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“You!” A soft voice with just a hint of snarl in it makes my head pop around.
“You!” I smile at her, completely unfazed that she’s looking at me like I’m a piece of gum on her shoe.
“You know I can read lips right? I could practically hear all the very nice things you said about me and my driver.”
I cringe. “I’m sorry about that. I was just letting off some steam.”
Those cool gray eyes that keep popping into my head narrow. “I’m sure.”
“I needed to get to my daughter and then back here and it just seems like everything was going wrong today.”
I can’t look away from her hair, all these wild, soft silvery-gold curls tousled around her pretty face. It keeps blowing past me and I can smell the scent of flowers, lush and sweet. My dick jerks to attention and my eyes widen. I thought that blasted piece of me had died.
Hooray for me! My daughter’s right across the beach and waving and my dick thinks that this is the right time to come back to life with a vengeance. Not to mention the woman he likes looks like she’s sucking on lemons right now.
Dammit! I don’t need this shit.
CHAPTER 3
Sarah
He’s much bigger when he’s not sitting in a jeep. His shoulders are about a mile wide and I only come up to the middle of his chest.
His very broad, tanned chest. A light smattering of golden-brown hair trails down a set of abs that ladder in big, beefy slabs all the way straight down to board shorts in a khaki brown that should look more boring than oatmeal.
Not on that body.
I jerk my eyes back just as they drift down to the muscles along the sides of his waist that barely seem like they’re holding up his loose shorts. Those lovely “v” muscles that just beg a girl to hang onto them while he’s leaning over her and…
Swallowing roughly, I force my eyes to stay locked on his. They’re alpine blue and so bright that they rival the glowing island waters around us. The bright sunlight glares off of them, catching on swirls of sapphire and gold buried in their exotic depths. He’s got a jaw like granite and the most kissable, full lips I’ve ever seen. His teeth tug at his bottom lip and I struggle to keep in the groan that wants to come out and play.
Fuck! I’ve never seen a more beautiful guy.
“Daddy?”
My brain finally fires back up as a teenage girl comes strolling up, her long limbs tanned and her body just barely starting to fill out in a bikini that I’d never wear in a million years. Thirty-five is not the time to discover bikinis. That ship has sailed. Not to mention that I’ve got a little too much jiggle from eating my feelings for the last year.
My therapist told me that I’d know when it was time to move on. I call bullshit. I still don’t know a damn thing and it’s been a year since the accident. A year of starting over, building my own life without Dave in it. A year of learning to be all alone at night, listening to the sounds of the house settling around me. A year of relearning who I am.
The house that we picked out together. That we both loved that now means not a damn thing to me except pain. This is the corner that I cried in when the police came to tell me about the car that hit Dave on his way home from work. Then there’s the other kinds of pain that he introduced me to.
This is the bed that we used to sleep in that now just feels like miles of cold sheets and horrible nightmares. Nightmares that are real. That drag me down. Keep me up at night and grind into my psyche until I’m barely able to drag my ass up in the morning.
“Hey! Are you alright?”
Shaking my head, I smile shakily at the abrasive, yet hot guy. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” I glance around. “What are all these people here for?”
He glances around and I take the opportunity to stare at him, unimpeded by the concern in his electric gaze. It’s like staring at Zeus up on Mt. Olympus or something. He doesn’t seem quite real.
His lips quirk. “Surfing lessons and all that other stuff that we all love.”
A tiny prickle hits me and I push it down. But it crops back up. Dave liked doing stuff like this but I never tried any of it. I’d just watch him, smile and wave at him as he lived. Each day was a new adventure for him…while I watched. Skiing, driving a race car, snowmobiling, surfing, zip-lining, jumping out of a plane. He did it all. He lived his best life. I just tried to make it through every damn day without pissing him off.
Which is why it was such a shock when he was driving home on the freeway and was t-boned by a drunk driver, knocked into oncoming traffic and killed. My stomach jumps and I put my hand on my belly, trying to push down the anger, fear, resentment, nausea…all those roiling emotions tuning up in me that I’ve fought to keep pushed down for the last year while I cried at night, my hand reaching out to find his big body, to feel him wrap his warm arms around me and his lips brush my forehead as I fell asleep. Which he never actually did. I’m not sure what fantasy I was reaching for but it wasn’t my life.
I slip my sunglasses down to cover my eyes because this man’s eyes are a little too perceptive. “I’ve got to go. I need…”. My voice trails off.
I don’t know what I need. I just know I don’t want him to see all the ways that my heart hurts. I don’t want anyone to see that.
