Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

She got all the way to the surf line, stopped, and looked back at her mistress.

“It’s okay,” Grace coaxed. “You can get your feet wet. Give it a try.”

To demonstrate, Grace waded in, letting the warm ocean water lap against her ankles. “It’s like bathwater,” she told Wyatt, who followed her in.

The dog edged in and immediately scampered back onto the dryer sand, barking as the wavelets edged toward her.

“Okay,” Grace agreed. “You walk on the sand; we’ll walk in the water.”

“Can I take her?” Wyatt asked. Grace handed over the leash.

“Come on Sweetie,” Wyatt called, veering onto the beach. “Let’s run!”

He broke into a trot, and the dog obediently followed behind. After less than a hundred yards, though, Sweetie ran toward the shell line, where mounds of crushed seashells and seaweed marked the high-tide line.

Sweetie sat, barked, and began nosing in the shells, digging frantically and occasionally stopping to give an excited yip.

“What’s she doing?” Grace asked, when she caught up to the pair.

“She smells something” Wyatt said. “I think she must have some terrier in her, the way she’s going after it.”

Suddenly, the little dog yelped. She backed away slightly and gave a menancing growl, barked again, crouched, and growled again.

“It’s a ghost crab,” Grace laughed, as the pale creature scuttled away. She bent down and picked up the dog. “Stay away from crabs, Sweetie. Crabs are not your friend!”

They walked down the beach in companionable silence, with Sweetie meandering along, sniffing the air and occasionally stopping to growl at imagined threats to her security. After half a mile or so, by unspoken agreement, they turned and walked back toward where the car was parked.

A concrete picnic bench was perched under the shadows of one of the big old pines. “Let’s sit for a little bit,” Grace suggested. She sat on the tabletop and placed Sweetie in her lap. Wyatt sat beside her.

“We used to come out here and go ‘parking’ in high school,” she said, with a sigh. “Seems like a long time ago.”

“When I was in high school, we liked someplace a little more secluded,” Wyatt said. “There was this dead-end street over on Holmes Beach. You could pull your car way up under the trees, and it was on a little bit of a rise, with a perfect view of the water. Although”—he laughed ruefully—“I don’t remember being that interested in actually looking at the water back then. I was a horny little bastard, back in the day.”

“And now?” Grace turned to look at him, her gray eyes teasing.

He hesitated, but stood abruptly, brushing sand from the seat of his pants. “I don’t remember.”

She felt her face aflame with embarrassment, jumping to her feet and startling the dog, who yipped her reaction. “We should probably go.”

“Look. I’m not divorced yet. You’re not divorced yet. I’m pretty sure this is against every divorce-recovery-group rule Paula ever thought of.”

“This?”

He sighed. “You know. Us getting together. Gotta be against the rules.”

Something inside her rebelled. Against rules, and best intentions and common sense. That mischevious smile of hers was back. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” She tilted her face up, waiting to be kissed.

And then … he coughed politely. She opened her eyes and saw that he was putting on his shoes.

*   *   *

Ever since they’d pulled over to the Coquina Beach parking area, Grace had been anticipating this moment. Wondering what she would do if Wyatt tried to kiss her. Or even touch her.

Okay, maybe she’d been wondering all of the above since the minute he’d walked into Paula’s office earlier in the evening. Not that he hadn’t been kinda hot the other times, unshowered, dressed in his Jungle Jerry’s safari work clothes. She didn’t usually go for all that down-and-dirty muscley, manly type, but somehow, on Wyatt, it worked. Then, tonight, he’d obviously made an effort to look good. Was it for her? And had he noticed that she’d dressed up tonight, too? She hadn’t anticipated how crazy all of this was making her feel.

It had never occurred to her that they would come this close—and he would so totally and completely shut her down. Dammit, she was no good at flirting after all this time.

But maybe Wyatt didn’t know that.

Grace cursed all that stinking moonlight. She gathered her keys, her shoes, and her dog and stomped off toward the car.

“Jesus!” Wyatt’s voice was hoarse. He grabbed her arm as she was unlocking the car. “Don’t think I don’t want this, Grace. I do. More than I can tell you, I want it. But where do we go from here? It makes no sense.”

She spun around to face him. “I don’t care. I don’t want to make sense. I just want to be held, and be kissed.” She raised her eyes. “By you. Does that make me a criminal? Or some kind of a slut?”

“No! Of course not. Don’t call yourself that.”

She felt her jaw clench. “That’s how you’re making me feel.”

She placed Sweetie on the backseat, brushed the sand from her feet, and sat in the driver’s seat, with the engine running. A moment later, he got into the car.

“Grace?”

She didn’t answer, just pulled the car out of the lot and onto the beach road, keeping her eyes straight ahead. Sensing the tension in the air, Sweetie whined from the backseat, but Grace kept her back stiff.

“Look,” he said, running his hand over his gleaming head. “I’m playing way out of my league here. You know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

He closed his hand over her shoulder, but she wrenched it away. He tried again. “You are incredibly beautiful, smart, and sane, and nice.”

“Sane?” She raised one eyebrow. “Nice? What kind of left-handed compliment is that?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t know anything. I haven’t been with another woman in eight years. Okay? I have no idea what I am saying or doing tonight. My instincts say go for it, but I’m afraid, all right? What happens if you and I … start something? Where does it go?” You say