What Janie Wants (10 page)

No pressure. No one around but the two of them and a man named Pedro she’d never see again. “You sure he can’t see me?”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders and his lips hovered at her ear. “Checked for a reason, babe. Proud as hell to be seen with you, but not at all interested in sharing with Pedro.”

One chance. No way would she be able to do this again, and she was always telling her kids not to let opportunities pass.

Zade beamed at her, his gaze full of pride and sparkling to match the sun on the water.

“
I can’t believe I’m going to do this.” God, her voice was deep. Raspy like one of those screen goddess femme fatales.

Zade’s grin kicked up a notch. “I can’t believe I’m the lucky bastard who’s with you.” He moved back enough to let her up and reached for her beach bag. “Roll on over, wild woman. Let’s give the twins a little one on one time with Father Sun.”

She pulled in a steadying breath and rolled to her back.

The sun and wind teased her skin like a mix of warm and cool silk all at once. Her stomach clenched and her nipples hardened. Now she got it. Topless, at least, on a beach had a lot of merit. It felt great. Amazing, bohemian, come-to-momma, kind of great.

A shadow fell across her a second before the trampoline jolted and Zade straddled her, his knees at her hips. He flipped the top on her fifty-plus sunscreen and scowled down at her.

“
Something wrong?”

“
Tactical error.” He studied her another moment then shook his head and squeezed out a handful of lotion. “Nope. I’ll do it.”

“
Oh, Zade. You can’t.” The tour guide hadn’t popped into view, but God only knew what might make him change his mind.

“
Can’t have the twins out of action,” he said, all business. “Either you put on the sunscreen or I do. If it’s me, I can hone my thoughts on warming you up for later. If it’s you, I’ll come in my trunks before you get it rubbed in.”

“
But, Pedro—”

“
Is busy.” He smoothed the cool lotion up her rib cage and cupped her breasts. His voice dropped a sexy octave. “As. Am. I.”

Holy moly, his hands felt good. She arched into his confident, powerful strokes and bit back a moan. Barely two full days left to her own devices as a single woman, and she was topless on the ocean getting rubbed down by a man fourteen years her junior. Not too shabby. Wrong on so damned many levels, yes, but mmmm. The man knew how to use his hands.

He massaged in the last of the lotion and finished off with a teasing pinch to her nipples. His lungs rose and fell in a deep, ragged pattern. “Gonna have to schedule another private tour tomorrow. Can’t finish what I want to do to you in fifteen minutes.”

And wasn’t that a pity. Another minute and she’d have forgotten about Pedro, the ocean, and anything else in a five-mile area.

He swung himself off her hips and reclined against the raised hull. “Come on over here and lean back on me. If I keep a head-on view of you in the sun like that much longer I'll get us into more than Pedro bargained for.”

The idea shouldn’t thrill her as much as it did, but the way he looked at her, hungry and ready to toss caution to the wind, fired a heady confidence she’d never felt before.

She crawled toward him, her bare breasts tight and sensitive to each sway of the boat. Settling between his legs, she laid her back against his chest. A long, easy sigh rolled past her lips, tension from the last nine months and God only knew how many years before vaporizing with it.

He gripped her hips and nuzzled her ear. “You’re fucking gorgeous. How you don’t know that is beyond me.”

He sure as heck made her feel that way. Riviera royalty gorgeous. She stretched a little more, angling to the glorious sun.

He tightened his hold. “Talk to me.”

“
You get me almost naked on the ocean, work me up, and then ask me to talk?”

“
The only way I’ll make it to shore is if you keep my dirty mind occupied.”

She smiled big enough, her cheeks protested. “Well. Wouldn’t want your dirty mind to start something it can’t finish. So, what can we talk about?” She wiggled her butt and teased his hard cock pressed against her back.

He hissed and thrust his hips against her.

God, she should be ashamed. “So, you sold your business. What’s your next step from here?”

He huffed out a harsh laugh, and his warm breath brushed the back of her neck. “Well, that’s one topic to derail my hard-on.”

“
What?” She tried to turn, but Zade held her in place.

“
It’s fine. I’m joking. Mostly.”

“
I didn’t mean to bring up something that bothered you.”

“
Not a bother so much as a frustration.” He relaxed beneath her and massaged her shoulders in languid strokes. “I’m mad as hell at myself for signing the deal as it is, but they put a non-compete clause in the contract. I can’t engage in any competing business for two years.”

He paused for a minute. “I was so caught up in someone wanting to buy the business I’d built…so overwhelmed with what I saw as success, that I didn’t realize I was cutting myself short in the long run. Not to mention, they’d crater what I’d created.”

“
A non-compete that’s defendable?” She covered his hands with hers. “No, way. My husband, I mean my
ex
-husband’s, been doing contract law in Texas for years. That’s got to be one of the hardest clauses to defend. Particularly when you’re dealing with a person’s livelihood. They can’t tell you that you can’t work anymore. Even if the clause was defendable, you could do a new spin on your company. Teach other people how to do what you do. Or find a different, unique environment for your photo shoots. There’s always a way to work it. Just talk to your lawyer. The laws can’t be that much different in California.”

“
California?”

She peeked up at him. “That’s where you live, right? You said the company that bought you out is from California, so I assumed—”

The boat rose and crashed on a steep wave and jiggled her breasts. She shrieked, cupped them, and giggled like a sixteen-year-old. “Okay, the sun feels good, but that’s a downside.”

