"Back and shoulders. Face front, Damien, so I can put the sunscreen on you."
What? No way in hell he was letting her touch him. He’d need a bucket of ice from the beach bar poured down his shorts first. "I’m fine. I don’t need sunscreen."
She shot him a look of disbelief. "You’re a very difficult man, you know."
And this was news? "I know."
"You’re not supposed to admit that."
"Why not?"
"Because it’s rude or something. I don’t know." Mandy set her feet on the sand and reached for the sunscreen he’d dropped on her beach towel.
"I thought it was mature to admit my flaws."
"Not when that flaw is being difficult." She squirted a great white glob of sunscreen on her hand. "Turn around."
"You don’t have to. I can get it." Just the thought of her touching him made him a little desperate. His feelings for her were unexplainable and unwanted, but they were there. Since he was not in as firm of control as he would like, it was possible she would guess he was attracted to her.
Which would be the end of the world as he knew it.
"Turn around. Even demons need sunscreen in the Caribbean." And she grabbed both of his shoulders and tried to twist him.
Their knees bumped, her breasts hovered close to his chest, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was torturous to want her and know he couldn’t have her. Until Mandy, his body had been sexually dormant, and while it had woken up raring to go, nothing else had changed. His heart was still frozen.
"All right, all right." He hooked his leg over the chaise longue and spun away from her. "Now who’s being difficult?"
Damien expected Mandy’s touch to be soft and gentle. He’d misread her again. Her strokes were bold, sensual, the lotion making a squishing sound between her fingers as she moved across his back methodically.
"It’s not being difficult when you’re right. And I caught you just in the nick of time – your shoulders are pink already."
"I’ve only been out here for ten minutes." Damien fought the urge to close his eyes and sigh. He had forgotten how good it felt to have a woman so close, hovering behind him, warm and alive and concerned for him. To smell her, to have her hair brush against him.
"What’s this? A tattoo? Why, Mr. Sharpton, I’m shocked." Her voice was teasing.
Damien stiffened. He only had one tattoo and he did not want to discuss…
"Jess. Who’s Jess?"
Pain kicked him in the gut, pain he thought he’d buried down deep under a layer of work and exhaustion. What could he say? Jess had been his wife. His beautiful, successful wife, and she had been murdered. How was that for a little light, lounging-in-the-sun conversation?
Since the tattoo was on his upper arm, he rarely looked at it and could effectively ignore that Jessica’s name was scrawled on his skin. Branding her to him forever, the physical manifestation of what was interwoven in his soul. Jessica had laughed that day he’d come home with it, her blond hair falling over his chest as she had inspected it. It had amused her, pleased her that he had taken such a dramatic way to display his feelings.
What I love about you, Damien, is the way you love me.
How many times had she said that?
He had lost himself in her all those years ago, and had never found a way back out.
"A woman," he said. "She was a woman."
Mandy’s fingers slowed. Her voice cooled. "Is this woman still in your life?"
God, if she only knew how much Jessica was still in his life. Damien dug his toes into the sand. "No. No, she hasn’t been for a long time."
"Then you should get her name turned into something else. A celtic cross, or flowers. No, flowers are too feminine… maybe barbed wire, or you could switch Jess to Jesus."
Damien felt the tightness in his chest lessening as Mandy spoke. She was doing the unimaginable – talking about Jess with a flippant, irreverent attitude. But she didn’t know the whole truth, and for some reason, hearing her joke about his tattoo eased the peach pit that had lodged in his throat.
"It could say ‘Jesus is my home boy.’"
A startled laugh burst out of his mouth, surprising him. "That doesn’t really sound like my style." And it sounded downright hilarious in Mandy’s British accent.
Her fingers strayed to his stomach, and she wiped back and forth. "Extra sunscreen."
His muscles clenched, a jolt of sexual awareness ripping through him.
But Mandy stood up. "Oh, look, they’re starting beach bingo. Come on, let’s play."
She patted his shoulder and started down the beach.
And he didn’t even resist.
Chapter 7
Damien was kicking ass at beach bingo. Mandy watched him with growing amusement. She held her card in her lap, the beans they’d been given as markers rolling around, no longer on the numbers that had been called.
The first time she’d upset her whole card, she had asked Damien to read her the numbers he had. It had aggravated him, since he hadn’t been able to hear the new numbers as they were called with her distracting him.
So the second time she’d spilled her beans, she had just leaned over and shifted his markers around so she could see the numbers. Only in doing that, she had got in the way of him seeing his board, and he’d got bingo just seconds behind another hotel guest.
He’d been ticked off. Mandy didn’t understand why, since he’d won twice already, but Damien was nothing if not competitive. Now he had his card set on the ground, his feet pinning it so the wind wouldn’t take off with it. His knee went up and down in agitation, and his hand hovered over the card with a bean at the ready.
Mandy sometimes wished she had an ounce of competitiveness in her, but it had never surfaced. She liked to do things she enjoyed and didn’t really care about the outcome as long as she had fun. Which probably explained why her toy shop had never turned a profit.
The games coordinator sat at a table calling the numbers. With a smile, he pulled the next ball out.
"Eight. Ocho. Huit."
Before he was even finished with the French translation, Damien was on his feet. "Bingo!"
There was some good-natured grumbling from the half a dozen women in their seventies playing, while Damien strutted to the table to collect his latest prize pack. Sitting at Mandy’s feet were already three bottles of rum, two T-shirts, a piece of Dominican artwork, a model of a sailboat, and a necklace made out of shells. She couldn’t even begin to imagine why he needed any more booty.