Simply Irresistible (25 page)

Georgeanne felt a little foolish for the ember of pleasure in the pit of her stomach. She batted his hand away and pulled the bottom of her shirt down. “Well, it is,” she said, then she stepped around John and walked ahead of him and Lexie. She remembered what had happened seven years ago when he’d turned her head with his smooth compliments. Every southern girl dreamed of being a beauty queen, and with very little effort, he’d made her feel like Miss Texas. She’d eagerly jumped in his bed. Now, as she walked around a medium-sized boulder, she reminded herself that while he could be charming, he could also get real nasty.

Once they reached the base of the rock, the three of them explored. John set Lexie back on her feet, and together they examined the usual variety of ocean life. The sky remained cloudless and the day beautiful.

Georgeanne watched John and Lexie together. She watched them discover orange and purple starfish, mussels, and more sticky anemone. She watched their dark heads bent over a tide pool and tried to bury her insecurities.

“It’s lost,” Lexie said as Georgeanne crouched down next to her beside the tide pool.

“What is?” she asked.

Lexie pointed to a little brown and black fish swimming beneath the surface of the clear, cold water. “It’s a baby and its mommy is gone.”

“I don’t think it’s a baby,” John told her. “I think it’s just a small fish.”

She shook her head. “No, John. It’s a baby, all right.”

“Well, once the tide comes back in, its mommy can come and get it,” Georgeanne assured her daughter, attempting to stop Lexie before she got too agitated. When it came to orphans, Lexie was known to get very emotional.

“No.” She shook her head again and her chin quivered as she said, “Its mommy is lost, too.”

Because Lexie had only known the security of one parent, and she had no other family besides Mae, Georgeanne had to carefully screen Lexie’s movies and videos to make sure that every child and animal had a mother or a father. On her last birthday Georgeanne had let Lexie convince her that she was old enough to watch the movie
Babe
. Major mistake. Lexie had cried for a week afterward. “Its mommy isn’t lost. When the tide comes back in, it can go home.”

“No, mommies don’t leave their babies unless they’re lost. The little fish can’t ever go home now.” She rested her forehead on her knee. “It’s gonna die without its mommy.” She squeezed her eyes shut and a tear ran down her nose.

Georgeanne gazed across Lexie’s bent head toward John. He stared back with a desperate look in his deep blue eyes. He clearly expected her to do something. “I’m sure its daddy is out there swimming around looking for it.”

Lexie wasn’t buying. “Daddies don’t take care of babies.”

“Sure they do,” John said. “If I were a daddy fish, I’d be out there looking for my baby.”

Turning her head, Lexie looked at John for a few moments, weighing his words in her mind. “Would you look until you found it?”

“Absolutely.” He glanced at Georgeanne, then back at Lexie. “If I knew I had a baby, I’d look forever.”

Lexie sniffed and stared back into the clear water. “What if it dies before the tide comes back?”

“Hmm.” John reached for Lexie’s bucket, dumped out her shells, and scooped the tiny fish inside.

“What are you doing?” Lexie asked as the three of them stood.

“Taking your little fish to its daddy,” he said, and turned toward the tide. “Stay here with your mother.”

Georgeanne and Lexie stood on a flat rock and watched John wade out into the surf. Gentle waves swept up his thighs, and she heard his gasp as the cold water soaked the bottom of his shorts. He looked about him, and after a few moments, he carefully lowered the pail into the ocean.

“Do you think it found the daddy fish?” Lexie asked anxiously.

Georgeanne stared at the big man with the little pink pail and said, “Oh, I’m certain he did.”

He walked back toward them. A smile on his face. John “The Wall” Kowalsky, big bad hockey player, hero of small girls and guardian of tiny fish, had just sneaked past Bad Hair Day on her likable scale.

“Did you find him?” Lexie jumped off the rock and waded in up to her knees.

“Yep, and boy, was he happy to see his baby.”

“How did you know it was the daddy?”

John gave Lexie her pail, then took her little hand in his. “Because they look alike.”

“Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “What did he do when he saw his baby?”

He stopped in front of the rock where Georgeanne stood and looked up at her. “Well, he jumped up in the air, and then he swam around and around his little fish just to make sure it was all right.”

“I saw him do that.”

