Summer Beach Reads. Natalie Anderson

even know he wanted to ask it until the words tumbled off his lips. He wasn’t in the habit of questioning—or pushing—his luck.

      She watched him steadily. ‘Other than the scenery?’

      ‘Ha ha.’

      She sat up and kept the sheet tucked carefully under her arms. That seemed a crime now that he knew from first-hand experience what was under there. The memory of her skin sliding against his was still so fresh.

      She shrugged. Slowly. ‘I just decided that casual sex shouldn’t be merely a male prerogative.’

      His gut tightened. ‘Casual as in one-off?’ It hadn’t felt very casual as she’d writhed under him and clenched her long fingers into his flesh.

      She arched a brow. ‘I think we’re already over our quota for that, don’t you?’

       Point.

      ‘Casual as in … casual,’ she went on. ‘Not a big deal. Something nice to do when we see each other.’

      Nice. He stared at her, not letting the twist in his belly grow into anything harder. ‘Those might just be the last words on the planet I ever expected to come out of your mouth.’

      She leaned back against the wall and kept her eyes guarded. ‘Maybe I’ve found myself at sea.’

      Or lost yourself. And he had a nasty feeling he might have been responsible for that.

      Shouldn’t he be celebrating now? He’d got to have sex with Shirley. Shirley-the-untouchable. She’d let him touch her wherever he wanted last night. Repeatedly.

       A man like you …

      Had he dragged her down to his level?

      Her scowl returned and that, too, was a crime after the ecstasy that he had seen stamped on her features last night. ‘Relax, Hayden. You haven’t corrupted me. I’m here because I wanted to be.’

      Had she meant to use the past tense?

      And … by the way … could he be more of a teenage girl about this?

      He gave himself a mental punch. Come on. This was what he did. He had sex with beautiful women, enjoyed them in the moment, kissed them goodbye and moved on. Occasionally he came back for round two but never round three. On principle.

      Moments like this were not new to him. But this … disquiet certainly was.

      This felt all kinds of wrong.

      He glanced at naked, make-up-less, alabaster-skinned Shirley. Carol-Anne’s little girl. But he would totally have hit on her way back when she’d sat in his living room like a gift from the gods of sensuality if he’d thought he had a chance, and he’d known then who she was. So it couldn’t just be about her genes.

      This was about her.

      He was uncomfortable because it was her.

      Shirley. The person. The woman. The soul.

      He pushed to his feet. ‘I might just grab a shower.’ It was down the hall. A decent physical separation so that he could think.

      Khaki eyes tracked him silently as he pulled on jeans and a T-shirt over his nothingness and bundled up some clean underwear and a towel. That beautiful mind turning slowly over. It made him nervous. But he made himself turn back and smile. Just because he was wigging out didn’t mean he had to show it.

      ‘Back in a tick.’

      She nodded and he was gone. The one bathroom on the floor was small but serviceable and, given how few of them there were on this skeleton-crew voyage, it was in reasonable condition. He stripped off again and stepped under the spray before it was fully warm.

      Shirley hadn’t responded to him as if she was caving under pressure. On the contrary, she’d taken the lead. She’d been more than decisive at his door yesterday afternoon. Far more than he’d managed. All he’d done this trip was moon around feeling misunderstood. Last night Shirley had been a wake-up call. A healthy reminder that short, passionate affairs were his past and his future. And roughly what he had a right to expect, given the kind of man he was. If she’d gone on being enigmatic and chaste and so bloody uninterested he might have started getting unhealthily obsessed. Clouded and off-track. Started doubting the lessons of his life.

      He was a man who did best with his emotions firmly holstered.

      She was a woman who had impeccable timing and a sense of the dramatic. Just because she played him better than most didn’t mean it wasn’t still a play. Hell, he admired her all the more for it. That kind of sense for people would do very well at his firm. Below the intrigue and the professional disguise, Shirley was a woman just like any other—infinitely less inhibited as the night wore on and she let herself open to him—and hard to walk down the hall away from. But basically made of the same cloth.

      And, frankly, he was relieved.

      If she’d been cut from any other fabric he might have had a much harder time walking away from her. Not just down the hall to the shower but away.

      He built himself a decent soap lather and then slopped it everywhere that mattered. Rather more roughly than was warranted.

      Again—why wasn’t he celebrating? He had a gorgeous, flammable woman in his bed offering him a no-strings out, and the significant pleasure that he gleaned from being right. Last night had been in their future from the first time she had let him touch her.

      So why would he really rather be wrong?

      Shirley let her breath out slowly and evenly as Hayden’s footsteps diminished with distance. She sagged back against the wall.

      What was she doing?

      Had she truly gone all friends-with-benefits on him? Hayden? The man who’d made an art form of the one-night stand? As if there was any other way of doing things in his head. She might just as likely wander up to the bridge of the Paxos and tell Captain Konstantinos the difference between port and starboard.

      Part of what she’d said was true—she was here because she wanted to be. But he’d looked so earnest when he’d asked her what had changed after Queenstown, and then so sick when she had assured him how much she wanted to be here.

       Way to play all your cards at once, Shirley.

      But done was done. And there were worse outcomes, for her, than having him believe none of this was a big deal. Though it was. A very big deal. She might have made her decision suddenly but she hadn’t done it lightly. She knew exactly what she’d be sacrificing by being with him. But she hoped her dignity would be partially salvaged by making it clear that them being together was not because of any influence he’d applied, but because it was her choice. What she wanted.

      And was it ever.

      She’d stood there in the corridor and tried to imagine them going to their separate rooms and maintaining a careful distance all the way back to Australia, the way they had on the way out. And she couldn’t do it. Too much had passed between them.

      She’d hung, upside-down, from that old bridge and curled her fingers around his as he pulled her into his strong orbit and she’d known there and then that they would be together one way or another.

      Her subconscious just hadn’t updated the rest of her until the last moment.

      And maybe it had been wise not to if it had had a clue of the ferocious charge that would surge between them once she opened the proverbial floodgates. The moment her decision had been made and his lips had touched hers … she’d been lost.

      Lost enough to still feel it now.

      Lost enough to want more the moment he got back.

      But sane enough not to let it show.

      Ever.

      Four days