Perfect for the Beach (38 page)

“Damn! That poor kid!” Sam said, taking the phone from her and punching the keypad. He waited as it rang and dragged Kat close. He knew she was worried about her friend, but there was nothing they could do from here. Besides that, Elliot had left when Sam did, but he’d gone fishing at the lake for the weekend. He told Sam he’d be on his cell, and he wasn’t that far out of the city.

Elliot picked up, and Sam said, “Hey, it’s Sam. Wake up and get dressed, buddy. Your assistant’s in the slammer.” He grinned at Kat when she socked him in the shoulder, appalled at his amusement when Summer was facing serious charges.

As he talked to him, Sam was sure Elliot would take care of things. His partner had it bad for his wayward assistant, and he was rightly in a rage when Sam relayed the information Kat had given him.

Sam hung up the phone, confident that while Summer might
need
the weekend to recover after her experience in the clink, she’d be cleared of all the charges, even the assault. Both she and the police were victims of circumstance. Her booking would most likely be the worst of the whole ordeal. Well, Sam chuckled, that or the lecture she was in for from her boss.

He pulled Kat down beside him on the bed. “Elliot’s on his way back home to get her,” he said, and smoothed the crease from between her eyes. “Don’t worry.”

She still looked concerned.

“Kat, you have to know how he feels about her, right?” Sam had seen the signs for weeks, even if Elliot wouldn’t yet admit it to anyone—even himself.

Kat smiled and snuggled back down beside him. “I suppose so,” she said. “But you have to admit, it was getting a little ridiculous in that office. All three partners swearing company celibacy, their assistants unwittingly testing
their
resolve, and all of us fighting the attraction. It’s like an old black-and-white movie that only comes on late at night. Now that’s two that have broken Jonah’s stupid,
illegal
policy, including Jonah himself. I wonder if Elliot will be the holdout.”

Sam chuckled and slipped an arm around her, bringing her close to his side. “It was a gentleman’s agreement, sweetheart. Jonah just didn’t want to lose good people… like
you.
But if Elliot knows what’s good for him, he won’t wait too long.”

Kat stroked his skin, her fingers making circles in his chest hair. “I hope he realizes what he’s in for, though. Summer’s a shy little thing, but she’s got gumption. If he backs her into a corner, I have a feeling she’ll come out swinging.” She laughed. “The man won’t know what hit him.”

Sam grinned, thinking that Kat didn’t fit the mold he’d imagined of her either. But every new thing he learned made him love her that much more. He figured Elliot was in for a few surprises where his own assistant was concerned.

He pulled Kat to him and captured her lips hungrily. “Where were we before our felon called?” Sam asked, then kissed along her throat as she tilted her head for him.

“Alleged felon, Counselor. And you were just about to make passionate love to me,” Kat replied teasingly.

“Yeah, that’s exactly where I was.” He tweaked her nose. “You’d make a damn good lawyer, babe,” he said, rolling and pulling her under him, his mouth just inches from her delicious lips.

“I’d rather be the wife of one.” She sighed.

Sam wholeheartedly agreed. “Mmm, I like the sound of that. Let me show you the benefits package
that
position offers.” He growled, his grin wicked as he began undoing the endless row of buttons down the front of her dress.

Kat wriggled under him, and tugged it easily over her head, leaving her in nothing but her bra and panties as she tossed it away.

“God, you’re pretty, Kat. I’m an incredibly lucky man.”

Her throaty laugh bubbled up and his excitement began to build as he gazed down at her. The sun was breaking over the horizon, casting a soft glow through the window onto her silky skin. Her hands stroked his heated flesh, sliding down and unfastening his shorts. “I’m the lucky one, Sam. I got you. For once, Murphy’s Law worked in my favor.”

He couldn’t argue with that. Didn’t want to. Instead, he let her slide his zipper down as he lowered his head for a kiss that was reverent, yet demanding. Her soft hand wrapped around his hardening erection and he dragged his mouth from hers, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “For both of us, sweetheart,” he breathed raggedly. “It worked for both of us.” And Sam began to show her just how grateful he was.

In another wonderful Brava anthology,
BAD BOYS DOWN UNDER,
Nancy Warren has written all three stories.
Here’s a sample of one of them,
The Great Barrier.

Bronwyn Spencer dragged out the photo of the man she’d be looking after for the next fortnight. Mark Forsyth. Even his name sounded wet. He was some sort of finance type, coming over to sort Crane’s financial system and explain how all the taxes worked in the American market. She knew this was important, but she couldn’t imagine anything more boring.

She’d tried to balance her checkbook once and found it so futile she’d given up. She’d discovered instead a wonderful thing called overdraft protection.

And after that ran out, in extreme emergencies there was always Cam. Except that he wasn’t here. Off with his new lovey dove right when she most needed him.

Why did her overdraft have to run out right when the week’s rent was due? Oh, well. Luckily she was a resourceful woman, and had allowed Cam to bail her out of a jam once more, even though he’d done it without his knowledge. Which wasn’t her fault. He hadn’t been around to ask.

She wasn’t going to stand around the baggage claim area holding a sign with Mark Forsyth’s name on it, so she was going to have to recognize the man. She studied his corporate photo while she drank the coffee.

Mark Forsyth gazed back at her from a corporate head shot, earnest and dull. Black hair that would look better if it was a little longer and not so neat, serious blue eyes in a serious, narrow face. Firm lips that looked as though they never smiled at a joke, never mind told one.

Her lip curled. It was going to be a long two weeks. Already she was irritated with the man since she was on time and his flight wasn’t. She could have snatched a bit more sleep. Her feet ached from all the dancing last night, and she stretched them out, noticing the coral polish on her nails was already chipped.