John laughed and little lines appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Really? From clear over here?”

“Yep. I’m gettin‘ my towel ’cause I’m freezin‘,” she announced, then took off up the beach.

Georgeanne looked into his face and matched his smile with her own. “How does it feel to be a hero?” she asked.

John grabbed Georgeanne’s waist and easily lifted her from the rock. Her hands grasped his shoulders as he lowered her feet into the frigid surf. Waves swirled about her calves and the breeze tousled her hair. “Am I your hero?” he asked, his voice gone all low and silky. Dangerous.

“No.” She dropped her hands from his hard shoulders and took a step backward. He was a big, powerful man, and yet he was very gentle and caring with Lexie. He was slicker than an oil spill, and if she wasn’t careful, he could make her forget the painful past. “I don’t like you, remember?”

“Uh-huh.” His smile told her he didn’t believe her for a minute. “Do you remember the time we were together on the beach in Copalis?”

She turned toward shore and spotted Lexie bundled up on the beach. “What about it?”

“You told me you hated me, and look what happened.” As they walked through the surf, he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes.

“Then it’s a good thing you find me completely resistible.”

He glanced at her chest, then turned his gaze toward the shore. “Yeah, good thing.”

When the three of them got back to the house, John insisted on making lunch. They sat at the dining room table and ate shrimp cocktail, slices of fresh fruit, and pita bread filled with crab salad. While Georgeanne and Lexie helped John put things away, she spied a deli sack stuck back in the corner by his answering machine.

By four o’clock the morning spent in the car with Lexie and the anxiety of the trip left Georgeanne exhausted. She found a soft chaise lounge on the deck and curled up with Lexie in her lap. John took the chair next to her, and the three of them stared out at the ocean, content with the world. She didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do. She savored the calmness of it all. Although she couldn’t say that the man sitting next to her was relaxing company—John was too big a presence and there was too much painful history between them for that—this house on the coast went a long way toward making up for the strained moments when he did his best to provoke her.

The peaceful sounds and the soft breeze lulled Georgeanne to sleep, and when she awoke, she was alone. A handcrafted blanket with shells on it covered her legs. She pushed it aside, stood, and stretched the kinks from her bones. Voices from the beach rose on the breeze, and she moved to the rail and leaned over the edge. John and Lexie weren’t on the beach. She pulled her hand back and a sharp sliver stabbed the soft pad of her middle finger. Her finger throbbed, but she had a more pressing concern.

Georgeanne really didn’t think John would take Lexie anywhere without talking to her about it first. But he wasn’t the sort of man who would think he needed her permission. If he’d left with her daughter, then Georgeanne figured she had a right to kill him and consider it justifiable homicide. But in the end, she didn’t have to kill him. She found both Lexie and John downstairs in the weight room.

John sat on a fancy exercise bike in the corner, pedaling at a steady pace. His gaze was lowered to Lexie, who lay on the floor, her hands behind her head and one dirty little foot resting on her bent knee.

“How come you gotta ride that so fast?” Lexie asked him.

“It helps my stamina,” he answered above the soft whirring of the front wheel. He still wore the olive T-shirt he’d worn earlier, and for one short second, Georgeanne let her gaze travel to his strong thighs and calves, and she took in the pleasure of watching him.

“What’s stamina?”

“It’s endurance. The stuff a guy needs so that he doesn’t run out of steam and let the young guys kick his ass all over the ice.”

Lexie gasped. “You did it again.”

“What?”

“You swore.”

“I did?”

“Yep.”

“Sorry. I’ll work on it.”

“That’s what you said last time,” Lexie complained from her position on the floor.

He smiled. “I’ll do better, Coach.”

Lexie was quiet for a moment before she said, “Guess what.”

“What?”

“My mom gots a bike like that.” She pointed in John’s direction. “ ‘Cept I don’t think she rides it.”

Georgeanne’s exercise bicycle wasn’t like John’s. It wasn’t as expensive, and Lexie was right, she didn’t ride it anymore. In fact, she never really had ridden it. “Hey,” she said as she stepped into the room, “I use that bike all the time. It has a very important job as a shirt hanger.”

Lexie turned her head and smiled. “We’re working out. I rode first and now it’s John’s turn.”

