Page 91 of Sucker For You

He just smiled at her. She hadn’t sprung away with sharp spines and averted eyes. “Morning, Buttercup.”

He wasn’t sorry at all. Hopefully, she actually wasn’t, either.

“M. . . morning.” A dimple trembled beside her mouth as she wiped her cheek. “Um, what time is it?”

His watch buzzed before he could prevaricate.

So Isabel took her turn in the shower; he watched her inch off the mattress, sidling into the bathroom while modestly stretching down his borrowed shirt. Not that she needed to: it dwarfed her, the sleeves dropping off her shoulders almost to her elbows, the hem grazing her thighs. But with the sun beaming tantalizing curves and shadows through that old, thinning cotton:shoulder blades, the knobs of her spine, a dart of illumination between her legs—

Groaning, he flipped onto his stomach until the bathroom door closed.

Cold: the temperature of Antarctic bottom water.

Only after he’d breathed down his stubborn heart rate did he pad out to check on the octopus, belt his terrycloth robe over his boxers, and start breakfast. When they swapped spots ten minutes later, with Isabel brewing tea and buttering toast, Wes scrubbing off salt and sleep and the memory of her thighs tangled with his under a chilly deluge, he emerged into the bedroom to find the mattress immaculate and his loaned shirt folded on the couch outside. He shook his head and tossed it back toward the bed.

“Keep it.”

Maybe she was too busy scrambling eggs to protest.

And he’d actually spotted her toothpaste perched on the bathroom sink.

They fed Thalassa after breakfast—her white-speckled arms took a single shrimp and let two sea snails fall; the octopuswas apparently no more inclined to wake up than Wes had been—before cranking Baby (engine inspected, gears tweaked) into motion with a newly lusty roar for their drive to Moss Landing.

Wes swiped past an influx of messages on his phone from his siblings at a stop sign, and asked Isabel to pick between the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Then he merged onto the highway. Misty light danced against the windshield as they headed north. The sea breaking its frothy fingers against the beach was calm.

Much calmer than Erin and Adrian’s texts.

But he’d deal with their questions about his ringless fiancée and the fallout from yesterday’s boardwalk adventure later. At least neither of them seemed to have squealed on him to his mother yet. If they had, he would have received about a hundred calls from Lori Monaghan.

Instead: “Wish they all could be Canadian girls!” he sang out of tune, until Isabel switched over to the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden”. “Good choice. Maybe I’ll find it today. You never know.”

Smiling and humming along, she didn’t protest at that, either.

She even let him walk her into MORI.

“Bye,” with another little smile as she badged through the lab door.

He didn’t care if Brianne caught him grinning in the lobby like a fool. He grabbed his stabilizing weight vest from Baby, plus his Nikon, a strobe, and a laminated sheet of species. He shuffled out into the water in his fins.C-old, cold!Colder than his aggressive Antarctic fantasies. But now the chill contained a sense-memory:last night. It ignited heat in his stomach, thighs, and cheeks while he kicked through the surf and by a raft of otters, then flipped down into the kelp.

Click: a moray eel snapped at a crab through the sunlit murk.

A sea lion swam past in a pillar of bubbles.

The chatter of migrating whales vibrated against his ears. They were too distant for even his teleconverter to capture. A bat ray winging through the rocky holdfasts beneath his fins wasn’t. So:click. Its venomous stinger swept by. When a few moon jellies drifted his way, Wes stroked out of their path. His skin tingled with recollections of pain.

And again:heat.

Capable fingers roving over his shoulders in the shower—and then, last night:her hands in his hair, her body and her lips pressed to his, breathing in time with the undulating water, the warmth of her exhalations in his mouth.

His grin widened.

This time, smiling was a problem; the snorkel mouthpiece escaped his teeth. Water flooded his tongue, startling him into a violent coughing fit that forced him to kick for the surface. He surprised a pair of kayakers as he broke through the kelp.

“What the—”

“Nice day for it, right?” Sputtering, blowing out a spout of moisture and laughter, he waved at them, flipped up his dive mask, and tapped his watch. “Text Isabel Wright.”

Wes Monaghan (voice-to-text)