When she finally straightened, she found Will watching her with an unreadable expression. The look was oddly intense, and she forced a smile to lighten the moment even as she wanted to beg him to kiss her in the rain with the Pacific Ocean crashing noisily in the background.
With every additional moment she spent with Will, she feared more and more that there was nothing easy and casual about what they were doing. Every look, every kiss hinted at more.
And it scared the crap out of her.
“Tell me you brought some food in one of those huge coolers,” Brynn said, trying to lighten the strangely intimate mood.
The old, easy Will returned instantly as he pushed back from the rail and headed inside. “Of course I brought food. Nothing organic, though, and I don’t want to hear one peep about preservatives or nitrates.”
“Exactly how long have you been planning this?” Brynn asked as she trailed after him.
For all his yammering about spontaneity, it was clear that Will had put a decent amount of thought into this little getaway. By the time she’d hurriedly showered and dressed that morning, he’d already loaded her suitcase into his car along with a couple of coolers and his own black leather bag.
The car ride had been complete with a road-mix sound track and a thermos of hot chocolate, and the guy hadn’t once looked at a map to know where they were going. Spontaneous my ass.
Brynn had never heard of Moclips before now, but from the looks of it, it was one of those cute Washington coastal towns that she’d always meant to visit on a whim. Instead, she’d ended up going on elaborate vacations that took eighteen months to plan.
Even the house they were staying in was perfect. From the outside it had looked sort of rustic and plain, but the owner had obviously spared no expense on the inside. Granite countertops in the kitchen, rich dark leather sofas in the living room, and the biggest fireplace she’d ever seen.
She hadn’t seen the bedroom yet, but she’d bet big money that there was a big bed.
“How’d you say you found this place?”
Will opened one of the coolers and pulled out a couple of sandwiches. Brynn’s fingers fumbled a little as she opened the sandwich he gave her and found her favorite combination of all time: turkey, cucumber, and Brie.
It’s not a sandwich that one accidentally threw together. And she was reasonably sure that she’d never told him her favorite sandwich. And yet he’d known.
Her spine tingled a little in warning.
“One of my biz-dev guys bought the house for next to nothing a few years ago and fixed it up. There’s been an open-ended invitation for a while, but I’ve never taken him up on it.”
“You say that like it’s supposed to mean something to me,” Brynn said around a mouthful of sandwich. “‘Biz-dev’…?”
“Business development,” Will said, unwrapping his own sandwich. Brynn had the odd urge to know what kind it was. To know him like he apparently knew her. She pushed the urge aside. Flings didn’t need to know each other’s food preferences.
She shook her head. “Business development? Could you be any more vague?”
He gave her a funny look. “Sounds to me like you might actually be intereste
d in my career, Princess.”
Brynn lifted a shoulder, feeling oddly embarrassed. “I’d be interested if you had one.”
For a second Will looked completely stunned, and then his face registered something else entirely as he set down his untouched sandwich and stared at her. “You think I don’t have a career?”
The crushed expression on his face paralyzed Brynn. My God, I don’t know him at all.
“I, um…I guess I never thought about it. I mean, you obviously have money, but you never seem to work. I figured it was from an inheritance or taking a shortcut somewhere.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Taking a shortcut?”
The sandwich that had a minute ago tasted like heaven kept wanting to get stuck in her throat. Why had she taken the conversation in this direction? “I mean, you move all over the place whenever you want, you don’t wear suits, you don’t work nine-to-five…”
“Well, gosh, if I don’t have tassels on my shoes and a company-sponsored 401(k), then I must be an unemployable slacker, right?”
“No!” Maybe. “I guess I just never understood what it is that you do. How you make your money…”
His eyes snagged hers and held. “You could have asked.”