John looked over at her. The bicycle pedals stopped, but the wheel kept spinning. “Yes. I can see that,” she said, wishing she’d brushed her hair before she’d found them. She was sure she looked scary.

John didn’t agree. She looked tousled and flushed from sleep. Her voice a bit lower than normal. “How was your nap?”

“I hadn’t even known I was that tired.” She combed her fingers through her hair and shook her head.

“Well, keeping up with the twists and turns of a certain little mind is exhausting,” he said, and wondered if she was doing that hair-shaking stuff on purpose.

“Very.” Georgeanne walked over to Lexie and held out a hand to help her to her feet. “Let’s go find something to do and let John finish.”

“I am finished,” he said as he stood, keeping his eyes above chest level and trying not to stare like a schoolboy at her cleavage. He really didn’t want her to catch him ogling her body and think he was some kind of perverted bastard. She was the mother of his child, and although she never really said anything specific, he knew she didn’t have a very high opinion of him as it was. Maybe he deserved her low opinion. Maybe not. “Actually, I wasn’t going to do this today, but Lexie and I got a little bored waiting for you. It was either ride the exercise bike or play Barbie Beauty Parlor.”

“I can’t see you playing Barbies.”

“That makes two of us.” But there was just one problem with his good intentions; the halter top she wore was sapping his willpower. Kind of like Superman and kryptonite. “Lexie and I have been talking about finding some oysters for dinner.”

“Oysters?” Georgeanne turned her attention to Lexie. “You won’t like oysters.”

“Yeah-huh. John said I would.”

Georgeanne didn’t argue, but an hour later as they sat in a seafood restaurant, Lexie took one look at the picture of oysters on the menu and wrinkled her nose. “That’s yucky,” she said. When their waitress approached the table, Lexie ordered a toasted cheese sandwich on “fresh” bread, fries on a separate plate, and Heinz ketchup.

The waitress turned her attention to Georgeanne, and John sat back and observed the power of her southern charm and megawatt smile.

“I know you’re very busy, and I know from experience that your job is thankless and extremely hectic, but you look like a sweetheart, and I was so hoping I might make just a few little changes,” she began, her voice oozing compassion for the woman and her “thankless” job. By the time she was finished, she’d ordered salmon with a “lemon-chive brown-butter sauce” that wasn’t even on the menu. She substituted new potatoes for the rice, with “no butter, just a dash of salt, and a pinch of chives.” She ordered her cantaloupe served on a separate plate because “cantaloupe should never be served warm.” John half expected the woman to tell Georgeanne to go to hell, but she didn’t. The waitress seemed only too happy to change the menu for Georgeanne.

Compared to his two female companions, John’s order was extremely easy. Oysters on the half shell. Nothing extra. Nothing on the side. As soon as the waitress left, he looked across the table at the two females with him. Both wore light summer dresses. Georgeanne’s matched the green of her eyes. Lexie’s matched the blue of her eye
shadow
. He tried not to frown, but he hated to see all that makeup on his little girl. It was embarrassing and made him grateful for the darkness of the booth.

“Are you gonna eat those?” Lexie asked once their food arrived. She leaned forward, fascinated yet repulsed by his dinner.

“Yep.” He reached for a half shell and raised it to his lips. “Mmm,” he said, then sucked the oyster into his mouth and down his throat.

Lexie squealed, and Georgeanne looked a little squeamish and turned her attention to her salmon with lemon-chive brown-butter sauce.

The rest of the meal progressed fairly well. They chatted with a bit less tension than usual, but the ease of the evening ended when the waitress set the check next to him. Georgeanne reached for it, but he stopped her with his hand. Her eyes met his across the table, and she looked like a woman who wanted to drop the gloves and fight for the check.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

“Don’t make me get rough with you,” he warned, and squeezed her hand. He wasn’t opposed to the match, just the arena.

Rather than argue, she let him win, but the look she gave him said she clearly meant to discuss it again later when they were alone.

On the way home from the restaurant, Lexie fell asleep in the backseat of John’s Range Rover. He carried her into the house, feeling her warm breath on the side of his neck. He would have liked to hold her longer, but he didn’t. He would have liked to stay while Georgeanne got her ready for bed, but he felt a little funny about it and left.