I can’t help but laugh as I pick it up and untangle it for her, handing it back. “Don’t mess with that part,” I point at the line. “Hold this button down, then release it as you cast it. Like this.”

I demonstrate.

“And you’re acting desperate. A woman like you doesn’t need to beg someone to fuck her.”

My tone is probably harsher than it needed to be because I can practically see her flinch.

“I’m not desperate,” she repeats, softer this time. “I just… I know what I want. And I only have a limited time to get it. That makes me driven, not desperate.”

I stare at her, at the way the sun is already flushing her cheeks, at the strange look in her eyes… vulnerable, but determined. And I can’t help but wonder once again, why she wants me so much.

I’m not stupid. I know I’m not lacking in female attention. But a girl like Nora can have literally anyone she wants. And girls like that don’t usually throw themselves at someone….because they think they’re above that.

It mystifies me.

We’re quiet for a while, surrounded by the scent of the hot wooden boards, the lake water, the sunshine.

But it doesn’t take long for Nora to get antsy, and I can see why her gardener wanted to be alone to fish. She chatters, and I sigh.

“You know, when you talk, you scare away the fish,” I finally tell her.

She glares up at me.

“You’re not catching anything anyway.”

I sigh again. “It takes time. And patience.”

She falls silent for just a minute, then my mouth falls open as she unties her bikini top.

“What the hell are you doing?” I blurt as she drops her top on the pier and sits topless in the broad daylight.

“I don’t want lines,” she shrugs. “There’s no one out here anyway. This is a private pier.” She turns her back to me, and thrusts a plastic bottle over her shoulder. “Put some sunscreen on my back, would you? It’s a curse of being a ginger, I burn easily.”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

It’s the oldest trick in the book. A chick asks you to put lotion on them at the beach in order to get attention.

But still, I sit staring at her bare back, at the expanse of creamy white flesh facing me, and before I know it, I’m grabbing the bottle of sunscreen and dumping some in my hand.

My fingers glide over her soft skin, smoothing the lotion over her slender body, skimming over her shoulders, the friction between our skin warming my hand.

My groin reacts to such a simple act, tightening, constricting, noticing.

Hell.

Nora turns with a smile.

“Now my front?”

She thrusts her chest out and her perky tits are in my face, perfect, young and lush. My dick is rock hard by this point.

“You can do your own front,” I growl. “In fact, put your suit back on. You’re not a stripper. You don’t know if someone will show up here.”

She cocks her head and keeps her chest thrust proudly out. “No one will. It’s just you and me.”

“For now,” I tell her firmly. “But you never know. Stop acting like a bar whore and put your clothes on.”

The words come out before I can stop it, a reaction to my own frustration, to my own gut reaction at her nakedness.

Her face falls and her eyes shutter closed, she’s expressionless now, sullen as she reaches for her top.

“I didn’t realize I was so offensive,” she mutters. “I’m sorry. I’ll just leave you alone out here.”

She stalks away and I can hear her heels clicking on the pier with every step she takes, as she gets further and further away.

I feel awful for crushing her. And I did crush her. I saw it in her eyes before she guarded them. I saw it in the way her shoulders fell, the way she sucked in her breath at my words.

I don’t know why I said what I said… except that I want her to find her dignity.

I know, somehow I know, that this isn’t really Nora. Nora Greene doesn’t act like this. So why she feels the need to act like a bar whore around me, I have no fucking clue.

All it’s doing is making it harder on me. Harder to not take her up on her proposition.

With a start, I realize that’s exactly what she’s doing. She’s making it harder on me to say no.

With a groan, I roll my eyes and cast my line again.

Fuck. Like I need that. I’m having a hard enough time saying no already.

Nora

Fuck him.

I don’t need this shit.

I storm into my room and yank a t-shirt and yoga capris out of a drawer. I’m here to help him, out of the goodness of my heart, and he wants to treat me like a common whore?

What the hell?

What is wrong with him that he won’t just take me up on my offer? Jesus.

And there was no need to be so mean.

His words made my hands shake… I’m not a whore.

I pull on my clothes and twist my hair into a bun at my neck. I’m just starting to throw my clothes back into my bag, when I catch sight of a picture sitting next of the lamp… an old photograph, framed in sea shells.

It’s Brand, Gabe and Jacey.

Brand and Gabe must be around twelve, which means Jacey is just a bit younger. They’re tanned and smiling and lying on the beach with popsicles. Their mouths are red and Jacey’s got her arms wrapped around Brand’s waist.

Something about that picture gives me pause, and makes me stop packing.

Being only twelve, I’m sure Brand hadn’t even begun to notice Jacey yet… she was a couple of years younger after all. But it does show that even way back then, Jacey was clinging to Brand.

It started so long ago.

It makes me seethe, because I don’t know Jacey, but I know girls like her.

She started clinging to him, making him feel important to her, reeling him in, going to him for advice, growing closer and closer. She kept him on the hook just in case she ever decided she wanted him… but then she never did, because he was like her ‘brother.’

And Brand never saw it coming, because he’s such a good guy. He never knew he was getting played, getting strung along.

Then when he bared his heart to her, she probably crushed it.

I stare at the picture, at the blonde little girl with her arms wrapped around Brand, and I can’t help but hate just a bit. She hurt him, and now he’s distant from every other woman as he protects himself from that happening again.

He hasn’t said, but I know that’s what he’s doing.

All because of her.

In the picture, he’s young and innocent. He’s laughing at Gabe, still oblivious to the hooks Jacey would cast into him a bit later.

It twinges at my heart and I stop packing.

Because it reminds me that he’s so fucking good. As I look at his boyish face in the picture, all I can see is teenage Brand, the boy who picked me out of the dirt and cleaned me off, all at the risk of getting in trouble. The sexy boy who grew into a sexy man, a man who fought hard for his country, a man who loved a woman he couldn’t have.

Even though he’s hardened and cautious now, he’s still good.

That’s why he doesn’t want me throwing myself at him, lowering myself to begging. He doesn’t want it that way.

It’s been so long since I’ve been around a good man, I didn’t even think about that.

I put my clothes away.

I head out to the living room and fold the towels in the basket, all the while watching out the window.

Brand grows sweaty and takes off his shirt.

The sun beats down on his shoulders and back, tanning him even more. I literally ache to go out there and smooth sunscreen over his shoulders, running my hands over that rippled muscle, running my fingers over those fucking words.

I stand on a wall to protect what is mine.

I swallow hard.

The sun glints on his honey-blond hair, and a sheen of sweat appears on his forehead. He stretches, and leans back once again, his muscles flexing with every movement.