Sex On The Beach. Delphine Dryden

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СКАЧАТЬ Oh, yeah. That.” He shrugged, looking sheepish. The gesture wasn’t as large as it might have been, because his shoulders were already so close to his ears. His jock posture had disintegrated back into programmer-slouch, making him look more like the Jeremy she remembered. A sexy gargoyle. “It’s not a big deal.”

      The breeze shifted and Amanda wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly aware of the drop in temperature. She was sobering up. “We should continue this indoors. Or at least let me put on something warmer.”

      Her mistake, she realized as soon as the words left her mouth. The correct response to all of this craziness was to send the man packing, not invite him to hang around while she slipped into something more comfortable. Even if, as in this case, comfort had everything to do with temperature and nothing to do with seduction.

      “I’ve missed you. You look really good.”

      “You knew where to find me. I wasn’t the one who moved. And you look...good too.”

      The way he looked didn’t matter, of course, but it would certainly give her something pleasant to gawk at while they were having what was sure to be a disastrous series of conversations. The prospect of eye candy wasn’t enough to keep her headache from switching back on.

      She stepped off in the direction of her room, and after a few strides heard the faint crunching of Jeremy’s footsteps in the sand. As they passed the beach blanket dance party, she spotted Alan and Julie together near the edge of the crowd. Moving in tandem, laughing about something. They looked like a couple, but then that was nothing new.

      She’d just drawn level with the last tiki torch when Jeremy snapped his fingers, cursing. He ran back to the tide line for his shoes, barely saving them from being washed away, and caught up to her at the edge of the greenery that marked the pathway to the cottages. The sprint hadn’t even winded him.

      Apparently he’d used the time to think up something else to say.

      “Did you have a good flight over?”

      “Are we making small talk now?” Small talk wasn’t safe. The very fact that they could chat like that was an anomaly, something neither of them tended to do with anyone else. The first time she’d met Jeremy they’d ended up small-talking their way into an extended make-out session. It had all felt so natural, so easy. Like kissing was just another way to converse.

      “Well, I kind of blew my chance to lead with the large talk.”

      “Why don’t you just say what you were planning to say? Since you apparently rehearsed it and everything.”

      “I don’t have the flowers.”

      She shrugged. “If you were relying on vegetation to make the difference, you must not have thought much of your speech.”

      Jeremy reached to one side, plucking a broad leaf from a hibiscus branch that snapped back with a rustle as the stem released. He presented his botanical prize to her with a wry flourish.

      “For the lady.”

      “I don’t know what to say.”

      “But I do. Aren’t we lucky? Okay, here’s the speech. I came here because it’s neutral territory. Because I was an idiot to leave when I did without insisting that we talk this through, and I thought maybe here we could do that without the distractions of work and wedding plans and family and every other damn thing. I didn’t tell you I was coming because I knew you wouldn’t agree to it. I’ve spent the last year accomplishing even more than I thought I could, but it’s all kind of meaningless because all I do is think about how I want to share it with you. I still love you, I still want to be with you. We are both really smart, and I know we can figure this out if we try. Please just give me these few days to try. And that is what I came here to say.”

      Amanda twirled the leaf between her thumb and forefinger, trying to focus on the texture and the sharp, green smell rather than the way her heart was pounding, her stomach buzzing with emotions she couldn’t begin to identify. The row of cottages rose up before them like a sanctuary, a miraculous diversion from all the junk she was obviously in store for over the course of the trip.

      “That’s my room over there. I’ll be right back.”

      “I’ll be waiting.”

      As if she needed reminding.

       Chapter Three

      Not one word. He’d said his spiel, poured his heart out in his own carefully measured way, and Amanda hadn’t responded at all except to say she’d be right back.

      It could have been worse. She could have told him off some more, shoved the stupid leaf up his nose, kicked some sand on him and called hotel security about the scary leaf-nosed beach-stalker guy. Of course, she might also be in her room packing at that very moment, but he still felt confident enough to hope.

      She looked so good, so good. He’d forgotten, like he always did, how deeply adorable she was. How her expressions sometimes punched him right in the gut, as if the two of them were connected in some weird cosmic way, so he was feeling whatever she felt. Soul mates or star twins or some idiotic thing like that. Mostly, it was all he could do not to grab her and kiss her. Make her understand the strength of his emotion by the time-honored methods of tonsil hockey and groping. Amanda made him stupid and he liked it, every dopey, eager, grunting-caveman second of it. He’d forgotten about that, too, but now he recalled how he inevitably became such a goofy, drooling puppy around her.

      The near year of celibacy probably didn’t help with that. That bright red bikini, either. He pried his mind away from the tantalizing notion of peeling away those vivid scraps of nylon, untying the bright floral scarf that Amanda wore as a skirt, and just...damn. Just going to town, which he knew wasn’t going to happen. Not the way she’d reacted to seeing him. Not the way he’d fumbled the speech.

      I blew it before I even got on the plane. Sure, now he realized that. But it was too late, he was already here and he’d already talked to her, so there was no way out but through.

      When she emerged from the room, the bikini-and-scarf-skirt combo was absent, replaced by a pair of yoga pants, a T-shirt and a hoodie. Armor, Jeremy realized. Fair enough.

      “We could go over to the bar in the lobby,” he suggested. “I think it’s still open.”

      Amanda rubbed the bridge of her nose, drawing his attention to the fact that she’d also taken off her makeup. He liked that look on her, the unguarded clarity of her eyes and the dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. “Yeah, fine, as long as they have coffee and more dessert there.”

      “More dessert?”

      “Don’t judge me.”

      “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

      In the split second before she turned to start toward the main building, he saw it. The crinkle at the corner of her mouth and eye, the barest hint of a smile. All his reason to hope, right there on her face in one fleeting instant.

      The night air was full of life, the constant susurration of the tide and the influx of heady aromas on every breath of СКАЧАТЬ