Zade covered her hands and growled near her ear. “Trust me when I tell you, that was not a downside. Hell, I hope it’s choppy sailing from here to shore.”

She whacked his thigh and settled back against him.

“
You really think it’s that simple?” he said. “Just talking to a lawyer?”

“
Oh, I don’t know about simple. Lawyers are never simple, but I’d say there’s usually a loophole somewhere. Seems like I heard Gerald talk about one company who didn’t uphold the quality or the mission of the business, and the seller was able to get the company back for breach of something or other. I don’t know what it’s called. Seriously, have a lawyer check the contract out. You just need a knowledgeable set of eyes.”

Zade unfastened her hair clip and finger-combed the untamed mess.

Easing into his casual touch, Janie closed her eyes and soaked in the moment. The sun, the wind, the steady swish of water spraying as the hull cut a clear path toward home. Oh, if Emmy could only see her now.

“
So, you’re a free woman now,” Zade said. “One kid already in college and another leaving soon. What’s your next step?”

Wasn’t that the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Or in this day and age, the sixty-four million dollar question. Geez, she was old. “I guess that’s what Emmy sent me here for. To figure out what to do next.”

“
Emmy?”

“
My baby sister. She lives as large and loud as the colors she wears, and has never met a stranger. She might be five years younger than me, but I’ll swear she’s got the spirit of a wise man.”

“
An old soul.”

Janie cackled loud enough, it should have brought Pedro scrambling over the center cabin. “God, don’t let her hear you say she’s old anything. I’ve never met a woman more determined to fight the aging process.”

“
If she’s anything like you, she won’t have to fight hard.” He combed her hair to one side of her neck. “Do you have any places you want to start? Ideas you want to pursue?”

All the peaceful sounds around her reverberated loud as cymbols in her head, and the unfamiliar panic she’d been fighting since Gerald dropped his I’ve-fallen-in-love-with-someone-else speech surged to full pitch. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Zade laced his fingers with hers, comforting without being overbearing.

“
The alimony will cover me for as long as I need it to and the house is paid off. Needless to say, Gerald felt obliged to give it to me in the divorce. Still.” She shook her head. “Living off him doesn’t sit well with me. I want to be a model for McKenna. To show her it’s important for a woman to be able to take care of herself.”

“
Did you do anything when the kids were growing up? Volunteer anywhere?”

“
Oh, yeah,” she said. “PTA, church, a few of the sports organizations the kids were involved with. I was quite the take-charge, figure out how to get it done woman.”

“
So maybe you start there.” He edged out from behind her and met her gaze. “You said you wanted to go back to school. Why not look at a business management degree? Hell, you zoned in on a solution to my problem quick enough.”

School. Tests and studying. Class schedules and credit hours. All those things she’d helped her kids with. “You don’t think it’s too much to take on? I mean, I’d stick out like a sore thumb on any kind of campus.”

Zade scoffed. “Hardly. You really think you’re the only adult over the age of thirty readjusting their life? I bet half my bachelor’s graduating class had at least twelve years on me.”

Twenty-six years old, barely out of college, and she’d slept with him. Was running around topless as footloose and fancy free as her sister always encouraged her to be.

“
Something wrong?” he said.

“
I keep forgetting you’re younger than me. You don’t act like it.” She glanced down at her bare torso. “Well, except when you’re trying to talk me out of my clothes.”

“
Out of curiosity, how old is your husband’s new interest?”

“
Twenty-four.”

“
So what’s the difference?”

Well, damn. He had her there. “Okay, I’ll grant you it’s a double standard. But I guarantee you some of the people at church would deem me a cradle robber.”

The horizon shifted and her hair slanted across her face as Zade flipped her to her back on the trampoline. “Cradle robber, huh?”

Pedro’s voice floated from behind the raised partition shielding them from view. “Five minutes to shore,
señor
.”

Zade studied her a moment, a wicked glint in his eye, then tugged his T-shirt free of the beach bag. He tossed it to her and stuffed her bikini top where the shirt had been. “Then maybe we need to go back to the resort and do some things that would shock them for reasons that have nothing to do with age.”

Five days into her vacation and probably ten pounds heavier, Janie plucked the last bite of the best lobster she’d ever eaten off the tiny tabletop grill and dunked it in a bowl of drawn butter. “You weren’t kidding with the food. Thank God I brought mostly sundresses. I won’t fit into my shorts by the time I head home.”

“
You can’t come to Fifth Avenue and not eat at La Parrilla. I think it flies in the face of tourist law.” Zade rested an arm on the wrought iron balcony rail overlooking the busy street below. No cars were allowed, but tourists strolled thick up and down the many storefronts with everything from cheesy T-shirts to Cuban cigars. “This place looked a whole lot different when I first came to visit Arlo and Dahlia. I’m glad the area’s drawing more people, but I hope they can hang on to Gypsy Cove so some of the old feel sticks around.”

A ceiling fan with fat blades and a motor big enough to power a small plane whirred above them, making the early evening heat far more bearable. Color surrounded her on all sides. Gold stucco walls trimmed in cobalt blue, terra cotta tile floors with bold yellow suns painted in the center of each square, and red, green, and white Mexican banners crisscrossed on the ceiling.