Making a Splash

She was over him on the condition she didn’t have his future rubbed in her face. While she wouldn’t call herself a sore loser per se, she was competitive enough to prefer winning.

Darting the rest of the way up the stairs, she stepped onto the deck and headed for the helm. Night air blew over her, the temperatures out on the water decidedly cool even though the day had been gorgeous back home on the Cape. Sea breezes dotted her cheek with cool moisture, the taste of the salt spray on her lips reminding her of Jack’s skin. Ignoring the hum of residual pleasure that memory brought, she bent to check the chart plotter and the headings he’d set. Thankfully, Jack didn’t try to stop her. She didn’t think she could handle any more touching. Her body still sang with the seductive contact from earlier.

“We’re going to Bar Harbor,” Jack told her finally, since the high-tech gadgetry wasn’t giving up any obvious clues. He checked a few instruments and made an adjustment to some stray dial. “Keith and I traded boats tonight after we got into a BS argument about who had the better vessel. Dumb guy stuff.”

Alicia whirled around to face him. She wondered how he could stand the wind with no shirt on, but then, he’d practically been born on a boat. He looked like a gorgeous Poseidon with his granite wedge of shoulders and his dark brown hair blowing in the breeze. He’d pulled on a pair of trousers, which were unbuttoned at his waist, a hint of dark cotton boxers showing through the open V above the fly.

And whoa. How did her eyes end up on that southward journey? She yanked her gaze back to his tanned skin and the crinkle of tiny lines around his eyes that spoke of long days outdoors. They’d been there even when he was younger—he had a smile that lit up his whole expression, but it was one that she’d been privy to only for a single incredible year. The lines were deeper now, as if they’d been baked in by the sun from all those months on a destroyer in the Pacific.

“So if you told him you had a better boat than him, how exactly did you end up sailing his out of the marina while I was sleeping?” Keith had told her to make herself comfortable because he’d be late arriving. Had he set her up for this? Her stomach dropped at the thought that he would do something so underhanded when she’d believed they were friends.

“Hmm…” Jack scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I might have taunted him about not knowing how to sail. I mean, will you look at this thing?” He gestured to the top-notch equipment at the helm. The tiny hot tub built into the foredeck. “How does this floating house party bear any resemblance to boating as we know it?”

For a moment, the “we” sucked her in, included her in that exclusive little club of insiders that Jack respected. His list had always been short, his high standards tough for most mortals to meet. When she had been among the people Jack trusted, the feeling had been awfully damn good for a girl who’d grown up without the mother who’d left long ago, and with a father more committed to his job than his kids. Jack Murphy had once seemed like Prince Charming, there to save the day.

Not anymore.

“So you didn’t want to take his party cruiser, but you were so dead set on forcing him to sail a real man’s boat that you swapped vessels.” She was starting to form a picture now. She could almost hear the conversation at Ryan’s party. “And what do you think Keith’s motive was for taking you up on the trade when he knew damn well I would be on board?”

A gust of wind blew the bedspread open around her legs, the fabric lifting clear up to her hip. She battled it back down, stuffing the excess fabric between her knees to pin it in place.

She thought she spied a flash of male appreciation in Jack’s eyes before he recovered the glower that now seemed to be his trademark expression around her.

“I can’t imagine what he was thinking, but you can bet I’m going to find out.” He waved his phone again.

“If you even get a cell signal out here.” She sighed. “Look, why don’t we just tuck into land wherever we are and I’ll catch a bus to Bar Harbor. No harm, no foul.”

She moved back toward the hatch to return downstairs and dress. She didn’t need this kind of garbage in her life. Whatever Keith had in mind by throwing her together with Jack tonight, it wasn’t going to work. Any chance of making peace between them had ended when he’d signed up for the navy the second he’d finished telling her they were through.

It’d been the ultimate kiss-off. Not only had he dumped her, he’d hot-footed it to the other side of the globe and sold himself to Uncle Sam in the process, just to make damn sure she knew how serious he was about getting away from her.

Or at least, that’s how it had seemed. And he’d never disabused her of the notion, keeping his explanations to a bare minimum in a way that had hurt like hell.

“No.” Jack’s arms were around her, stopping her.

It didn’t make sense, because she could see how much of a hardship it was for him to be near her. To touch her. Most guys would have at least let her dream on in her aroused state when they’d been in bed together, but Mr. Noble and Upstanding had been too honorable to cop an extra ten-second feel, bolting out of bed as if she was a pariah.

So why did he have his arms around her now?

“Excuse me?” Her hair whipped about her face in a crosswind and she had to push it aside so she could see him.

“I will take you to Bar Harbor.” His hands warmed her right through the quilt fabric. The rest of her remained chilled, while two perfect imprints of his palms flared hot on her forearms. “I have to go there anyhow to drop off the boat for Keith’s colleague.”

