Island Affair (Keys to Love #1)(100)

Jonathan and Edward had moved around back to grab her suitcase. Robin stood between the side of the car and the open door, blocking Sara in. Her sister grasped her shoulders, gray eyes serious, her game face firmly in place.

“Promise me you’re going to make him grovel,” she demanded.

“Robin!” their parents chided in unison.

“I say grovel!” Grinning, Carolyn leaned out from the backseat to hand Sara her Goyard tote.

“You are corrupting my wife,” Jonathan complained to their older sister, wheeling Sara’s hard-sided silver carry-on behind him.

Robin ignored them all. She gave Sara’s shoulders a tiny shake. “Promise me. You’re worth it.”

Sara gave her sister a quick hug and whispered, “I promise.”

“Go get him,” Carolyn said softly.

Robin stepped aside for Sara to pass.

When she reached the sidewalk, Sara turned back to her family. “I love you.”

A smattering of “we love you, too,” “back at ya,” and Robin’s “of course you do” brought a huge grin to Sara’s face. Her siblings and Edward climbed back in the SUV. With everyone waving good-bye, her father drove off to circle the airport and try not to miss the left turn into the rental return area again.

Sara kept her gaze trained on their vehicle until it disappeared behind the redbrick ruins of the museum on the main road. She stared at the calm ocean across the street, the lone Jet Ski speeding by, skimming the water’s surface. Suddenly nervous to face Luis.

Now that her family was gone and she stood on the hot sidewalk alone, she couldn’t help wondering if maybe she had jumped the gun.

Just because he was here, the same time that she would need to arrive to make her direct fight to Newark, didn’t necessarily mean he had come looking for her. Maybe he was visiting Carlos at work again.

“Sara, will you please come talk to me?” Luis’s soft entreaty called to the lonely part of her soul that ached for him.

Grasping the carry-on bag’s hard plastic handle, she swiveled in his direction, determinedly keeping her expression bland.

“The other day you seemed to think there was nothing left to say,” she answered.

“The other day I acted like an idiot.”

Surprised by his unexpected admission, she drew up short. Her suitcase kept rolling, clipping her sharply on the ankle as it smacked into her.

“Ow!” She bent down to grab the sore spot.

Gravel crunched as Luis moved to kneel at her feet. Blood oozed from an inch-long gash along her ankle. He wiped it with his thumb. Fresh blood oozed out again, dripping down to her heel.

He rose, sweeping her up in his arms.

“Luis!” she gasped. “What are you doing?”

“You need to elevate this and get a bandage on it to stop the bleeding.” He strode to the driver’s side of his truck, where he opened the door and set her on the high seat.

She watched, nonplussed by his overly protective behavior, as he retrieved her suitcase and returned to her.

“I can take care of this after I check in,” she told him. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“I have a first-aid kit in the backseat. Let me—”

“Luis, stop.”

He paused, his hand on the driver’s side passenger door handle. He closed his eyes and the air seemed to whoosh out of him. Now that she was closer, she noticed the pain-filled stress pinching his rugged features.

Like her, it didn’t look like he had spent the last day and a half living it up in Key West.

“What are you doing?” she asked softly.

“I’m trying to apologize to you.” The dejected frown creasing his brows and clouding his dark eyes made her heart ache.

“By bandaging my ankle?”

“Yes. No!” He rubbed a hand along the back of his head, clearly frustrated. At what remained to be seen though.

Sara dug in her purse for a pack of tissues and pulled one out. Luis took the tissue from her and applied pressure to the gash.

His large hand wrapped around her ankle, and she shivered at his touch. He glanced at her from under his lashes. The tenderness in his expression had tears stinging her eyes, but she blinked them away.

A moment of tenderness would not erase what had been said between them on Wednesday. Before she could let him in again, she had to know if anything had changed with him.

“I drove to the rental house at ten, but you were already gone,” Luis said.

“We checked out and had a late breakfast at Camille’s. Anamaría recommended it.”

He nodded, a strange hesitancy replacing his normally confident demeanor. Ducking his head, he checked her gash to find it continued bleeding, so he applied pressure again with his left hand. His right gently stroked the inside of her lower leg as if in comfort.

Desire flared, racing up her leg, tingling in her core.

She longed to drag him closer, feel his strong arms around her, and lose herself in his kiss. It would be good. Oh, so good.

But desire wasn’t enough.

“What are you doing here?” she prodded when he didn’t say anything.

“I remembered you were on the Newark flight. And I figured . . . well, hoped, I guess . . . I might catch you. That maybe you’d stop here. At our spot, before you left.”