Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling (29 page)

L
EE WONDERED WHAT HE WAS
doing driving down Collins Avenue in the company of a ditzy blonde who sported a jewel in one nostril and talked nonstop.

“Like I said, at the juiceteria we have avocado smoothies, strawberry fizzes, and something you might really enjoy, limeade made from Key limes. You know, those are the little limes, the
ones they make Key lime pie from. I can make really good Key lime pie if you want to come over for dinner sometime. For today, maybe you’d like to try the passion fruit smoothie. I’ll make it for you myself. Maybe you’d like that. Would you?”

Lee made a noise that he hoped was noncommittal. He was already contemplating how he was going to engineer his escape from this woman. Despite her considerable pneumatic assets, spending even one hour with her would be like walking forty miles in bad socks. But for the moment he was trapped, and all because he had wanted to see this juiceteria and compare it with what he had planned for Grassy Creek.

“Here we are,” Mandi said. “Drive down this alley. Mine’s the first parking space.” He parked the car, and, treating him to much tossing of hair and swinging of hips, Mandi preceded him into a little hole-in-the-wall place with scarcely enough room to turn around. It had a bar equipped with stools, and a narrow counter where you could stand and watch people passing by on the street while you drank your juice. Grassy Creek was going to be much more upscale and health-food oriented.

“What will it be?” Mandi said after elbowing her assistant aside. “The coconut? The passion fruit? Although if you choose that one, it might make you more passionate than you would like,” and she winked.

“I’ll take the coconut,” he said, studying the decor of the place. It was simple, with walls painted a bright Pepto-Bismol pink and gray tile floors. On one wall hung a framed poster showing an animal—it appeared to be a donkey—lying back in a beach chair with its hind legs crossed and blissfully drinking from a glass adorned with a tiny pink paper umbrella. His Grassy Creek store would have a
scenic mural behind the counter and elegant light fixtures, not fluorescent lamps.

The roar of the juice machine interrupted his thoughts, and in a minute or so Mandi slid a glass across the counter toward him.

“I don’t suppose you serve wheat grass juice?” he asked while he could get a word in edgewise.

She raised her eyebrows. “No. What’s that?”

“Oh, a health food thing,” he said before trying out his drink.

“Health food,” Mandi said disparagingly, and then she was off on a new tack, one that seemed to be pointing toward the possibility of seeing him when she got off work.

He ignored her, drank half of his drink, decided that it was too sweet by far, and insisted on paying for it. This seemed to hurt Mandi’s feelings, but he figured the couple of dollars he gave her were well spent on research. He had gained valuable knowledge about the competition hereabouts.

But now he was finished with business and could concentrate on pleasure. He would head back to the Blue Moon where he’d try again to connect with Azure. He’d been surprised when she’d refused to accompany him when he left with Mandi. Surely she knew that he had no interest in anyone but her. Didn’t she? He’d been clear enough in his intentions from the very beginning. Hadn’t he?

Maybe today’s tarot reading had scared her off. Or perhaps Mandi’s mindless prattle about speedy orgasms and phallic symbols had offended Azure. He had an idea she’d be a tigress in bed, though.

The thought was intriguing. He wouldn’t disappoint her in the lovemaking department. That is, when he got a
chance to show her that he could—what was it? Oh, yes, “make women ecstatic with his expertise.”

He grinned to himself, already anticipating his own ecstasy as
well as hers.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL!

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Not-So-Charming Paco

Dorrie, I’m going to be staying in Miami Beach for a while because I won’t be meeting with Leonardo Santori until Friday night. I might stay over the weekend, too. Guess what—I’ve met someone. And guess what else—you can tell Paco I’ve met someone. I swear, I can’t figure out for the life of me why I ever thought Paco was charming in the first place.

More later—

A.J.

P.S. Yes, I’ve kissed him, and no, he didn’t turn into a prince.

