Something flickered in Felicity’s eyes, then she blinked and it was gone. “It’s strange, when you think about it. We both grew up under a cloud, overshadowed by dark events beyond our control. I responded by holding myself in check and trying to keep as much control as I can…and you let yourself go. You let yourself experience things to the fullest. You wring every drop of happiness you can out of life. I wish I could be more like that.”
“You can,” he promised her, meaning it with everything in him.
“I think…I’m ready to try. If you’ll help me.”
“Anything.” So many promises, when Zane had managed to make it through his entire life without ever promising anyone anything. But he couldn’t regret it when a slow, tremulous smile bloomed across Felicity’s face.
She leaned back on her elbows against the hood of the car, like a classic pinup girl in a fifties magazine. Crooking one slim finger, she tilted her chin up in invitation. Only the rapid rise and fall of her chest gave away her nerves.
“Come here,” Felicity said, all throaty and husky. “And help me experience life to the fullest.”
In three long strides, Zane was at her side. Her eyes were hot enough to sear his skin, and when he reached for her, she gasped at the hungry slide of his hands up the outsides of her silken thighs.
Clasping her slender waist, he marveled at the feel of her—delicate, fragile, yet somehow totally in control of her own power as a beautiful and desirable woman. It was addictive. Zane’s body throbbed, thick and heavy with the molten beat of his blood.
When Felicity boldly leaned up to grab hold of his collar and pulled him down to cover her, Zane grinned, wild and free. There was nothing on earth like watching Felicity Carlson come apart in his arms. Nothing he’d experienced before in his life of decadent pleasures even compared.
Zane sank into the moment, lost and found in Felicity’s tight embrace.
“I can’t believe we did that.” Felicity hitched her shoulders against the rear bumper of the car and leaned into Zane. “I can’t believe
I
did that.”
“No regrets?”
The light ease of his tone was at odds with tension she could feel in his strong, hard-muscled body. The body she’d felt every inch of, pressed against her and moving with her to create sensations she’d never even imagined possible…
Felicity smiled up at him and tried to find the energy to rearrange their rucked up clothing into something passably respectable. “None. Except maybe the fact that we didn’t take the time to get somewhere private where we could undress each other—and maybe find a flat surface.”
At one point, too caught up in each other to notice insignificant details like gravity, they’d slid right off the hood of the car and onto the ground. Cursing fluently, Zane had twisted them at the last second so he landed first and cushioned her fall. Felicity couldn’t help but laugh, even knowing it might piss Zane off. From what she remembered of her Bad Year of college hook-ups, boys did not enjoy it when girls got the giggles during sex.
Well, maybe that was the difference between boys and men, she reflected now as she watched answering humor lighten Zane’s incredible blue eyes. Because Zane had thrown his head back and laughed right along with her, then growled and lifted her above him and made her gasp. She’d never realized sex could be both intimate and playful, intense and silly at the same time.
“Flat surfaces are overrated,” Zane told her, with the air of a wise old man imparting deeply serious advice. “You get more points for style and high degree of difficulty if you go for slanted, bouncy, or otherwise unstable surfaces.”
“
You’re
unstable,” Felicity retorted nonsensically, lifting her mouth for a kiss.
“But you love that about me.” The words hummed against her swollen, sensitive lips, and Felicity told herself the shiver that shot down her spine was from the sensation…not from the sound of the “L” word in Zane’s rich, deep voice.
She didn’t want to move. All her muscles and bones felt weighted to the ground with spent pleasure and exhaustion. But the ever-present timer in her head kept relentlessly ticking, reminding her that time was running out.
“What I would love,” Felicity said, disentangling herself and struggling to her feet, “would be to nail down a reception location. I’ve planned everything I can without that last piece of the puzzle in place.”
Zane glanced at his wafer thin sports watch. “So. The most amazing sex of your life distracted you for all of…eighty-seven minutes. I must be slipping.”
“Who said it was the most amazing sex of my life?” Felicity responded tartly, hands on hips.
The smoldering look Zane directed up at her from his boneless sprawl on the ground made Felicity’s thighs tremble and her cheeks heat. There was something unbelievably sexy about Zane’s confidence, especially now that she’d peeked behind the curtain and glimpsed the reasons behind everything Zane did.
