Page 48 of Last Resort

“It’s nothing.”

“That’s bullshit, but I respect a man keeping his business, his business.” He takes a sip of water and wipes the beads of sweat off his head with a handkerchief he pulls from his back pocket. “But I tell you this, Boss Man, women like three things. To laugh, to feel wanted, and little gestures.”

“Little gestures?”

“Yes, man. It lets them know you care and—”

“It’s not like that,” I say. “It’s—she’s—”

“Ahhh,” he says, drawing the sound out. “I hear you. I feel you, brother. She’s not putting her clothes in your drawers anytime soon.” He fist-bumps me. “Nothing wrong with that now, is there?”

I chuckle and down the rest of my beer instead of responding.

“You in the game playing phase. You chase or she chase?” he asks and slides another beer in front of me without asking.

“That’s the question of the day, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Callahan

When I leave the bar an hour later with instructions to put the lady at the end of the bar’s drinks on my tab, I feel slightly more relaxed.

The sun is still out for a few hours yet since it sets later here than I’m used to, and the facts and figures that have loaded down my mind are swimming somewhere beneath the haze of beer running through my blood.

I stop in front of the villa and stare at the door. Our first night here, I was quite sure I was winning at life when I made sure the two of us were rooming together, and now it just feels like I’m standing with my dick in my hand and fucking losing.

To have her within reach and want her desperately but to not be able to have her because of some bullshit, unanswerable question.

Fuck that.

I’m Callahan Sharpe. Any woman would kill to be with me. It’s time she knows that.

I march to the door and yank it open with a purpose, dead set on getting what I want. On getting her.

“Sutton.” It’s a command. Plain and simple.

“Callahan? Is something wrong?” Sutton walks out of her bedroom, fastening an earring through her ear. “Are you okay?”

She stops mid stride when she sees me, and I’m sure the concerned look on her face is because my jaw is probably dragging on the floor.

Standing in the middle of the villa is Sutton in a bright red bikini that highlights and emphasizes every glorious goddamn inch of her. Legs and abs and tits and . . . Christ.

Staring at her, I feel like a man drowning for water, and she is the water.

I clear my throat. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Did you need something?”

“No—I don’t think—”

“Ooops,” she says as her earring falls to the ground. I hiss out a breath when she bends over to pick it up and gives me a full showing of the teeny, tiny bottoms that go between her perfectly round ass.

“Are you going somewhere?” I take a step forward, not hiding the fact that I’m enjoying the view.

“Yes. Out. To the beach.”

“In that?”