Summer Love: The Best Mistake / Impulse

There had been a few times in his life when he had seen and desired on instinct alone. What he had seen and desired, he had taken. Just as he would take her. But when he took, he meant to keep.

Carefully he stepped back. “Maybe neither of us has a choice.” He dipped his hands into his pockets. “And if I touch you again, here, now, I won’t give you one.”

Unable to pretend, knowing they were shaking, she pushed her hands through her hair. She didn’t bother to disguise the tremor in her voice. She wouldn’t have known how. “I won’t want one.” She saw his eyes darken quickly, dangerously, but she didn’t know his hands were balled into fists, straining.

“You make it difficult for me.”

A long, shuddering breath escaped her. No one had ever wanted her this way. Probably no one ever would again. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”

“No.” Deliberately he relaxed his hands. “I don’t think you do. That’s one of the things about you I find most intriguing. I will have you, Rebecca.” He saw something flicker in her eyes…. Excitement? Panic? A combination of the two, perhaps. “Because I’m sure of it, because I know you’re sure of it, I’ll do my best to give you a little more time.”

Her natural humor worked through the sliver of unease she felt. “I’m not sure whether I should thank you politely or run like hell.”

He grinned, surprising himself, then flicked a finger down her cheek. “I wouldn’t advise running,matia mou.I’d only catch you.”

She was sure of that, too. One look at his face, even with the smile that softened it, and she knew. Kind, yes, but with a steely underlying ruthlessness. “Then I’ll go with the thank-you.”

“You’re welcome.” Patience, he realized, would have to be developed. And quickly. “Would you like to swim? There’s a bay. We’re nearly there.”

The water might, just might, cool her off. “I’d love it.”

Chapter 5

The water was cool and mirror-clear. Rebecca lowered herself into it with a sigh of pure pleasure. Back in Philadelphia she would have been at her desk, calculator clicking, the jacket of her neat business suit carefully smoothed over the back of her chair. Her figures would always add up, her forms would always be properly filed.

The dependable, efficient Miss Malone.

Instead, she was swimming in a crystal-clear bay, letting the water cool and the sun heat. Ledgers and accounts were worlds away. Here, as close as a handspan, was a man who was teaching her everything she would ever want to know about needs, desires, and the fragility of the heart.

He couldn’t know it, she thought. She doubted she’d ever have the courage to tell him that he was the only one who had ever made her tremble and burn. A man as physically aware as he would only be uncomfortable knowing he held an inexperienced woman in his arms.

The water lapped around her with a sound as quiet as her own sigh. But he didn’t know, because when she was in his arms she didn’t feel awkward and inexperienced. She felt beautiful, desirable and reckless.

With a laugh, Rebecca dipped under the surface to let the water, and the freedom, surround her. Who would have believed it?

“Does it always take so little to make you laugh?”

Rebecca ran a hand over her slicked-back hair. Stephen was treading water beside her, smoothly, hardly making a ripple. His skin was dark gold, glistening-wet. His hair was streaked by the sun and dampened by the water, which was almost exactly the color of his eyes. She had to suppress an urge to just reach out and touch.

“A secluded inlet, a beautiful sky, an interesting man.” With another sigh, she kicked her legs up so that she could float. “It doesn’t seem like so little to me.” She studied the vague outline of the mountains, far out of reach. “I promised myself that no matter where I went, what I did, I’d never take anything for granted again.”

There was something in the way she said it, some hint of sadness, that pulled at him. The urge to comfort wasn’t completely foreign in him, but he hadn’t had much practice at it. “Was there a man who hurt you?”

Her lips curved at that, but he couldn’t know that she was laughing at herself. Naturally, she’d dated. They had been polite, cautious evenings, usually with little interest on either side. She’d been dull, or at least she had never worked up the nerve to spread her wings. Once or twice, when she’d felt a tug, she’d been too shy, too much the efficient Rebecca Malone, to do anything about it.

With him, everything was different. Because she loved him. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but she loved him as much as any woman could love any man.

“No. There’s no one.” She closed her eyes, trusting the water to carry her. “When my parents died, it hurt. It hurt so badly that I suppose I pulled back from life. I thought it was important that I be a responsible adult, even though I wasn’t nearly an adult yet.”

Strange that she hadn’t thought of it quite that way until she’d stopped being obsessively responsible. Stranger still was how easy it was to tell him what she’d never even acknowledged herself.

“My aunt Jeannie was kind and considerate and loving, but she’d forgotten what it was like to be a young girl. Suddenly I realized I’d missed being young, lazy, foolish, all the things everyone’s entitled to be at least once. I decided to make up for it.”

Her hair was spread out and drifting on the water. Her eyes were closed, and her face was sheened with water. Not beautiful, Stephen told himself. She was too angular for real beauty. But she was fascinating… in looks, in philosophy… more, in the open-armed way she embraced whatever crossed her path.

He found himself looking around the inlet as he hadn’t bothered to look at anything in years. He could see the sun dancing on the surface, could see the ripples spreading and growing from the quiet motion of their bodies. Farther away was the narrow curving strip of white beach, deserted now, but for a few birds fluttering over the sand. It was quiet, almost unnaturally quiet, the only sound the soft, monotonous slap of water against sand. And he was relaxed, totally, mind and body. Perhaps he, too, had forgotten what it was like to be young and foolish.

On impulse he put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her under.