The Red Bikini (21 page)

She looked away first, and a comfortable silence swelled. Giselle enjoyed the sound of the water, roaring up and hissing back. A strip of light shimmered against the ripples.

“Moon is full,” she said.

He murmured an agreement. “Strawberry Moon.”

Her eyes widened. “How did you know that?”

“I study moon and tide charts every day, Giselle. They’re the homepage of my laptop.”

“But how did you know it was the Strawberry Moon?”

He frowned. “That, I’m not sure. I learned that at some point—probably one of the Zen surfers.”

“My dad taught me.”

“Why does your dad study moons?”

“He teaches Native American literature. He always said the full moon is the best time for change.”

He stared at her for a long time; then they listened to four or five good waves. Suddenly, she felt his fingers touch hers on the concrete.

She jumped, and gasped.

“That’s the sound I was talking about. The one I’m not supposed to think about anymore.” His body unfolded. “Come with me.”

He moved through the glass doors, his heels thudding against the hardwood floor, but turned abruptly when he realized she wasn’t following. After hesitating a few seconds, he walked back and held out his hand.

“I’m not going to jump you, Ms. Underwood. As tempting as that sounds. I just want to show you something.”

She took his hand uncertainly. He lifted her from the concrete ledge, and she followed him down the hall, past the passed-out Tamara, and into his bedroom.

G
iselle hesitated in the bedroom doorway.

The room had the same feel as the front of the house—sort of a retro Polynesian look, with dark woods set off by white walls and linens. A bamboo fan hung over the bed, moving ocean air through the room. A desk and dark cabinetry ran the entire length of one wall, and a row of photos ran along the connecting wall—all framed in dark bamboo against the stucco. The photos were black-and-white, of surfers from other eras with their boards, sometimes with vintage cars.

“Who decorated your house?”

He found whatever he’d been searching for in a walk-in closet, and emerged with six or seven loose eight-by-tens in his hand. “You can tell I didn’t?”

“It just seems awfully detailed for a man to do.”

“Well, you’re right about that. I had a designer do it.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“That’s when the money was rolling in, and my agent suggested it. What do you think?” He surveyed the room himself. “Would it impress someone like you?”

“What do you mean ‘someone like me’?”

Fin just smiled. “Here are some photos I wanted to show you. Remember I was talking about the perfect moments? These are some.”

Giselle remained near the door while they studied the photos. He was the sole surfer in each one and looked spectacular. He pointed out the “corner” of the wave, or where the “wall” was. A few of the photos were close-up, his face fierce and focused. In some, he was crouched so low it was hard to imagine him balanced, coming through a tube of water, right at the camera.

“That was on the cover of
Surfer
magazine.” He handed her the next photo, in which he was hanging in the air over a wave, sideways, the board seeming glued to his feet, his tan arm flexed as he gripped the side. The sun glinted off the ocean in diamonds all around him.

In another, he was doing one of the “soul arches” she’d seen Kino do. His board shorts hung low on his hips, and his body arched back in a work of art.

“That was in Levanto, Italy, for
Longboarder
magazine. This one was in Sri Lanka.” He handed her the last one of him doing the soul arch, the water crystalline and blue behind him, the sky a saffron yellow.

“These are gorgeous,” she said. “I thought you didn’t like to have your photo taken?”

“I don’t mind having my photo taken doing something
real
.”

The whirling of the ceiling fan and the gentle ticking of a clock were the only sounds in the room as she took her time gazing at each of the photos, taking in his handsome face, the sexy flex of his forearms, the muscles in his thighs, the ridges of muscle across his stomach—then marveling that it was all within touching distance right now. Her breath quickened.

Fin leaned against the desk that ran along the one side of the room, his heavy arms crossed, watching her.

Giselle didn’t know what to do with his perusal. She shuffled the photos, then glanced around the room. A wall of framed shots caught her eye. “Who are these?”

Fin’s gaze dragged away from her. “My parents.” He pushed up from the desk. “That’s my mom in a competition she won in the seventies, and that’s my dad, accepting a trophy for the Honolulu competition. This is both of them, in Tahiti.”

The photos were all black-and-white—perhaps orchestrated by the designer—but Fin’s parents appeared timeless anyway. They looked like teenagers, with a tiny Fin between them—a towheaded, wide-eyed boy sitting in the crook of his mother’s legs, with her chin on his hair. Giselle couldn’t imagine how a mother could ever leave her child in another country, but in this picture she almost looked like a child herself—nineteen at best.

