Tidewater Seduction

Joanna’s anger floundered. ‘What are you doing here, Cole?’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought you’d be on the next flight back to South Carolina.’

‘Hmm. I guess you did.’ Cole stretched his long legs comfortably, and laced his hands beneath his head. ‘Well, as you can see, I’m still here.’

‘I won’t change my mind, you know.’

Joanna’s response was half peevish, and she wished she hadn’t felt the need to defend herself, when Cole merely shifted to a more restful position.

‘I haven’t asked you to, have I?’ he countered, looking up at her through the sun-bleached tips of his lashes. ‘Relax, Jo. It’s much too hot to fuel all that adrenalin.’

Joanna pressed her lips together mutinously, trying to regain her composure. Now that she was assured that no one was trying to proposition her, she ought to be able to rekindle her sense of well-being.

But, of course, she couldn’t. Although she determinedly lay down again, the feeling of tranquillity had left her. She felt on edge, and agitated, and far too aware of the man on the sun-bed beside her.

His arm was only inches from hers, she observed covertly, tautly muscled, and displaying the tiny tattoo of a venomous bushmaster, which he had had etched when he was just a boy, and for which, he had told her, his father had soundly beaten him. The muscle flexed, as she watched it, tightening and hardening, before relaxing once again. The skin that covered the rest of his arm was brown and smooth and flawless, almost hairless, and lightly sheened with sweat.

Without any volition on her part, her body responded to the sensual appeal of his. The sight of his bare chest, with its flat nipples, and light dusting of hair, disturbed her. She found her eyes following the provocative arrowing of hair that disappeared beneath the elasticated waistband of his shorts. His restless movements had inched the waistband of the shorts down below his navel, and his pelvis made a cradle of his sex.

God! She tore her eyes away, and stared blindly across the pool. What was the matter with her? she chided, as her hands coiled into tight fists. It wasn’t as if Cole’s naked body was any novelty to her. She had lived with him for more than two years, for heaven’s sake! She had seen him in every pose and attitude, in every state of undress. He had a beautiful lean body—a perfect specimen of American manhood. It was a pity the contents didn’t live up to the wrapping!

‘Do you want a drink?’

She was so tied up with her thoughts that Cole’s first question didn’t register. ‘I—beg your pardon?’

‘I said—do you want a drink?’ he repeated, propping himself up on his elbow, drawing up one leg, and half turning towards her. ‘There’s a waitress making a tour of the deck, taking orders. I thought you might like something long and cold and refreshing.’

‘Oh——’ Joanna swallowed, and explored her dry lips with her tongue. ‘Well, yes. I think I will have some lemonade. But I’ll get my own. You don’t have to bother.’

‘It’s no bother,’ Cole assured her, swinging his feet to the ground. He moved swiftly, so that by the time the bikini-clad waitress reached them he was standing up, and Joanna saw to her chagrin that his southern courtesy did not go unnoticed.

‘You didn’t have to stand up,’ she muttered irritably, as he resumed his seat, and Cole’s mouth tilted.

‘No, I know,’ he agreed, brushing an insect from his thigh with a lazy hand. ‘But it costs nothing to be polite.’

‘Would you have stood up if it had been a man?’ she persisted, and Cole’s lips parted to reveal a row of even white teeth.

‘I guess,’ he said, his eyes leaving hers to move insolently over her body. ‘What’s the matter, Jo? Something eating you?’

Joanna shifted uneasily beneath his taunting gaze, and she was aware that she was still aroused from her thoughts earlier. Her own nipples were as taut as buttons, and she tugged surreptitiously at the front of her swimsuit to hide their provocative display.

Unable to think of an answer sharp enough to puncture his mocking self-confidence, she turned her head, and pretended to watch the antics of two young people in the pool. They were teenagers, she guessed, holidaying together for the first time, and from the way the girl draped herself around her companion they were not ignorant of each other’s bodies. There was an intimacy between them that spoke of long nights exploring the intricacies of love. She and Cole had once explored those same intricacies, she remembered. During those long southern nights, before things started to go wrong …

The waitress returned with two tall glasses of lemonade, liberally spiked with ice. Cole took one for himself, and held the other out towards Joanna, and although she was loath to take anything from him it would have been childish to refuse. So, sitting up, cross-legged, she took the perspex tumbler from him, drinking from it thirstily, before tipping her head back on her shoulders, and luxuriating in the intense heat.

Cole was still sitting sideways on the sun-bed, legs spread, bare feet resting on the tiled surface of the pool-deck. It meant she was constantly aware of his eyes upon her but, despite her irritation, she supposed his presence was deterring any unwelcome attention.

‘You look good,’ he said suddenly, and her eyes jerked towards his before she could prevent them.

‘Thank you,’ she returned, striving for a careless tone as she took herself in hand again. ‘So do you. Sammy-Jean’s evidently doing something right.’

Cole’s expression hardened for a moment, but then he returned to the attack. ‘You always were a beautiful woman,’ he murmured. ‘And, if anything, you look better now than you did when we got married.’

‘Then I must be doing something right, too,’ declared Joanna shortly, impatient at the wave of colour that swept into her neck at his words. ‘Living in London isn’t all bad, whatever you think. Our climate may not be as good as yours, but it has its compensations.’

Cole’s brows arched for a moment, and then he looked down at his drink, resting in hands hanging loosely between his thighs. ‘I guess it does,’ he conceded at last. ‘I’m sure Grace would agree with you.’

‘I’m sure she would.’ Joanna nodded. But she didn’t like this conversation. It wasn’t what Cole was saying that troubled her exactly. But the tone he was using did. He was so polite. His lazy southern drawl scraped across her nerves, like a nail over raw silk, and every time he looked at her she grew more and more tense.

