“It’s an heirloom,” she said mildly. “Passed down through my family for generations.”
He gave a short laugh.
She touched a toe into the hot springs. And the rest of her body sort of reflexively oozed in after it as if she were literally melting.
“Ohhhhhhh...” It felt like the best thing that had ever happened to her.
“Good, huh?”
“Holy Mother,” she sighed. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. She opened her eyes.
He was still standing near the largest stone, motionless, watching with satisfaction, as if her enjoyment was something he’d personally accomplished.
“So is your plan that you are going to guard me like I’m Cleopatra and you’re a centurion? You look like you should be holding a spear.”
“Aren’t you mixing up your cultures and centuries?”
“Probably,” she murmured.
“Do youmindif I get in there with you? Hot tubs are pretty seventies and you know what they got up to in the seventies.”
“Macramé. Heavy metal. Muscle cars.”
“Orgies,” he contributed.
She stared at him. The word was very conjuring of writhing bodies, always fairly sexy, but in her mind’s eye all the men had seventies mustaches very similar to her dad’s, and that, as far as she was concerned,wasn’tsexy.
“Don’t you need a crowd for that sort of thing?” She was way too relaxed to bat that innuendo back or to protest. Maybe that was his plan. She didn’t care about that, either.
“I don’t know. You’re the one who goes to, what was that, bondage farmers’ markets and all that stuff. But I can make a few calls.”
She gave a somnolent snort. “It was a fair. The Folsom Street Fair. A decadent celebration of... a lot of things, let’s just say. Not a farmers’ market. To tell you the honest-to-God truth, I feel about as sexy as a carrot floating in soup. A really happy carrot.”
It was a warning of sorts that if his plan was to seduce her, he had his work cut out for him.
And it was also a relief: the less sexy she felt, the less inclined she was to attempt to climb him like a tree. Because standing backlit by the sunset right now, no one had ever looked more tempting.
He yanked his boots off and peeled off his shirt. Maybe it was the fact that the world went slo-mo that made him resemble a sculptor unveiling a statue. She watched through slitted eyes. The casual undressing held an unexpected walloping intimacy, and her stomach muscles braced as her senses took the impact. There was no way he didn’t know the power of his own nearly bare self, because Mac was the sort who thought of all the angles.
He was brownish everywhere from the sun apart from a hint of paleness at his hipbones. An ordinary pair of red swimming trunks clung lovingly there. The rest of him looked like it had been turned on a lathe or cut by whatever tool they use to facet diamonds. She saw a scar across the lower part of his thigh. That was new.
And then all of that vanished under the water, and only his smooth brown shoulders remained above, like two enticing tropical islands.
She might actually be in dangerous territory here. She was literally in the soup!
All she could do was smile drowsily. The warm water resumed doing its business of soaking all the tension out; maybe it wouldn’t let any new tension back in.
“Is it yoga?” he asked, finally.
“Is what yoga?”
“Is that how you got thighs like anacondas? Thighs that can strangle a grown man?”
This was pretty funny. “I’ve never tested that particular application. But I suppose it could come in handy. Yeah, I do yoga. Not with a good deal of commitment, but I do it. San Francisco hills, you know. Good for the legs.”
“Sure, sure.”
The water lovingly lapped them and they were quiet.