Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(76)

In a couple of minutes, she dialed the concierge and ordered several items off the menu, including a bottle of wine. As she considered ordering dessert, the concierge offered to send the ingredients for s’mores, to roast over the private fire pit.

She put her hand over the mouthpiece and asked Jason, “Do you like s’mores?”

He looked at her gravely. “It hurts my feelings that you would even have to ask.”

Grinning, Justine said to the concierge, “Yes to the s’mores.”

After Justine had set the phone back into the cradle, she told Jason, “I hope you’re good at roasting marshmallows…”

“I am.”

“… because I always burn them.”

“I know.”

Justine wrinkled her nose at him. “How?”

“Because roasting marshmallows takes patience.”

“Are you implying that I’m impatient?”

He walked his fingers along her sheet-covered thigh. “I’m stating it as a categorical fact,” he said, and she grinned.

Dinner had arrived by the time they had left the bed and showered. Justine put on a hotel robe and stayed in the bedroom while Jason, who had dressed in casual clothes, let the room service attendants into the cottage. They set out a feast of exquisitely prepared dishes, decanted the wine, and left discreetly.

“How does it look?” Justine asked, venturing out of the bedroom.

“Fantastic,” Jason said, his gaze taking in the sight of her in the hotel robe.

She smiled at him. “I meant the dinner.”

“The dinner, too.” He poured the wine and seated Justine at the table. They started with sun-ripened tomato slices drizzled with delicate green olive oil and flaked sea salt, followed by salads of crisp fennel leaves dressed with jammy slices of mission figs. Justine’s entrée was osso buco, rich braised meat melting off the shank. For Jason she had ordered a vegetable ricotta tart topped with pine nuts and slices of smoked Meyer lemon. It was seriously good food, the flavors so sublime that you would remember them later and be sorry if you hadn’t eaten every bite. They did justice to the meal, hunger tamping down all but the most necessary conversation until they were finally satisfied.

They went outside to sit by the fire pit, orange flames dancing against the darkness and warming the air pleasantly. Jason roasted a steady supply of marshmallows, each one perfectly golden, the toasted sugar-skins breaking to reveal melting white interiors. When Justine was too full to eat another bite, she went to Jason, took the skewer from him, and set it aside. “No more,” she said, sitting on his lap. “I’ve eaten so many marshmallows, I feel like a giant s’more.”

“Let me taste.” Having noticed a bit of fluff on her thumb, Jason took it into his mouth and licked off the sticky sweetness. “Perfect. I just need to layer you with chocolate.”

Settling back against him, Justine shivered pleasurably at the contrast of the fire and the cold night, and the sound of chilled Pacific waves against the shore. The hard masculine arms around her, the heartbeat at her back.

They were both quiet, relaxing deeply as warmth accumulated between them. An unfamiliar feeling stole through her. She realized it was joy, burnished with the bittersweet awareness of its transience. “I didn’t know happiness came in these flavors,” she said absently, her head on his shoulder.

“Marshmallow and chocolate?”

“And you. My favorite flavor.” She turned her face until her lips brushed his ear. “Do some people really get to have this for a lifetime?” she whispered.

Jason was quiet for a moment. “Not many,” he said eventually, and she didn’t complain even though his arms were a little too tight.

* * *

“Don’t you want to go sightseeing?” Justine asked late the next morning, in the aftermath of a leisurely lovemaking session that had begun with Jason kissing every inch of her body.

He stretched out at the foot of the bed to play with her toes. “I’ve been sightseeing you.”

“I guess your mother never told you to look with your eyes instead of your hands.” One of her sensitive feet jerked as he pressed a kiss to the arch. “No tickling! I’m declaring my feet off-limits.”

Jason caught her ankle in his hand, keeping her still. “You can’t. I’ve just discovered a latent fetish.”

“You have enough fetishes. You don’t need a new one.”

“But look at these feet.” He stroked the glossy surface of her big toenail, which was painted violet-purple-cream and adorned with a tiny pink bow decal. He bent his head, and Justine squeaked as she felt his tongue flicker into the space between her toes.

“Stop it,” she protested, yanking uselessly at her captured foot. “I’m not putting up with you and your … your foot-related perversions…”

“Podophilia.” Another wet little flick made her squirm and giggle.

“Wh-what?”

“The word for the love of feet.”

“You,” she said severely, “play too much Scrabble.”

“Insomniac,” he reminded her.

They went for a long walk on the beach, their feet sinking into sand as soft as talcum powder. Closer to the edge of the water, the flat terrain turned moist and biting cold. The tide had gone out fast, stranding a small constellation of spiny sand starfish. Spying the bleached white circle of a sand dollar, Justine picked it up and brushed away the sediment to examine the star shape of pinholes.