Page 14 of Pervade Montego Bay

Stirring from my daydreaming, I realized I’d been holding her hands for a little too long. Letting go, I stepped over to adjust the sail to full mast. I didn’t want Emily anywhere near the rigging. Couldn’t risk her fingers getting injured.

From the moment I’d learned to sail I’d gone out alone. My love of the ocean had morphed into a serious career—those years spent on submarines feeling like my natural habitat, despite how confined life could be.

“What’s the other boat you’re working on? The one calledLiberty?”

“A hobby.” I played it down because that smaller boat I was renovating felt like it had my bloodline running through it.

I’d gifted it to Victoria on our wedding day, and it had been swept out to sea during a hurricane. We’d rescued it but the hull had been damaged. Whenever I was in Montego Bay, I worked on it a little, trying to bring the boat back to its original beauty. It was taking time to fix, though. It was a challenging boat to grapple with. Maybe it was the hull, or the design, or…

Reaching into Emily’s beach bag, I pulled out the bottle of sunblock and squeezed lotion into my palm. “Turn around.”

The touch of her skin felt as soft as silk. Gently, I eased the straps of her dress off her shoulders. She was wearing a bikini beneath. Working the cream over her exposed back, my palms tingled as they caressed her. I breathed in her faint floral perfume, and leaned down to drink in the fresh, wind-blown scent of her hair.

Emily was so real…so pure—unaffected by her talent and wistfully uncaring about her natural beauty.

She reached up and rested her hand on mine.

I allowed it to remain.

It would be easy to wrap my arms around this exquisite woman and let the sailboat set its own course. It would be easy to bury my face in the crook of her neck and inhale her beauty.

I moved around Emily and knelt before her so I could massage sunscreen over her face and neck. She gave me one of her cute smiles as though suspecting how much I needed this intimacy. As though me fighting it was adorable. It took every ounce of control I possessed to resist kissing her.

I turned my attention to her feet, removing her sandals. The thought of sucking on her red painted toes hit me and my fingertips traced the sole of her foot.

“James?”

“You have to get it between the toes,” I told her, rubbing in the lotion.

She pulled her foot away, as though ticklish, and I eased it back and finished applying the cream. She continued to watch me closely with a curious expression.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I applied it before we left.”

“You seasoned sailor, you,” she quipped.

I whipped out my phone and sat next to her, lifting it up ready to snap a shot of us together. “Smile, Em.”

She frowned suspiciously instead.

The fact that Emily hadn’t smiled would hopefully stir Xavier’s empathy when I sent the photo to him. He’d believe she wasn’t enjoying herself and that would motivate him to come rescue her from the big bad wolf.

The wind filled the sail and the boat took us farther out to sea.

Thoughts of Xavier crowded my mind and I tried and failed to push them away. It was the endless blue that brought him back to me. He’d sat where Emily was now, looking out at the view with his short blond hair ruffled by the breeze, scruff covering his face from where he’d given up shaving for weeks. His Norwegian complexion tanned easily, making the color of his eyes pop like these crystal-clear turquoise waters. I recalled the way his smile reached his eyes in reaction to all this beauty—revealing his affection for me.

That happy grin of his had once melted my heart and revived my life.

Every moment in his presence felt easy. He was sacred in every conceivable way. What we’d shared was ours alone to cherish. The intimacy so profound I cursed the part of me that had rejected the future we both deserved.

Even after all my soul-searching, I’d denied my feelings for him. Even up to the day we’d fought, and he’d run into the heart of London. The same evening Xavier had fallen into Emily’s arms.

My jealousy had been veiled behind my need for Xavier’s professional talents. I did need him on that level, but my heart had yearned for him, too. It hurt like hell knowing it had been me who’d sent him reeling.

He didn’t deserve any of it. Because Xavier was not only brilliant in every conceivable way, he was kind and compassionate and everything that was right in this world.

“Are you thinking of him?” Emily interrupted my daydreaming.