‘I thought I might find you down here.’ Bryn’s deep voice suddenly sounded above her.
Mia looked up at him in surprise. ‘I…I went for a run…’
His eyes swept over her reddened features. ‘So I see.’
She turned back to the sea. The sight of him in nothing but a pair of board shorts and trainers was far too unsettling. ‘I’ve just had a swim and now I think I’ll have a little sun-bake for a while.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘No.’
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No,’ she lied.
‘Have you had something to drink?’
‘No…’
He stretched out the large beach towel he’d brought with him next to where she was sitting. ‘Here, lie down on that and I’ll go and get you some water.’
Mia turned onto her stomach so she could watch him as he walked back along the promenade to a café on Hastings Street. She saw several female heads turning as he went past, his tanned and muscular but lean frame obviously as attractive to others as it was to her. She gave a little sigh and rested her chin on her hands and closed her eyes.
He came back in a few minutes with a bottle of water and some fresh fruit salad and handed them both to her.
She met his eyes briefly. ‘Thank you.’
He sat down on the edge of the towel and looked out to sea. ‘How did you sleep?’
‘Fine,’ she said between mouthfuls of juicy mango and tangy pineapple. ‘I like listening to the sound of the ocean. It puts me to sleep every time.’
Bryn wished he could say the same for himself. He’d spent a great deal of the night tossing and turning restlessly, his body still on fire. When he’d taken her bag into her room once she was asleep it had been all he could do not to join her in the bed and pull her into his arms. His desire for her was beyond anything he’d ever experienced before. It gnawed at him relentlessly, making his body ache to possess her. He could feel it now just sitting next to her on the sand, her trim, golden body so close he could smell the hint of vanilla on her skin in spite of the exercise she’d taken.
He turned to look at her and asked, ‘What would you like to do today?’
‘I don’t know…sun-bake and stuff…What did you have in mind?’
‘If I told you what I had in mind you might slap my face.’
Mia stared at the piece of kiwi fruit she’d just speared with her plastic fork, her skin prickling all over as she felt the weight of his studied gaze. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything else besides satisfying your bodily urges?’
He leaned on one elbow, his long, tanned legs stretched out beside hers, his expression teasing. ‘Is that why you’re an obsessive exerciser? To control your own bodily urges?’
She gave him a chilly little glance. ‘I happen to believe in living healthily. The human heart is a muscle like any other. Daily exercise is essential to keep it in good working order.’
‘There are other ways of exercising the heart,’ he pointed out. ‘I could show you if you like.’
‘No, thank you.’
He laughed and, picking up a handful of fine sand, began to trickle it over her up-bent thigh.
‘Stop that!’ She slapped his hand away and began dusting off the grains from between her legs.
‘Come in and rinse it off with me,’ he suggested, springing to his feet and holding out a hand.
Mia scowled at him but her hand slipped into his regardless. He pulled her to her feet and, releasing her hand, issued her an irresistible challenge. ‘I’ll race you to the water.’
‘You’re on,’ she said and took off at full speed for the ocean. She had to skirt around a toddler and his mother at the water’s edge, which cost her valuable seconds, but she made it to the first breaker and would have beaten him convincingly except he grabbed one of her ankles and tugged her backwards.
She came up spluttering and in revenge scooped a handful of water up and tossed it at his face. ‘You cheated!’
He ducked her liquid missile and caught both of her hands in his, pulling her towards him. ‘I warned you once before, sweetheart, I don’t always play by the rules.’
A gentle wave at her back pushed her even closer to him and he steadied her with his hands on her waist, his eyes, even bluer than the water around them, locking on hers. She moistened her mouth as his head came down, her eyes closing on her soft sigh as his lips found hers. It was a deeply sensual kiss, made all the more alluring because they were skin on skin in the warm water. Mia had never felt so aware of her body before. She could feel the tightening of her breasts and the melting of her bones as he deepened the kiss. The waves rocked against them, leaving her in no doubt of Bryn’s thickening erection pressed so tantalisingly against the naked flesh of her lower belly. She writhed against him, wanting more of his burning heat but lower, where a hollow ache pulsed for him to fill.
After a few breathless minutes Bryn lifted his mouth from hers and looked down at her with a mocking glint in his eyes. ‘I can only assume that your rather convincing performance was for the benefit of the crowd on the beach.’
Mia was temporarily lost for words. She hadn’t given the crowd a single thought. All she had thought about was how he made her feel and how much she wanted him.
‘That’s what you’re paying me to do, isn’t it?’ she said at last, her tone sounding terse and embittered as she pulled herself from his hold and stalked back through the waist-deep water to the sand.
Bryn turned to watch her make her way through the foamy wash and frowned. ‘Yes…’ he said but the words were lost on the waves as they rushed to follow her to the shore. ‘Yes, it is.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MIA gathered up her things and waited on the promenade for Bryn, who had stopped to help a small child who had tumbled over close to the water’s edge. She watched as he crouched down and gently set the toddler back on his feet, handing him his tiny plastic bucket and spade, his warm smile doing something all mushy and wobbly to Mia’s insides.
The child’s mother rushed up to thank him and after exchanging a few words he picked up his sports shoes off the sand and walked over to where Mia was waiting.
‘Your boy-scout deed done for the day?’ she queried with an arched brow.
He frowned at her tone. ‘I happen to like kids. Is there a law against it?’
‘I thought playboys avoided them like the plague.’
He sent her an inscrutable sideways glance as he bent to tie his trainers. ‘But I’m not a playboy now, am I? I’m a married man.’
‘Only temporarily,’ she reminded him, ‘and only on paper,’
‘That paper is already starting to burn at the edges,’ he said as he straightened to look at her. ‘Could be it’s a pile of ashes by morning.’
Mia didn’t answer but she felt a sensation of something hot and liquid flood her lower body at his arrogantly confident statement. She had never met a more sexually compelling man in her entire life and she knew it would take every single gram of her will-power to resist him.
She swung away and began to walk at a brisk pace but within two strides he was alongside her, his beach towel rolled up under one arm.
‘Do you fancy a walk through the park or have