Almost Paradise (Book 4) Read online

  “Three words.” She paused, then continued gravely, “The Gage Gorge.”

  Jesus Christ. A dull heat crept from the back of his neck to his face. “I wrote you about that?”

  “Your twin told me about that.”

  “Which is the slower death, strangulation or drowning?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, her tone cool.

  She should have no idea about the Gage Gorge, either. “For the record, Griffin coined that phrase, not me.”

  Her silence said more than actual words.

  “Look, any guy would do the same. After months of crappy meals and crappy booze, it’s natural to want to consume mass quantities of my favorite foods and beverages.” And he never wanted to see another juice box or packaged cheese and crackers for the rest of his life.

  When she didn’t say anything, he plucked at his T-shirt. “I’ve lost weight!” He’d worried about dysentery when the water they’d given him had arrived in a rusty watering can and from some unknown source. He’d tried sticking with the mango juice, but the thick stuff had eventually made him sicker than the thought of parasites in his H2O.

  “By all means,” she said, still in that chilly voice, “indulge in your desires. It’s really none of my business—as long as your...your feasting doesn’t extend to my friends and neighbors.”

  Okay, she was just being snotty now. Feasting, she’d said, as if he were bellying up to a banquet. But they both knew she was referring to something other than nutrients. “It’s not a crime to want to get laid.”

  “But when you’re on a ‘Gage Gorge’ your goal is to get laid as often as possible.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it with a snap. After a few long breaths, he tried again. “I think my brother thought he was, uh, enhancing my reputation with that kind of talk.”

  She sent him a skewering look over her shoulder. “You think being a man-ho enhances your reputation?”

  “I’m not a man-ho. Jesus, Skye. I’m just a guy who likes sex and when I haven’t had a chance to get any for a few months, then I...I want to have some.”

  She stood and brushed at the dirty knees of her jeans. “And some more and some more and some more.”

  He got to his feet, too, and glared at her, because he didn’t understand why he felt so damn guilty. “Well, excuse me, Sister Josephina Henry.”

  “Who?”

  “The meanest nun I ever met. Told me I was going to hell when I was seven years old. Ugly old bag, with a wart on her chin.”

  Her expression told him he’d gone too far. He replayed his words, blanched. “Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you have a wart on your chin.”

  “Just that I’m an ugly old bag.”

  “No! No, wait, don’t go off in a huff.”

  But she did just that, disappearing into her house and shutting her front door with a decisive snap. He stared after her, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong.

  He was pretty sure it had something to do with sex. Why she should care about his interest in that, he didn’t know. It was Griffin’s fault, he thought. No, Skye’s. No, both Griffin and Skye were to blame, he decided as he started back down the beach, kicking at the soft sand.

  Damn both of them.

  And him, too, for pissing off the woman who, sometime during the course of their correspondence, had gone from casual pen pal to personal talisman.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Gage was once again up early. He set out for another walk, keeping to wet sand and the neutral company of the shorebirds. The tide was low and he headed for a favorite haunt just beyond the restaurant. There, where another bluff met the ocean, was an extensive series of tide pools, some small, some shallow, some twice as big and twice as deep as a bathtub.

  Eyes cast down, he picked his way around them, also carefully avoiding the exposed rock faces where sharp-edged barnacles and dark-shelled mussels crowded together like villagers confronting a common enemy. Peering into a cup-sized crevice in the rock, he started when he heard his name, the soles of his leather flip-flops slipping on the wet rock.

  Regaining his balance, he looked over. Ponytailed Skye stood nearby, dressed in drawstring linen pants and a matching tunic the color of dry sand. Despite how they’d parted the day before, he couldn’t help smiling at her. For two wretched weeks, she’d walked through his imagination, keeping him sane. Seeing her in the flesh was testament to his fortitude. He’d made it back.

  Who wouldn’t be glad?

