Gwen hadn’t thought to ask about how Evie and Will spent their weekends, and she’d returned to the condo to find them headed to the pool. Against her better judgment, she allowed them to convince her to join them. She regretted the decision instantly after Will stripped down to nothing but a pair of black swim trunks. Thankfully her sunglasses hid the unladylike and unflattering way her eyes had to have bugged at the sight of all that bronze skin and hard muscle. She’d run to the safety of the cabana immediately, very glad when Will dove straight into the water instead of taking the other lounge chair.
Now Evie was engrossed with homework, and she was having a hard time pulling her eyes away from Will.
It’s rude to stare. But next to impossible not to, she told herself. She lost count of how many laps he completed long ago, but he showed no signs of tiring. That explained the tan. And the shoulders. And the chest… She reached for her water bottle, rolling it across the heated skin of her neck and chest before taking a long drink to try to lower her temperature. With a sigh, she tried to concentrate on the words in her book, thankful neither Evie nor Will were paying her any attention at all.
Water splashed at her feet, and she looked up to see Will, all wet and wonderful, standing in the shallow end of the pool, ready to send another stream of water at Evie.
“Hey!” Evie shouted, “You’re getting my homework all wet.”
“Aren’t you two coming in?” Water dripped from his dark hair onto his shoulders before joining the rivulets running down his chest and over the muscles of his stomach. Her stomach contracted at the sight.
Mercy. The man should be on billboards.
Evie closed her notebook and took a running dive into the deep end. As graceful in the water as her brother—if not more so—she swam the length of the pool and surfaced not far from Will.
Cupping her hand, Evie expertly sent a spray of water straight into Will’s face. He shook it off, sending droplets in all directions.
“Oh, big mistake, squirt.”
Evie squealed as Will pelted her with sheets of water until she begged for mercy. For Gwen, it was a much-needed distraction from her brooding and drooling over Will. When he stopped, Evie sent one last spray his way, then swam quickly to Gwen’s side of the pool.
Will’s arm pulled back, ready to continue.
“Better not, Will. You’ll get Gwen all wet.”
Gwen laughed. “Oh, no, don’t come running to me for protection. You’re on your own, kiddo.” She made a show of wrapping her book in a towel and placing it out of immediate water damage.
“Traitor,” Evie wailed before she disappeared under a wall of water that drenched Gwen as well.
The cold water took her breath away. She pushed her sopping bangs out of her eyes to see a completely unrepentant Will grinning at her.
Something lightened inside of her chest, and she grabbed the feeling and the moment with both hands.
“Oh, you are so dead meat, Will Harrison. Come on, Evie.”
That was all the warning he got before she jumped feet¬first into the pool and joined Evie in sending as much water at Will as humanly possible.
She wasn’t as good at it as Will and Evie, but at least two-against- one helped even the odds a bit. Will fought back, using both arms and hands to keep the water flying as he moved in her direction and backed her up against the pool wall, leaving her helpless under the constant fall of water.
Evie, that little traitor, switched allegiances and joined Will in dousing her.
She needed to get off the wall and back in the open. Gwen calculated her move, waited for the right second, then slid quickly to her left, planning to go under, push off the wall and slip quickly between them.
No such luck. Will moved at just the wrong—or possibly right—moment, and her push off the wall sent her barreling straight into him. Those strong arms locked around her and pulled her to the surface, keeping her trapped against his chest.
His wet, hard, stuff-of-fantasies bare chest.
Gwen’s shout of outrage died in her throat as the bare skin of her back burned where it pressed against his. She gasped instead. Every memory of last night’s kiss and the fantasies it inspired flashed across her mind.
“You got her, Will!”
“Indeed I do.” He lowered his voice and dropped his head closer to her ear. “Now what should I do with you?”
She shivered as much from the whisper of breath across her ear as from his words. Will answered her shiver with a squeeze that pressed her more firmly against him. Every inch of her—from shoulders to ankles—sizzled at the contact. The seconds stretched out as she reveled in the sensation. But the hard flesh nestling right above the swell of her bottom brought her attention rocketing back to his whispered question.
“I call for a t-truce.”
Will chuckled in her ear and whispered, “Coward.” But he did release her, and she sank into the cool water, allowing it to balm her burning skin. With a knowing wink in her direction that only scrambled her thoughts more, Will swam away to the other side of the pool.
Gwen climbed the ladder on trembling legs and retreated to the relative safety of the cabana. She would not take the bait of being called a coward, but she wasn’t going to run and hide in her room, either. She placed her sunglasses firmly in front of her eyes, buried her nose in her book and tried to calm her rapid breathing.
Evie produced a Frisbee, and she and Will began a noisy game of catch, giving her a much-needed opportunity to mentally regroup.
Sarah had been brutally direct this morning with her analysis of the situation. “Sounds to me like the attraction is mutual.”
Okay, so maybe it was. She couldn’t deny or ignore Will’s attraction to her, and she knew for damn certain she wasn’t immune to him. Sarah had listened to the full list of Reasons This Would Be Bad, but countered with romanticized possibilities that would ease any worst-case scenarios.
There was no romanticizing or outthinking the biggest Bad Reason, however, and that Reason was rapidly moving to the top of her list.
And that Reason would be how much she liked Will. Really liked Will. Irritating BlackBerry, bouts of overbearing arrogance and all, she’d finally found a man she liked to talk to. One who could surprise her and make her laugh at the strangest things. Everything she thought she knew about him had proved false; instead she’d found a handsome, charming, funny guy who was smart and successful and cared about his little sister.
She, thanks to the papers and her debs, knew a lot about his dating history. He wasn’t exactly a playboy, but he did play the field one socialite at a time. That, coupled with what she knew about Will’s workaholic tendencies and bolstered by some casual comments dropped by Evie, made liking Will a danger. Maybe Will wasn’t looking for anything permanent, but could she enjoy what he did have to offer? It would be one fabulous ride—while it lasted. Could Sarah be right and the Worst-Case Scenarios actually be fixable? Could her heart and her ego take the hit if it didn’t work out?
Evie, though, was still a sticking point. She didn’t want Evie to get hurt. Had Will even given thought how his serial- dating technique might affect a fifteen-year-old?
And could she handle being the next installment in that serial? She remembered the feel of Will’s skin against hers and the taste of him under her lips. The gooseflesh that rose on her arms answered part of the question: her body was more than willing to give it a shot.
“Gwen?”
Gwen snapped out of her reverie to find Evie and Will standing in front of her with identical puzzled expressions. Evie