“Do you miss them?”

Fin dropped his gaze. The sound of the clock ticked clearly again into the silence.

“Coco’s lucky to have you,” he finally said. “You’re a good mother.”

Tears pricked her eyes at the compliment. It was one she always longed to hear, and coming from the least likely source she could imagine. She searched for something to focus on so he wouldn’t see her tearing up again. She shuffled through the photos and selected the two she liked best. One was the soul arch.

“Can you scan these for me?”

Fin frowned. “Why?”

“So I can remember my week here, with you.”

He stared at her a long time, not seeming to know how to react to that. He pushed them back toward her. “You can have them.”

“But these are your perfect moments.”

“There’ll be more.”

“Because you’re always looking for the next one.”

He smirked. “I am.”

“I’ll scan them and send them back,” she whispered.

A wild rush of despair swept through her, similar to the art show only more intense, causing her heart to accelerate in an out-of-control way. She hadn’t had an anxiety attack in a long time. She brought her hand to her chest. Usually they came on when she was terrified, like the first week she’d been alone with the newly born Coco. Or the week Roy had left.

“What’s wrong?” He was trying to duck his head down to see her face.

“Fin, I—I’m having a great time with you.” Giselle could hear the apology in her voice.

He laughed with discomfort. “I’m having a great time with you, too, Giselle.” He said it in a polite way, the way you speak to a child.

She was anxious about missing him. He made her feel accepted in a way she hadn’t felt in years—so unlikely, yet there it was. A twenty-eight-year-old pro surfer in California, making her feel she was good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, and even a good enough mother—when it was all she’d been looking for from everyone she knew all her adult life. When she glanced up, he was frowning in confusion.

“I mean—I’m having a
really
great time with you, and I don’t know why I can’t . . . let myself . . .” She shook her head. She knew what she wanted. She whispered the next part: “Why I can’t let myself have
casual sex
.”

Fin seemed to find that amusing. He took the photos from her and walked them back to the desk. “Giselle . . .” He straightened some papers, then leaned against the desktop. “This is a dangerous conversation.”

“I really think—”

“It’s not a huge mystery. You can’t let yourself have casual sex because you play for keeps. And that’s great.” He gave a rueful laugh. “It’s healthy. Just stay that way.”

“But maybe I want . . .” She wrestled for what that might be.

“What?” he asked, frowning.

What
did
she want? What Fin had said earlier—that had touched on something that felt true. “Maybe I want passion, like you said.” She whispered it. She was shocked she even let it slip off her tongue, but there it was. Between them. Floating like truth. “Maybe I want to be . . .”

The clock ticked off the seconds while she tried to formulate what it was.

“What?” He stepped closer.

“Desired.”

Fin’s chest rose and fell rapidly under his navy T-shirt. He dropped his head back. “Giselle,” he whispered. “What are you doing to me here?”

“I’m not trying to do anything,” she said. “I’m just confused and I . . .”

She turned toward the door. She didn’t mean to torment him. But before she could reach it, his hand snapped around her wrist. “Listen,” he rasped.

When she turned, he let go and stepped away from her. He took a deep breath. “You
are
desired. Half those boys at Rabbit’s stare at you as if you’re dessert. And, on the other end of the age spectrum, I think you had Mr. Turner’s heart-rate monitor up a few notches. So if you think you’ve lost that somewhere, don’t. And if your ex forgot to tell you, he’s an idiot. You’re beautiful. And sexy. And those lips . . . You’re the type of woman who will
always
be desired. And I—well, I haven’t made it a secret that I’ve been desiring you since the second I laid eyes on you.”

He took a hesitant step toward her.

“But I’m standing here thinking you want something more than that. I’m thinking you want to be in love, maybe, long-term. Or married again. Or maybe you’re looking for a good father for Coco.”

He searched her face, scrutinizing it for his answer.

“So I’ll ask you, one more time . . .” His voice was quiet, tinged with something that sounded like desperation. “I’m asking what you want. Because if you say you want a long-term relationship, I’m going to spin you on your heel and march you right back out of this bedroom, because I can’t give you that. I’m not equipped for long-term.

“But if you say all you want is to be desired, or to know how much you’re desired, I’m going to lock that door and hope to God that Fox doesn’t come back for the next couple of hours. Because
that
I can show you.”

