Burn: A Novel Read online

  After Matt left, Jenner took a sip of her iced tea and said, “Does he work for you?”

  “Who?” Cael asked, reaching to the top of his head and sliding his sunglasses down into place as he squinted at the pool.

  “Matt,” she said, without explaining who “Matt” was. If a detail like that had slipped by Cael Traylor, then she was a monkey’s uncle.

  A slow grin spread across his face. “You’re paranoid, aren’t you?” They were keeping their voices low, but the noise around the pool area was such that they could have used normal speaking voices without worrying about being overheard. A live band was blasting Jimmy Buffett music at the sunbathers, people were shrieking, laughing, chattering. Cael had selected a table as far from the music as he could get, but the noise level was still high.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, and looked away because his grin was making her stomach do flip-flops. How many days left until they got back to San Diego? They hadn’t even made it to Hawaii yet. She didn’t know if she could bear up under the pressure of being so close to him, because already she felt as if she were about to jump out of her skin.

  She rubbed the back of her neck, felt the sweat. The weather was very warm—or she was very warm—so Jenner kicked off her beach thongs and stood. Cael lazily reached out and snagged her wrist. “Where are you going?”

  “Swimming.” She indicated her swimsuit, a hot pink tank with cut-outs on the sides, then the pool. “Swimsuit, pool—hello!” She wished he’d stop touching her. Damn it, evidently even her wrist was an erogenous zone. She just hoped he didn’t feel how her pulse was galloping.

  “It’s too crowded to swim.”

  That was true, but swimming wasn’t her goal; cooling off was. She said as much, though she didn’t expect him to relent. To her surprise, he sighed and got to his feet, kicking off his own deck shoes. Taking her hand, he walked with her to the pool’s edge. “Are you going to get your hair wet?” he asked.

  “Do I look like a woman who won’t get her hair wet?” she countered, flipping the choppy ends of her hair, which was barely long enough to cover her ears. “I go snorkeling and parasailing whenever I can.”

  “Then hold your breath,” he said, and stepped off the side of the pool still holding her hand. The pool wasn’t a diving pool so it wasn’t deep, maybe six feet at the deepest part, but it was still over her head where they were. He tugged on her hand and brought her back to the surface, then wrapped one arm around her to keep her there.

  The cool water felt wonderful; his hard, muscled body felt even more so. Jenner took her time wiping the water out of her face, to hide her reaction to the sensation of his wet skin against hers. Muscles and water had to be one of the most potent combinations known to womankind. Had she lost her mind? What in hell had she been thinking? Actually, she hadn’t been thinking about being in the pool with him, she’d been thinking about getting in the cool water away from him. That plan hadn’t worked.

  “Put your arms on my shoulders,” he said, his face so close to hers she could see the individual black eyelashes, clumped together in wet spikes that made the blue of his eyes even more vivid. Automatically, her mind having turned sluggish by his damn pheromones, she did as told, which brought her against him from breast to thigh. Getting in the pool had to be one of the worst ideas she’d ever had, and definitely the one she’d enjoyed the most. She was a fool and a nitwit, to fall in lust with her captor—though, in her view, any woman worthy of the name would be fanning herself at just the sight of him, more rough than pretty, and tough in ways most men would never even consider.

  The buoyancy of the water sent her legs sliding against his. Bracing her hands on his tanned shoulders, she tried to find purchase by pressing her feet against the side of the pool, but so many people were jumping in and out that the water was in constant turbulence and kept pushing her against him. The back and forth reminded her almost unbearably of another back and forth, one that had nothing to do with water and everything to do with getting naked.

  “This was a bad idea,” she said, caving in before things got any worse and she found herself with her legs locked around his waist.

  His expression said I told you so, though he hadn’t, not in so many words. “Ready to get out?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He hoisted himself out of the pool, water sluicing off his body, then he bent down and bodily lifted her out of the water to stand her on the edge of the pool. That careless strength made her stupid stomach tie itself in knots again. She was skinny, yeah, but she wasn’t bony skinny, and she actually weighed more than it looked like she did because all of her activities gave her muscle. For him to so easily lift her like that … She couldn’t look at him; she couldn’t bear to. If she did, she might never look away.

  They returned to the table and toweled dry, and Jenner used her fingers to arrange her hair. It would dry quickly in the breeze, and the cut deliberately made it look choppy and messy, unless she went to some pains to smooth it down. She gulped down some of the tea, then turned her chair slightly so she was looking more at the ocean than she was at Cael. Sun didn’t normally bother her eyes, even living in south Florida, so she often had to remind herself to wear sunglasses. Now was one of those times, and she gratefully seized hers from where she’d tossed them on top of the table. Hiding her eyes was a damn good idea.

  They sat there a little while longer, not speaking much. Her swimsuit stopped dripping, and her hair dried enough that it began to lift in the breeze. The gentle motion of the ship began to make her sleepy, and she thought how nice it would be to stretch out on one of those padded deck chairs and take a nap.

  “Let’s go,” Cael said, pushing back his chair and standing.

  “Hello, neighbors!” came a cheerful voice, and they looked around to find the two women in the suite across from theirs, Linda and Nyna, smiling at them as they approached. Jenner had spotted them at a distance at the various functions, but they hadn’t spoken since the lifeboat drill.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling back because both of them seemed genuinely nice. They made no pings at all on her Jerry-radar. “Are you enjoying the cruise?”

  “Yes, we are,” said Linda. “Join us for lunch, and we’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I’d love to,” Jenner said quickly, before Cael had a chance to come up with an excuse. The last thing she wanted was to be alone in the suite with him right now. She wanted to give her hormones a stern talking to, as well as a chance to settle down.

  He could’ve begged off and had lunch with his buddy Ryan, but of course he didn’t. Cael wasn’t going to leave her on her own even with two perfectly harmless older women; Jenner thought she had trust issues, but Cael was in a league of his own.

  She pulled on the almost-knee-length coverup that made her bathing suit perfectly acceptable for lunch, and stepped into her sequined beach thongs. Cael put on his shirt and buttoned it up. Thank God. She could breathe easier now, even though a part of her wished he never put on a shirt. The important thing was to not let him see how he affected her.

  Linda and Nyna were having lunch in The Club, one of the casual indoor restaurants. They were shown to a table for four near the center of the room. The two older women seemed to have made acquaintance with almost everyone in the restaurant, because their passage was slowed by people greeting them.

  When they were seated, Nyna unfolded her napkin and said, “It’s so nice to see you two again. Of course, there’s so much to do, and the ship is so large, you might have been roaming the ship from stem to stern and we wouldn’t know it.” Her smile made it clear that she thought exactly what Cael wanted everyone to think—that they were spending the cruise in her suite, and mostly in bed. That explained away all the hours he spent spying on their other neighbor.

  “Have you been to the spa?” Linda asked, her question directed at Jenner.

  “No, I’m afraid not. I’d planned to, but …” She shrugged, letting the sentence trail off. Le