Island Affair (Keys to Love #1)(90)
“If we keep this up,” he murmured against her warm skin, “I won’t be able to walk in there without making a spectacle of myself.”
“Mmmm, but it feels so good.”
It sure as hell did.
Everything about this entire week did. Almost too good.
Which was why his doom and gloom radar had been blipping ever since her family had driven away from the boat ramp near his house in Big Coppitt, heading home to wash up and start preparing the fish they’d caught for dinner while he and Sara cleaned and stored his boat.
The whole time she toiled beside him—scrubbing the deck, cleaning the workstation behind the boat helm where he’d cut their bait and cleaned the snapper, rinsing and storing the life vests—he couldn’t stop thinking that she was the absolute perfect first mate. On the Fired Up and in his life.
He needed to tell her that. Get it out in the open.
But old insecurities refused to completely release their grip on him.
So, he had remained quiet. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hoping it wasn’t a steel-toed boot that wound up kicking him in the balls.
“We should head inside,” Sara said on a sigh.
Her hands explored his back, teased the waistband on his board shorts, driving him crazy because their foreplay couldn’t lead to the satisfaction both of them wanted.
“Mom already texted. Everything’s ready. They’re just waiting on us before putting the fish on the grill.” Sara stepped backward toward the door. Linking her fingers with his, she gave a little tug. Like he wouldn’t follow her anywhere.
As soon as they entered the home’s cool interior, Luis heard a loud clamor of voices coming from the living room.
“I don’t understand?” Ruth’s distressed cry meshed with Robin’s worried, “Mother, calm down,” and Jonathan’s firm, “You should leave!”
“Enough!” Charles’s deep baritone, stiff with authority, cut through the bedlam, silencing everyone. “I am sure Sara has a valid explanation for all of this.”
Sara sent Luis a confused frown.
Before he could say anything, she hurried down the hall. The slap-slap-slap of her black flip-flops against the hardwood floor galvanized him into action. Tossing his truck keys in the shell-shaped bowl on the hutch, he followed quickly behind her.
“An explanation for what?” she asked seconds before they reached the living room. “Oh!”
She gasped, rearing back and bumping into Luis. Her arms went slack at her sides, the big beach bag dropping onto the floor at her feet.
Luis grabbed her hips to steady her, peering down with concern when she went slack in his arms, her complexion suddenly pale. He ran his gaze from her parents and Robin seated on the sand-colored chenille sofa. To Edward, propped on the sofa arm near his wife. To Jonathan and Carolyn, squashed together on the matching oversized ottoman. And finally, to a clean-shaven, slick-looking pretty boy wearing a pinstriped suit and a polished, whitened-teeth smile.
The stranger rose from his seat in the overstuffed chair angled to the left of the sofa. He tugged the bottom of his suit coat sharply, his too-large smile confident. It reminded Luis of a smarmy salesman ready to sweet-talk you into a deal on a piece of swampy, mosquito-infested property in the Everglades.
Luis’s hands tightened on Sara’s hips. Dread oozed through him, thick and suffocating.
“Hello, Sara, it’s good to see you,” the stranger said.
“Ric, what the hell are you doing here?”
Sara’s harsh, horrified question confirmed Luis’s worst nightmare.
And just like that, the steel-toed boot he’d been anticipating swung hard and fast. With dead-on accuracy.
*
Ric’s schmoozy smile, the fake one that had grated on her nerves once she learned to spot its insincerity, slipped the tiniest bit at Sara’s blunt question. Good, she hoped the jerk was sweating underneath his sports coat.
“You invited me, remember?” he had the audacity to say. He spread his arms as if expecting her to give him a welcome hug. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
She actually laughed, surprised by his narcissism. “I’m not sure why. The last thing I said to you was, ‘Go to hell.’ ”
“Sara?” Her father rose from the sofa, his impervious Chief Cardiothoracic Surgeon regal bearing firmly in place. Even in khaki shorts and a tropical print shirt rather than his white lab coat and stethoscope.
“It’s okay, Dad. I’ve got this.” She held up a hand to stop her father and anyone else from stepping in. Although, based on Ruth’s shocked expression and the splayed hand on her chest, Sara’s mother was incapable of speaking at the moment. The rest of her family ran the gamut from pissed off: Jonathan, glaring at Ric, to haughty superiority juxtaposed with concern: Robin, her gaze skittering between Ric and their mom.
Ric had the gall to open his arms wider, still awaiting her welcome hug. “Come on, you didn’t really mean it, did you?”
“You should go, Ric,” Sara said firmly.
“Don’t you—”
“Please don’t make this any more awkward than it already is,” she interrupted, trying to remember what about him had appealed to her in the first place. “We were finished before you bailed on me. We’ve both known it.”