Bungalow Nights(30)

“Hey,” he said, spreading his fingers. “I’m the soldier.”

“If we’re the only two people in the world, it occurs to me we won’t have need of your combat skills.”

“Until there’s spiders to manage,” he reminded her. “Or killer dolphins.”

“Killer dolphins,” she scoffed. But she was smiling and the tension between them eased even more. He smiled back, his spirits lifting, too. Maybe they’d meet with success tonight.

According to sailors, when the flash appears, it means a soul has crossed over.

As if she caught his train of thought, her smile died and she went silent again. Her expression pensive, she turned her attention toward the horizon. The sky was a wash of pinkish-orange, the water the gray of gunmetal, the round sun glowing like molten lava. Vance breathed deep again, and over the shush of the ocean tossing against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, he heard Layla sigh.

He turned to her. The wind had caught her long hair and it swirled around her face. He grabbed a long skein of the stuff and tucked it behind her ear. “You okay?”

“Hmm.” She drew up her knees and linked her arms around them, then flicked him a quick look. “This morning I spoke to your mother about Picnic Day. Details. How many cupcakes she thought we might need, what time we should get the truck to the ranch, that kind of thing.”

He swallowed his groan. “I thought we were the only two people in the world,” he said. “In which case there is no upcoming Picnic Day.”

“Nice try,” Layla said. “But you can’t bury your head in the sand.”

Why not? It was effectively what he’d done when he’d joined the army all those years ago. With relations between him and his family in shambles, he’d buried himself in the sand of war. Stretching out his legs, he fumbled in the pouch of his ragged sweatshirt. The flask he’d stashed there clunked against his cast, and he pulled it out, glad he’d thought to bring it.

“Whiskey,” he said, unscrewing the lid with his unencumbered right hand, thanking God for his renewed mobility. He’d put the brace away three days before. A hefty swallow of the liquor went down smooth. A clean burn of unpleasant thoughts. “You want?”

She eyed him. Then took a sip, sputtered.

“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot you’re only good with tequila.”

As if she took the remark as a challenge, she tipped the flask for a second sip. Color flushed her cheeks as she passed it back.

Jesus, she was something. She did something to him, with that soft skin, the top-heavy mouth, those long-lashed eyes that now faced forward again. As he watched, her back stiffened.

“Here we go,” she said, groping for his hand.

After four days of avoidance, he keenly felt her touch. It was as if the small fingers twining with his also had some clutch hold on his heart. Trying to ignore its ache, he turned to the horizon. The sun slipped lower, moving fast now, as if it had suddenly remembered a previous engagement. A golden reflection of it spread against the dappled water and the wind suddenly died. The breakers seemed to quiet, too, as if nature was holding its breath.

Vance knew he was. Tightening his fingers on Layla’s, he leaned his shoulder closer to hers. She trembled a little, and he pressed against her, sharing his warmth. His strength.

The orange orb dropped. And dropped. The top edge seemed to spread and flatten as it slipped the final bit. And then—

Nothing.

His heart twinged in more sympathetic pain, and he damned the thing. It had been nicely numb after Blythe’s defection, but thanks to Layla it now seemed determined to mirror his every mood. Her every mood.

He glanced over. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“Yeah,” she said, her gaze on the now-empty sky.

“We’ll see it next time. I’ll pick the right sunset, and then we’ll see it.” God, once he started on the promises, he couldn’t seem to stop.

“Sure.”

The melancholy on her face made him nuts. “We’ll make a wish on it then,” he said.

She turned her head, perking up a little. “A wish?” Her lips curved.

“Yep. That’s a bit of folklore I picked up.” He touched the pillow of her bottom lip with the tip of his forefinger. The surface was unbearably soft. “Tell me, lovely Layla, what does your heart desire?”

Her smile fell. Her lashes swept down to hide her eyes. And Vance cursed himself. Her heart’s desire? It would be to have her dad beside her right now, you idiot, not some substitute. Pissed at his own stupidity, he fumbled again for the flask and took another drink. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just ignore me.”

Instead, she took the whiskey from him and sipped, grimacing as if it was medicine. “What about you, Vance? What would you wish for?”

“That you wouldn’t be sad,” he said, and meant it to the marrow. “That I could take the pain away for you.”

Her head bent as she seemed to consider it. “Maybe you should save that wish for yourself,” she replied after a long moment, lifting her gaze to his. “You’re sad, too.”

“Me? No.” He had annoyances. Grievances. Frustrations. But sadness? “Not that.”

Layla took another sip from the flask. “Come on. Fitz and Blythe...”

He snatched the liquor from her. “I don’t want to talk about them.” It was another reason he’d spent four days avoiding her. There was no need to dig around in that old nonstory.

“We’re going to have to.”

In the waning light, he frowned at her. “I don’t see why.”

“Because we’ll be at your family’s ranch.” She hesitated. “Look, I know we’ve been stepping over the elephant in the living room, but we can’t do that forever. If we’re going to do the pretend girlfriend/boyfriend thing again on Picnic Day, I need to have a better understanding of—”

“What, you haven’t had a boyfriend before?” he asked, throwing the question out like bait. Anything to redirect the conversation.

She made a face at him. “I told you. I’ve had experience. I’ve kissed. I’ve been in relationships.”

Ah, yes, thank you, God. His little fish had gone right for the worm. “Forgive me for finding it hard to see your tough-as-nails father allowing you to kiss anybody.” Even as he said it, he worked hard to put their kisses from his mind, the sweet plumpness of her top lip, the soft velvet of her tongue.

Her laugh was rueful. “Okay, I admit it. He was an impediment in my younger teenage years. I wasn’t allowed to attend many parties or go out on one-on-one dates. I thought I might die a ninety-five-year-old virgin.”

Vance wasn’t surprised that the colonel had tried to shelter his only daughter. “But in your older teenage years?”

“I had more freedom.” She found the flask that he’d dropped on the blanket between them. “I was a freshman in college when Dad’s latest deployment left me with an empty house—Uncle Phil was at a meditation center for the weekend. So I devised a battle plan to put an end to my untouched status.”

It was almost dark now, but he turned toward her, anyway, intrigued—no, appalled. “A battle plan?”

“A strategy, if you will,” she said. “An agenda. An approach to finally learning what it seemed as if everyone else in the world my age already knew.”

Wow, Vance thought. No romantic daydreams for this girl. No getting swept away by emotion or even hormones for Layla. The soldier’s daughter thought in terms of tactics and maneuvers to get what she was after.

She swigged some more from the flask. “Here’s the truth. I’d had exactly one date that ended in exactly one kiss before the night I engineered to experience the whole shebang.”

“Shebang,” he echoed. “She-bang?”

“Whoops.” Layla released a husky, half-tipsy giggle. “Bad choice of word.”

He snatched the metal canister away from her. “I think we can leave it at—”

“So I had this battle plan,” she continued. “I’d been to the doctor for birth control, I had condoms, I bought a slinky nightgown, I picked a guy who seemed respectful and who I kinda liked.”

“You kinda liked him?” Vance asked, now almost aghast.

“Well, no,” Layla admitted. “I actually liked him okay, but I amended it later...when, you know.”

A chill rocketed up his spine. “No, I don’t know.” And how can I find this *? “Did he...what did he do?”

“He just didn’t do it for me.” Layla was silent a moment. “And then he seemed somewhat irked when I pointed that out.”

Good God. Vance rolled his eyes skyward, to see the first stars shining above them. On the heels of a single kiss, she’d attempted the full monty with all the sentimentality of an officer drawing up combat plans in a war room. No wonder she’d been left unsatisfied. By a guy she liked okay.