  The wind came up, swirling escaped pieces of her dark hair and pressing the thin material of her clothes against her skin. For the first time he could make out the contours of her figure: small high breasts, slender waist, the flare of feminine hips. A flash of heat shot down his spine and curled around his balls. His cock reacted in typical horny male fashion and his smile died.

  Hell. She didn’t want his “feasting” to involve her friends or family, so he figured she didn’t want it to involve herself, either. He didn’t want it to involve Skye and mess up what she already was to him. Childhood friend. Charming correspondent. Survival technique.

  So he shut down his baser urges and approached her with slow steps, smiling again. “Hey,” he said. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning to you, too.” The strap of a backpack was slung over one shoulder and she let it slip down her arm as she returned her own smile. “I have coffee.”

  He watched her pull out a silver thermos. “Is that an offer?”

  She glanced up as she poured some steaming liquid into the cap. “How about a peace offering?” The smell of the brew wafted his way as she held it out. “I’m sorry about yesterday... I...I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “Me, neither.” He took the small cup from her and brought the coffee to his lips. “Maybe we should start hanging out together in the wee hours of the night.”

  She was rummaging in her backpack again, and he saw her withdraw an empty plastic container. Then she crossed to a large, high-and-dry flat boulder and sat down, dropping the pack near her hip. Gage followed suit, hoisting himself onto the rock beside her, then passing the cup of coffee in her direction.

  After a little hesitation, she took it, and swallowed a small sip before handing it back to him. They shared the beverage and a companionable silence, each of them looking out to sea.

  “I picked up your last couple of letters before I returned to the States,” he finally said. “I’m sorry you were worried.”

  She kept her gaze on the horizon line. “I think it was because you wrote you had a new contact who was taking you to a region you hadn’t explored before. It sounded dangerous.”

  He’d probably telegraphed his own unease. His internal debate over trusting the new guy had gone on for several days. He wasn’t stupid—journalists in that part of the world ran into all kinds of trouble, from muggings to murder. But the truth was, every footstep made in a war-torn country was a judgment call and the accolades went to those willing to take the most risk. It had seemed an acceptable trade-off at the time.

  Gage realized that Skye was looking at him expectantly. “What?”

  “I asked how that worked out—your new contact,” she said.

  He hesitated. The wind whipped past again, propelling a lock of her long hair across his lips. It was silky-soft and smelled like a flowered breeze. Catching it between his fingers, he made to tuck it behind her ear.

  She hunched away from him and grabbed the stuff herself, drawing it around her far shoulder. “Your contact?”

  Thinking of Jahandar, Gage fought the urge to spit. “He turned out to be not so good.” Understatement.

  They subsided into silence again.

  “How’s your friend’s widow doing?” Skye asked eventually. “And her son?”

  “Okay,” he replied, easily following her train of thought. Ten months ago, a colleague, Charlie Butler, had been abducted and held for ransom by the Taliban. His wife, Mara, the mother of a four-year-old, had be
en forced to navigate the complex maze of negotiation and counternegotiation along with the crisis management team hired by Charlie’s newspaper. The foreign correspondent community had done what they could, suggesting people to call and offering support, even as they’d kept the story out of the news. It was safer for the kidnap victim that way. “I’ll try to see them while I’m here. They don’t live far.”

  “You could invite them to the cove. Sun and sand can be healing.”

  Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping, Gage mused, then turned his thoughts back to Mara and her son. No doubt they could use a dose of sun and sand. It had come down to Charlie’s next of kin—to Mara—to give the go-ahead on an American military raid to rescue her husband. He hadn’t survived the attempt. One of his kidnappers had shot him as soldiers stormed the compound where he’d been held.

  “I’m glad Griffin has made the choice to stick close to his woman,” Gage said abruptly. “If you love somebody enough, you won’t chance putting them through that.”

  “He loves Jane a lot.”

  “He does,” Gage agreed, shaking off his dark thoughts and breathing deep of the clean, open air. “Speaking of love lives, how’s yours?”

