Her heartbeat ticked into her throat, her breathing the only sound as silence greeted her.
A pair of sandy deck shoes had been left beside one of the loungers. Bingo.
The oval pool sparkled in the sunlight, fringed by large planters of exotic tropical flowers and shrubs. On one side of the beach beyond was the wooden jetty from where she had watched the sunset the night before, a gleaming motor launch and a couple of jet-skis docked at the end. As she scanned the cove, her gaze caught on a glimmer of movement about a mile out, coming around the point on the other side of the bay.
She shielded her eyes. Was that a dolphin?
But as the sleek shape drew closer she recognised it as a man swimming, or rather powering, across the lagoon in fast, efficient strokes, his dark hair and tanned skin contrasting sharply with the bright, translucent turquoise of the sea.
Jack! My invisible husband.
The knots in her stomach grew, and her thigh muscles quivered as he strode out of the water and onto the beach below the terrace. Dragging off a pair of goggles, he picked up a towel left on the sand and scrubbed himself dry in brusque strokes.
She stepped back into the shade of one of the flowering scrubs, the knots in her stomach tightening.
His muscular arms and wide shoulders glistened in the sunshine, the wet swimming shorts clinging to his thighs and hanging from his lean waist, displaying the ridge of his hip flexors. After rubbing the towel through the short strands of hair, he dragged off the shorts.
The last of her confusion and irritation dried in her throat, turning to something that felt uncomfortably like shock... And awe. It was the first time she’d seen him naked since he had disrobed in the grey, shadowy light of Cariad’s storm-tossed bedroom.
Even though he stood a good twenty feet away, the bright sunshine made the view a lot clearer. The tickle of panic in the back of her throat—at the spectacular sight of Jack Wolfe stark-naked—was nothing compared to the flood of sensation working its way up her torso as she took her time devouring every detail—the tan demarcation line on his hip, the bush of black hair framing the long column of his sex before he hooked the towel around his waist.
Apparently Jack worked out... A lot. Something she hadn’t registered the last time she’d seen him naked in the furore of need. During her lonely granola breakfast, Katie had rehearsed a script of all the things she wanted to say to Jack when she finally located him. But as he groped around on the sand, then picked up a pair of spectacles, every last word of those imagined opening gambits were whipped away on the breeze along with the last of her temper. And all that was left was the knot in her throat, the sultry insistent ache in her abdomen and the clatter of her heart beating against her ribs.
Jack wore glasses. How had she not known that?
As he headed towards the house with his head down, running his fingers through the cropped hair, she had a sudden vivid memory of the night they’d met and his unfocussed gaze as he’d glared at her. How myopic was he? Because it had seemed for a minute as if he’d had to use touch to locate his spectacles.
As he drew close, she stepped out from behind the plant.
Show time.
His head rose and he stopped dead. Tension rippled through his body, but even behind the lenses of his glasses—which had darkened in the sun—she could see something fierce yet guarded flash across his face. Surprise and desire, certainly, but also a wary alertness.
And suddenly the last of her doubts disappeared. He had said those words to her about the scar in the jet two nights ago. It hadn’t been a dream. Was that why he had been avoiding her?
Compassion blindsided her.
‘Katherine,’ he murmured, managing to temper his reaction sooner than she could. ‘You’re awake?’ He sounded surprised as his possessive gaze took in everything, from her scarlet toenails in the open sandals to the damp tendrils sticking to her neck.
‘I’ve been up for an hour,’ she said, determined not to get sidetracked by the hum in her abdomen or the electrifying awareness that pulsed around them.
‘Why didn’t you come back last night?’ she asked.
‘I did,’ he said, deliberately misinterpreting her question. ‘You were asleep.’
‘Don’t lie.’ She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘You’ve been avoiding me, Jack. Why?’
‘Because I’ve been busy.’ Jack ground out the words, struggling to keep his voice firm and even when everything inside him was clamouring to touch her, to taste her, to scoop her into his arms, tear off the shorts that barely covered her butt, tug down the swimsuit peeking out from beneath her shirt and fill his mouth with the taste of salt and apples on her breasts.
Hell, how could he still want her so much after swimming for miles and burying himself in work yesterday to keep the hell away from her? Shouldn’t this hunger have faded by now, or at least become a lot more manageable? Especially as she knew things about him now he didn’t want anyone to know.
When they had arrived yesterday, he’d only planned to stay away from her for an hour or two, but the yearning had only become more insistent as the afternoon had worn on.
He needed to be able to control it, or he might blurt out something else. And he already hated that she’d caught him without his lenses in. The heavy glasses always made him feel weak, reminding him of the child he’d been, trying to dodge fists he couldn’t see.
‘Doing what?’ she asked.
‘Surely you can’t be bored already?’ he countered, damned if he was going to answer any more of her questions.
‘We’re supposed to be here on our honeymoon, Jack,’ she countered right back. ‘Don’t you think the staff will find it odd if all you do while we’re here is work...?’ Her gaze dipped. ‘And swim.’
Of course they did. He’d seen the confusion on the resort manager’s face when he’d insisted on spending all afternoon and evening going over the specs for the press launch in a month’s time.
‘They’re well paid not to question what I do,’ he muttered, making the implication clear that she had also been well paid not to question him and not to confront him.
He was damned if he’d be found wanting by someone he’d paid to be his wife...
‘Are you avoiding me because of what you told me about your scar?’
The gentle enquiry—and the astuteness behind it—shocked him so much, he couldn’t hide his reaction.
Her gaze darkened, piercing the protective layer he’d always kept around his emotions.
‘So you remember that?’ he growled.