At least, that was how Tad seemed to her as he came strolling toward her, his long legs and firm body filling out that fitted black suit with the red satin tie. She could have worn her jacket, after all.
She could pretend he wasn’t as
hot as he seemed, except that she’d seen those legs. Knew how muscular and firm they were. Had seen the boxers, too...
Were they blue tonight?
Shivering with the need to know, she took the hand he held out to her and walked with him to his SUV, not caring that the slit in her dress rode up to the silken line of her black panties as she climbed inside.
She caught him looking. And smiled. Noticing how he pulled the corner of his jacket closed.
Being with a man, being in want, being wanted, was delicious. If this was healthy living, she was all for it.
After he started the engine, it was quiet inside, dark and intimate. He reached for the radio controls, finding a streaming station that played soft music with no commercials.
“Dinner was delicious, thank you,” she said as a love song that had come out a couple of years before filled the car.
She’d heard the song a hundred times. Knew the words. It had never meant a darn thing to her.
Suddenly every word was etching itself on her body.
And she got nervous.
She wasn’t in love. Couldn’t be in love.
But she was in a whole lot of like. Infatuation, even. Respect and a ton of lust...
And didn’t know squat about casual sex. Not personally.
“You want to stop at the beach? We could take off our shoes and walk in the sand,” he suggested as they drew closer to her part of town.
A reprieve. And romantic, too.
“We could stop at my place, pour some wine into plastic cups and walk over.” She’d have to change shoes. Or go barefoot.
“You want more wine?”
Not as badly as she wanted him.
She nodded.
He stopped at her house. And poured the wine while she changed into flip-flops. He got a pair of his own out of the back of his SUV as they passed it on their way down the driveway.
“From my gym bag,” he told her. “I don’t go barefoot in the sauna.”
Neither did she...when she’d gone to the sauna back in college. Her roommate at the time, a girl she’d only lived with for one semester, had teased her about it. That was the first time she’d gone to college. She silently took his hand as they started down the street.
* * *
Tad was about ready to explode. He’d clearly been without sex for too long, and he was having a hard time thinking about anything else. Found his thoughts thinning as though the synapses in his brain had gone numb. His penis had not. Darkness hid the evidence, for which he was thankful.
But he had to keep his wits about him or risk making a huge mistake. He couldn’t afford another one of those. Which was why he was carrying a cup of wine but not drinking from it.
He didn’t want to lose his closeness with her. And not because of her father. But because she’d come to mean more to him in eight short weeks than he could fathom. His life, a life that had been like a spinning top, had finally settled in a little beach town in California, thanks to the woman walking beside him in the dark, holding his hand.
And yet staying in Santa Raquel wasn’t a reality he could seriously consider. More and more he knew that he needed to get back to work. That quitting what he did—putting himself on the line to save lives—would destroy part of who he was. He needed his work.
And he needed her happy, too. Such an odd concept, to care so much about a person that his or her happiness made you feel...satisfied.