pose.”
“Sounds athletic to me.”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
He leaned back in his chair, studied her. “You do that a lot, don’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Discount yourself. What you’re capable of.”
His statement surprised her. “I—I didn’t realize I did.”
“You were certain climbing the falls was going to be too much for you. Yet you handled it just fine.”
“I had you there to guide and catch me.”
He ignored that. “And the way you disparaged your karaoke performance.”
Now he had to be teasing her. “Do you blame me? I sounded horrible. Pitchy and completely off key.”
“Is that your takeaway from that night?”
“It’s the truth! Please don’t pretend I have any talent whatsoever as a singer.”
“No. I won’t.”
She had to laugh at that quick response acknowledging her lack of singing ability. “Thank you.”
“Does that mean you should never sing karaoke?” he asked with all seriousness. Celeste was beginning to wonder if this might be one of the most vexing conversations she’d ever had. To top it off, they were supposed to be talking about him.
“I dunno. I might say that’s exactly what it means.”
“You’d be wrong. You may be bad at singing. But you’re great at karaoke.”
Okay. Now he was making zero sense. “Uh... Come again?”
“You were magnificent up there when we sang together,” he declared.
Magnificent? “Um... I was?”
He nodded with zero hesitation.
“How do you figure?”
“You were engaging and endearing, despite being scared out of your mind. Most important, you had the crowd entertained. Off key or not, they were with you through the whole song, some singing along. Others simply bouncing to the beat of the song.”
Huh. Had that really been the way that whole scene had played out? She’d been so nervous, all she’d thought about was getting through the song and fleeing off the stage.
“I was?” she stammered, completely shocked at what he was telling her.
“Yes. You were. Everyone who witnessed it saw how amazing you were that night. Everyone but you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE’D IMPLIED THAT he found her amazing. Celeste couldn’t seem to get that thought out of her head. They’d finished their dinner of salt fish and grilled vegetables moments ago and were now on the upper deck of the boat admiring the star-filled night sky and the tranquility of the Caribbean waters as they sailed over the surface.
For a conversation that had started out all about Reid, he’d certainly given her a lot to think of about herself. All her life she’d been told that she wasn’t enough, that she had to try harder, be better, simply to be enough. Her mother certainly found her lacking. As did her younger sister. Her fiancé had left her emotionally bruised and publicly humiliated.
Yet here was this charming, enigmatic man trying to tell her the exact opposite—that she didn’t give herself enough credit.
