The Sweetheart Secret (10 page)

“I'm sorry I misled you.”

She got to her feet, ripped off the sunglasses, and glared down at him. “
Misled
me? Is that how you're justifying it?” She shook her head, snatched up her towel, the cookies, and water, then jammed her feet into a pair of flip-flops. “You know what, Colt? You were right. It
was
a nice day to enjoy the sun. Until you came by.”

Then she brushed past him and out through the gate. The metal swung back, clanged against a pole, and stayed there. Daisy marched across the lot, into Room 112, and slammed the door.

Well, hell.

Colt stood there, while the pool gurgled and traffic went by on the street a few feet away. He knew he should let her go. He should get in his damned car and go home or go back to work or go get a beer and put her out of his mind. Daisy Barton had never been one to be tamed or corralled. The sooner he quit trying to tell her what to do, the sooner she would get bored with whatever game she was playing here, and be on her way.

Or maybe . . . if he was smart, he could find a way to sever the ties with Daisy once and for all, and also restore order to his own life. He grabbed the magazine and crossed the lot to knock on the flimsy motel room door. An instant later, Daisy flung it open, still wearing the bathing suit, the towel discarded on the floor by the door.

“You forgot your magazine,” he said, and held it out.

Once again, another brilliant sentence. What the hell was wrong with him?

She held his gaze for a minute, then looked away and bit her lip. She jerked the magazine out of his hand and started to close the door.

He reached for the edge, and stopped her. “And . . . I wanted to apologize. Can I come in?”

She considered that for a long moment, then stepped back and waved him into the room. They stood there, staring at each other, two people who once used to talk so much it seemed they'd run out of breath before they ran out of words, now mute and at an impasse.

“It wasn't mine,” she said.

“What wasn't?”

“The magazine. I found it there. It was someone else's. I should take it back to the pool in case whoever left it comes back.” She started to go past him, but he caught her arm. When she looked up at Colt, he realized that for all her bravado and anger, Daisy was scared.

Why? Did he make her as nervous and discombobulated as she did him? Maybe she was having trouble, too, trying to figure out what this was—or wasn't—between them.

“The magazine can wait,” Colt said. “There's no one else at the pool.”

“Still, I should . . .” She glanced down at his hand on her arm. He released her and stepped back, but the warmth of her flesh had left an invisible imprint on his palm.

“I'm sorry,” Colt said. “For New Orleans. I never should have made you think there was something between us still. I was drunk and lonely and there was a part of me that . . .”

“That what, Colt?”

He didn't have an answer. He never did when it came to Daisy. That was the problem with her. She was the kind of woman who made a man forget his priorities and his plan. Every time he got within ten feet of her, his brain cells misfired.

“I . . . don't know,” he said.

“Then why are you here? I thought we settled all this back in your office. You don't want me in Rescue Bay and you don't want to help me with the loan. So why did you come to the motel, and even more, why follow me to my room?”

“Oreo cookies.” He shook his head and let out a little laugh. Who was he kidding? This wasn't just about restoring order to his life. It was about trying to make sense of why he was still drawn to the one woman who didn't make sense for him. “It was the damned Oreo cookies.”

Confusion filled her eyes. “Oreo cookies?”

He picked up the opened package she had tossed on the nightstand. Dark chocolate crumbs littered the veneer surface like ants at a picnic. Inside the package, chocolate wafers rustled together. “The first time I met you, you were eating Oreos. I'd never seen anyone eat an Oreo like you do.”

He could remember the day like yesterday. She'd been seventeen, sitting on the wide porch steps outside of the Hideaway Inn. He'd been in a hurry, rushing to his summer job at the paddleboard shop down the beach, but he'd stopped when he'd seen the pretty brunette sitting in the sunshine, with a half-eaten package of Oreos. She'd smiled up at him, a smile as bright and warm as the sun, and said, “Want one?”