With a quiet chuckle she remembered that Fiona had outlasted her at the party, and seemed pretty keen on a blond surfie from Brisbane wearing a shirt of so hideous a green that it ought to be burned. She wondered how Fi was faring and pulled out her mobile. She hesitated, and then decided that if she had to be functioning at nine in the morning on a Saturday, her best mate ought to as well.

She punched in the number and after a few rings, Fiona answered. “This better be life or death.”

“Did you go home with your surfie?”

A great groan met her ears. “What the bloody hell are you doing ringing me at this hour?”

“Well, did you?”

A few passengers began drifting out from the California flight. Idly she watched them, blinking with tiredness, or stretching after more hours than she cared to contemplate stuffed in a tin can thirty thousand feet above earth. Bron shook her head, she firmly believed that if God had meant man to fly, he’d have given surfboards wings.

She glanced down at the black-haired, serious and controlled-looking man in the photo and kept her eyes open while Fiona yawned and groaned.

“No,” her friend said, finally. “I didn’t go home with him. Now would you piss off.”

A man came through the glass doors alone. Right general age and he had black hair, but he was nothing like the photograph. His hair was a mess. His face was shadowy with stubble, giving him a disreputable look. He moved slowly, but she liked the way he walked, with a kind of rolling gait, as though he were getting off a boat rather than a plane. He stood as though he were about to fall asleep on his feet, his gaze searching out someone. Then their gazes connected and she felt her heart flop over.

No photograph could have captured the blue of his eyes. They were the dark, smoky blue of a wailing sax at some bar at three in the morning, with a half drunk whiskey and a smoldering cigarette. They were so tired, and so lonely in a cynical way that she wanted to fix everything for him and kiss his hurts better. It was an odd reaction for her to have for a stranger, but he didn’t even look like a stranger, she thought with a spurt of recognition.

He held a briefcase in one hand and a black suitcase in the other. She glanced back at the photo and back at him, every hormone in her body doing a victory dance.

“Oh, my God,” she said into the phone. “He’s gorgeous.”

“I dunno,” her friend said in her ear. “He was all right looking, I suppose, but that shirt! I thought he’d—”

“What are you going on about? You can’t see him.” She’d have to remember never to wake Fi early on a Saturday again. “I’ve got to go.” And she ended the call, while Fiona was in the middle of something.

Mark Forsyth’s gaze had paused only briefly on hers and kept going, but whew, what could happen to a person’s pulse in a few seconds.

Slowly she rose and approached. Could she really be this lucky and find that she was being asked to look after just about the sweetest sexpot she’d ever seen? Taking a deep breath, she said, “Mark Forsyth?”

He looked at her for a moment and a crease formed between his brows as though he weren’t quite sure what his name was. She wanted to kiss the frown away.

Please turn the page for a sizzling preview of
RETURN TO ME
by Shannon McKenna.
Available right now.

“Excuse me, miss. I’m looking for El Kent.” The low, quiet voice came from the swinging door that led to the dining room.

Ellen spun around with a gasp. The eggs flew into the air, and splattered on the floor. No one called her El. No one except for—

The sight of Simon knocked her back. God. So tall. So big. All over. The long, skinny body she remembered was filled out with hard, lean muscle. His white T-shirt showed off broad shoulders, sinewy arms. Faded jeans clung with careless grace to the perfect lines of his narrow hips, his long legs. She looked up into the focused intensity of his dark eyes, and a rush of hot and cold shivered through her body.

The exotic perfection of his face was harder now. Seasoned by sun and wind and time. She drank in the details: golden skin, narrow hawk nose, hollows beneath his prominent cheekbones, the sharp angle of his jaw, shaded with a few days’ growth of dark beard stubble. A silvery scar sliced through the dark slash of his left eyebrow. His gleaming hair was wet, combed straight back from his square forehead into a ponytail. Tightly leashed power hummed around him.

The hairs on her arms lifted in response.

His eyes flicked over her body. His teeth flashed white against his tan. “Damn. I’ll run to the store to replace those eggs for you, miss.”

Miss?
He didn’t even recognize her. Her face was starting to shake again. Seventeen years of worrying about him, and he just checked out her body, like he might scope any woman he saw on the street.

He waited patiently for her to respond to his apology. She peeked up at his face again. One eyebrow was tilted up in a gesture so achingly familiar, it brought tears to her eyes. She clapped her hand over her trembling lips. She would not cry. She would not.

“I’m real sorry I startled you,” he tried again. “I was wondering if you could tell me where I might find—” His voice trailed off. His smile faded. He sucked in a gulp of air. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “El?”

The gesture tipped him off. He recognized her the instant she covered her mouth and peeked over her hand, but he had to struggle to superimpose his memories of El onto the knockout blonde in the kitchen. He remembered a skinny girl with big, startled eyes peeking up from beneath heavy bangs. A mouth too big for her bit of a face.

This woman was nothing like that awkward girl. She’d filled out, with a fine, round ass that had immediately caught his eye as she bent into the fridge. And what she had down there was nicely balanced by what she had up top. High, full tits, bouncing and soft. A tender, lavish mouthful and then some, just how he liked them.

Her hand dropped, and revealed her wide, soft mouth. Her dark eyebrows no longer met across the bridge of her nose. Spots of pink stained her delicate cheekbones. She’d grown into her eyes and mouth. Her hair was a wavy curtain of gold-streaked bronze that reached down to her ass. El Kent had turned beautiful. Mouth-falling-open, mind-going-blank beautiful. The images locked seamlessly together, and he wondered how he could’ve not recognized her, even for an instant. He wanted to hug her, but something buzzing in the air held him back.

The silence deepened. The air was heavy with it. She didn’t exclaim, or look surprised, or pleased. In fact, she looked almost scared.