“It’s not being difficult when you’re right. And I caught you just in the nick of time—your shoulders are pink already.”
“I’ve only been out here for ten minutes.” Damien fought the urge to close his eyes and sigh. He had forgotten how good it felt to have a woman so close, hovering behind him, warm and alive and concerned for him. To smell her, to have her hair brush against him.
“What’s this? A tattoo? Why, Mr. Sharpton, I’m shocked.” Her voice was teasing.
Damien stiffened. He only had one tattoo and he did not want to discuss...
“Jess. Who’s Jess?”
Pain kicked him in the gut, pain he thought he’d buried down deep under a layer of work and exhaustion. What could he say? Jess had been his wife. His beautiful, successful wife, and she had been murdered. How was that for a little light, lounging-in-the-sun conversation?
Since the tattoo was on his upper arm, he rarely looked at it and could effectively ignore that Jessica’s name was scrawled on his skin. Branding her to him forever, the physical manifestation of what was interwoven in his soul. Jessica had laughed that day he’d come home with it, her blond hair falling over his chest as she had inspected it. It had amused her, pleased her that he had taken such a dramatic way to display his feelings.
What I love about you, Damien, is the way you love me.
How many times had she said that?
He had lost himself in her all those years ago, and had never found a way back out.
“A woman,” he said. “She was a woman.”
Mandy’s fingers slowed. Her voice cooled. “Is this woman still in your life?”
God, if she only knew how much Jessica was still in his life. Damien dug his toes into the sand. “No. No, she hasn’t been for a long time.”
“Then you should get her name turned into something else. A Celtic cross, or a tree. Maybe a demon, that would be a little cheeky. Or you could switch Jess to Jesus.”
Damien felt the tightness in his chest lessening as Mandy spoke. She was doing the unimaginable—talking about Jess with a flippant, irreverent attitude. But she didn’t know the whole truth, and for some reason, hearing her joke about his tattoo eased the peach pit that had lodged in his throat.
“It could say ‘Jesus is the man.’ ”
A startled laugh burst out of his mouth, surprising him. “That doesn’t really sound like my style.” And it sounded downright hilarious in Mandy’s British accent.
Her fingers strayed to his stomach, and she wiped back and forth. “Extra sunscreen.”
His muscles clenched, a jolt of sexual awareness ripping through him.
But Mandy stood up. “Oh, look, they’re starting beach bingo. Come on, let’s play.”
She patted his shoulder and started down the beach.
And he didn’t even resist.
Chapter Seven
Damien was kicking ass at beach bingo. Mandy watched him with growing amusement. She held her card in her lap, the beans they’d been given as markers rolling around, no longer on the numbers that had been called.
The first time she’d upset her whole card, she had asked Damien to read her the numbers he had. It had aggravated him, since he hadn’t been able to hear the new numbers as they were called with her distracting him.
So the second time she’d spilled her beans, she had just leaned over and shifted his markers around so she could see the numbers. Only in doing that, she had got in the way of him seeing his board, and he’d got bingo just seconds behind another hotel guest.
He’d been thoroughly ticked off. Mandy didn’t understand why, since he’d won twice already, but Damien was nothing if not competitive. Now he had his card set on the ground, his feet pinning it so the wind wouldn’t take off with it. His knee went up and down in agitation, and his hand hovered over the card with a bean at the ready.
Mandy sometimes wished she had an ounce of competitiveness in her, but it had never surfaced. She liked to dothings she enjoyed and didn’t really care about the outcome as long as she had fun. Which probably explained why her toy shop had never turned a profit.
The games coordinator sat at a table calling the numbers. With a smile, he pulled the next ball out.
“Eight. Ocho. Huit.”
