For a second he didn’t see her. Then he did.
And he stopped dead.
She was putting her towel on one of a pair of loungers, and as Dan ran excitedly up to her, she straightened. Xander remained motionless, not taking his eyes from her. Not being able to.
She was in a one-piece, turquoise, cut high in the leg, low over her breasts, hugging her figure like a second skin, and he remembered it as if it were yesterday.
Poised to dive off the swim deck, golden hair flowing down her back, looking so, so beautiful.
Slowly he walked towards her.
“I remember that suit,” he heard himself say. “You always wore it when you wanted to do decent swimming, not just splashing around in a bikini.”
For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw her colour change. Her cheeks flush. Then she simply said, with a half shrug, “It still fits me.”
Xander’s eyes washed over her. All the way down, all the way back up. A visible caress.
“Oh, it most certainly does that,” he said softly. “In all the right places.”
Without thinking he had reached his hand towards her, letting his forefinger run a leisurely curve along her décolletage. Lingering.
He used to do that in Greece, he recalled. Before slipping the straps from her shoulders and drawing the clinging material downwards to expose her lovely coral-tipped breasts, cupping them in his hands lightly, seductively, his eyes never leaving her, scissoring her nipples as they peaked beneath his ministrations, her breasts engorging beneath his palms as his mouth lowered to hers.
She stepped back, but the vivid flush in her cheeks now showed him that she was remembering as vividly as he. Satisfaction went through him. A satisfaction he should not feel, because the Laurel of that time had nothing to do with the Laurel now. But he felt it all the same…
“Your figure is definitely still a total knockout,” he said. Appreciation was in his voice. Deep appreciation. He let his gaze rest on her, drinking her in.
It was madness to do so. He was not here for Laurel, the woman whose beauty had beguiled him, who had had eyes only for him, had made passionate love to him—and then stolen from him and lied to him.
So it would be madness to be beguiled by her beauty again.
He felt a hand tugging at his and realised it was Dan’s.
“Dad, can we go in?” he was pleading.
With a start, Xander put the dangerous past behind him. It was over and done with.
And it’s got to stay that way. Because otherwise…
But he would not let his thoughts go there. Would not let himself do anything but pay attention to his son, for whose sake he was here, for whose sake alone he was in Laurel’s company.
She is nothing to me but the mother of my son.
He had to remember that.
“You need your armbands, Dan,” he heard her say now.
Xander cut across her. “There’s a shallow entrance, and I’ll be with him. He’ll be fine.”
Again she seemed to hesitate, then nodded.
Xander looked down at Dan. “Let’s get you swimming, shall we? So you won’t need armbands any more.”
He led him off to the pool. It felt good to hold his son’s hand, good to be about to teach him to swim. Good just to be with him.
Determinedly, he did not look back towards his son’s mother. She might still look fantastic in a bathing suit, but that was nothing to him now. Not after seven years and a stolen bracelet she would not admit to. However polite they were now being to each other for Dan’s sake.
Yet even so, as he stood with Dan at the shallow end, encouraging him to doggy-paddle—with much splashing—he could not resist looking back to her.
