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“Sure,” smiled Evan. “Something-something ‘you hope we’re okay with a girl who occasionally walks around in her underwear.’ Right?”
“Exactly,” I smiled back. “Like I said, I’m used to living alone.”
He shrugged coyly. “Who said I wasn’t okay with it?”
“And I’m not very formal.”
“Or modest,” Evan winked.
Mustering up my best fake frown, I marched over still in my towel. I kept my eyes locked on his, refusing to look at his muscles out of principle. He on the other hand, didn’t mind letting his eyes wander. Especially at the point where the towel ended, three-quarters the way up my naked thighs.
“Well thank you forrescuingthis,” I said, reaching to pluck my underwear from between his fingers.
What happened next was electric — like the spark that flared between us the night we almost kissed. Maybe it was because Evan held onto my thong just a second too long. Or maybe it was my hand that lingered on his, either intentionally or unintentionally…
Either way, we locked eyes again. And the wave of intense warmth that washed over me made the heat of sixteen shower heads feel like nothing.
“Quinn…”
The fabric of my tiny underwear danced deliciously against his thick, tan wrist. Sheer black satin, so small and dainty, it looked like a pair of strings.
I arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“I— I wanted to…”
Evan’s normally-confident expression dissolved into something more complicated and complex. Maybe even a little pained.
“What?” I asked, instantly dropping the sarcasm. “What is it?”
He shook his head and turned away. “Nothing. Forget it.”
“You can tell me,” I urged, trying to be gentle. “I’m right here.”
God, did he have to bethisgood-looking? And not just Evan but all three of them! Seeing me in a towel was no big deal; I’d seen them all as well, muscles bulging, coming and going from the big room they’d turned into a gym. Always just barely dressed, in the tightest T-shirts or loose-fitting sweat shorts that, when the winds of chance blew just right, revealed the outline of someveryimpressive equipment.
Evan retreated a step into his room and grabbed something, and that something turned out to be a shirt. I sighed frustratingly as he reached up and pulled it down over his broad, delectable chest.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
I was still confused, still in disbelief. “For what?”
His eyes crawled my body again, slowly and deliberately. The resulting sigh masked some sort of cataclysmic disappointment.
“For agreeing to somethingreallystupid,” he murmured, and closed the door.
Fifteen
QUINN
The mansion was always filled with life and laughter, even at night. But the wee hours of the morning, after the alarms were all set and everyone had finally turned in?
Well, the place was so remote you could almost hear a pin drop.
I say almost, because the blanket of silence was broken only by the distant sound of the rolling sea. There were nights when it was deathly quiet, the tides still. But when the wind picked up it threw the waves crashing against the shore, creating a pleasant background of white noise that I could always count on to soothe me to sleep.
Always, except for tonight.
I’d gone to bed more than an hour ago, but sleep still hadn’t come. It could’ve been because I was short-staffed and therefore the restaurant had a shit dinner service. More likely though, I was just preoccupied with a thousand simultaneous things. Sitting up, I turned on the light and grabbed the notepad I always kept on my night table. Most of my better ideas popped into my head after the sun went down, and I needed to capture all of them.