Giselle stood very still, worried that even the slightest movement would upset the equilibrium of the room. She took in his rock-solid shoulders, his darkening eyes, his sun-kissed hair, and wondered whether she could touch him, have part of him, and then go nonchalantly back to real life. Would one night of passion help her get her life back on track? Was that all she’d been missing?

She could tell he knew the answer already. He turned to collect the photos. He seemed already resigned, already reeling himself in.

The old Giselle, she knew, would continue to wring her hands and say yes, she wanted the long-term relationship. It was what she was supposed to want. It was what everyone told her to want.

But the new Giselle would not.

The new one would lock the door.

 • • • 

Fin heard the click of the lock, and stood there dumbly for a second, wondering whether he’d heard it right.

Did she just—?
He turned his head
.

Holy fuck, she did.

He faced her, but then caught her terrified smile, and wondered what he had just unleashed here. Giselle had some kinks in her that she seemed to feel the need to work out, and here he was—lucky bastard—the recipient of her newfound depravity.

But guilt rose like a tide. He hung back to see where she wanted to go with this. “I guess that’s my answer,” he said.

“I guess it is.” Her breasts began rising and falling rapidly.

And damned if his heart wasn’t pounding a hundred miles an hour. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt nervous about touching a woman, but there it was. With Giselle. Damn.

“I can’t be anything but a lay right now, Giselle.” His voice was husky. He hardly recognized it.

“It’s okay,” she said on a sweet whisper.

“This is a one-night stand.”

“I know.”

He closed his eyes against the fragility of it all.

She wasn’t ready for this. One-night stands were good for raw sex; good to scratch that itch; good for men like him who didn’t want anything more than that. But Giselle would feel hurt by the coldness this always ended with. She was coming off a relationship that sounded like it lived and died in coldness—this was not going to make anything better for her.

And Lia was going to kill him.

But even as he was coming to those very logical conclusions, and knowing he didn’t want to be the jerk in this scenario, his brain was short-circuiting at the sight of her trembling fingertips going to the top button of that damned sweater. He swallowed hard. He was caught between his own base desires—amplified, tenfold, for some reason with this woman—and the stable, responsible person, the better man, he wanted to be.

“You won’t be hurt by this?” he reiterated, his voice barely coming out. He knew he was rationalizing already—the desperate man’s last resort.

But the way she shook made him feel bad. As much as he wanted to see her naked, touch her, be in her, he didn’t want her staring at him with that terrified expression all night.

She stalled at the button she’d been about to undo while her smile began to dissolve at his last question. His baser side batted twelve good curse words through his head for his idiocy.

“Because once we get started,” he went on, hoping she’d continue. He wanted that button undone. He wanted that cleavage revealed. He wanted her breasts in his hands, his lips buried there, her clothes coming off. “. . . I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

Well, that was fucking true. What if Fox decided to come banging on the front door about now? How was he going to stop here? Did he even turn off the torches outside? Did he close the slider door? Did he—

His brain stalled as Giselle undid her top button. It was exactly the way he’d imagined it, from that very first night he sat with her on the sand—that primness, juxtaposed with a simmering sexuality that was coming from beneath a very shallow surface, very close to the top. She was so curious, so willing. . . .

His erection pressed hard against his shorts. His glance swept her dress for a zipper or button or some way he could get the whole thing off her in about five seconds. But he stopped. This needed to be her idea.

His breathing went shallow, and a line of sweat broke out along his hairline. Watching Giselle strip for him—wriggling out of that dress, stepping out of her underpants—would be something he didn’t want to miss. But given their situation here, this might be their one and only time together. He didn’t want to rush a single second.

He clenched his back teeth and focused on keeping his feet planted on the wood.

“Are you sure you still want me?” She seemed uncertain.

“Gi
selle
.” He tried to keep his voice in a gentle reprimand—the one he used when she doubted her beauty—but it came out on a rasp, as if he didn’t have enough air. “Can you see how hard I am for you right now?”

Her eyes darted around, not landing anywhere near his shorts. He bit back a smile. “I’m not faking that.”

Nodding hesitantly, she finished wriggling her sweater over her elbows, giving him a nice jiggle of her breasts while the sweater slid to the floor.

He caught his breath. He’d been right about that top. It had a sort of Marilyn Monroe appeal to it and made her breasts look very, very . . .
full
 . . . and very, very . . . What was the word? . . .
Touchable
. Shit, his brain was giving out. He might not make it through this strip show. His palms began to itch.