Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Houston lay on his beach towel, furious with himself. He’d done exactly what he hadn’t wanted to do.
He’d hurt Josie.
She had stared at him Saturday night, her big green eyes wet with unshed tears, telling him she’d forget their night together had ever happened, and he had felt like the biggest pile of garbage north of Miami. A goddamn smelly landfill, leaking and dripping and festering.
Things between them hadn’t gone at all as planned. He wasn’t supposed to like Josie as a person. He was supposed to have screwed her out of his system with casual sex between consenting and emotionally unattached adults, not spending every waking second feeling guilty. And lonely.
For Josie. For her laugh, her smile, her silly little run-on sentences.
His decision to have sex with Josie had been made by his dick, and his dick had definitely led him into disaster.
He was not relationship material, and Josie was a settling-down kind of woman. It was better this way. He had cut ties before her emotions were truly engaged.
She might have been a little hurt Saturday, especially since he’d been called to the hospital early in the evening, but she would get over those feelings a hell of a lot easier than if he had strung out an affair with her over months like he was tempted to do.
Houston pushed his sunglasses onto his head and sighed. He could rationalize with himself for hours—in fact, had been—but he still felt like shit. And he still wanted to scoop Josie up into his arms and offer her another round of the dirty doctor.
Christian nudged him on the leg with his foot. “One more run, H, then I’ve got to call it a night. Kori will have my ass if I’m not there for bedtime stories.”
Dennis laughed. “Sounds kinky.”
Houston forced himself to rise off the sand where he had been lying prone like a patient on a shrink’s couch for the last half-hour. Dusk was darkening the sky, and he wanted one last run himself.
Out on the water, he could convince himself that it would all work out, that Josie would handle herself at work on Monday with aloofness and maturity and that he would see her through new, lust-satisfied eyes.
Which was a joke. If anything, his lust had reached Himalayan levels. He wanted her more than ever now that he knew how incredible she was. How giving and sexy.
But he couldn’t have her. She was exactly the kind of giving woman who could drag him under with her adorable fucking smile and take away his control and he would never let that happen. Ever.
He sighed again.
Christian glanced at him. “What’s up with you? You sound like a teenage girl.”
Now there was a mortifying comparison.
Dennis flicked Houston in the chest with a towel. “Sounds like our bachelor boy has fallen hard. Who’s the girl, Ice?”
“There is no girl,” he said shortly, picking up his board.
Dennis laughed and Christian looked more curious than ever. “Sounds like love to me, buddy. Have you messed it up already, or she doesn’t know you exist yet?”
Oh, she knew he existed. Had felt his solid cock stretching her moist inner walls as he brought her to a screaming orgasm.
“None of your damn business,” he said, than started towards the water.
Laughter followed him. Christian clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t let Dennis get to you, he’s just messing around.”
“He doesn’t.” A short, perky woman was bothering him, not Dennis.
“If you want to talk, hey, I’m here, man.”
They reached the edge of the water and it lapped at Houston’s feet. He knew his brother-in-law was only trying to help, but the last thing in the world he wanted to do was admit out loud what a prick he’d been to Josie.
“Thanks,” he said, and started paddling out.
“See you back on shore.” Christian waved to him as he headed out on his own board.
Houston hadn’t gone to the hospital that day, so he hadn’t seen Josie since the night before when he’d dropped her off at her apartment. She had been unnaturally quiet, and that had spoken volumes. He wasn’t looking forward to going into work tomorrow.
Lost in his brooding thoughts, he had to look twice when he thought he saw a dark shadow moving to his left.
“You’re seeing things, Hayes,” he scoffed at himself and kept an easy rhythm going with his hands. He had probably imagined it since his brain was only half on the task at hand anyway. Or it could be a dolphin, or a big fish, or just a shadow on the water.
Yet he couldn’t shake the sudden feeling of unease that something big was in the water with him. He glanced left and right. Christian was too far to the left to hear him. No one was to the right of him. Narrowing his eyes, he studied the water, but didn’t see anything.
Still, he was on the verge of turning his board around and heading back when he saw it. A gray dorsal fin popped out of the water, vibrating back and forth, indicating extreme agitation.
That was no black-tip. That was a bull shark, and Houston was already pulling himself up instinctively onto his board, drawing all his limbs in tightly.
Bull sharks were unpredictable and vicious. Sometimes they left you alone, and sometimes they attacked without warning, taking you under the water in a powerful bite.
There was nothing between him and the shark but the water and the board. Saltwater was no goddamn protection.
Fear rose like bile in his throat. “Christian!” he shouted, scanning, scanning the water, hoping like hell the thing would just swim off.
Then his board was bumped from beneath.