“That doesn’t mean we ought to travel together.” How could she survive being penned up on a boat with her controlling, I-know-best ex-boyfriend? Not in this lifetime. “In fact, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

He turned her out of the wind, taking most of it on his back and shielding her from the light spray the gusts kicked up. He was protective like that. Always had been. Some would call that thoughtful. But there came a point where a woman didn’t want to be wound up in bubble wrap for safekeeping, and somehow Jack had never understood that about her. He’d told her she shouldn’t wait for him while he was in the navy, since it would be too much to expect of her.

Another way he’d cut her to the core.

“You didn’t think it was such a bad idea ten minutes ago when we were in bed together.”

She’d need a crowbar to pry her jaw off the deck.

“You did not just say that to me,” she managed to reply finally, her throat cracking on a dry note at the reminder of how she’d been drawn to him like a magnet. “I was asleep. Are you going to hold it against me that I was having some anonymous sexy dream?”

“It was hardly anonymous. You said my name.”

“Did I?” She vaguely recalled this. “I wouldn’t know what I said or did because I was sleeping.”

“Would you like me to remind you?” His hands shifted ever so subtly on her arms, the play of his fingers up her shoulders taking the touch from gentle restraint to…Sensual? Romantic?

She didn’t know how to define it—the last time she’d checked, Jack Murphy had told her to have a nice life, since they clearly weren’t meant for each other. The news had come after their umpteenth argument about how to make a relationship work while she was still in college and he was globe-trotting for his father’s company. He’d ditched her and the family job in one swoop, encouraging her to date guys her own age since he was “tying her down,” preventing her from having a real college experience.

“You. Wouldn’t. Dare.” She knew him well enough to know he would never use her attraction against her. He was all about protectiveness. Doing what was best for her even when she’d hated it.

As his eyes narrowed, a dangerous light glittered in their depths. Too late she realized she’d just issued a challenge to a man who’d never known how to walk away from one.

2

HE WOULDN’T DARE?

Jack suspected she didn’t have any idea what he would dare when it came to her.

Alicia LeBlanc had transformed from a sweet college coed in need of a date for her fall formal, to a sexual dynamo with an attitude.

He didn’t know what to make of this woman who bore little resemblance to the studious business major she’d once been, or even the hardworking swimmer and sorority girl he remembered from before he’d joined the navy. But he didn’t feel the same limits with her as he had four years ago, that was for damn certain.

She’d grown even more beautiful, her athletic body still trim and lean but the curves subtly more voluptuous. Long blond waves fell around her shoulders. She wasn’t as tall as most swimmers, but she had a can’t-miss presence when she walked into a room. A throaty laugh you could hear across a crowded party. The abundance of freckles across her nose reminded him that as an avid diver and surfer, she loved the outdoors as much as he did. She’d started giving lessons in a variety of water sports during her senior year of college and had grown the business to include equipment rentals and a couple of employees.

Hell, she’d been game for any sport he’d ever wanted to play, and that was saying something. Most guys he knew couldn’t handle the mega-competitive weekend reunions at the Murphy household, but Alicia hadn’t just sat on the sidelines flipping burgers. She’d tried her hand as starting pitcher when they’d played stickball, and got prickly when her receivers hadn’t run the routes she’d dictated when they’d let her quarterback a team in the Turkey Bowl. She had a natural competitiveness that made her fit right in with his family.

If she hadn’t been so damn young—or maybe if she hadn’t been every bit as strong-willed as him—they might have gotten somewhere. But both those things had tripped them up and he hadn’t thought it would be fair to maintain the relationship when he’d made the decision to take a navy contract after…well, when the call to serve had become undeniably personal.

He hadn’t been at liberty to discuss the way the war had hit close to home back then. Couldn’t let her in on why he’d needed to sign that contract so badly. And the secrecy had cost them both.

He’d heard she’d dated half his high-school graduating class since then—okay, two other guys that he knew about. But she’d dated with enough of a vengeance that she’d shown him she didn’t care about the breakup.

It’d stung when he’d gotten the news on his first stint overseas, back when he’d been sitting on a ship in the Gulf of Oman.

“I’m going to give you fair warning, Alicia.” He kept his hands on her, ill prepared to deal with the riptide effect of being alone with her for the first time in four years. He was too exhausted—and too turned on from finding himself in bed with her. “Because even though I play to win, I believe in a level playing field.”

“How generous of you.” The soft words held plenty of sarcasm, but she didn’t move a muscle, her body perfectly still under his hands.

“I would dare a lot when it comes to you.” Because he’d never forgotten about her. Because she’d moved on with an ease that had rankled long afterward. “So if you won’t admit you felt something for me in the cabin earlier, I’m not going to think twice about proving what a lie that is.”

“Okay, so I felt something, damn it,” she snapped, leaning forward to get in his face. “Satisfied?”

Her gutsiness had always made her irresistible. And he had no reason to hold back now. She’d sparked a flame inside him and he couldn’t think of any reason not to follow it to its natural conclusion. Maybe this time it would burn itself out, since trying to shut it down four years ago had backfired. He’d thought about her more than any other woman he’d ever been with, probably because he’d stomped out the relationship too soon.