  Skye made a great show of screwing the empty cap back onto her thermos. “Oh, let’s not talk about me.”

  “Why not? Did something go wrong with you and Dagwood?”

  Her eyes narrowed at him. “Dalton.”

  “Dalton, Dagwood.” With a vague wave of his hand, he dismissed his mistake. Fact was, Dalton felt like the mistake. He didn’t know the guy, but she’d written that he worked in commercial real estate. Probably wore a suit seven days a week and didn’t like to get sand or seawater on his feet.

  “We broke up,” Skye said.

  “Good—wait, what?” Gage turned to face her. “When did this happen?”

  “A while back.” Now it was her turn to make an offhand gesture. “He still keeps coming around, but it’s over.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  She shrugged.

  Call him nosy, but he couldn’t let it go at that. They’d shared quite a bit of themselves through their letters. “What was the trouble?”

  A flush suffused her face. Her wet tongue came out to paint her upper, then her lower, lip. Gage watched the nervous movement, aware he was getting aroused again. Damn. And damn her for the hesitation that had his hackles rising, too.

  “Skye?”

  “We...uh...” She cleared her throat. “There were some physical problems.”

  Dumbfounded, he stared at her. He’d expected to hear the guy was married. Or maybe two-timing Skye with some other single woman. But...physical problems? What the hell did that mean?

  Without thinking, he slid close and gripped her upper arms to turn her toward him, a sharp urgency driving him. “Did he hurt you? I’ll kill him if he hurt you.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t him. He didn’t hurt me.”

  Gage frowned, searching her face for the truth. “Okay. Good.” Then, driven again, he yanked her close and buried his face in her hair, breathing in more floral sweetness. “You scared the shit out of me for a minute.”

  It took another of those minutes for him to realize she was stiff in his hold. God, he thought, releasing her to put some distance between them. She probably considered him nuts. He was nuts, because he could still feel the imprint of her delicate form against his chest, the soft mounds of her breasts snuggled against his pecs. His cock throbbed and he shoved a hand through his hair, trying to push from his mind how good she’d felt in his arms.

  Fuck. He needed to get laid, whether or not it insulted Skye’s prudish sensibilities. Not that she’d have any reason to know about who and what he did between the sheets. He could be discreet.

  Though he wondered about his erection, because it was still upright and clamoring for immediate action.

  Gage shot to his feet. “I should get back. Give Griffin a call.” If his brother refused to go babe-trolling with him, maybe Jane had a friend who was up for sexual adventure. Because that was exactly what he needed.

  Skye stood, too, her plastic container in hand. “See you later.”

  “What are you doing today?”

  “This and that.” Then she crossed the uneven surface at her feet to peer into the nearest tide pool. “First, I’m gathering some sea lettuce.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a bright green seaweed—looks just like lettuce.”

  “I know what it is, I just don’t know what you want with it.”

  She sent him a smile. “I’m going to eat it in a salad. Want to come over for dinner tonight and share it with me?”

  “Tell me you’re not going to serve it with sea cucumber.” They were unattractive orange, sluglike creatures, about as long as a man’s hand, with a bumpy, leathery skin.

  Her gaze went back to the tide pool. “I think I see one or two of those in here, as well.”

  He made his way over to take his own look. “You don’t really eat them.”

  “I don’t really eat them.” She leaped over a nearby pool to approach yet another. “Oh, here’s an octopus.”

  Who could resist an eight-armed animal? Gage walked toward her, sliding a little on some slimy surf grass covering the exposed rock.

  “Be careful,” Skye admonished.

  He shot her a grin. “Thanks, Mom.” Upon reaching the edge, he squatted for a better view.

  Skye mimicked his position. They were shoulder to shoulder. Her arm lifted, and she pointed toward a small underwater cavern below the surface. “See?”

