If I leave your father, I’ll lose you. He’d make sure I don’t get custody, and I don’t have the money or influence to fight that.
Seth bent his head, and she watched as strands of dark hair flopped over his forehead. She itched to touch it, to slide her fingers through it, to feel its softness under her hands. And she wanted to touch the thick muscles of his shoulders, even though she already knew they wouldn’t be soft. They were everything hard and powerful. She knew that for sure because last summer someone had tossed her in the water and it had been Seth who had hauled her out. Being held by him was something that no woman would forget in a hurry.
Unsettled, she dragged her gaze to his face. His nose had a slight bump in it thanks to a football injury the summer before, and he had a scar on his chin where he’d head-butted a surfboard and needed fourteen stitches.
Fliss didn’t care. To her, Seth Carlyle was pretty much the most perfect thing she’d ever laid eyes on.
There was something that set him apart from the others. It wasn’t just that he was older, more that he was so sure. He knew what he wanted. He was focused. He made doing the right thing sexy. He was studying to be a vet, and she knew he’d be good at it. He was going to make his father proud.
Unlike her.
She’d made her father disdainful, exasperated and angry but never proud.
And she didn’t want to drag Seth down with her.
She snatched her hand away from his and curled her fingers into her palm to stop herself from touching him. “You should join the others. You’re wasting a perfect beach day.”
“I’m not wasting anything. I’m exactly where I want to be.” His gaze was focused exclusively on her. And then he gave her that wide, easy smile that made her feel as if she was the only woman on the planet. She didn’t know which got to her most—the way his mouth curved, or the way those sleepy dark eyes crinkled slightly at the corners.
Her stomach flipped. After being made to feel unwanted, it was a change to feel the opposite.
What would happen if she put her arms around his neck and kissed him? Would he get carried away and do the wrong thing for the first time in his life? Maybe he’d take her virginity right here on the sand. That would really give her father something to complain about.
The thought made her frown. Not even by virtue of a thought did she want her father to tarnish her relationship with Seth.
“You really shouldn’t be here. With me.” She leaned her back against the rock and gave him a fierce stare designed to repel, but it didn’t work with Seth.
“I saw a car outside your house. Was it your father? He doesn’t usually join you in the summer, does he?”
She felt as if she’d plunged naked into the Atlantic. “He arrived this morning. Decided to surprise us.”
Seth’s gaze didn’t shift. “To celebrate your birthday or ruin it?”
He knew.
She squirmed with horror and embarrassment. Why couldn’t she have a normal family like everyone else? “I didn’t hang around to find out.”
“Maybe he wanted to deliver his gift in person.”
“That’s your father, not mine.” The words blurted out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Mine didn’t bring a gift.”
“No? Then it’s a good thing I did.” He braced one arm on the rock behind her and reached into the pocket of his board shorts with the other. “Hope you like it.”
She dragged her gaze from the swell of his biceps and stared at the cream velvet pouch in his palm. “You bought me a gift?”
“It’s not every day a woman turns eighteen.”
There it was again, that word. Woman. And he’d bought her a gift. Actually chosen her something. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t care, would he?
Her parched self-esteem sucked up the much-needed affirmation. She felt dizzy and light-headed, even more so than she had the time she’d smuggled a bottle of vodka to the beach.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
She took the bag from him, recognizing the shell logo picked out in silver. She knew that whatever was inside it wouldn’t have come cheap. She and Harriet had walked past the exclusive jewelry store when they had occasion to be in town, but the prices had stopped them even staring in through the window. Of course, price wasn’t an issue if your name was Carlyle.
She tipped it out of the bag onto her palm, and for a moment she forgot to breathe because she’d never seen anything so pretty. It was a necklace, a silver shell on a silver chain. It was the shiniest, most perfect gift she’d ever been given.
Forgetting about keeping her distance, she flung her arms around him. He smelled of sunshine, sea salt and man. Hot, sexy man. Too late she remembered that she was wearing only her tiny shorts and a tank top. She might as well have been wearing nothing for all the barrier it created. Her skin slid against his and her fingers closed on those shoulders. Under the silken, sun-bronzed skin she felt the dip and swell of hard muscle and the dangerously delicious pressure of his body.
She knew she should let him go. Her father would freak if he could see her. He hated her hanging out with boys.
But Seth wasn’t a boy, was he? Seth was a man. A man who recognized that she was a woman. The first person to see her that way, and she decided that just might be the greatest birthday gift of all time.
Her father made her feel like nothing, but Seth—Seth made her feel like something. Everything.
“Fliss—” His voice was husky and his hands slid to her hips, holding her still. “We shouldn’t—you’re upset—”
“Not anymore.” Before he could say anything else, she pressed her mouth to his. She felt the coolness of his lips and his sudden start of shock, and she thought to herself that if he pulled away she’d die of embarrassment right here on the sand.
But he didn’t pull away. Instead he tugged her against him with purposeful hands, trapping her against the solid length of his body. Behind her she could hear the rush of the ocean, but here in the privacy of the dunes there was only Seth and the indescribable magic of that first kiss.
As he angled his head and kissed her back, she thought that her eighteenth birthday had gone from being the worse day of her life to the best. Melting under the erotic slide of his tongue and the intimate stroke of his hands, she stopped thinking about her father. All she could think about was the way Seth’s mouth made her feel. Who would have thought it? Who would have thought that good-boy Seth had such a bad-boy side? Where had he learned to kiss like this?
She told herself that she deserved romance on her eighteenth birthday. She deserved this.
Never before had anyone, or anything, made her feel this way.
And never before had doing the wrong thing ever felt so right.
Ten years later…
“I’VE DECIDED WE should expand the business.” Fliss kicked off her shoes and left them in the middle of the floor as she walked barefoot to the kitchen. “Have you looked at our schedule for the next month? We don’t have a single available slot. Our referrals have doubled, and bookings are through the roof. Time to capitalize on success and think about growth.” Onward and upward, she thought. It felt good.
Her sister, busy feeding a puppy she was fostering, was less enthusiastic. “We already cover the whole of the east