‘Um—how—how’s your mother?’ she asked, hoping to divert the conversation away from herself, and Cole lifted his head.

‘Ma’s OK.’ His eyes skimmed her mouth, and although she had just drunk about a quarter of a pint of lemonade Joanna’s lips felt parched. ‘She’s getting older, like the rest of us. But she still works just as hard as ever.’

‘And—and Ben and Joe?’ Joanna felt compelled to keep him talking about his family. ‘And the twins? I bet Charley can swim now, can’t she? Did they start high school yet? Oh, yes, of course, they must have done.’

Cole regarded her between narrowed lids. ‘Are you really that interested?’ he queried, his brooding gaze bringing a deepening of colour in her cheeks. ‘Sure, Ben and Joe are fine. Joe’s married now, and his wife’s expecting their first baby. Charley and Donna started high school last year, and Sandy’s going to join them come fall.’ He paused. ‘I guess that about covers it, wouldn’t you say?’

Joanna bent her head, the weight of her hair sliding over one shoulder to expose the vulnerable curve of her neck. ‘I was just being—polite, that’s all,’ she said, half defensively. ‘I—like your brothers and sisters. And, I used to think that they liked me.’

‘They did.’ Cole shook the ice around in his empty tumbler. ‘Charley often used to talk about the time you and she got stuck out on Palmer’s Island. If you hadn’t swum back to get help, you might both have been swept away.’

‘Oh——’ Joanna made a deprecating gesture. ‘You’d already discovered we were missing. When the boat was washed on to the bank, you’d have guessed where we were.’

‘Maybe not soon enough,’ he insisted, and Joanna felt a remembered sense of apprehension. She could still recall how scared she had been in the water, fighting her way against the current, feeling her arms getting weaker by the minute. She had been unable to stand, when she hauled herself out of the river. If Cole and his brothers hadn’t been searching for them, it might still have been too late. The flooding torrent of the Tidewater River had left Palmer’s Island under several feet of water for hours. No one could have survived its fury, least of all ten-year-old Charley, who couldn’t even swim.

Joanna grimaced now, unwilling to think of that near-tragedy, and Cole stretched out his hand towards her. She thought for one heart-stopping moment that he was going to touch her, and she instinctively drew back against the chair. But, although his lips flattened for a moment, revealing his awareness of her reaction, all he did was lift the empty tumbler out of her hand.

‘I’ll get rid of these,’ he said, dropping one inside the other, and while she tried to recover her self-possession he sauntered across the deck to dump the tumblers.

By the time she heard the depression of his chair’s plastic slats, she was once again reclining on her towel, on her stomach this time, with her eyes closed, and her face turned deliberately away from him. Surely he would get the message, she thought tensely. She didn’t want to have to spell it out for him again. He was wasting his time if he thought he could get her to change her mind. They had a saying in the south, about catching more bees with honey than with vinegar, but if that was Cole’s intention it wasn’t going to work. He was an attractive man, sure, and, even though she had more reason than most to regret the fact, she wouldn’t have been a woman if she hadn’t found him easy to look at. But that was all. She wasn’t attracted to him. Not any more.

‘You’re going to get burned,’ his lazy voice observed, revealing his skin was thicker than even she had thought, and Joanna clamped her jaws together.

‘No, I’m not,’ she retorted, through her teeth. ‘My skin’s too dark, remember?’

‘It’s also used to a colder climate,’ Cole replied, and she heard him get up from his chair again.

God! Joanna lay completely still for a moment, and then, unable to withstand the suspense a moment longer, she rolled over on to her back—just as Cole was lowering his weight on to the side of her slatted mattress. It was just by a swift removal of her arm that she avoided being sat on, and her eyes sparkled indignantly at his uninvited presumption.

‘What the hell do you——?’ she was beginning, when Cole showed her the tube of sun-screening cream in his hand.

‘This is yours, isn’t it?’ he asked, and she guessed he had rifled it from her bag. ‘Turn over,’ he added, unscrewing the cap and squeezing a curl of its contents into his palm. ‘There’s no point in torturing yourself just to spite me.’

Joanna pressed her lips together and stared up at him, resentment oozing from every pore. The last thing she wanted was his help, in anything. And she certainly didn’t want him touching her. But once again he had her at a disadvantage, caught between the desire to show her real feelings, and the knowledge that by doing so she would be handing him all the cards.

So, instead of snatching the cream out of his hand and hurling it into the pool, she forced a tight smile and obediently rolled over again. Let him do his worst, she thought, stifling her angry reaction against the towel. After all, although her skin didn’t tan, it did burn sometimes, and she could do without that aggravation as well.

Cole’s hands were amazingly cool against her hot flesh. Of course, he had just been handling the tumblers containing the ice, she reminded herself grimly, as his long fingers slid across her shoulders, and his thumbs found the nubby column of her spine. She found it was important to keep a sense of proportion, as his probing hands found every inch of exposed skin. She was relieved she wasn’t wearing a bikini. At least the modest maillot left her some dignity.

But not a lot, she had to concede, as the sinuous brush of his fingers began to lull her into a false sense of security. It would be so easy, she thought, to go with the flow; to allow her flesh to respond to the sensuous touch of his; to admit she was enjoying his expert ministrations. Because of the limitations of the sun-bed, his leg was wedged beside her hip, and although the swimsuit protected the upper half of her pelvis his hair-roughened thigh was against the exposed curve of her bottom. It meant that every stroke of his hands on her shoulders brought a corresponding increase of pressure against her hip, and the images that evoked were all sexual …