Where the hell did she go?
His heart hammered in alarm as his eyes swept over the deserted beach, not seeing another living soul. The violence of the crashing waves hitting the shore increased his urgency to locate her . . . until he finally saw her, sitting alone at the end of the rock formations near the pier, her head bowed in what looked like defeat.
Leave. Don’t get involved. It’s none of my damn business why she’s upset. She obviously wants her privacy. Go. Now.
He avoided emotional scenes like incurable diseases. The last thing he wanted to do was get involved in some female’s problems, a woman he’d only talked to briefly a handful of times. He hardly knew her. And he didn’t do drama. Staying in control of his own emotions was critically important to him. The only way he’d found to accomplish that was to avoid caring about much of anything. And that included sad, crying, beautiful women like Mara Ross.
She’s trouble.
Jared tried to turn away. He really did. But for some unknown reason, he found himself drawn to her sorrow like a magnet. His brain might be telling him to go before she noticed he was there, to let her sort things out herself. But instead, he found himself striding across the sand and to the rocks, making his way stealthily to the end of the stone edifice where she was sitting.
Face it, man. You’ve been screwed since the moment you saw her big brown eyes, genuine smile, and curvy figure. For some reason, she messes with your head, and you can no more walk away from her pain than you can stop breathing.
But dammit, he wanted to. Badly.
Sure, he liked a good fuck as much as any guy who was almost thirty years old. He made it a point to deliberately find women who wanted something from him other than emotion. He gave them whatever they wanted materially in return for a night of hot, pleasurable sex for him with no strings attached. Jared didn’t do relationships, and he didn’t do emotional entanglements. The women he screwed didn’t either. And he liked it that way.
Then what in the fuck am I doing here?
He halted behind Mara, wondering again if he was losing his mind along with his ever-present control. The rough seas were spraying his black jeans and button-down green shirt with moisture, slowly saturating his clothing. Mara looked like her jeans and T-shirt were already drenched, but as she stared blankly out at the Atlantic, Jared was pretty certain she hadn’t even noticed that her garments were soaked. Despair seemed to be rolling off her body in waves, and it reached out and wrapped around his icy heart with a vengeance.
Shit. This has to stop. Whatever her problem is, I’ll help her solve it. Then maybe I can get over this inexplicable obsession I have with her. She’s throwing me off balance, and I can’t afford to lose control.
Done fighting with himself, Jared admitted defeat just for the moment and made his way to her side, sitting down on the rain-soaked rock next to Mara. Plucking the glasses from her face, he tried to dry them on his semiwet shirt. “Very few things in life are worth crying over.” He’d learned that lesson a long time ago.
Startled, Mara finally jerked her head to the side to look at him, as though she was astonished to see him sitting next to her. “What are you doing out here?” she asked warily. “It’s going to start pouring again any minute now.” She glanced up at the approaching dark clouds.
Jared shrugged and perched her glasses carefully back on her nose. He could hardly tell her that she had drawn him here, that she’d pretty much seized him by the balls the minute she’d first spoken with him and had never let go—even though it was lamentably true. “I could ask you the same thing. This isn’t the safest place to be right now.”
Jared’s jaw clenched as her previous comment about the weather reminded him that the ocean was incredibly rough, and yet another violent storm looked to be coming their way. His eyes swept over her, and a raw possessiveness surged tempestuously over his entire body. Mara looked small and vulnerable, and he didn’t like it. Her dark eyes were swirling with sadness, and she wrapped her arms around her body protectively as she responded. “I wanted to think. This is where I come when I need to figure something out. Sometimes it makes me realize how small my problems are when I see how vast the ocean is.” She raised her voice so he could hear her over the loud surf slamming against the rocks.
Jared cringed at the vulnerability he could hear in her voice, wanting to snatch her up and take her somewhere—anywhere—to make her forget whatever her problems were. “And is it working?” Judging by her look of distress, it wasn’t.