But the relief that he hadn’t caught her spying on him like a besotted schoolgirl didn’t last long as she headed back into the forest.
Why had she stared at him like that? What was wrong with her? Where was Cassie the boring rule-follower when she needed her? Because she did not need that wild woman back again. Not in any shape or form. That woman had caused her more than enough trouble already...
* * *
So, Cassandra James is full of...
Luke cursed under his breath.
She’d lied to him. Hadn’t she promised she’d steer clear of him? And here she was spying on him again.
Even before he’d seen the tell-tale glimmer of sunlight reflected on glass giving away her position—probably shining off the lenses of his own binoculars—he’d felt the zap of awareness on his chilled skin.
How long had she been standing there? And what the hell had she been doing? Other than getting an eyeful of him naked...
Luke tugged on his jeans and buttoned his fly—not easy as that prickle of awareness arrowed down.
Pirates’ Cove was his sanctuary, and she’d invaded it. His cold morning swim was t
he only way he had to contain and control the hunger which was still driving him nuts.
And she’d ruined that too, now.
But alongside the burst of anger and frustration had been the rush of something worse when he’d spotted the flash of light and realised she was watching him. Something giddy and light-headed and kind of demented, which he now recognised as...
Anticipation.
What the hell?
He swore again, viciously. Infuriated with himself as much as her.
He’d caught her spying on him. And instead of being furious, which he had every right to be, for one split second he’d actually been pleased.
Was he some kind of glutton for punishment now? Even when he’d been a teenager, treated like dirt by girls he’d thought liked him, he had never been a sucker. He’d stifled his need to be accepted, to be liked, and got over himself. And over them. They’d never really hurt him because he’d never let them.
No one’s approval was worth losing your dignity over, or your pride. If the girls he made out with at night didn’t want to acknowledge him in the daylight, they could go right to hell. He was in charge of his own destiny now.
He couldn’t even remember their names any more, and their faces were just a hazy memory. He’d never had any trouble moving on from those long-ago betrayals... Even as a sex-starved, untried kid, denied the one thing every kid yearned for in high school: acceptance.
But even as he congratulated himself on his ability to preserve his dignity back then, another voice and another memory beckoned.
His mama, her head high as they walked past those guys who’d always sat in front of Cunningham’s Deli, holding his hand too tightly while the wolf whistles followed them down the sidewalk.
‘If you can put out for a felon, honey, why don’t you put out for me?’
‘How about I give you some sugar, sweet thing? You ain’t going to be getting none from Gino for another five to ten.’
His fingers curled into fists.
How he’d hated those men, and the way they’d spoken to his mama—as if she were a piece of meat instead of a human being. But none of them had been the man he’d hated most of all.
‘He doesn’t give a damn about us, Mama. When are you going to figure that out?’
The memory of the feel of his mother’s open palm slashing across his face made his cheek sting all over again, and his chest tightened with the same impotent, futile rage that had tortured him as a teenager.
‘Don’t you disrespect your papa. He loves us. And when he gets out he’s gonna take care of us again.’
It was the one thing his mama had always been dead wrong about. Gino Leprince hadn’t loved either one of them. If he had he wouldn’t have ended up in the penitentiary, doing time for grand theft auto and aggravated assault—without a thought for the heavily pregnant seventeen-year-old girl he’d left behind.