Lindsay Evans - Pleasure Under the Sun

Bailey picked up her Scotch and brought it to her lips. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Shut up with your lies, girl!”

Bailey was helpless to the slight smile that quirked her lips. An image of Seven came to her, his hand raised to lift the plastic cup of sparkling white grape juice to her mouth. His own mouth smiling.

“It’s nobody.”

“Well, if he made you leave the office at a reasonable hour, I want to meet this nobody.”

“He’s...” She felt the disappointment again. “He’s like our parents.”

“What...dead?”

Bailey hissed. Sometimes she wondered what was wrong with her sister. “No. He’s some sort of artsy type. He sculpts or something.”

“Not this again.” She could practically see her sister plop down on the nearest available surface, flip her long dreads over her shoulder with irritation and scowl into space. “The life we had with Mama and Daddy wasn’t so bad.”

“What are you talking about? There were months when we were damn near homeless.”

“But didn’t we have so much fun?” Bette stretched out the last word as if it was the most important part of their lives. Damn the unpaid bills and insecurity about the roof over their heads, or where their next meal was coming from, or the constant moving from place to place following one art residency or another. There were nights when Bailey had cried over the desperation of it. She hated that life. The thought of going back to something like it terrified her.

Bailey sighed and took a sip of her Scotch. It seared across her tongue in a wave of beautiful heat, flowed down her throat like liquid silk. She stood at the edge of the cordoned-off rooftop to look down on the trickle of evening traffic, the winking lights from the occasional passing car. Bette was talking, but she tuned her sister out. They could never agree on their life before Miami. It was as if they had lived different versions of the same story. For Bette, it had been a dream. For Bailey, it had brought nothing but nightmares.

A movement on the beach caught her attention. For a moment, she didn’t know what it was, but the shape coalesced into a masculine silhouette walking out from the water. A dark, muscled figure with long, lean legs and slim hips covered in tight white swim trunks.

“What?” Bette’s voice cracked at her through the phone.

“Huh?”

“Did you say something?” her sister asked.

Bailey cleared her throat. “No, I didn’t say a thing.”

“You weren’t listening to me, either, were you?”

She leaned over the balcony, trying to see the man more clearly. “Not really.”

“Typical.” Her sister made a noise of frustration. “I don’t even know—”

“There’s a really hot guy on the beach.”

“Really?” Bette asked, her irritation apparently forgotten. “What does he look like?”

The waves whispered like a siren in the quiet evening. On the sand, the man stood with his hands on his hips, staring into the dark water. There was something vaguely familiar about him, about the masculine perfection of his body close enough for her to see his sculpted back with its deeper shadows of muscle.

“I can’t really tell, but his body is ridiculous,” Bailey murmured as she leaned over the concrete barrier. It pressed into her ribs through her blouse.

She’d seen enough body-conscious gay men walking on the beach that she wasn’t easily impressed. This specimen below her was something else. A brief thought of the man who’d brought dinner to her office intruded. But she shoved it away. It was easier to be frivolous and giggly with her sister, someone who wouldn’t take her appreciation of a stranger’s body for anything other than what it was.

“Does he look like Tyrese?” Bette asked with a laugh. “Damn, maybe it is Tyrese.”

“No. This man looks much better.” Oh, my God, so much better. “I wish I had my binoculars.”

“Now you’re just being creepy.”

“No. Just appreciative.”

“And drunk, too, I expect.” Bette laughed, a low and happy sound that made Bailey smile. “I wish I could come over there and have some of what you’re sipping on. And check out that hottie for myself.”

“No one told you to move all the way to Fort Lauderdale. There’s nothing up there but old queens.”

“And me.”

Bailey made a rude noise. “How could I forget?” She leaned her hip against the stone railing, paying proper attention to her sister while keeping her eyes on the man on the beach.

“Speaking of queens, I’m coming down to Miami to do work for a Colette fashion show this week.” Bette made a flippant sound as if her being the makeup artist of choice for one of the biggest fashion names in the industry was nothing. “You should take me to dinner and invite me to spend the rest of the week with you.”

Bailey smiled. “Sure. Mi condo es su condo.” She purposely didn’t say anything about taking her sister to dinner.

Bette noticed, of course, and muttered something about Bailey being a cheapskate, although they both knew that the dinner would happen—probably multiple times in the week—and that Bailey would pay.

Her sister was quiet for a moment, and Bailey heard only her low breathing, the rustle of some sort of plant, as though she was outside in the backyard of her rented Wilton Manors house.

“You know you have to get over this thing about men like Daddy,” Bette said.

“What about you and your thing about women like Mama?”

“I’m not even going to justify that with an answer.” For once, her sister sounded incredibly grown-up, coolly attempting to put Bailey in her place. “I’m not shutting a whole population of people out of my dating pool just because they don’t have the kind of job you find ideal.”

“I’m not going to compromise myself—”

“It’s not compromise when you’re making yourself miserable going after guys like Clive, who aren’t worth anything. I’m sure the guy you were lusting after is great if you’ll just give him a chance.”

“I don’t think so,” Bailey muttered.

On the beach, the man turned away from the water and began to pull on his clothes. He shoved his feet in sandals and threw something—probably a shirt—over his shoulder. A sixth sense must have warned him about her watching, because he looked up. And Bailey lost her breath. She was dimly aware of him raising a hand in acknowledgment. Then, instead of waiting on a response from her, the man walked up the sand away from the water, and away from her. Bailey blinked as she watched the dark figure disappear down a narrow side street.

It was Seven Carmichael.

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