Wrecked (Sons of San Clemente Book 2) (10 page)

“If you’ll swim with me.”

Swimming had been practically a code word for them. Memories banged on the door of her consciousness. Kadan, sleek and wet, untying her bikini top with his teeth. Kadan, kissing her under the waterfall from the top pool to the lower pool until she’d been boneless, her legs, too weak to stand, wrapped around his waist.

“Swimming only,” she said trying to sound unaffected.

“That’s what I said.” He turned around, his fingers still linked with hers, and Hollis felt herself relax a little. Then he winked. “Why would you think I’d mean anything else?”

H
ollis heard the splash of water, and she hurried out of the pool cabana, barely remembering to slip the swim wrap through her arms. Kaden sat beside the pool, taking his boot off.

“Wait.” She hurried forward.

“I’m in the shallow end, duchess. I think I can manage.”

“You’re so arrogant.” She forced herself to stare at his scars to gauge how bad it had been, how much recovery time he faced.

The scars were still red, swollen. Too swollen for a cast yet. He could get a water proof one. Still....

Even though she was done with being a physical therapist, her mind still began organizing what types of exercises he should do. What equipment they would need.

“I remember that suit.” He snapped her mind away from his injury with that one drawn out, innocent comment. “Mostly I remember how I liked to take it off.”

Okay, not so innocent comment.

“Still fits,” she said tightly.

“I’m not sure.” His eyes roved up and down her body with an appraisal so sexual, Hollis found herself pressing her thighs together. “I’m cursing your grandmother for providing such a well stocked pool cabana. I will have to have a word with her when she returns from Paris. Ditch the wrap.”

Hollis wrapped her arms around her waist. She knew she was acting ridiculously. This man knew her body as well as she did, and he knew ways to make her come alive that still made her blush and marvel that anything so intensely physical and sensual could have ever happened to her when she felt so dead inside without him. It terrified her how much she wanted to remember how it felt to feel alive in his arms.

Where had her courage gone? Taking a deep breath and somehow managing to look at him directly, even though his sexual magnetism made her want to freeze; she was incapable of running at this point, she dropped the swim suit cover up and forced herself forward to the pool’s edge. Maybe she could sit on the side. Go slow. He should go slow.

“This is the hardest part,” she said, trying to distract herself from her fears and his appraisal. “I hate the cold.”

“The water’s warm.” He eased his uninjured leg into the water.

“Mmmmmm,” Hollis murmured sitting down on the edge, her legs crisscross applesauce.

Her heart stuttered and she mentally repeated her mantra that she’d used to get her through the early years when Holland, her twin brother had died.

“Don’t be in such a rush,” she told him.

“I do everything fast,” he said, then his eyes walked down her body. “Well not everything.”

She pressed her lips together and then, remembering her role, she stood up and walked to the cedar storage unit off to the side of the pool. She hauled out a few noodles and a raft as well as a square float.

“That is not swimming,” he said when Hollis returned.

She waggled the noodle at him and touched it to each of his powerful shoulders.

“I dub you Sir Constantly Pushing His Luck. Now tuck these under your arms and lean back. I want to keep your other leg out of the water at least until you have a doctor’s clearance to immerse it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Says you.”

“I’m the expert on myself. I’m a surfer. It’s my career. Of course my doctor knew I’d be back in the water. She’s a sport’s orthopedist.”

“Even if your doctor said ‘wait a month,’ you’d never tell me that.”

“True.”

She laughed. “Honest.”

“Yes, duchess. I have always been honest.”

She bit her lip. But he wasn’t. Hadn’t been. Not in the way that she’d desperately wanted and needed him to be. Hurt and anger speared through her red hot and painful and then of course despair followed. It seemed she just kept coming back full circle. Why didn’t she seem to be able to move on like other people? She kept getting sucked under, back into the sticky mud and ooze of the painful parts of her past and left to fight her way out of the pit only to be tossed back in, no stronger or smarter than the last time.

She could do this. She was a professional. The pool was well lit and shallow here. Nothing to grab her, pull her under. She’d swum here as a baby. Taking a deep breath, she eased into the water. It didn’t even come to her waist. Her breathing caught, but still her hands were gentle as she propped his foot and ankle onto the board. He leaned back, his head in the water, staring at the sky.

Hearing his sigh of contentment, something in her eased. Her breathing became less constricted.

“Better?”

“Yes.”

“This feels amazing.” Hollis lied and stood next to him as he floated arms outstretched as if he could embrace the night.

She tried to make out a few stars beginning to appear in the hazy night sky. “I didn’t even think about how my grandmother being gone for so long and the house renovations might mean the pool’s heater would be turned off completely. That would have sucked, but instead it’s even warmer than usual.”

“Your grandmother has always been so kind and thoughtful to me. She knew I would want to swim, would need the exercise and the water.”

Of course she would have. Kadan had always been special to her. Not many friends and acquaintances had understood why Caroline Remington had personally become so involved in helping Kadan during his teen years.

Yes, she had spearheaded many programs and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars that had benefited the children of San Clemente in many ways, school enrichment, after school tutoring and sports programs, arts programs, mobile clinics, food banks. But she had personally tutored Kadan. Personally intervened when he’d been in trouble with cops as a young teen. Personally invited him into her home when he’d been left to the streets at age fifteen. He’d declined. Crashing on couches of friends and a former priest, Preach, but then her grandmother had bought and opened a local house where teens could stay that was safe and clean and dialed in with social services, adult help, and food.