A
ROUND TWO IN THE AFTERNOON
, Azure was on her way back to the Blue Moon after shlepping a stack of file folders over to a harried Paulette at the Rent-a-Yenta office when the red Mustang barreled around the corner. Lee swung it over to the curb and grinned at her, his smile as bright as the sun winking off the chrome wheels.

“Hi, gorgeous. Want to go snorkeling?”

She stopped in her tracks. With his crooked grin and
tousled hair, he looked about as scrumptious as a man could look. Still, it wouldn’t do to appear too eager.

“Why should I?” she said.

“Because it’s fun. Because I have snorkels and swim fins in the trunk of the car. And because what else do you have to do?”

“Now that you mention it, not much.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not planning on taking me to Haulover Beach, are you?”

He laughed. “No, I’ll never go there again. I promise.”

He looked so appealing that she found herself smiling, unable to stay angry with him. After last night, and she still remembered exactly how his kiss had broken down all the barriers between them, the only thing on her mind was resuming where they had left off.

“Hop in. You look beautiful, by the way.” He leaned over and opened the passenger-side door for her, and without giving this jaunt another moment’s thought, she slid in beside him. The car smelled of sun-warmed leather, of Lee, of adventure.

“Where’s Mandi?” she asked.

He angled the car back into traffic. “I left her at work.”

She turned toward him. “So. You’re into providing a free taxi service for single women?”

He slid an amused look at her. “Did I say it was free?”

She enjoyed parrying with him. “You mean there’s a price to pay?”

“Isn’t there always?”

“Now that you mention it, maybe so.”

“Are you
interested in the price you’ll have to pay today?”

She raised her eyebrows, pretending to consider this. “I’d say so.”

“First let me explain that I wish you had come with Mandi and me.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t think of a snappy reply. “How was the smoothie?”

“Fine, but I came to the Blue Moon today to see you, not Mandi.”

“You didn’t act like it. And besides, I thought you wanted Goldy to read the tarot cards for you.”

“Believe me, the tarot was secondary.” He would have loved to share with her his reason for accompanying Mandi to the juiceteria, but he couldn’t do that without mentioning wheat grass. If he did that, she’d immediately know more about him than he wanted her to know.

“I guess I could have been more forceful about asking you to come with us to the juice bar,” he said. He’d be glad when this playacting stint was over and he could talk with her about his plans for Grassy Creek. He hoped she’d be as enthusiastic as he was.

“I still wouldn’t have gone,” she said.

He glanced over at her and, taking note of the stubborn set of her jaw, decided to change subjects.

“What did
you
think of Goldy’s tarot reading?”

At this, she softened. “I’m not into that kind of thing, but Goldy is a sweetheart and I don’t mind going along with it.”

“Have you ever had yours read?”

“No, and I doubt that I ever will. What if she declares that I’m going to be kidnapped by Elvis worshipers, and in a spaceship yet?”

He smiled. “Maybe it’s better than being kidnapped by me in a red convertible. That’s a very attractive outfit, by the way. I recognize it from the store window.” He thought
he saw the hint of a blush spreading upward from her neck—a very graceful neck, he thought.

“Paulette and I went shopping, and she insisted that I buy this. I’ll never wear it again.”

“You don’t go to the beach when you’re in Boston?”

“A group of us rent a house on Cape Cod for a week in the summer. It’s not like here, though. Not nearly as hot, for one thing, and not as—colorful.”

She herself looked very colorful today, Lee thought. The yellow bikini showed through the transparent wrap, and although her hair was piled haphazardly on top of her head, most of it had fallen out of its clip and swung around her face.

“I’m glad you decided to come with me today,” he said.

She blew out a long breath, treating him to a hint of a smile. “I only hope I won’t live to regret it. Where are we going?”

“There’s a park at the end of Miami Beach. Fleck suggested it.”

“Who’s Fleck?”

