Mary told them she was a therapist, and Glen said he was a pilot.
Mary watched him for a moment after he’d given half the truth to the couple but didn’t elaborate about what he did for a living.
They parted ways once they stepped onto the small island. “How about some lunch?” he suggested.
“Let the feedings begin.”
Glen took the liberty of placing his hand on her back as he led her through the dense crowd.
Catalina was only eight miles across at its widest point with one main city populating it. The city of Avalon, for the convenience of tourists, was one hundred percent walkable. Which worked out well since the main transportation on the island was limited to golf carts and bikes.
“We have an hour and a half before our next adventure,” Glen told Mary as they walked the small city filled with shops, restaurants, and tourist traps.
“Did you have something in mind for food?” she asked.
“Leaving that up to you. I picked last weekend.”
She glanced around before grabbing his hand and pulling him into a Mexican restaurant.
Mary liked her food spicy. She splashed hot sauce all over everything and didn’t break a sweat when she popped a jalapeño in her mouth.
They had just enough time to walk to the launch ramp and grab a water taxi.
The sailboat was large enough to have a small galley and a place for Mary to change. A crew of three waited to take the two of them halfway around the island to where only the sound of the waves hitting the hull would distract them. Mary emerged wearing a cover-up over the patches of red material Glen had all but burned into his memory.
“If you two are ready,” the captain said once they were both seated.
Glen rested his arm on the side of the boat and encouraged Mary to sit back. “You’ll love this,” he said so only she could hear.
“Good thing I don’t turn green on boats or this day would have been ruined.”
Glen placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her into his side. She fit, perfectly.
The crew hoisted the sails and the material caught the wind. The wind also caught Mary’s cover-up and Glen was treated with an up close vision that a camera couldn’t do justice to. Mary tilted her face to the wind and the salt spray hit her closed eyes.
They spotted a pod of dolphins . . . or did they call it a school? Glen didn’t know, and the two of them debated it for ten minutes before attempting to look up the information on their phones. But a signal was nonexistent, which had them both turning off their phones and putting them away for the duration.
Mary removed a tube of suntan lotion from her bag and distracted him by running a generous portion down her legs and over her arms. “Did you hear what I said?”
He almost said yes . . . then realized he had no idea what she’d just said. “No. I’m having a hard time hearing anything with you doing that.”
She slid her arms out of her cover-up and let it drop around her waist, and Glen’s brain fried. She was beautiful, curvy in all the right places, slender in all the others. His mouth watered. “You have a picture in your phone.”
He let his eyes drop for a nanosecond and promised himself a longer look when she wasn’t watching him. “It isn’t the same.”
“It’s just a bathing suit.”
“It’s not the suit.”
Maybe it was the reflection of the sun off the water, but he swore she blushed. “How is it you’re not used to compliments?”
She continued with the lotion, this time higher on her thighs. The tips of her fingers moving between the material and her skin.
Lucky fingertips.
“I don’t get them as often as you might believe.”
He waited for her to struggle with the spaces she couldn’t reach, and took the liberty of removing the tube from her hand. “Then you either don’t wear a bikini when you’re swimming or you’re hanging out with the wrong men.”
She pulled her hair over her shoulder and presented him with her back. Her skin was soft and warm . . . his hands covered her shoulders and rubbed the lotion in with slow, strong strokes. He figured as long as she was getting a massage out of the application, she wouldn’t realize how much time it took for him to apply the SPF 30. So he used his thumbs up the edges of her delicate spine and rolled the tension up her neck and back down. Mary stopped talking and moaned.
That simple noise took his semi–state of arousal into high gear and had him sucking in a deep breath.
Get ahold of yourself, bud!
Talking to himself, in his head, wasn’t new. In fact, it was becoming a necessary part of dating Mary. He promised himself he’d take it slow, not scare her off. They had too many mutual friends and too much chemistry to push this fast.
Mary was quickly turning to putty in his hands.
“How about I lie down and you do that for an hour.”
“Because we have an audience and I don’t trust myself to do this that long and remain a gentleman.”
She passed a look over her shoulder of complete trust. “You surprise me.”
He moved quicker to avoid his hard-on becoming more prominent. “Oh, how so?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t think you’d be so careful with me.”
“What did you expect?”
She leaned back to say something in his ear when her arm brushed against his erection.
He didn’t move a muscle and she delivered a knowing grin. “I expected you to think a little more with that.”