Chapter 11
ALEC
The evening humidity out on the veranda has glued my shirt to my back and I’m three sips into a glass of warm rum punch that Dr. Vaughn would confiscate if he could see me.
I’m not supposed to mix alcohol with my medication.
I’m also not supposed to have a resting heart rate that spikes every time I remember the way Ella’s skin felt under my palms this afternoon, and yet here we are.
My cock has been at half-mast since the pool four hours ago.
The memory of her delicate shoulder blades under my thumbs, the little shiver that ran through her when my fingers grazed her neck, is still sending low, persistent signals to a part of my anatomy that has apparently decided my forced medical leave is its time to shine.
As for Ella, she was already gone when I returned to the suite a while ago.
She left me a note saying she was out to dinner with some new friends from Montreal she met earlier today.
She’d even added a smiley face and a p.s.
that she’d left half a slice of chocolate cake in the mini fridge if I want to “live dangerously.”
She’s been on this island for one day and she’s already collecting people like frequent flier miles. The only person I’ve met is the blonde maneater down at the pool, and although I’m sure Honey Carlisle would have jumped at the idea of dinner with me, I’m not buying anything she’s selling.
No, apparently, I’d rather sulk by my lonesome on the dark veranda with a drink I shouldn’t have and an erection I can’t explain, wondering how much fun Ella is having without me around to be the dark cloud looming over her fun.
The sliding door whispers open behind me.
“Oh—sorry.” A pause. “My bad. I didn’t know you were out here.”
I turn. She’s in the doorway with her sandals hanging from one hand, barefoot on the tile.
Her face is flushed, her dark hair wind-tossed.
She’s looking at me with that kind of easy, unguarded warmth that hit me last night when I walked into the suite and found her eating chocolate cake with the unapologetic abandon of a child.
Her knee-length sundress is pale yellow, nothing particularly sexy about the sunny, sweet look yet I stare at her for more than a few moments too long.
My dick stirs. Of course it does. I should let her go inside. I should say goodnight, finish my drink alone, and maintain what’s left of the boundaries I set when we first arrived in this suite.
“Stay,” I say instead. “Come on out. It’s fine.”
It’s not fine. I just dismantled my own protocol because watching her walk away is worse than standing next to her, and I don’t want to think about why that equation has changed.
She hesitates, and I think she’s going to retreat back inside—part of me hopes she will—but then she pads over to the railing next me. I notice she leaves a reasonable amount of space between us. I track the distance like a shrinking budget line.
“How was dinner?” I ask.
“So good.” She leans on the railing and tips her face toward the ocean breeze.
“The Tremblays are amazing. Married thirty-one years. They’re adorable.
Pierre still pretends to steal bites off Colette’s plate, and she swats his hand away, but she’s always pushing the plate closer to him.
Thirty-one years and they still look at each other like swoony teenagers.
” She smiles, breathing out a wistful sigh.
“They say I remind them of their daughter. Who is apparently a ‘handful.’ Their word. But they said it in a nice way.”
I don’t care about the Tremblays. I don’t care about Pierre’s dessert habits or Colette’s plate choreography. I care that Ella can describe a thirty-one-year marriage in three sentences and make it sound like something she wants. Like something anyone should want.
“Sounds like you had a nice time.”
She swivels a big smile in my direction. “I really did. And afterward, I did the limbo.”
I chuckle under my breath. “Of course you did.”
“I was terrible, Alec. Like, genuinely, historically bad. The bar was at thigh height and I still knocked it off. Twice. The second time I took out the entire pole and nearly flattened Colette. She told me I had ‘enthusiastic form.’” She holds up two fingers, proud of this disaster.
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment. ”
This woman cannot do a single thing at half volume. Not eat cake, not apply sunscreen, not attempt a basic limbo pass without committing structural damage to the equipment.
“Enthusiastic is what people say when ‘structural hazard’ feels rude.”
She laughs loud and hard, and the sound of it hits me low, in the place where my cock has been keeping a running tally of everything that seemed annoying about her on the plane but that I’m starting to find endearing and real.
I take a sip of my warm drink because I need something to do with my mouth that keeps me from looking at hers.
Damn, she’s got a nice mouth. Soft, pillowy lips in a dusky, natural shade of rose that doesn’t need artificial color.