Damn! He’d slipped. It was hard keeping his guard up when what he wanted to do was get to know her better. “Fleck’s a friend. Does a lot of snorkeling and diving.” Which was why there were snorkels and swim fins in the trunk of the Mustang.

“I haven’t been snorkling since I went to the Virgin Islands with my friend Dorrie on vacation a couple of years ago,” she said. Suddenly a thought surfaced out of nowhere. “I didn’t bring my cell phone,” she said. “Or my PalmPilot.”

“So what?”

“So I might miss an important call. I
might need to check my schedule.”

“We have no schedule, and if you miss any calls, so what?”

She pondered this. “So what,” she repeated. “You’re right. So what?” She laughed again, something that she was prone to do when she was with Lee.

When they arrived at the park and he had pulled the car into a parking slot, she went around to the trunk to help him with the equipment.

“Here you go,” he said, handing her a pair of swim fins and a snorkel.

“Want me to carry the towels?” she asked.

“No, I’ve got them.” He tossed them across his shoulder.

The parking lot smelled of hot sun-baked asphalt, suntan lotion, and sea air. They’d had to park a long way from the beach, and when they finally reached the sand, there were several Latino couples with children not far away. A curious crab peered at them from the edge of its hole, then scuttled out of sight. Out on the sun-spangled surface of the bay, someone cut a frothy wake on a jet ski.

Azure helped Lee spread the towels on the sand, and Lee removed his shirt. At first Azure felt self-conscious about unwrapping the pareo and exposing herself to his eyes in full sunlight, but when she did, he didn’t stare and he didn’t ogle. That earned him a few points in her estimation.

He tossed her a swim mask. “This one should fit,” he said.

She tested the mask and found it satisfactory. Then she tugged the swim fins on and stomped around experimentally, scaring away a flock of seagulls who were looking for a handout. “I feel like one of those sea monsters in old Japanese science fiction movies,” she said jokingly, and he grinned at her through
his own swim mask and retorted, “I feel like I just stepped off the spaceship that the Elvis worshipers are expecting,” which made her laugh because he did look like something otherworldly.

Once they were in the water, she became more confident. She was an excellent swimmer, and she swam year round at her health club in Boston. Here the water was so warm and clear, and the salt water made her feel light and buoyant in her own skin. She adjusted the snorkel to fit her mouth and submerged, following Lee as he paddled toward the rocks of the manmade jetty.

At first they didn’t see any fish at all, only a discarded fishing lure and an old lawnmower tire. But as they hovered over the rocks, Lee motioned toward a black-and white striped fish, and soon there were at least a hundred, their scales flashing iridescent as the school surrounded them. The currents stirred by their passing felt like silk against her skin. Before long, a bigger fish swooped out of a crevice in hopes of finding his dinner. The school of striped fish scattered, and the big fish hunkered down between the rocks, lurking in wait for his next opportunity.

Before she had ever gone snorkeling that first time in the Virgin Islands, Azure had thought that the underwater world might look something like scenes out of the Disney movie,
The Little Mermaid.
It wasn’t like that at all. The denizens of the sea were reclusive, and if you suspected one was hiding, you had to wait it out, all the while looking as little like a preying fish as you could.

Azure found that she and Lee could communicate by hand gestures, pointing when there was something unusual to see, motioning in the direction toward which one of them wanted to swim. Once she caught him staring at her from behind his face mask and wondered
how she looked to him; underwater, did she look fat or too pale, or did she seem sexy?

But it was easy to forget her own self-consciousness, and in the end, it didn’t matter anyway. In the end, the only important thing was that they had a good time.

After Lee at last motioned for them to swim toward shore, they surfaced side by side in the shallows. Azure pulled off her snorkel and mask. “Did you see that big stingray near the large boulder?”

“At first when I spotted it lying there half buried in the sand I thought it was a piece of old plastic. When it skedaddled away, it stirred up so much mud that I almost couldn’t tell what it was. How about that blue fish hiding behind that log right after we saw the stingray?”

