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“Wise ass.” Matt tossed the grapes into the cooler and headed for the door.

Josh called after him. “Don’t forget condoms!”

Eight

T
ALKING WITH HER
mother didn’t usually drive Allison to drink. But she reasoned a single glass of wine would settle her nerves and bolster her courage.

Setting down her empty glass, she tugged open the door.

Matt Fletcher stood on her front porch in a black T-shirt and jeans, thumbs hooked into his front pockets, a hint of a smile on his lips, totally at ease.

Without even trying, he made every gym-toned banker and golf-playing engineer her parents had ever pushed at her seem overdressed, insecure, and uninteresting. He was so entirely male, so completely comfortable in his own skin.

Her insides danced with a mix of lust, rebellion, and Chardonnay.

“You look pretty.” His gaze brushed her bare shoulders before settling firmly, warmly, on her face. The tiny hairs on her upper arms tingled in awareness. “Might want to bring a sweater, though.”

Allison flushed with heat and wine. She’d spent twenty
minutes digging in her closet for an outfit that didn’t make her feel like Laura Ingalls Wilder, finally unearthing a halter top from spring break five years ago and a pair of skinny jeans. She had good arms. And decent legs.

But despite what Gail had said about Matt’s reputation, he was obviously in no hurry to talk her out of her clothes. Maybe she should suggest that he keep her warm? But she needed more daring for that.

Or another glass of wine.

Wordlessly, she fetched a cardigan from her bedroom.

“Thank you for going out with me,” she said when they got to the truck.

“My pleasure.” He shifted gears with one hand, steering with the other. He had great hands, she noticed. Working hands, tanned and strong, with a thin line of white scar across his knuckles. “Thank you for saying yes.”

“I asked you.”

He glanced over in surprise.

“Tonight,” she explained as he backed smoothly out of the driveway. “You asked me for tomorrow. I asked you tonight.”

“Yeah, you did.” Another sideways glance. “Why did you?”

To spite my mother
didn’t seem like a tactful reply.

Or even a very good reason.

She cleared her throat. “My mother called. I told her I had a date to get off the phone.”

A corner of his mouth kicked up. “And you don’t like to lie to your mother.”

“Yes. No.” Allison took a deep breath to still her jittery stomach.

If she wanted honesty from Matt, she owed him honesty in return. This wasn’t about her mother. Allison was a grown-up, old enough to make up her own mind about what she wanted, what she needed.

And woman enough to change it.

“I wanted to go out. With you,” she said, so there could be no doubt. “I’d like to get to know you better.”

The echo of her previous words charged the air of the cabin.
I don’t jump into things with someone I don’t know.
She wiped damp palms on the thighs of her jeans. Did he remember?

“Most women from off island don’t care about getting to know me. They’re just looking for a good time.”

“Which you no doubt provide.” She meant to sound teasing, not wistful.

He slanted a smile at her. “I can.”

The two words thumped softly in the pit of her stomach. The buzz was back, collecting on her skin like static before a storm. She had asked Matt out as a gesture of independence, a show of control over her life, her destiny. But she didn’t feel in control of herself or the situation.

He sounded so sure of himself.

Of her.

But then, she thought crossly, she was practically throwing herself at him. He had every right to sound confident.

“So is this how you entertain your dates? By bringing them…” She leaned forward to peer out the windshield at empty road and shadowed, silent dunes. “Where are we, anyway?”

“I told you I’d show you my island. This is it.”

Gnarled live oaks on one side; an uneven line of erosion fence on the other; marsh grass and sea oats everywhere.

“There’s nothing here.”

His teeth showed in a smile. “Give it a chance.”

Their headlights jumped across the road. He turned left toward a gap in the line of pickets. She felt a bump as the pavement ended and their tires dropped onto sand. Shells crunched. The engine rumbled.

She gripped the door handle as the truck lurched, aware of leaving something behind, of venturing off the road she knew into the unknown.

And then the dunes fell away and the beach opened below, stretching away into the dusk on either side, gray sand and silver sea under a twilight sky.

