Page 3 of Daring Lance

Willow bobbed her head, not sure what she was agreeing to, but she didn’t know what else to do with him so close to her. “Don’t worry about the dogs. I’ll take them for a walk and make sure they have water and food in their dishes. You can text me if you need me to come back this afternoon to let them out.”

Lance smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but notice that his top right incisor over lapped the one next to it ever so slightly. She found the imperfection appealing. She mentally shook herself as she didn’t think she had ever found a man’s teeth attractive before she’d met Lance. Ugh.

Lance stepped away from her and grabbed his keys from off of the countertop, shoving them into the front pocket of his jeans. The expression in his eyes appeared distracted. To Willow’s relief, he obviously had his mind on work rather than her. “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll see you later.”

Willow watched Lance leave the apartment, the door softly closing behind him. While most women might be upset that he hadn’t turned around and acknowledged her before he made his departure, she wasn’t one of them. Having spent the last few minutes that close to him, she knew the smallest of gestures would have sent her sailing into his arms. Lance was in town overseeing the family company’s job site while also dog-sitting for his honeymooning brother. Once Lance’s obligations were over, he was back to wherever the construction company sent him. According to Madison, and Willow was still disgusted with herself for asking about him, Lance was the most eager of the Bennett brothers to hit the road on new assignments that led to foreign shores. He was typically in one location no more than a few months at a time.

Willow sighed. Having grown up the only child of a pair of foreign diplomats meant she had lived all over the world, sometimes moving two or three times a year depending on her parents’ assignments and the political climate of their current residence. The majority of her childhood was spent with nannies while her parents traveled. Even when they were home, they often attended social functions, leaving Willow alone. When her parents finally settled in Hawaii her freshman year in high school, Willow decided that she never wanted to move again. She was tired of acclimating to new places, making new friends, and plain sick of having to adjust to a new culture, climate, and address. She and her parents were finally a family, and she was content to stay in one place forever. Everyone else might enjoy the lure of exotic vacations and new destinations, but not her. Been there, done that, no desire to repeat.

Then two months ago, her parents announced that they were selling their family home and moving to her mother’s native South Korea to “try it out,” as her father explained. She had been shocked and heartbroken; her family had lived in Hawaii for seventeen years. She’d spent a solid week staring out the window of her bedroom, trying to decide if she should move with her parents or not. Hawaii was expensive, and she would have to rent an apartment on her own. Her closest friends, Madison and Ariana, both of who had lived in Hawaii at one time, had already moved away. Once her parents left, she would no longer have anyone close to her living on the islands. Most of the people she had befriended had made Hawaii only a stopping ground for a few years before they moved on, leaving her behind.

Even though she was thirty-one years old and financially independent, she had simply not been prepared to make a choice between moving or staying in Hawaii so quickly. It wasn’t until Madison had said that she planned to rent out her condo in Florida after she married that Willow decided to make her first move in seventeen years. She rented Madison’s place, and now that Willow was here, she planned to stay at least another decade before she uprooted herself again. She liked the area. The climate reminded her of Hawaii, and the rent was affordable, allowing her to save for a place of her own. Willow had made friends at the tennis club and yoga studio she’d joined, and many of the people she met made it sound as if they planned to make the area home for a long time. As a bonus, Madison and Luke lived less than two miles away from her and had become her extended family, as had some of the residents of Regency Palms. Nope, she was not leaving south Florida anytime soon, nor would she get involved with anyone who wanted to. This meant Lance Bennett was a big no-no, no matter how good the man looked at ten o’clock in the morning with a thin shadow of stubble gracing his strong jawline and finely defined cheekbones.

Willow groaned and then glanced down at the dogs who looked back at her, their tongues hanging out of the sides of their mouths and their tails wagging eagerly. With a deflated sigh, she gently pulled on each of their leashes and led them out of the door for the walk she was no longer as enthusiastic about as she had been only twenty minutes ago. Fortunately, she still had the bagel in her pocket, “six hundred yummy, carb-filled calories that will go straight to my thighs. Gotthatgoing for me,” she muttered under her breath as she led the canines out of the condo.

TWO

“Hey Antonio, check it out, over by the shoreline. Isn’t she the one who Lance hooked up with at Luke’s wedding?”

