Dead Calm. Lindsay Longford

even the roots of his wet hair.

      He wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d swung around and seen a string of black, scorched footprints following him in the sand.

      Flopped on the wet sand and facing the storm surge, she didn’t see him approaching her.

      It gave him that extra second he needed.

      It gave him the element of surprise he wanted.

      Relief washed over him and left him feeling like a yellow-bellied coward as he pitched his voice lower than the booming waves. “Sophie.”

      She leapt to her feet. The board bounced to the sand, kicked up a shell. “Finnegan? Finnegan?” She was breathing hard, her breasts lifting with her questions. “What—where did you come from? And why?” Strands of wet hair clung flatly to her head, lay against her cheek as she stared at him. “Judah. Here?”

      “Yeah. Me. Here.” He stooped and picked up her board, handed it to her.

      “Thanks,” she said automatically, her face crumpled with confusion. She held the board close to her, and that pulse in her throat was going ninety miles an hour. “You—”

      “Scared you?” He’d like to scare her, just a little, just enough to make her drop that brittle mask she wore around him. He wanted to see her without all that clever self-possession, just once.

      “Scared? No, no, you startled me. That’s all. I thought no one was here.” She lifted the board, tamped it onto the sand.

      “How’s your shoulder?”

      He shrugged. He hadn’t thought about his stitches once since he’d arrived at the beach. “It’s okay.”

      “Good. Do you need any pain meds?”

      He must have made a sound.

      “No, tough guy, I guess you wouldn’t. Need anything, that is.” She bounced the board hard against the sand, shifted.

      “So, Finnegan, exactly how long have you been here?”

      “Long enough to see you eat pie on that wave.”

      She glanced toward the Gulf, gave a small, delighted smile. “Big waves for the Gulf. I hadn’t expected anything like this.” From the east behind her, light was beginning to stain the sand, tint the water a softer shade of gray. “That beast stripped my rash guard off, right over my head and arms. Gone.” She paused before turning her attention back to him. “I hit the backwash. It popped me right off. I couldn’t hold it.”

      “Too bad.”

      “That’s surfing for you.” She looked out at the Gulf. “You play in God’s ballpark, you pay the price.” Absently she rubbed her elbow, calm as all get-out.

      Except for that pulse going like a bat out of hell.

      Hair flattened against her head, she was a sleek, otter-like silhouette against the lightening gray in her shiny black neoprene. He wanted to sluice the water dripping from her hair with his hands, he wanted to slide those same hands, wet with salt water, down the smooth, shiny curves of her, he wanted to taste that tiny pulse beating like a trapped butterfly under her skin—

      She glanced back at him, frowned, the little pulse beat going lickety-split. “So. You’ve been here a while.”

      “I have.”

      He knew the second she regained control. It was caused by a tone in his voice. Or the look on his face. But the confusion softening her face disappeared, the restless shifting back and forth ceased as she registered his comment. She narrowed her eyes. With a quick assessment, she considered his wet clothes, sopping hair, and the seaweed still clinging to his worn jeans. “Looks like you ate pie yourself.”

      “Not me. You couldn’t pay me enough to go out there at this time of day. I sure do admire a shark’s efficiency, but I’m not right fond of having breakfast with them. Or being their breakfast. Didn’t you know this was feeding time, Yankee Girl?”

      “Not much of a risk on this coast. Different if we were down in the Keys.”

      “There’s always a risk.”

      “Hey, Finnegan, life’s full of risks. Don’t you know that?” Her laugh was a ripple of sound that furred along his nerve endings and made him catch his breath.

      “Remember a couple of years ago? That huge migration of sharks in the Gulf off Tampa? Hundreds of them?”

      She shrugged. “Surfing’s a controllable risk. I like surfing these fat storm waves. They’re as close as I can get to Hawaii. I like dawn patrol. And I like taking risks.” She ran her hands over her hair, spraying water onto his bare feet.

      “Do you now?” The drops burned against his skin. An errant scent drifted to him and it took him a second to realize that it was the scent of her skin flavored by Gulf and an unknown tension.

      “I’m an adrenaline junkie. Otherwise, I’d have chosen some other profession.”

      “And here I’ve been thinking it was pure compassion that put you in your doctor whities.”

      The wind carried the light sound of her laugh behind them, to the east and the still-shrouded sun. “Oh, come on, Finnegan. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Cops feed off that rush. Isn’t that fine testosterone rush why most of them go into the job? Isn’t it why you became a fine boyo in blue? And don’t try to play the innocent,” she mocked as he hesitated. “Because I know better.”

      “I never thought about it.”

      “You should…think about it.”

      “Are we still talking about cops and robbers? Because all my fine detecting skills pick up something else here,” he drawled.

      “Really? How perceptive of you.” She wrung water out of her hair, sent it spattering again onto his feet. “By the way, where are your shoes, Finnegan? Or are you the original barefoot boy with cheek of tan?” Her eyelashes sparkled with drops of water. Giving off a heat of their own, her eyes glittered.

      “I’m a Florida cracker. Of course I’m barefoot.” He gave in, yielded to temptation and that siren heat. Reaching out, making himself move slowly, he brushed his forefinger along the edge of her lashes, let it skate slowly down her cheek until his finger rested in the hollow of her neck, just above the zipper of her neoprene vest.

      The leap of her vein against his finger sent a painful pulse straight south. He stepped closer, stepped into the heat rising from her.

      “Where did the seaweed come from, Finnegan?” Her breath puffed against his chin as he dipped to her face.

      “Same place you did, Dr. Sugar.”

      She stepped closer. Against him, through his clothes, through his jacket, she was a cold, supple shape moving in his arms.

      And then, with a breath, hot skin everywhere his fingers slid. Cold neoprene and hot skin.

      Unbelievable, the heat radiating from her.

      From her cheeks, from the lobes of her ears.

      All that silky skin should have been cold, blue-tinged.

      Yet it blistered the palms of his hands as he cupped her face and tasted the salt lingering on her eyelashes. Dimly he wondered, why?

      But the clean, salty smell of her skin spun him away from his memories of the night and its ugliness, sent him spiraling into a place where there was light and peace. “Delicious,” he murmured, absorbed in the scent and taste of Sophie.

      He thought she would hesitate, expected her to step back, figured she would push him away. He hoped she would. But her eyes darkened, the pupils huge as she curled one black-clad arm around his neck and pulled him to her.

      “Share, Finnegan,” she murmured into his mouth, her lips soft and pliant, as soft and pliant as the woman