Allison drew her breath in wonder.

Matt circled the truck to face the dunes, parking perpendicular to the water.

He cut the engine. Silence rushed in, cool and laced with the scent of the sea.

Allison craned her neck to look out the windows. “Wow. Just…Wow.”

“Yeah.”

The horizon ran with paint box colors, purple, red, and gold. Low breakers rolled toward shore, dissolving in a flurry of foam against the flat sand.

Matt came around to help her from the truck.

“Easy.” He steadied her as her heels sank into sand.

“I’m okay.” She was
not
drunk. “I wasn’t expecting a walk on the beach.”

“We’re not going far.”

She glanced down the shoreline at the glowing line of lights over the water. “Is that the pier?”

“Yep.”

“What is it, like a mile?” She could walk a mile if she took off her shoes.

“We’re not walking. We’re parking.” He went to the back of the truck.

The soft sea breeze was clearing her head. “I didn’t know you could park on the beach at night,” she said conversationally.

“Now, yeah. Not during the season.”

“Because of tourists?”

He grinned and lowered the tailgate. “Because of turtles. Sea turtles lay their clutches in May. They hatch at night, follow the moon’s reflection to the sea. Headlights confuse
them. And they can get trapped in tire tracks. But this time of year, it’s not a problem.”

He grabbed a quilt from the back and spread it over the truck bed. “Up you go.”

He boosted her onto the tailgate, his hands hard and strong. She caught her breath as he swung up beside her, the truck bouncing beneath his weight. His thigh brushed hers, his body warm and close. He stretched an arm behind her, making her heart beat faster.

Making his move, she thought.

He dragged a cooler forward from the back and began to unload it.

A picnic.

Her lips curved as he laid out grapes and cheese and wrapped sandwiches. She found the simple spread more appealing than her mother’s themed and catered menus, more romantic than an overpriced meal in some fancy restaurant.

Matt lifted a bottle of wine from the cooler.

And far more seductive.

She watched as he lit a Coleman lantern, as he pulled a corkscrew from his pocket.

“Very nice,” she said. “Do you come here often?”

“I used to. With my grandda, fifteen, twenty years ago.” Expertly, he uncorked the wine. “It hasn’t changed much.”

“You don’t like change?”

“I didn’t say that. You can’t live on an island without accepting change. Storms come, beaches erode, families die out or move away. Old houses are bulldozed to make way for a parking lot or a septic tank.”

He poured wine into two plastic tumblers, handed her one. “You live with loss, you learn to appreciate the things that endure. The sea. The moon. The lighthouse.”

“The things that endure,” she repeated softly. “I like that.”

Wasn’t that what she’d come to Dare Island to find?

She wanted to build a life here, to make a permanent place for herself, something solid, something lasting.

She didn’t want to be another in the long line of Women Who Had Dated Matt Fletcher, the summer girls who lasted a few days or weeks.

It was both tempting and dangerous to believe she could be more.

She sipped her wine. “Thank you. You’re very good at this.”

He paused, unwrapping a sandwich. “This?”

She flapped her hand, encompassing the scene. “The secluded beach, the private picnic, the bottle of wine. It’s really nice,” she said again. “You’re awfully…”
Practiced.
“Prepared.”

“Not me. My mom.”

Allison blinked. “Your mother?”

“The inn keeps supplies on hand for the guests, wine and cheese, box lunches, that kind of thing. Those are my mother’s cookies.”

“Oh.” She tried to imagine her mother’s reaction to anyone casually helping themselves to the contents of her kitchen. Favors in the Carter household always came with strings attached. “How does your mother feel about you raiding her pantry?”

“She’s okay with it. I’ll replace the wine tomorrow, turn over part of my catch for dinner.”

“That’s…really sweet,” Allison decided. “The way you all interact with each other.”

“That’s what families do.”

She drank more wine. “Not mine.”

“You talk with your parents. You said your mother called,” he added when she looked at him, surprised.