That was it. Two words. It had stopped Colt in his rush to get to work. For that moment, he couldn't think of a single thing in the world that sounded better than sitting in the warm summer air with a pretty girl, eating cookies for breakfast. He'd dropped onto the step beside her, and
wham
, that was it. He'd been hooked, on the cookies, on her.

An embarrassed smile danced on her lips now, flushed her cheeks a pretty pink. “I only like the middle.”

“And I only like the cookie part.”

“I remember.” Her voice was soft in the dim room, her eyes wide mysterious pools.

A long time ago, he'd found those differences between them sexy and endearing. He'd thought their wild, headstrong relationship, with all its clashes and drama, was a sign of meant-to-be. Now he knew better, or at least he told himself he did. Because right now, in the quiet solitude of a crappy motel room on the eastern side of Rescue Bay, Colt was having trouble thinking about anything more than how beautiful Daisy looked right now.

He put down the package and moved until he was inches away from her, until the dark floral scent of her perfume teased at his senses, awakening memories that haunted his nights, made him remember the backseat of his father's Grand Marquis and a squeaky bed in a fifth-floor walk-up.

It made him wonder about possibilities, like what might have happened if he had opened up to her years ago, instead of enduring those dark, horrible days alone. If he had called her and said
I need you, Daisy,
would she have come? And most important of all, would she have stayed?

That's what he wanted to know, the question that had drawn him to her in that diner three months ago. Once again, instead of asking it and opening doors he'd kept shut for fourteen years, he said, “Why are you really here, Daisy?”

“I told you. Because I need”—she took a breath and in that moment, he thought she'd say
I need you
, but then the breath passed and instead she said—“a new beginning.”

The vulnerability in her words chipped away at his resolve. “Why here? Why now?”

She paused a long time. Then she turned away, crossed to the window, and looked out at the pool, sparkling in the sun. When she spoke again, her voice was low, quiet. “This place was the only place that ever felt like home. I know I was only here for a summer, but it was a
perfect
summer. I mean, look at this town. Gulf breezes, palm trees swaying in the wind, egrets that perch sedately on the edge of the water. It's like living in the middle of a Jimmy Buffet song.”

“I don't know if it's quite as perfect as all that.”

She shrugged. A melancholy smile curved up her face. “At the time my aunt asked me and Emma to take over the inn, I was so tired of working in dives, so tired of having men old enough to be my grandfather grab my ass when I brought them a menu,” she went on. “And so, so tired of feeling like I was a hamster on a wheel, getting nowhere fast. Then when the chance came to resurrect the inn . . . well, it was time for a change, and maybe a chance to find that Jimmy Buffet world. So I came here.”

He took a half step closer, and turned her to face him. Her chest rose and fell with her breath. The heat from her barely clad body drifted down his skin.

“That's all you want from me, Daisy? A cosigner on a loan?”

“You owe me that much, Colt, after . . .” Her eyes welled. She bit her lip, drew in a breath, and the tears receded. “Don't you think?”

She wasn't talking about that night three months ago in New Orleans. She was talking about how he had left her the first time, just up and walked away, a scared kid who hadn't cared how the chips fell behind him. He'd been focused on getting home, on making amends for leaving, and he'd never thought about how cruel it was to leave nothing more than a note behind.

He'd never told her why he'd left, why he hadn't returned. Why he'd excised his wife from his life after that day, like a tumor.

“I owe you more than that,” he said, his voice suddenly rough against his throat. Every ounce of him was hyperaware of the tiny scraps of fabric covering her curves, the scent of cocoa butter tempting him like a siren at the edge of a rocky cliff. The bed a few feet away. The wild, headstrong rush that always enveloped them every time they were in close proximity, like magnets that couldn't resist the pull.

A cookie crumb dotted the edge of her lips. It made him think of the beignets. Of the first time he'd met her. Of all the times he'd wanted her and kissed her, and how much he still wanted to do just that.

“Won't your girlfriend be mad you're in a motel room alone with me?”

“I don't have a girlfriend, Daisy,” he said. “I don't know what made me say that.”

