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  She put her arms out, her hands against the back of the bench, as he entered her again and again. Her eyes were closed, and she gave herself over to the sensation of this man and this moment.

  When she thought she could stand no more, he picked her up and pulled her to him, holding her against his body. They had on shirts but the heat of their skin blazed through.

  When she felt herself reaching the peak, Alix put her head back, but Jared drew her to him closer and closer until the shudders came, both of them clinging together, silent, fulfilled. It was minutes before either of them moved.

  “Kingsley,” Alix said.

  “That’s me.” Jared had his mouth on her ear.

  “Good, because I was a little nervous about Montgomery.”

  He laughed as he stepped away from her, picked up his trousers, and pulled them on. Alix stayed on the table, her shirttail falling between her legs.

  “You’ve stolen Daris’s title,” he said, smiling.

  At first she didn’t know what he meant but then remembered that he’d said Daris had the best legs on the island.

  “Lots of leg presses,” she said. When he walked to her, she slipped her hand under his shirt to run over his hard, flat stomach. “What about you? Go to the gym a lot?”

  “I reel in two-hundred-pound tunas,” he said as he picked her clothes up off the floor and handed them to her. Considering the way relatives walked in and out of the house, she knew it was better not to leave them lying around. She started to put on her trousers but Jared halted her.

  “I like to see beauty.” He put his arm under her legs and lifted her. “Aunt Addy or your mom?” he asked.

  He was asking her which room they should retire to—and she was glad their evening together wasn’t over. “Not Mom’s and …”

  “And what?”

  He was carrying her up the stairs seemingly without effort. But then, Alix thought, she weighed less than a tuna. “Well, with the Captain watching us …”

  “He won’t be there,” Jared said, and when Alix started to say more, he kissed her to silence. “There are some things you need to take my word on.”

  He gently put her down on the master bedroom’s big bed and she wasn’t sure how it happened, but in just seconds she was naked. He stretched out beside her, putting his mouth on her neck while his hands began running over her upper body. “You are beautiful,” he whispered.

  He was still fully dressed, only his jacket missing, and it felt odd for her to be naked but for him to be covered. The shades in the room were down but light filtered in, golden and shadowy.

  As Alix lay there, surrounded by the silken drapes of the bed, her body fully nude, she looked at Jared, at his eyes, hooded, sultry, unfathomable. She reached up to start unbuttoning his shirt but he kissed her fingertips and took her hand away.

  She started to ask why, but didn’t. Her experience of sex was that it was something quickly done and finished. In school, sex had fit in between classes and assignments.

  But this man—key word being man, not boy—seemed to have other ideas.

  He began to caress her body as he looked at her. His lips soon followed his hands over her breasts, her ribs, down onto her stomach. She lifted her hips, wanting him to touch the center of her, but he didn’t. His hands ran over her legs, down to her ankles.

  He kissed her mouth as his hands wandered over her and Alix felt the urgency building inside her. There was something intensely erotic about being bare while he was clothed, something she’d never felt before as his hands touched and caressed her.

  When he did reach the center of her, she arched up to meet him. It didn’t take long for her to reach a crescendo, to come against his hand.

  She buried her face in his shoulder. “Where did you learn that?” she asked.

  “Made it up. I’m very creative.”

  She laughed and for a moment they were still, then she began unbuttoning his shirt. She’d never seen him in anything but long sleeves. They’d been rolled up to expose strong, tanned forearms and she’d wondered what the rest of him looked like.

  It took only seconds to get his shirt off and she gasped at the sight of him. He was tanned all over, a deep, golden brown, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. She put her mouth on his skin and it was as warm as it looked.

  It was an hour later that Alix, exhausted and sublimely happy, heard him say, “You have beautiful lips.” When a laugh escaped her, he drew back to look at her. “Why is that funny?”

  “I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”

  “After what we’ve just done you can’t tell me what about your lips causes you to laugh?”

  “Not mine. Yours. Specifically your lower lip.”

  He ran his teeth over his lip. “What does that mean?”

  “Someday I’ll tell you. Show you, I guess.”

  “Are you keeping secrets from me?” he asked.

  “A few. What about you? Weren’t you going to talk to me about something?”

  “Not now. Later.”

  She could tell that he was falling asleep, and that meant the part of sex that Alix hated was about to happen. The man either left or he turned away and started snoring. “You’re going back to the guesthouse?”

  “I will if you want me to, but I’d rather stay here. If it’s all right with you, that is.”

  Smiling, she snuggled up to him. “I don’t understand why some woman hasn’t snatched you up.”

  She meant it as a joke but he seemed to take her comment seriously. “Since you’ve been here, what have we spent most of our time doing?”

  “Working.”

  “That’s what they don’t like about me.”

  “Foolish women.”

  “I agree,” he said.

  They didn’t sleep much. They woke at midnight, both hungry, first for each other and second for food. They satisfied the first one right away, then Jared put on trousers and Alix slipped on his shirt and they went downstairs to the kitchen. To their delight, the fridge was full of leftovers from the picnic. Cold crab salad, chicken slices, bread, four kinds of cookies. But as nice as it was to find the food, it also meant that while they’d been upstairs someone had come into the house. Alix didn’t want to think about what they might have heard.

  “Now you see why I never leave underwear on the kitchen floor,” Jared said, his mouth full.

  “Does that mean you’ve had a lot of practice in leaving undies on the floor of your great-aunt’s kitchen?” she asked primly.

  “Not mine. Hers,” Jared said. “Aunt Addy’s. I had to pick it up often.”

  Alix laughed at his joke. “So what were you like as a kid? Other than kind and generous?”

  “Do you think that because I gave you some old Legos? I was protecting my inheritance. Aunt Addy let you play with things that should be in a museum.”

  “Speaking of which, maybe tomorrow I could see the papers about Valentina.”

  Jared stopped with a fork full of food on the way to his mouth. “Say that name again and the ghost arrives.”

  “Are we talking of the beautiful Captain Caleb? Then I’m on board.”

  “What is it with you and so-called beautiful men today?”

  “There’s you and who else?”

  “Good catch,” he said. “First Lexie’s boss and now my grandfather.”

  Alix’s face lost its smile. “You’ve mentioned him before. Maternal or paternal? Still alive?”

  “If I remember correctly, I changed that reference to Aunt Addy.”

  “So you did.” She looked at him and could see that he wasn’t going to say any more. “Could I see the papers?”

  “Sure. They’re in the attic. Can I stand on the floor and watch you climb up those steep stairs?”

  “With or without undies?”

  Jared’s look made her shove the last bite in her mouth. Without a word spoken between them, they jammed the rest of the food back into the fridge and ran up the stairs to the bedroom.