“She is amazing.” Hollis breathed, blinking hard several times to try to bring the stars back in focus.

Maybe that was it, Hollis thought sadly. Her grandmother was a compassionate force for social change. Her mother was a financial wizard. Her brother had been the best of all of them. Beautiful. Social. Wickedly smart. Science geek. Athletic. Daring. Charming. She had been the nothing. Still had nothing to show for her twenty-nine years on the earth, just a long string of attempts. And now a looming bankruptcy.

Hollis balled her fists under the water and forced herself to sink a little lower in the water. She focused on Kadan’s hair as it floated out a little from his head like liquid crown. She was having a long, self-indulgent pity party that had to stop right here, right now.

Hollis bit her lip hard until she tasted blood and then forced herself to freestyle down the pool and back twice. Fast as if demons chased her and they did. She practically didn’t breathe until she surfaced, but she managed. She sucked in air as quietly as she could, feeling shame wash over her at the silliness of the tiny victory.

“Show off,” he said when she came back after several laps.

“Just giving you something to aspire to.”

“You know I’m competitive.”

“Really?” Hollis teased. “I didn’t know.”

“I could probably still kick your ass,” he said, and the gleam in his eye both flipped her stomach in excitement and fear.

“Simmer down, surfer boy. You want to swim? I think back stroke would be good for tonight. I can put your boot back on and attach it to the board with yoga straps to keep your ankle immobile. It’s waterproof, right?”

He sighed. “Yes, and I can’t complain about your ingenuity. You must be a professional.”

Hollis felt her smile slip. “Yeah. Back stroke only.”

“Hardly qualifies as exercise.”

“Take it or leave it, surfer boy.”

“Really?” He scowled. “Surfer boy. That’s the best you got. I thought you were anti-nicknames, especially ridiculous ones.”

“Oh, and duchess is so me.”

“Very suited, actually.”

“In what way?”

“You remove yourself from everyone,” he said softly.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “I can’t even believe you said that.”

She fastened the boot carefully around his foot and ankle to keep it immobile.

“You do. It’s as natural to you as breathing.”

She thought of how emotionally wrenching working with the vets had been, especially the ones who were trying so hard, determined to regain some of their life back. After six months she’d been barely able to function. Forget sleeping. Distance was not her problem. Disengaging was. She hadn’t been able to let go of her work with the vets so that she could function, and clearly she had was not able to let go of Kadan, even though she had a million reasons why her heart should have dumped his ass years ago.

“Unfortunately that character reading falls flat,” she said wryly, both hurt and amused at his assessment. She should probably be angry, but he was just needling her because he was frustrated by his injury and probably worried.

“How bad?” she asked, tracing her finger along his scar after she finished wrapping a yoga belt around his ankle to keep it secure to the float.

“Four pins and a plate in my heel.”

Four
, she mouthed and felt herself go cold.

“I’m practically bionic. Going to be hell to get through airport security.”

It would be hell to get any mobility, much less feeling and flexibility back.

Four
.

“And I’m going to be fitted with a cast probably next week.”

There were questions she could ask. Probably should. But she didn’t. Kadan wouldn’t want to answer those questions anymore than she wanted to answer his.

“Okay.” She rose out of the water and smiled, finding the mantle of professional physical therapist wore better than ex-girlfriend. “Let me run you through some exercises that will help your body stay strong while you are recovering but also take the stress off your muscles that have to work overtime because of the crutches, which”—she mock glared at him—“should be exchanged for a scooter.”

“Do these exercises involve touching?” His voice was smoky with sex, and it pierced her professional demeanor as if it had never existed.

“Kadan.” She breathed.

Four
.

“I’m trying here. Please, just once, behave.”

He righted himself, his leg extended behind her, and the other on the floor of the pool holding him up so that she was caged between his thighs. In the pool lights dancing across the water, she could see how well his leg muscles were defined, and she could feel them behind her locking her close to his body. She searched for something to say that would cut through the sexual tension that hummed through her body and kept jumping to his, sparking and then running its potent current back through her again.

“Duchess.” His lips skimmed along the curve of her ear and kissed along her neck until her skin danced with goose bumps and her body trembled. “You know me better than that.”

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think beyond how much she wanted to kiss him. To touch him. He was a drug for her. She craved him. Physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally. All of it. Her eyes closed in resignation. It was going to start all over again. She was powerless to stop it, and she didn’t really want to anyway. It wasn’t like her life was a screaming success without him. And it wasn’t as if distance and determination to forget had even put a dent in her feelings and desire for him. Always Kadan. He’d been her first. Her only.

She wanted to hate herself for her feelings, but, really, he was as much a part of her as her DNA.

“Yes.” She breathed, her lips parted, head turned to find him.

“Mmmmmmm.” The sound tickled her lips as he barely skimmed the outline of hers.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and savored the strength and width of him. She leaned in so her body could press against his chest. Then she tilted her head back so she could see his masculine beauty silhouetted against the moon. Strong jaw, high cut cheekbones, cheeks hollowed out a little from age and pain, laugh lines that feathered out from his beautiful, dark blue eyes, and his mouth. Oh, the things his mouth had done to her and what she wanted it to do again.

His fingers played along her face and one traced along the outline of her lips.

“I still remember how you taste,” he whispered against her mouth, feather soft. She arched further into him, her eyes never leaving his. “Do you remember how I taste? How I feel inside you?”

Why lie?

“Forever.”

Her fingers tangled in his wet, shaggy curls and pulled him closer, pulling him into a kiss where she immediately lost herself.