His brother’s death had scarred him. Zane might think he was over it, that he’d moved on by living his life a certain way—but Felicity could see that there was still healing to be done. For instance, even now, Zane avoided looking past her and out to across the beach to the sea.
Holding out a hand to help brace him, Felicity felt a thrill when he clasped her fingers and let her tug him up. They were in this together.
“You’re right,” she said, quiet and simple and to the point. “It was the best sex of my life, because for the first time in a long time, I let go and allowed myself to enjoy it. And you’re the one who showed me how. So thank you for that.”
His eyes heated to the color of the blue flames at the heart of a fire. “It was my pleasure, I assure you.”
“Let me show you something in return.” Felicity tried not to beg, but his answer mattered so much.
Zane zipped up his jeans, leaving the top button undone in a way that played havoc with Felicity’s hormones. Shrugging back into his waffle-print cotton Henley shirt, he gave her a wary glance. “The beach?”
She nodded, doing her best to project calm emotional support. “You wanted me to admit that the world wouldn’t stop turning if I let go and had fun. We proved that together. Now let me prove to you that you’re strong enough to stand at the edge of the ocean.”
***
Fair was fair, Zane supposed, swallowing as a chill sweat broke out along his hairline. Ignoring the clenching of his gut, he said, “Sure. What the hell.”
Relief and happiness turned Felicity’s smile up to eleven. She clasped his hand, apparently not minding that his palms were a little clammy, and walked backwards onto the edge of the sand.
With Felicity holding his hands and pulling him forward, Zane managed to take that first step out onto the sand. The shift and scratch of it under his shoes tightened his stomach, bringing up memories, but Zane held them at bay by staring into Felicity’s soft amber eyes.
He inhaled salt sweet air and the sound of gulls calling to each other as they rode the breeze overhead. Sharp, dry cord grass brushed and caught at his jeans as they tramped through the dunes to the wide expanse of flat beach. The sound of the waves rushing in filled Zane’s ears, and for a disorienting heartbeat, the crying gulls sounded like humans shrieking for help. Zane tensed, but Felicity linked her arm through his elbow and stood shoulder to shoulder with him. As if it were the two of them against the world…or at least, the two of them against Zane’s darkest nightmares.
The Atlantic Ocean rolled out before them like a vast, endless blue void. White-capped waves surged and danced, hiding untold dangers in the depths below. Zane forced himself to confront it—not just the view of the ocean but the undertow of his memories. “This is the same ocean that killed my brother.”
Felicity’s arm tightened around his, but her voice was calm. “It’s never the same ocean. The water ebbs and flows, the tides go in and out, and everything changes. What happened to you and your family was horrible, Zane. But the ocean is as beautiful as it is terrible. And it has a lot of meaning, for a lot of people. I’m sure Miles and Greta would love to celebrate their vows right over there.” Felicity pointed a little ways down the beach to a protected inlet, small and intimate looking.
Heart pounding, Zane pictured it. He pictured himself in a suit, after standing up with Miles, who reminded him of Michael so much that at times, it was hard to be around him. Could he do it? Could he dance at Miles’s wedding reception, on the sandy beach he’d avoided for so long, and be happy for his friend?
Surprise washed through him. Instead of dread, the image felt good—right. It was what Miles wanted, and Miles should get to live his dream of the perfect wedding. Zane wanted that for him, and since he could never give it to Michael, he’d do his damnedest to make sure Miles got everything he wanted.
Which, for some reason, included Zane working together with Felicity Carlson to plan the reception. Maybe Zane owed Miles a thank you.
Drawing in a deep, cleansing breath, Zane cracked his neck and dropped Felicity’s arm so he could turn to face her. She stared up at him with hope and compassion brightening her eyes to the color of ancient gold coins, and Zane couldn’t resist dipping his head to steal a kiss from her berry-pink lips.
His next breath came straight from Felicity’s lungs, and it gave him strength. “It’s going to be a beautiful wedding,” he murmured, nuzzling against the silk of her cheek. “And it’s going to be a beautiful reception, too—right down there in that cove.”
