Kathleen O'Brien - Trial By Seduction

Philip ignored him as usual, but Mark, sensing that Edgerton was about to overload his circuits, grabbed another bottled water and ambled toward the two men. “Here,” he said, handing the drink to Edgerton. “See if this will put the fire out.”

He joined Philip at the window and peered into the silver mist.

“Show me,” he said cooperatively, though he didn’t really expect to see anything of interest. Philip’s taste in women ran to the type whose IQs were as skimpy as their bathing suits. Unfortunately, Mark required more than a D-cup to engage his attention. In fact, he couldn’t imagine what it would take to interest him anymore....

“Darn, she’s moved out of the light.” Philip sighed, and Mark’s jaw tightened at the whiff of blended whiskey that floated over him. God—Philip was really tossing it back.

Somehow Mark fought down his annoyance, trying to feel sympathetic. Edgerton’s plans for today’s grand reopening festivities were a maze of social and political intricacies. Philip was probably scared blue. But why, just once, couldn’t he think of some less destructive way to stiffen his spine?

“Wait—yeah, there she is, just beyond the light now, heading for the water.” Philip clutched his cousin’s forearm. “Oh, my God, took—she’s taken off her shoes.”

“Easy boy,” Mark said calmly. “You have seen feet before.”

But as his gaze focused on the woman’s slim figure, his carefully cultivated cynicism began to peel away like an old coat of paint under a bright sun.

By God, this wasn’t just another of Philip’s over-endowed bimbos. This one actually was different. She was... beautiful.

Yet it was so much more than that. Beautiful wasn’t enough to account for this tightening of his gut, this startling sense of recognition. No, it wasn’t just beauty—it wasn’t even the way the wind blew her white shirt back against her breasts, outlining their feminine swell with a curve of silver mist. Bathing beauties were as common on Moonbird Key as coquina—his eyes saw them, but they had long since lost the power to stir him.

So what was it? What kept him here at the window as silent as an awestruck schoolboy? He let his shoulder drop to rest against the wall, trying to affect a casual air while he studied the vision before him, trying to pinpoint the difference.

Her hands were clasped demurely behind her back, dangling white sandals, and her shoulders were bravely squared. She had reached the water’s edge now, and as the incoming waves licked at her toes she cast one last look back at the hotel, seemingly watching for someone.

Philip was still chattering stupidly. “Was I right or what? Isn’t she a babe?” His tone was proprietorial, as if he had not just discovered but actually invented her.

A babe? Perhaps... Mark nodded mutely. She was so small, so heartbreakingly delicate that her sensual perfection of form was somehow surprising, like the tiniest fluted turbonilla that had ever escaped the pounding of the sea. Next to her, the Gulf of Mexico seemed clumsily dangerous.

Philip shivered comically as the wind lifted her full white skirt, exposing a slim, pale and graceful thigh. “Ooo-weee, man, is she hot,” he said, exhaling a liquored breath.

For one hot black instant, Mark thought he might shove his cousin, thrusting him from the window, denying him the right to watch. Shut up, he wanted to shout. He hated the tone, the bawdy, half-drunk lechery...

Somehow he checked himself. Philip didn’t understand. How could he? He saw only the high, rounded breasts, the long blond braid...

Mark saw more, felt something completely different from Philip’s lip-smacking lust. And yet lust was part of it. His fingertips pulsed with a burning awareness. He wanted suddenly, almost painfully, to touch her. She needed to be touched—he felt it as keenly as if she had cried her need out loud.

She might have been a little girl, lost and afraid, except for the somber, self-possessed quality of her slow march toward the water. Not lost, he thought, the clamps tightening in his gut. Exiled, rather. Sent out unarmed to meet the demon.

“Goddamn it, you two voyeurs knock off that gawking and get to work.” Edgerton’s voice cut through the strange, tingling fantasies like a cold dousing, and Mark looked at his cousin, oddly surprised to remember that Edge was in the room.

Good God. He squeezed his eyes, trying to clear his vision. What the hell was the matter with him? He needed a new woman in his life about as much as he needed sunstroke. He must be more tired than he’d thought. Yes, that was it. The gauzy silver-blue mist was playing tricks with his tired brain.

“Somebody has to meet the temps.” Edgerton was shuffling papers irritably. He flicked on the light over the bar. “And this timeline just doesn’t work. I don’t know who we’re going to get to staff the pressroom.”

Mark bit back his irreverent response. He might as well cooperate—the Moonbird Hotel’s grand reopening was also designed to kick off Edgerton’s campaign for a seat in the state legislature, so the poor guy was doubly uptight. He wasn’t going to rest until Mark and Philip were marching in lockstep, alongside the army they’d already hired.

Mark straightened, turning away from the window, ignoring the stupid pinch that felt like the snapping of a psychic cord. Nonsense. There was no such thing.

But as he crossed the room toward his cousin, hand outstretched to accept the typed agenda, he couldn’t help looking over his shoulder, just once, to convince himself that he had been seeing things.

It was merely another woman. Gorgeous admittedly, but ever since he’d turned eighteen Mark had been littering the beaches of Moonbird Key with beautiful women, lovers who had foolishly dreamed of possessing him—or perhaps his money. He had buried those dreams without regret, like so many pirated jewels smothered under the thick, wet sand.

Yes, he’d been around far too long to start spinning Andromeda fantasies about a total stranger. It had to be the mist. One last look...

But, God help him, the one last look was fatal. While he watched, the woman bowed her head and, as if someone had cut the strings that had been holding her erect, suddenly crumpled to her knees at the water’s edge.

He could hardly bear to watch. She was, somehow, the personification of pain. Incoming waves frothed around her legs, lifting her sodden white skirt, then sucking it down into the sand, but she was oblivious. She lowered her face into her hands, and her shoulders began to shake softly, as if her heart was breaking.

Mark made a low noise in his throat and, without a word, strode past Edgerton, who stood frozen in disbelief, his hand full of typed agendas thrusting at empty air.

“Hold on there, buddy. Where do you think you’re going?” His words were aimed at Mark’s back like buckshot. “After that girl out there? For Pete’s sake, man, you don’t even know who she is! You don’t even know if she’s a paying guest.”

Mark hadn’t intended to stop, hadn’t meant to respond, but he found himself pausing once again in the doorway. What an officious hypocrite the man was! The only thing Edgerton liked better than a pretty blonde was a pretty blonde with money. Twenty years of repressed anger surged to the fore, temporarily subduing twenty years of kinship.

“You may find this hard to believe,” he said as calmly as he could, though his hands had folded into involuntary fists, “but I really don’t give a damn.”

Glenna McBride hardly knew why she had arrived at the Moonbird Hotel so early. She wasn’t due for another four hours—and Purcell Jennings, the photographer she would assist on this assignment, wouldn’t arrive until dinnertime tonight.