“My mother and I don’t talk. I say ‘hello’ and then I listen while she tells me how I’ve disappointed her again.” Allison shook her head, impatient with herself. “That isn’t fair. My
mother wants a relationship with me. She wanted me to come for a visit. Drop everything, take a day off, meet her latest candidate for son-in-law.”

“Candidate?”

“It doesn’t matter. The point is, she’s lonely.”

“She has your father, right? They’re still together.”

“Yes.”

There had been a time, after Miles left, when she’d thought her parents’ marriage would not survive the strain. But a divorce was too expensive for her father, too embarrassing for her mother, to be pursued.

“My father’s gone a lot, chasing projects, entertaining clients. He has more important things to do with his time than go shopping and out to lunch or listen to my mother talk about her flower arranging class.” Allison stared at Matt, struck. “Oh, God, maybe I’m turning into my father.”

He refilled her glass. “Not happening.”

“How would you know?”

“I don’t want to go out with your father. I definitely don’t want to see him naked.”

She snickered before she could stop herself. “Thanks. I feel so much better now.”

“Well,” he said mildly, “that was the idea.”

She sipped her wine, aware she was talking too much. The goal was to get to know him, not to blurt out every pathetic detail of her family relationships. “They’re not bad people, my parents. It’s just that when I’m with them, I revert to this awkward, uninteresting twelve-year-old. I can’t please them. And they can’t accept that.”

“Listen, it’s none of my business, but maybe you’re fishing with the wrong bait.”

“Excuse me?”

He unwrapped another sandwich and laid it on the napkin by her knee. Somehow, without noticing, she’d eaten the other one. “I read that syllabus you sent home with Josh. It was great.
You lay it all out, what you expect from the kids, what they can expect from you. You’re nice about it, but you let them know what your boundaries are, what your consequences are. You want your parents to see you as an adult, you need to treat them like you do your students. Set boundaries.”

He was right.

Wine, or maybe frustration, made her say, “I don’t see you setting boundaries with your parents. You live with them.”

“Behind them, yeah. The rent helps in the off-season. They wouldn’t accept money from me otherwise. That doesn’t mean we’re in each other’s business all the time.” He smiled a little. “They have boundaries, too.”

She sighed. “You’re lucky to have them.”

“I know.”

“And they’re lucky to have you.”

He shrugged. “They take care of me and Josh, I take care of them.”

“I envy you. It’s easier for me to blame my parents than to try to change them.”

“You can’t change them.”

“Meaning, I’m the one who has to change?”

He moved his shoulders again, clearly uncomfortable with continuing the conversation, just as obviously committed to help. “Meaning all you can do is be straight with them.”

“I’m afraid if I’m honest, I’ll alienate them completely,” Allison confessed. “The way my brother did. I won’t have any relationship with them at all.”

“Your brother was a kid. Eighteen when he left home, right? You’re not the person he was.”

“They still get to me.”

“Because you love them. That’s a good thing.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His touch lingered. “Just don’t let them use it against you.”

Their eyes met.

He was so sane, strong, solid. A nice guy.

Sometimes that’s enough
, Thalia’s voice whispered in her head.

Leaning in, she laid her lips on his.

H
EAT
. H
UNGER
.

She tasted salty sweet, like woman and wine, and when she licked his bottom lip, Matt angled his head, taking her in, taking control.

Her bare shoulders were driving him crazy. He ran his hands up her smooth, toned arms, jerking her forward, pushing her back, falling with her into the deep and the dark as he kissed the hell out of her.

As she kissed him back.

His head spun. His blood rushed in his ears like the sea. Her arms twined around his neck as she stretched beneath him, as she arched against him. He sank into her, taking the kiss deeper still, tongues tangling, desire rising fast and hot. He skimmed his hands along her sides and felt her tremble, nudged his thigh between her legs and heard her moan. She was taut and pliant, moving under him, her mouth eager under his. His hand brushed the side of her breast, and she gripped his wrist, guided his hand beneath her top. His mind blanked.

No bra. Only flesh, only Allison, soft and warm. He palmed her breast, scraped the delicate point with his thumb. Her breath hissed.

Too hard, he thought.

Too far, too fast.

He had to stop.