“Sounds good to me,” Tyler said heartily. “Can you wait for me to take a quick dip, too?”
“Sure!” Faith said. Then she looked hesitantly at Hailey. “Can’t we, Hailey?”
If Hailey refused either to wait for him or go to dinner, she would have to make explanations to Faith. At that moment she didn’t feel up to doing more than nodding her head in agreement “Sure, that’s fine.”
Tyler’s eyes were probing hers, but he looked away to chuck Faith under the chin before he said, “I’ll be right back.”
In minutes he had returned, entering the atrium by a side door and walking toward the pool with all the confidence and nonchalance of a pagan god. And almost as nakedly.
His swimming trunks were black with white piping around his trim legs. They hugged his hips with a fit that made Hailey want to stare when she knew propriety dictated she should glance away quickly. The muscles of his thighs were lean but hinted at tremendous strength beneath his hair-roughened skin.
Hailey tried to avert her eyes from his torso, but was powerless to do so. He had the physique of a man half his age; his maturity only heightened his virility. His shoulders and chest were muscular, but not bulky. His ribs and waist were trim, but not thin. He looked powerful, but was graceful as he executed a knife-blade dive that barely made a ripple on the surface of the water.
Hailey had gone to sit in the whirlpool at one corner of the poolroom. The atrium ceiling was three stories above her, yet the indoor pool with its grotto design, complete with waterfall and lavalike rocks, had an aura of intimacy about it. The tropical plants around the pool grew in profusion in the steamy atmosphere.
Tyler and Faith were playing and splashing boisterously in the larger pool. Hailey lay back in the hot, bubbly water and closed her eyes. Projected on the back of her lids was an image of Tyler. She knew what it was like to touch that dark, springy hair that grew at the top of his chest. But what of that narrow, silky line that grew straight as an arrow down his stomach and disappeared into the waistband of his trunks? What was it like to touch that?
“I’d like to be inside your head and see what naughty thought has brought such a sublime expression to your face.”
Her eyes sprang open, and she was disconcerted to see that he was in the whirlpool with her. The churning water had kept her from hearing him as he stepped in. He sat down beside her on the underwater bench and whispered, “In fact, I’d like to be inside you—period.”
She struggled to sit up straight and was almost unbalanced by the force of the swirling water. “Don’t talk to me like that!” she hissed.
He smiled lazily. “Why?”
“Why! Because we’re in a public place, that’s why.”
“We have the place to ourselves.”
She looked around in desperation and saw that he was right. Where had everyone gone? “Your daughter is here.”
“She’s playing under the waterfall. She can’t hear us.”
“Still, you … Oh! What is that?”
“My hand.”
His boldness shocked her. “Tyler …” His name was spoken like a verbal caress and not the reprimand she had intended. Frantically she groped for the hand that wouldn’t be captured or deterred. Where was all that cool condescension she was going to treat him to? That well-planned contempt? The disparaging glances? Within minutes of his return he had her once again at his mercy—confused, breathless.
“Tyler, please. You shouldn’t.”
“Why?” he asked against the corner of her mouth.
“Because … because …” She searched her mind for a plausible reason but could find none. It felt so good to have his hand squeezing the tender flesh on the inside of her thigh. His fingers moved without discretion or shame, gliding over her skin as sleekly as did the soothing water. Her eyes closed and her head fell back against her shoulders. Unwilling to admit total surrender, she still denied his right to take such liberties. “Because you shouldn’t,” she argued lamely.
“You can touch any part of me you want to.”
That intriguing line of hair that ran from his chest to abdomen came unbidden to her mind. Her eyelids fluttered open to see him staring down into her face. One thick brow was raised in an amused query, while his lips twitched with controlled laughter. “Do you already have some part in mind?”
She struggled against him. His insolence infuriated her, and all the pent-up anger that had been simmering inside her boiled to the surface with volcanic force. “Let me go.” Extricating herself from his persistent hands, she managed to stand and walk up the shallow steps of the pool. “From now on, keep your hands to yourself,” she said with venom.
She waved to Faith from the side of the pool. “Come on out so we can dress for dinner.” When the girl climbed out of the water, Hailey wrapped a towel around her and together they walked to Tyler’s suite of rooms. A sitting room divided the two bedrooms, and the smaller of them had been given over for Faith’s use.
Faith had claimed the shower first, so Hailey was rinsing out their suits in the basin when she heard a knock on the connecting door. Cursing softly under her breath, she slipped her terry wrapper over her nakedness and went to the door. “Yes?”
“I came to borrow some soap.”
“Soap.”