3. Nora #2
"It's not just cats and dogs."
I glance up. He's leaning forward slightly, forearms resting on the edge of the jacuzzi, and the shift brings him into the light enough that I can see his face clearly. The sharp line of his jaw. The faint stubble. The way his gray eyes catch the glow from the villa and hold it.
"You save animals," he says. "That's not small."
My throat tightens. I swallow hard, force a laugh that doesn't quite land. "Yeah, well. Someone's gotta do it."
"Not everyone would."
"Maybe more people should."
His mouth curves. Not a smirk — something warmer. "Maybe."
I eat more ice cream to give my hands something to do, my brain something to focus on that isn't the way he's looking at me or the fact that I just monologued about rescue animals to a man who probably owns more square footage than my entire apartment building.
"What about you?" I ask, desperate to shift the spotlight. "What do you do? Besides... own islands and confuse the rest of us?"
"Real estate."
"Shocking."
"Family business."
"Even more shocking."
He huffs a quiet laugh, shaking his head. "It's not exciting."
"Try me."
He does. Sort of. Rhett doesn't volunteer information — I have to pull it out of him like I'm coaxing a nervous cat out from under a bed.
He works acquisitions. He flies between cities.
He negotiates deals that involve dollar amounts with so many zeros my brain stops processing them as actual money.
"Do you like it?" I ask.
He pauses. "I'm good at it."
"That's not what I asked."
Another pause. Longer. "It's fine."
"Fine," I repeat. "Wow. Don't oversell it."
His eyes narrow slightly, but there's humor in it. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know. Maybe that you're secretly miserable and wish you could run away and join a traveling circus."
"I don't like clowns."
"Who does?"
"Fair point."
I grin, and he almost-smiles back, and the space between us feels smaller even though neither of us has moved.
The ice cream is mostly gone. I scrape the last bite out of the bottom of the pint, then set it down beside me on the step.
The ocean shushes. The steam rises. Rhett shifts in the water again, rolling his shoulders like he's working out a knot, and I watch the muscles in his arms flex under the ink.
Then I make myself look away.
"You're shivering," he says.
I am. I hadn't noticed until he said it, but now I feel the goosebumps prickling my arms, the way the breeze off the ocean cuts through the thin cotton of my nightgown. "It's fine."
"Sit beside me."
I look at the jacuzzi. At him. At the warm water with steam curling off the surface. "I'm not wearing a bikini."
He raises a brow. "Then get naked."
The words land in my chest like a stone dropped into still water, ripples spreading outward until my whole body is humming with them.
This is the part where I should laugh it off. Make a joke. Say something sarcastic and self-deprecating and deflect until the moment passes.
But I don't.
I stand. My hands go to the hem of my nightgown. And I pull it over my head.
The air hits my bare skin and I should feel exposed, vulnerable, scared the way I was scared in Cade's room when I first walked in and realized what I was doing. But I don't. My hands aren't shaking. I'm not covering myself. I just stand there, naked in the moonlight, and watch Rhett watch me.
His gaze drags down my body — slow, deliberate, like he's memorizing every freckle. When his eyes meet mine again, something in his expression has shifted. Warmed.
"Come here, Nora."
I step into the jacuzzi.
The water is perfect — hot enough to sting for half a second before my body adjusts, then just warm, enveloping, melting the tension out of my shoulders I didn't realize I was carrying. I sink down onto the bench across from him, the jets hitting my lower back, and exhale.
"Better?" he asks.
"Yeah."
He's still watching me. Not leering. Just... present. Like he's exactly where he wants to be and I'm exactly who he wants to be looking at.
I should say something. Fill the silence. But I don't. I just sit in the warm water and let myself be looked at, and it doesn't feel wrong. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.
"Tell me about the one with three legs," he says. "The one who sleeps on your pillow."
I laugh, surprised. "Houdini?"
"Yeah."
So I do. I tell him about the day we found Houdini in a parking lot with his leg mangled, how the vet said he wouldn't make it, how Dina cried for two hours straight while I held him in a towel and refused to believe he'd die.
I tell him about the surgery, the recovery, the first time he jumped onto a counter and we realized he didn't care that he only had three legs — he was going to do whatever the hell he wanted anyway.
"He sounds like a pain," Rhett says.
"He is. I love him."
"I can tell."
The conversation drifts. We talk about Dina, about the island, about the wedding. I ask him about his brothers. He gives short answers — Cade's intense, Jude's a smartass, they get along better now than they did as kids. I make a joke about coordinated smirking. He almost laughs.
At some point I realize I've drifted closer. Not consciously. Just... closer. The bench wraps around the inside of the jacuzzi and I've migrated from directly across from him to beside him, and now there's maybe a foot of water between us instead of three.
He hasn't moved. But he's noticed.
"I heard you with my brother," he says, and my breath catches.
I freeze. Stare at him. "You?—"
"Was he gentle with you?"
The question is so direct, so tender, so utterly unexpected that I can't speak. I just nod.
His jaw tightens. His hand moves through the water, fingertips brushing my knee under the surface. "Good."
Then he kisses me.
His mouth is warm, soft, nothing like Cade's.
Where Cade kissed me like he was claiming something, Rhett kisses me like he's asking a question and waiting for my answer.
His hand cups the side of my face, thumb stroking my cheekbone, and I lean into him without thinking, my lips parting, letting him in.
He tastes like the ocean and something darker, richer, something I can't name but want more of. His other hand finds my waist under the water, fingers splaying across my ribs, and I shift closer until our knees bump and I can feel the heat of his body even through the water.
The kiss deepens.