He ached to make love to Sandy. Four days might not be enough to get to that stage. But he could wait if that was what she needed. Even though the want, the sheer physical ache to possess her, was killing him.
‘No need to be. I’m here to fight battles for you. Never forget that.’
At last her smile reached her eyes. ‘You’re sure about that?’
She looked so cute he wanted to kiss the tip of her nose.
He stepped around the counter towards her at the same time she moved towards him. He took both her hands in his and pulled her to him. This time she didn’t resist. Her face was very close. That warm vanilla scent of hers was already so familiar.
‘As sure as I am about taking that second chance we’ve been offered. Let’s give it everything we’ve got in the next four days. Turn back the clock.’
She stared at him. He couldn’t blame her for being surprised at his turnaround. The shadow behind her eyes was not completely gone. Had she told him everything that was worrying her?
‘Are you serious?’ she choked out.
‘Very.’
She reached up her hand to stroke the side of his cheek. As if checking he was real. When it came, her smile was tender and her eyes were warm. ‘I’m so happy to hear you say that. It’s just that...’ She paused
‘What?’ he asked.
‘All these expectations on us. It...it’s daunting. And what will we tell people?’
‘Nothing. Let them figure it out for themselves.’ He gripped her hands. ‘This is just about you and me. It’s always just been you and me.’
‘And we—’
‘Enough with the talking,’ he growled, and he silenced her with a kiss.
A kiss to seal their bargain. A kiss to tell her what words could not.
But the kiss rapidly escalated to something hot and hungry and urgent. She matched his urgency with lips, teeth, tongue. He let go her hands so he could pull her tight. Her curves shaped to him as though they were made to fit and she wound her arms around his neck to pull him closer. The strap of her yellow dress slid off her shoulder. He wanted to slide the dress right off her.
He broke away from the kiss, his breath hard and ragged. ‘We’re out of here. To get some privacy.’
‘Wh...what about the shop?’ Her own ragged breathing made her barely coherent.
‘How many books have you sold today?’
‘Just...just a few.’
‘Yeah. Not many customers. Too many gossips.’ He stroked the bare warm skin on her shoulder, exalted in her shiver of response.
‘They did seem to spend more time lurking around corners and looking at me than browsing,’ she admitted.
Her hands slid through his hair with an unconscious sensuality that made him shudder with want.
‘You shut down the computer. I’ll set the alarm.’
‘But Ida...’
‘Don’t worry about Ida.’ He could easily make up to his aunt for any drop in sales figures.
Sandy started to say something. He silenced her with another kiss. She moaned a throaty little sound that made him all the more determined to get her out of here and to somewhere private, where he could kiss her without an audience.
The old-fashioned doorbell on the top of the shop door jangled loudly.
Sandy froze in his arms. Then she pulled away from him, cheeks flushed, eyes unfocused. Her quiet groan of frustration echoed his. She pressed a quick, hard kiss on his mouth and looked up wordlessly at him.
To anyone coming into the store they would look as guilty as the pair of teenagers they’d once been. He rolled his eyes. Sandy started to shake with repressed giggles.
He kept his arm firmly around her as they turned to face the two middle-aged women who had entered the shop. Both friends of his mother.
Two sets of eyebrows had risen practically to their hairlines.
News of kiss number two for the day would be rapidly telegraphed through the town.
And he didn’t give a damn.
‘Sorry, ladies,’ he said, in a voice that put paid to any argument. ‘This shop is closed.’
CHAPTER TEN
DESTINATION? SOMEWHERE THEY could have privacy. Purpose? To talk more freely about what had happened to each other in the twelve years since she’d left Dolphin Bay. And Sandy didn’t give a flying fig that the two bemused ladies Ben had ousted from Bay Books stood hands on hips and watched as she and Ben hastened away from the shop.
Even just metres down the street she fell out of step with Ben and had to skip to catch up. He turned to wait for her, suppressed laughter still dancing around his mouth, and extended his hand for her to take.
Sandy hesitated for only a second before she slid her fingers through his. Linked hands would make quite a statement to the good folk of Dolphin Bay. Anticipation and excitement throbbed through her as he tightened his warm, strong grip and pulled her closer. She smiled up at him, her breath catching in her throat at his answering smile.
When she’d very first held hands with Ben the simple act had been a big deal for her. Most of her schoolfriends had already had sex with their boyfriends by the age of eighteen. Not her. She’d never met a boy she’d wanted to do more with than kiss. When she’d met Ben she’d still been debating the significance of hands held with just palms locked or, way sexier, with fingers entwined.
And Ben?
Back then he’d had no scars.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, surprised when her voice came out edged with nervousness.
‘My place,’ he said. His voice didn’t sound nervous in the slightest.
Did he live at the hotel? That would make sense. Maybe in an apartment as luxurious as the room where she was staying.
‘Do you remember my family’s old boathouse?’ he asked as he led her down the steps in front of the hotel.
‘Of course I do,’ she said, and she felt herself colour. Thirty years old and blushing at the memory of that ramshackle old boathouse. Dear heaven, she hoped he didn’t notice.
On the sand outside the boathouse, in the shelter of Ben’s father’s beached dinghies, she and Ben had progressed from first base to not-ready-to-progress-further-than-third.
She glanced quickly up at Ben. Oh, yes, he remembered too. The expression in those deep blue eyes made that loud and clear.
She blushed a shade pinker and shivered at the memory of all that thwarted teen sexuality—and at the thought of how it might feel to finally do something about it if she and Ben got to that stage this time around.
‘I live in the boathouse,’ he said.
‘You live there?’ She didn’t know what else to say that would not come out sounding ill-mannered.
Instead, she followed Ben across the sand in silence, wondering why a successful businessman would choose to live in something that was no more than a shack.
But the structure that sat a short distance to the right of the hotel bore little resemblance to the down-at-heel structure of her memory. Like so much of Dolphin Bay, it had changed beyond recognition.
‘Wow! I’m impressed,’ she said.
Ben’s remodelled boathouse home looked like something that could star on a postcard.