Page 3 of Summer Affair
Recognition hit hard, and her eyes snapped open. It was not the wine. She was not even a little tipsy. She was stone-cold sober, and swimming over to her was an Easton, the youngest and sexiest of the brothers—and the only one Jillian let herself fantasize about because, with their age difference,thatwas never going to happen.
Clay, who lived in Seattle, was way too young and therefore had an expiration date—which was why she’d allowed her fascination to only morph into an embarrassing crush. So when he stood, arising from the now waist-deep water that sliced down his body, her mouth went dry.
Like some Greek god, his hard chest glistened with moisture in the moonlight, and a thin patch of wet hair trailed down the plains of his flat stomach, disappearing beneath the water. His hair and lashes were spiked, and his lips were turned up into a grin that had her bathing suit nearly melting off her body.
“Clay?” she asked, squinting her eyes to ensure it was the Seahawks running back swimming in her pool. She gulped. There he was, in only the night’s air and steaming water. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting to hear what number three on your list is. Number two was a showstopper,” he said, his gaze flickering with amusement and something a little more dangerous.
Interest. Even worse, it was clear that Clay of the chiseled abs and bulging biceps was teasing in a very flirty way.
“If you’d waited another minute, you would have seen the real showstopper,” Jillian flirted back in that flirt for flirt’s sake way Dr.Claire spoke of.
Clay took another step toward her, revealing a pair of board shorts that hung indecently low on his hips and matched his cobalt-blue eyes. “My loss.”
A wave of single-girl anxiety washed over her, causing her to fold her arms across her body—at least concealing the top half of her bikini.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Going for a swim before I turn in,” he said. “It seems you’re doing the same.”
“I was actually just—”
“About to lose your suit?”
“Not expecting Rhett until tomorrow,” she finished, referring to his older brother who was her renter.
“I’m not expecting Rhett at all,” he replied, amusement thick in his tone.
“I don’t understand.” Although, her gut understood perfectly. “You’re my new tenant?”
With a mischievous grin, he walked toward the stairs, every step revealing more of his delicious body until he was within reaching distance and the water only hit his thighs. He reached out and she took a step back—up the stairs and out of the pool.
He froze, and that grin turned into a smile as he scooped up the robe and held it out to her. “Disappointed, Jillian?”
And that’s when she saw it. The knowledge in those deep, blue eyes. He knew about her little crush. A silly—but very real—schoolgirl crush that caused her to blush whenever he so much as looked her way. Heck, every time she was within the same square mile as him, she stumbled over her words or gawked at him.
Like she was now. And here, all this time, she assumed she’d played it cool. It was clear she had not.
“What? No.” She was in trouble, that’s what she was. She took the robe, which was dripping wet, and used it as a shield for her body. She shivered at the warm water on her chilled skin. Or at least that was the story she was sticking to. “Sorry, I’m just a little confused. You’re Darcy’s brother-in-law who rented my place?”
“Is that a problem?”
A gigantic one. “No, but I’m still a little startled.” She was also panicked and thrown and incredibly turned on. “When Darcy called last week, saying her brother-in-law needed a quiet place to decompress, I thought it was Rhett, because of all the craziness surrounding his separation. I didn’t even look at the signature on the lease. I just assumed …”
He lifted himself out of the pool, water sluicing down his body, and she forgot what she was talking about.
“You’re probably one in a handful of women in the world who wouldn’t check out the famous Rhett Easton’s signature. The rest of us only share his last name.”
She shrugged, then grabbed the towel she’d intended on using and held it out for him, quick to pull her hands back when he took it. “More of a country fan myself.”
“I’ll add that to the list of things I like about you.” He towel-dried his hair in a way that was all things manly, then wrapped the towel around his waist. It didn’t help, his chest was still bare, his shoulders glistening in the moonlight. It was his smile. That genuine and warm smile that always made her nervous. Because smiles could be deceiving.
“We barely know each other, so it must be a short list,” she said.
“It has more than three items. Yours?”
She ignored this. “You weren’t supposed to come until the tenth. Today’s only …” She silently counted off all the activities she had accomplished this week and grimaced. “It’s the tenth. I am so sorry. I lost track of the days. Well, not the days, because Sammy and I are practicing days and he wakes me up every morning to tell me what day it is, but we haven’t reached actual dates yet, which is why I’m here dressed in this, interrupting your swim.”