  Gage studied nature’s temporary goldfish bowl. It took him a moment, but then he saw the creature, its brown-speckled body about the size of his fist. As they watched, one of its tentacles drifted out and explored the rock overhead. It touched a bright green anemone, which immediately drew in its petals. A trio of starfish, one orange, one brown, one rose, clung to another shelf of rock nearby, huddled close to each other. A small sculpin fish wiggled about the sandy bottom on its own mission.

  “Beautiful,” Gage said, turning his head to give Skye another grin.

  Her head turned, too, and she smiled back.

  Beautiful, he thought again, gazing into her face, then homing in on that soft, tender mouth. Her smile slid away and it was so serious now. So seriously in need of a kiss.

  Gage leaned forward.

  Skye scrambled back, stumbling as she rose. He shot up, too, taken aback by her sudden movement. Her left heel caught on a jut of rock, and the right sole of her slip-on canvas shoe slid on a patch of surf grass. Then she was falling, going ass-first into one of the larger, deeper tide pools.

  She didn’t submerge all the way, but managed to come to a stand, wet from the neck down. They both stared at each other a moment, and then she burst out laughing. “So much for my dignity,” she said, apropos of nothing and between bouts of laughter. “I feel like an idiot.”

  “You look like one, too,” Gage confirmed and leaned down, palm outstretched to help her out. After a moment, her wet hand met his and he pulled, her light weight making it nothing to get her back onto land, water streaming from her clothes and puddling at her feet.

  “I probably terrified some poor little sea creature,” she said, turning around to inspect the still-sloshing surface of the pool.

  Gage’s gaze got stuck on her backside, the thin linen of her clothing now transparent and plastered to her skin. Oh, God. She had the sweetest—the sweetest—of high, firm asses. His favorite kind.

  Then she spun back and the fabric was only the frailest of veils here, too. He could see every lovely line of her: the delicate framework of her collarbone, the gentle slope of her breasts with their cold-hardened peaks, the flat plane of her belly between her hip bones, the gentle rise of her sex.

  Gage flashed hot all over. He could have used his cock as a hammer.

  “We should get you back home,” he said, poleaxed by the strength and insistence of his physical
reaction. Want to have her, his body was demanding. Got to have her.

  And Gage had this worrisome premonition that no other woman would do.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SKYE HAD MADE A DATE with Polly for a caffeine boost in the form of an afternoon latte at Captain Crow’s. Her friend was already seated at the bar, blowing across the top of her overlarge cup as Skye approached. “How are you?” she asked.

  Polly responded with her usual cloudless smile, “Me? I’m good. I’m always good.”

  Settling herself onto a stool, Skye glanced around. Starting at about four o’clock, the place would fill with people demanding beer and cocktails, but it was relatively quiet now and there was someone new attending the espresso machine.

  He turned and started toward her. “What can I get you, Skye?”

  She frowned. He was in his mid-twenties, with shaggy dark hair and a skinny build. His face wasn’t familiar. “I’m sorry, do I—”

  “Oh, you probably don’t.” He appeared suddenly self-conscious. “I’m Steve. I went to college with Addy...Addison March, who stayed at the cove last month? We met here for drinks one time and she showed me the Sunrise Pictures stuff.”

  “Oh. Sure.” A grad student in film studies, Addy had cataloged the memorabilia in exchange for a first look at the complete collection. “But did we meet then?”

  The barista was a little red in the face now. “No, no. I think she pointed you out to me, that’s all. Can I make you a latte, as well?”

  “Yes, thanks,” Skye said, then watched him hurry toward the big machine at the end of the bar.

  “Just another of your admirers,” Polly murmured.

  “What? No! I don’t even know that guy.” And she didn’t want to know him, because he gave off a weird enough vibe to make her stomach knot. Though to be fair, these days all men gave off a weird vibe to her.

  “Well, Gage Lowell seemed very attentive yesterday. I saw him with you in your yard.”

  “You were the one he was paying attention to. He told me he thinks you’re cute.” And then she’d warned him off with a rabid intensity that made her squirm a little, remembering it.