Antonio lifted his dark sunglasses, set them at the crown of his head, and peered intently across the beach. “If it’s not, she has a twin, and I want to meet her! It’s her though, isn’t it, Lance? How come you never mentioned that she lived in your building?”

It took all of three seconds for Cam and Antonio’s comments to register in Lance’s sleep deprived brain. He shot open his eyes and pushed himself up to rest his upper body weight on his forearms as the rest of his body remained reclined on the chaise lounge. A quick glance toward the water confirmed what Lance already knew: his friends slash co-workers had spotted Willow. “It’s her, and before you ask, her name is Willow, and I’m not interested.”

Cameron-or as he preferred, Cam, friend, co-worker, and fourth cousin through some obscure relative Lance had never met-cracked open a beer as he watched. “What’s with the lame response?”

Lance grunted. He had no desire to explain to his two closest friends that he’d formed an instant attraction to a woman he’d met three weeks ago as part of his brother’s week-long wedding festivities. The feeling had yet to diminish, and if anything, it only intensified each time he saw her. This still baffled him. He wasn’t one to typically fall for anyone that fast, if ever, and especially not with a woman who told him straight out that he wasn’t her type. Okay, so she hadn’t initially said it directly to him but rather to his brother’s dogs, but eventually she had admitted it to his face.

Lanced dared to turn his gaze toward Antonio, not surprised that he also waited in eager anticipation for a response. “She’s not my type.”

Cam threw his head back in laughter. “Right. I forgot. Successful, beautiful, cerebral chicks aren’t your type. Luke mentioned she’s some type of computer geek.”

Antonio sipped from his beer before he placed it on the small table situated between their lawn chairs. “That’s exactly his type.”

Lance darted his gaze between his friends. “What? What’s that supposed to mean? That’s not true. I like all types of women.”

Cam picked up the bottle of sunscreen that lay at the corner of his chair and tossed it at Lance, hitting him squarely in the middle of his chest. “Maybe, and emphasis onmaybe,” Cam responded. “But the smart ones are the ones you’re interested in.”

“What?”

Antonio grabbed the sunscreen from Lance and squirted some into his palm. “Cam’s dead on. It’s always a mystery, too, when you break it off with one of them. Remember that lawyer in Bogota? She was ready to become Mrs. Lance Bennett after a few weeks of dating you. You were totally into her too, until she wanted to get serious, and then it wasadios, senorita.”

Cam laughed. “Yeah, and what was her name, you know, that brain doctor in Rio—”

“She was a heart specialist, and her name was Lela.” Lance silently cursed himself for not keeping his mouth shut because once Cameron and Antonio took a bite of a topic, they didn’t let go until it was shredded to pieces. They were a pair of Pitbulls, which he typically appreciated, only not when their focus was on him.

“That’s right. What is it with you, man? Are you afraid of commitment in general? Or commitment with someone who might match you brain for brain?” Cam narrowed his eyes, a grin twisting his lips.

“He doesn’t want to be with anyone smarter than he is, which totally limits his options.” Antonio ducked as an empty can within Lance’s reach went sailing toward Antonio’s head.

“Hey, dude, watch it. There would be a lot of disappointed women in the world if you were to put a scar on this face.” Antonio picked up the can that landed in the sand by his chair and tossed it into the bag of empties that had grown considerably in size throughout the day.

“Who says I’m not willing to commit?”

“You’re not.” Cam replied, and Antonio agreed with a nod.

Lance sat up in his chair. What the hell were his friends talking about? He wasn’t afraid of commitment. Hadn’t he finished law school? Gotten a construction management degree, too? Worked for his family’s construction company for over ten years? As for women, he had simply never found one he wanted to more than casually date. That was until Willow, and she wasn’t interested. “You guys are wrong. I have nothing against commitment, to smart women or any other, either.”

Antonio spread additional sunscreen on his arms, and Lance held back a chuckle. Already a deep bronze color, Antonio wore sunscreen not to avoid getting darker but to prevent skin cancer, a fear his mother had instilled in him as a kid. Now he was paranoid anytime they were out in the sun. Lance had never seen Antonio get even slightly pink, not even on job sites where the sun could be blazing down on them for hours, but Lance figured Antonio probably lathered on the lotion as part of his morning ritual.

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