Page 15 of The Hookup
He swallowed, and let out a strangled breath.
After a cold shower, and dressed in denim shorts and a t-shirt, he returned to one of the tables around the pool area, this time with a bowl of fruit, a protein shake, his cell phone, and his notebook.
Swimming helped draw out the business ideas which had been marinating in his head. He also had a heap of things to deal with—mainly emails from work which he hoped to get to now. He started typing out a response to the most important email, before he was interrupted.
“That was quite some distance you swam.” He looked up and into the eyes of Savannah’s cousin.
“Yeah,” he replied, agreeing, then scanning quickly at the half-finished email on his cell phone. “You should try it.”
He noticed her hair was still dry, and she was shiny from all the sun tan lotion she had slathered all over her body.
She tipped her wide-brimmed sun hat up a tiny bit. “I don’t like swimming in the sea. I was lying down, trying to get a tan.”
“I noticed,” he replied, putting his cell phone down. “You looked like you were sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you.” He picked up his spoon and started on his bowl of fruit, though Kay looked as if she was going to start a conversation.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“You looked like you were,” he replied, trying hard to focus on his pineapple chunks so that he didn’t have to look up at her. Her skimpy bikini left little to his imagination, and though he was usually good at setting a distance between a guest and his physical needs, the Monroe-esque deity standing before him was trying his sanity. “But I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Mind if I join you?” she asked, obviously not taking the hint.
He did, but it would be rude to decline. “Go ahead.” He moved his belongings to one side, and kissed goodbye to all that quiet time he’d been looking forward to. If she had been a complete stranger, if she hadn’t been at this event, and especially if she wasn’t the cousin of the bride, he would have thought nothing of taking her to his room and enjoying the rest of the afternoon. Judging by the bullets pointing out of her bikini top, and that look in her eyes, he had a read on her right now, and it told him that they both had the same idea in mind.
“You’re a good swimmer.”
“I love to swim. I don’t always get a chance to back home.”
“Your bartending hours don’t allow for any down time?”
“It’s a lot of late hours.” He didn’t even need to be at his bar for the amount of hours he was there for, but he liked being in the thick of things. It was the only way to see what worked and what didn’t. “I guess you secretaries don’t have that problem?”
“It’s a regular nine to five for me.” Her gaze shifted to his biceps. “I see you work out.” He nodded and grinned, then looked down at his protein shake. She was subtly undressing him in her mind’s eye as well.
“What do you like to do in your spare time?” he asked, moving the conversation to a safer topic. He couldn’t go there; to the place where his mind was at right now. Somewhere in his bed, with her beneath him.
“Me?” she asked, flashing perfectly manicured nails at him as she ruffled her hair. “Work takes up most of it. Sometimes it gets really busy and I end up staying at work late.”
“Seriously?” Secretaries worked that hard? Damn. He had no idea.
“Well, uh, you know what these banks are like. It’s brutal.”
“Brutal?” That was a strange choice of words. He’d never considered that secretarial work could be brutal.
“It’s crazy. The corporate world never sleeps.”
“I can see why you preferred to lie on the beach, and why you didn’t take up the offer to go snorkeling.”
“I work too hard to want to do any action adventure things on my time off. I like to take things slow and easy. Most times.”
“I noticed.”
She gave him the kind of smile that said many things. He knew, because not a day went by in his bar when an interested female customer didn’t give him such a smile.
She was interested, but he didn’t dare go there.
“What about you?” she asked. “What do you like to do on your time off?”
“I’m just a bartender,” he said, guardedly. “I like to sleep a lot.”
