The fact that he had said it so simply, without apology, had her stifling her sigh. It also had her wanting to ruffle dark hair still damp from his shower and tell him to lighten up. Maybe they should tangle those sheets sooner rather than later. Surely morning sex would loosen him up.
With a fingertip, she traced his smoothly shaven jawline, breathing in the wood and sandalwood scent of the soap she’d bought at Natural Indulgences Soap and Candleworks next door to Taylor’s Sugar Shack.
“I’ll bet you were a Boy Scout.”
“Eagle.”
She smiled at that. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I wouldn’t think anything could ever surprise you.” Proving that he could, indeed, surprise her, Donovan stroked the inside of her wrist and caused a jolt in her pulse.
How could what should have been a casual touch make her tremble? Because, Lani realized, for Donovan, there were no casual touches. No simple conversations. Everything the man did, what he said, was serious and seemingly meticulously planned.
Would he be so controlled in bed? No. From the pheromones jolting back and forth between them like lightning bolts, she’d bet her new titanium diver’s watch with electronic depth meter that Donovan was a sex god. After all, so much pent up energy had to go somewhere.
Lani grieved for the young man she had not appreciated when they’d first met: the rookie patrolman who had acted on his instincts. Instincts that were undeniably dangerous, perhaps even a bit foolish. That young man probably would not have risen through the ranks as far as the one now sitting with her in Nate’s sunny kitchen. But she doubted he’d have that aura of sadness hovering over him like a heavy Oregon fog.
She could make him happy. That was what she did. Her true talent, like her father’s bedside manner, her mother’s art, Nate’s writing. Hadn’t her baby-chick contestants assured her it was her calling? Which was, of course, why she’d had no choice but to leave them.
Right now, even as part of her wanted to strip off her clothes and lie beneath him, hot, sweaty, and naked, while he did anything and everything to her needy, tingling body, an equally strong part of Lani wanted to put her arms around him, put that beautiful dark head on her breast, and assure him that he deserved better than the life he seemed to have made for himself back on the mainland. That she could make things better. That he could have that life with her right here on Orchid Island.
And wasn’t that a dangerous, impossible fantasy?
Oh, Nate , she thought with an inward sigh. Even if I had been wanting to fall in love, you couldn’t have sent me a more unlikely candidate.
“You’ve surprised me, Donovan,” she admitted quietly. She’d never been one to hide her thoughts. Not even when it cost her a lucrative and satisfying career. “More than I would have thought possible.”
Instead of looking pleased by her admission, Donovan frowned. “Lani—”
“We’re losing the day,” she said with forced brightness as she pulled away. Nothing about Donovan Quinn was going to be easy. Then again, was there anything really worth having that was? “Come on, Detective. I’m going to get you to unwind if it’s the last thing I do.”
The hell with Nate and the hell with island time, Donovan decided. Lani Breslin was no longer Nate’s petulant underage sister. She was, as he’d informed her brother, an adult woman.
An adult, deliciously scantily clad woman he wanted with every awakened atom in his body.
He ran a slow, insinuating hand up her bare thigh. Hadn’t she told him to go with his impulses? “I can think of better ways to relax than running around playing tourist all day.”
She backed away so quickly you’d think she’d been zapped by one of his unstable, electrically charged breakaway atoms. “There you go again, city man. Rushing things.” She patted his cheek. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that anticipation is half the fun? Unless you’re up for skinny-dipping, go put some swim trunks on beneath those jeans, because you’re going snorkeling.”
Knowing determination when he saw it, Donovan did as instructed and returned to where she was waiting in the great room.
“Well?” she asked over her shoulder when he hesitated for a glance at the abandoned laptop sitting on the table. “Are you coming or not?”
Apparently, he considered, as he followed her out the door, not any time soon.
6
“Sugar is one of Orchid Island’s major industries,” Lani said as she steered the fire-engine-red Jeep through the forest of tasseled sugarcane.
For all her talk of the pleasures of life in the slow lane, Donovan estimated that she was going at least sixty miles an hour down the pitted dirt road.
She shifted gears and pressed down on the accelerator, passing an enormous truck loaded with freshly cut sugarcane on the right. Donovan resisted the impulse to close his eyes.
“Actually,” she said, waving gaily at the truck driver she was fast leaving behind in a cloud of dust, “sugar’s so dependable that it’s almost a religion on the island.”