Her brown eyes were wide and dark, as rich as good coffee, and just as unreadable. “I don't know what made it bother me.”

“It bothered you?”

She smiled. “A little.”

“I'm glad.” He reached up, and whisked the crumb away with his thumb, then let his touch linger against her sweet, tempting mouth. Her lips parted in surprise.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“I don't know.” Then he leaned in and kissed her. His hand cupped the back of her head, tangling in the dark wall of silk, and his body surged against hers, while his other arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her even closer. She stiffened for a half second, then went liquid in his arms, opening her mouth to his. She tasted of sugar and cream, of sunshine and heat.

The kiss deepened, her tongue dancing a familiar tango with his. His mind became a foggy blur of memories and fantasies, stored up in their years apart. She nipped gently at his bottom lip, then soothed it with a sweet and tender kiss, the combination that had always sent his pulse into overdrive, and now had him grabbing her, yanking her closer, until he forgot where she began and he ended.

She curved into him with a familiar ease, breasts to chest, waist to waist, her legs pressing against his. He didn't think, didn't pause to find one of those straight lines. His hands roamed down her back, skipping over the tied straps holding the top of the swimsuit in place. The strings teased against his fingers, a thick bow waiting like a gift. He caught a loop, gave it a gentle tug, and the straps unfurled with a soft whisper. There was a hitch in Daisy's breath, and then she stepped back, her eyes locked on his, a half smile playing on her lips. The fabric held its position for one long second, then waltzed down her skin and slid over her breasts. She stood there, a woman confident in her own skin, her own sexuality, those glorious breasts round and firm and achingly perfect.

“Daisy. Dear God, Daisy.” Anything more intelligent couldn't find purchase in his thoughts. He had a vague thought that he hadn't meant to do this, to come here, to get wrapped up in her again, but just as fast, the thought left him. “You are . . .”

“The same as I always was.” The smile curved a little higher.

“Always incredible and always very, very beautiful.” He had a whole other list of adjectives that could be applied to Daisy, but they fell away when he lifted his palms to cup her breasts. Three months ago, they'd been in such a rush, a hurried, frenzied, too-many-years-apart demand to have each other. Now all he wanted was time. Lots of time.

She mewed, then arched against his hands when his thumbs circled her nipples. “Colt, oh . . . we can't, we shouldn't . . .”

“I know,” he said, pressing his lips to her throat, to the warm pulse ticking wildly beneath her skin. He reached around to the back of her suit, to tug down the rest, to have all of her, have her now, have her—

No.

He could write this ending in his sleep. What was he doing? He'd struggled for years to get what he had right now—a nice, quiet, predictable existence. The opposite of life with Daisy.

Then there was his grandfather. His priority was Earl Harper. Grandpa was the last tie Colt had to—

To what mattered most. What had always mattered most.

That
was what he needed to remember. Not this . . . fleeting moment of lust. Yeah, that's all it was. Fleeting lust, gone as soon as it started.

He stepped back. His body screamed
no
, his pulse raced like a horse in the final stretch. He shook his head, took another step. “I'm sorry. That got out of hand.”

Yeah, maybe it would be easier if he put it that way, all calm and measured like the whole thing was just a momentary lapse in judgment, not a detonated rocket grenade in his solar plexus.

Daisy was already backing away from him, and retying the top of her suit, covering her chest. He couldn't tell if she was angry or relieved that he had stopped them.

“It always does between us. And that's the problem.” She whispered a curse under her breath. “I shouldn't have gone along with it. I had no intentions of letting things get out of hand between us ever again.”

“Neither did I.” What was wrong with him? The second he'd seen her, he'd forgotten his reason for coming. Forgotten anything existed outside of Room 112 at the Rescue Bay Motel. That alone was a sign he'd made a mistake coming here. Colt was a planner, a man who didn't go off course.

Except he did. Every time he was around Daisy. And when he did that, people got hurt. People he loved.

She took a step toward him. “Then what the hell are you doing here, Colt?”