Felicity breathed in sharply, pulling back to search his face. “You mean it? We can go ahead with the reception on the beach?”
The words didn’t want to come, choked up behind the knot of emotion in his throat, so he nodded instead. It was all worth it, the pain of reliving the past and the vulnerability of being here with Felicity, for the way her face lit up with happiness and excitement.
As she burst into explanations and plans for what she envisioned the reception to be like, Zane let his eyes drift to half-mast and listened with only half an ear while he kept one arm around her shoulders and concentrated on the feel of her at his side. She fit there so perfectly, as if there had been an invisible space carved out of the universe just for her, and he’d been carrying it around with him all his life.
Breaking off in the middle of an estimate for how long it would take to build a temporary wooden walkway across the cord grass marsh to help guests get from the yacht club to the reception site, Felicity met Zane’s gaze. “Thank you. I know this isn’t your first choice, and that it’s not completely comfortable for you, but it means a lot to me. And I know it will mean a lot to Miles and Greta.”
Zane shrugged it off, uncomfortable with her gratitude. “No big deal. It’s not like we’d found another alternative for the reception location anyway. And this will be convenient to the ceremony, no transporting the guests someplace else. It’s the practical solution.”
“I agree, but I know…” Felicity paused, worry shadowing her gaze. “I know it costs you something to be here, and to plan to spend even more time here. I just want you to know that I appreciate it, and I think we’re doing the right thing. For several reasons.”
Zane wasn’t sure what those reasons were, but as Felicity went back to lamenting the fact that she’d left her binder in the car and she couldn’t make notes on all her ideas, Zane hugged her in close to his side once more. And even as he pressed a kiss to the honey brown hair crowning her head, he realized he’d do a lot more than stand on a beach to keep from losing this.
Felicity wasn’t a child. She understood that the fact that she and Zane were now sleeping together—sneaking down the hallway at Harrington House, avoiding the creaky floorboard and laughing breathlessly when they slipped into each other’s beds—did not mean they’d never fight again.
Of course, the fact that both of them were guests at the Harrington’s huge, rambling Victorian house on Main Street eliminated several of the major obstacles to continuing their affair. For the last few days, they’d taken shameless advantage of their proximity, and every time they came together, Felicity felt herself unbend a little more. Under Zane’s tender hands and hungry gaze, her heart opened like a flower. No matter how often she reminded herself that this was only a fling, Felicity’s stubbornly hopeful heart never quite got the message.
But amazing compatibility in the bedroom—and in the back of her car, against a tree, and once, memorably, in the bathroom at the Firefly Café—did not necessarily equal compatibility anywhere else. Once they’d agreed to hold the reception on the beach, she’d sort of assumed the party planning would be relatively simple from there on.
Not so much.
“I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you want me to fly in Dash and the Danger Boys? They’re the top music act on my label. They sell out stadium concerts. Women throw their panties on the stage and men rock out to their badass sound.” Zane kicked his booted feet up on the porch railing and slouched down in his cushioned wicker chair. “What I’m saying is, they’re the new hotness. And I can get them here, on zero notice, to play a freaking hundred-person wedding. That’s the coolest thing I can think of.”
“It’s the flashiest thing you can think of,” Felicity corrected, snapping her binder closed. She ran a hand through her hair, grimacing at the tangles, and wished she had a rubber band to tie it back the way she did for her kickboxing classes at the gym. This conversation was every bit as much of a fight.
Zane shrugged. “So? People like a spectacle.”
“At a wedding, people like romance,” she argued. “And a hard-drinking, hard-living hard rock band doesn’t scream romance.”
“Romance.” Zane’s upper lip curled. “The best thing we could do for Miles is help his wedding transcend the usual tired clichés. Let’s give them all something to remember! A unique wedding experience they’ll never forget.”
Felicity kicked her bare toes against the white-painted floorboards to set the porch swing into furious motion. “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but Miles and Greta don’t care about unique. They don’t want to make a spectacle of themselves. They just want to dedicate their lives to each other, and to share that precious occasion with their friends and family in one intimate, special,
romantic
evening.”