“I could see this every day,” she breathed.
“We have similar sunsets in Miami,” he said although he didn’t know where that came from.
“Similar but not the same.”
“Similar but not the same,” he agreed.
Miami was unquestionably striking to him. Just the way that Jamaica, the island where his grandparents were born and where his immediate family returned year after year, was the most beautiful place in the world to him. And he’d been around the world enough to see most of the competition.
“You should see Jamaica if you haven’t already,” he told her, pressing his shoulder into hers. “The sunsets there will make you cry.”
She laughed and turned briefly to him, the sunset’s colors brushing her face in shades of amber. “Have they made you cry?”
“Not yet, but I’m a hard sell.”
She laughed again; this time he could see the distance in the smile that lingered, that her attention was no longer on the sky and the joy it made her feel.
“You ready to get going?” he asked.
She bit the corner of her lip. “Yes.”
He waited for her to finish the coconut; then took her down to the beach where the others waited. She walked just ahead of him, watching his three friends sitting around the fire with a mixture of wariness and relief, obviously having suspected that it would just be the two of them after all.
“We didn’t think you’d make it back,” Carlos said in Spanish. With his cropped hair, thick beard and full-sleeve tattoos, he looked like a typical hipster.
“I can see why,” Annika said in Dutch, smiling widely at Doe Eyes. “She’s pretty. How did you manage to find such a hot woman to play with after being on the island only a few days?”
Steven, serious and slender in his designer T-shirt and matching shorts, watched all the action like someone at a tennis match, gaze moving back and forth between the players.
Kingsley shook his head. “English, guys.” Then he laughingly introduced her as Doe Eyes, enduring his friends’ inevitable teasing that the woman he wanted hadn’t even told him her name.
“I speak a decent amount of Spanish,” Doe Eyes said. “If it makes you feel more comfortable speaking your own languages, it’s okay with me.”
Annika laughed. “We love her!” she crowed in English, then jumped up from her cross-legged seat near the fire to hug Doe Eyes, who grinned widely and hugged Annika tightly in return.
“Hi!”
“I might just love her, too,” Carlos said, this time in Dutch, as he watched the two women, dark and light, as they hugged.
“Pervert,” Kingsley muttered.
“Not at all, just a lover of women.”
Steven greeted her in his subdued way, squeezing her hand before sinking back down into a graceful lotus on the sand. He wrestled a beer from the depths of the cooler and gave it to Doe Eyes.
“Thanks for being okay with me coming out with you all,” she said, looking at each face around the fire. “I’ve never gone snorkeling at night, but Kingsley says it’s safe.” The lilt in her voice plainly asked them to confirm the safety of what she was about to do.
“It is safe,” Steven confirmed. “I’ve done it more times than I can count.”
Annika nodded. “It’ll be fun. Even though I’ve lived in Aruba for nearly two years, I haven’t done it before. But Kingsley said it’s something I absolutely have to try.”
“He’s very convincing,” Carlos said. “I swear if he said I had to eat fire to be a real Aruban, I would do it even though he doesn’t know a damn thing about being from here.”
“Or about fire,” Kingsley said with a laugh.
“It burns,” Doe Eyes murmured, looking at him.
Kingsley locked eyes with her. “It certainly does.”
Annika laughed, her pale blue eyes brimming with mirth. It was embarrassingly obvious she knew what Kingsley was up to. Yes, if he got the chance he would absolutely sleep with Doe Eyes. Well, not exactly sleep. He wanted to make long and deep love with her, press her into any available surface and show her just how much he knew about making a woman feel good. Kingsley cleared his throat and sat on the side of the fire opposite her, hiding the sudden tightness at his crotch with his beer.
They finished their drinks while the lights in the sky faded into gray, leaving trails of dark against the paleness of the moon. Dusk amplified the light from the crackling fire, a signal for them to get ready.
Steven was the first one to stand up. “Ready whenever you guys are.”
Although Steven had been the one to organize the trip, he’d asked Kingsley to give the prep talk to the group about the particulars of night snorkeling and partnering up. He also passed out the waterproof flashlights. Annika snickered when Kingsley announced he was partnering with Doe Eyes even after he told her the obvious reason, which was that Doe Eyes hadn’t done a night dive before and would need all the help she could get.
“But what about me?” Annika asked with a mischievous grin, determined to torture him. “I’m a newbie, too.”
At a look from Kingsley, Steven grabbed her by the waist and pulled her off toward the boat anchored nearby.
With everyone else sitting in the small motorboat, Kingsley pushed it into the water. Once it was far enough, he released the anchor and climbed in. Steven started the engine and it growled, propelling them toward the place where the sun had disappeared nearly half an hour before. The engine’s noise took away the silence, and the five of them were lost in their own thoughts and in the beauty of the night as they raced toward the reefs.
Kingsley sat across from Doe Eyes, watching the beach and their banked fire get smaller and smaller. Nervousness vibrated from her, and he wanted very much to slide closer to her and convince her nothing would happen tonight she didn’t want to. The sea was a vast and frightening place. But that didn’t mean he would allow her to disappear beneath it.
“Here we are,” Steven said. He cut the engine.
In the sudden silence, the boat bobbed in the dark water, the sound of the sea slapping gently against the hull.
“Here” was far away from shore and nowhere in sight of their fire at all. There was nothing but the dark and writhing water around them.
“It’s a little creepy out here,” Annika muttered, most of her bravado gone.
“Yeah, but it’s nice,” Carlos said. “The quiet is very soothing.”
Doe Eyes sat with her hands curled around the edge of the boat, the fear slowly clearing from her face the longer they sat in the quiet with the sound of the water lapping at the boat.
Kingsley leaned close to her. “You okay?”
She jumped, looking away from the dark and rippling water. “Yeah. I’m fine. This is just...it’s all new to me. Amazing. Scary.”
He lifted his gaze from her to take in their surroundings, trying to pretend the others weren’t watching every move they made. “Facing the things that scare you is a great way to grow.”
Doe Eyes snorted. “And to get eaten by a shark, too, I’m sure.”
“No shark bites here.” Kingsley pulled off his shirt to show his unscarred belly in the moonlight. Annika snickered, having apparently gotten over her own nervousness. He thought he saw a smile from Doe Eyes. When her