For a charged second, I wonder what those lips would feel like under mine.
Would they resist at first, or would her mouth part easily for me if I kissed her right now?
“What about you, Alec?”
I snap myself out of the dangerous direction of my thoughts. “What? What about me?”
She tilts her head at me like I’m a halfwit. “Did you eat anything interesting tonight, or does your ‘dietary protocol’ prohibit actual food?”
“I had fish. And some steamed vegetables.”
“Sounds kind of sad.”
I scoff lightly. “The fish wasn’t sad. It was fine.”
“There’s that word again. Fine. Life is meant to be more than fine, Alec.” She nods at my glass. “At least you’re drinking something fun. What is that?”
“Rum punch. It’s too sweet.”
“Then why are you drinking it?”
Because after I came back and you were gone I wandered down to the tiki bar thinking I’d force myself to have some fun. Evidently, because my decision-making has been compromised since the moment your soft skin was under my hands.
But I say none of what’s going through my head. Instead, I shrug. “I was bored.”
“You were bored,” she repeats, skeptical. “On a tropical veranda. With a view of the Caribbean.”
“Boredom isn’t location-dependent.”
She grins. The grin lands in my chest like a blow I didn’t brace for, and I’m going to attribute that to the rum and the medication interaction and absolutely nothing else.
“What do you do, anyway?” she asks after a beat, leaning her hip against the railing. “For work, I mean. You’re always chained to that laptop but you’ve never actually said what your job is.”
“Software.” It comes out easily because it’s true. “Security systems. I started coding at fifteen, got good at finding the holes in other people’s architecture. Now companies pay me to tell them where they’re vulnerable.”
“You’re a tech nerd.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
She turns to face me fully, and the moonlight catches her collarbones and I lose the thread of whatever expression I was maintaining.
“I would not have guessed that. I figured you for some kind of numbers guy, or maybe a corporate shark. You give off very intense, ‘I will buy your company and fire everyone’ energy.”
Jesus. I hardly recognize myself in the way she describes me. “I don’t fire everyone.”
She raises an eyebrow and I realize what I’ve just half-admitted. Something sparks in her eyes, curious, and I redirect before she can pull the thread.
“My work’s not glamorous. It’s code and systems architecture and a lot of staring at screens.”
I’m not lying, exactly. I’m selectively answering. Giving her the version of me that sat in a Harvard Business School dorm room at nineteen teaching himself Python, not the version that currently runs a fourteen-billion-dollar cybersecurity company.
“Do you like it?” she asks, and the question is so simple and so sincere that it catches me off guard. People often ask what I do. What my company is worth. Nobody asks if I like it.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I do.”
She smiles. Her expression is warm and open, sweetly so.
Her face is so soft in the moonlight, it’s all I can do to keep myself from reaching out to touch her cheek.
Guilt helps. Here she is, looking at me with honest interest, and I’m giving her half-truths and calculated evasions.
I should change the subject before this conversation goes somewhere my defenses can’t follow.
“What about your family?” she asks, and the subject changes itself.
My family’s not an area I generally discuss with random strangers either, but Ella’s not random, and although it’s not even two days since we met I can’t consider her a stranger. I’m not sure what to consider her anymore.
“Only child,” I answer, deciding it best not to try categorizing her.
Especially not when we’re standing alone in the dark surrounded by the tropical romance of a warm ocean breeze and soft music coming from somewhere on the beach.
“My father was a construction foreman. Retired now. He taught me that if you’re going to build something, build it so it stands long after you’re gone. ”
“Good advice,” Ella says, listening intently. “Your dad sounds like a smart man.”
“Yeah, he is. My mom’s no slouch either. She was a school secretary for thirty years. Now she’s...” I pause. “She has a heart condition. Has for years.”
“I’m sorry. How’s she doing?”
I shrug, unsure why I allowed the conversation to wander down this uncomfortable path. “She has good days and bad. It’s hard to see her struggling when she was always so vibrant and independent. I hired a home health care agency for her, and I help out with other medical expenses.”
I say it matter-of-factly because that’s how Becketts talk about things that matter. No sentiment. Just facts and quiet follow-through. Ella’s expression softens as if I’ve handed her a piece of a puzzle she’s been trying to assemble since the plane.
“You take care of them.”