Azure grinned. “I almost stepped on him before I came up to clear my mask.”

They splashed through the shallows onto the shell-strewn sand, where Azure eased herself down on the edge of a towel and pulled off her swim fins. Lee threw himself down on the beach blanket beside her.

From where they sat, they could see the ship channel leading from the Port of Miami to the ocean. A huge ocean liner was passing by, its decks lined with tourists. Azure had never been on such a big ship; she wondered if she’d get seasick. Feeling totally relaxed, she lay back on the blanket and lifted her face to the last rays of the late afternoon sun. “There were lots of fish. More than I expected,” she said lazily.

“Not as—”

Lee caught himself before saying that there hadn’t been as many as he’d seen at the Great Barrier Reef off Australia
last year. “Not as plentiful as I’ve seen in the Keys,” he amended.

“Have you been there often?” Of course he would have; the Florida Keys were made for people who loved the sun and the surf.

“I spent Christmases there when I was a kid,” Lee said, biting off the words in a way that made her open her eyes in surprise. He was gazing out over the water, a flinty look in his eyes, and she raised herself on her elbows to study his expression.

“And now? Don’t you go there now?”

He forced a smile. “My parents used to drag me down to Key West when I’d rather have been home in Michigan going ice skating and skiing with my pals.”

“You’re an only child?”

He nodded, and he still didn’t look comfortable with this topic.

Azure, coming from a big roistering family with few rules and fewer restrictions, couldn’t imagine growing up all alone. She struggled to think of a consoling remark, but Lee went on talking.

“We’d spend the winter holidays in a rented cottage, and my parents went out every night with their friends. There were always baby-sitters or nannies, but I was lonely.”

“Your parents—where do they live, Lee?”

“Mom died when I was a teenager, and my dad lives in Grosse Point, Michigan, in a huge mausoleum of a house where I hate to visit. We’re not on good terms.”

“I’m sorry,” Azure said, and she was regarding at him with such sympathy that Lee wanted to tell her all of it—how his father had sent him to expensive prep schools and been livid when Lee dropped out of college to start Dot.Musix, how his father had never forgiven him for becoming a huge success despite the dire predictions he’d made
concerning his son’s future.

But as Lee Sanders he couldn’t tell Azure those things.

Azure fell back onto the blanket and closed her eyes, listening to the swish of the waves upon the shore, the cries of gulls overhead, the rumble of a boat motor far away. Lee was quiet beside her, seemingly lost in his memories.

When he hadn’t spoken in a long while, she opened her eyes and discovered that she was gazing directly into Lee’s clear gray ones, which were thoughtful and filled with—what? She wasn’t sure. Certainly she hadn’t expected this close scrutiny, which seemed ill-timed. Suddenly feeling too exposed, she flipped over on her front, turning her head to the side with the intention of pillowing it on her crossed arms, but that only put her mouth within a whisper of Lee’s.

Before she could turn away, her breath caught in her throat as the air seemed to scintillate between them, seemed to inexplicably draw them into a magical sphere. And then, before she could remember how to breathe, Lee brushed aside a wet strand of hair with one finger and then let that finger graze down her cheek until it tipped her head toward his.

She felt something akin to relief as his mouth found hers.

She’d been aware since last night of a certain edgy heat that would not go away, and she knew it wouldn’t take much to whip that heat into an all-consuming flame. As illogical as this attraction was, she wanted to bring it to its logical conclusion. Not here, not now—but somewhere, and soon.

He kissed with great skill, and he tasted of salt, of excitement and possibility and heartfelt longing. Stunned by her own rush of feeling, she opened her eyes and stole a glimpse of his face intent above her, caught the concentration of his expression and
also the passion that he didn’t bother to hide.

As he ended the kiss, she pulled away. Then the children from down the beach ran past and sprayed them with sand, effectively ending the special moment.