Page 32 of South Beach Bodyguards

Ryan’s fingers shifted the bottom of my top, so he could oil up the underside of my breasts. It seemed more than a little unnecessary and I liked it a little too much. “What are you doing?” I asked him a second time. “I’m not going to get burned where the sun can’t shine.”

“The edge of the bathing suit is where most people get burned. It’s a fact.”

His fingers shifted to the tops of my breasts and that had me sucking in a breath. “Fact: this is making me crazy so stop it.”

Ryan laughed. “Almost done.” He leaned over as he did my shoulders then nipped my earlobe. “It’s driving me crazy too, so we’re even.”

“Take me to bed or lose me forever,” I said, joking.

He furrowed his brow. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a movie quote. Top Gun.” I grabbed his wrist so he would stop slathering me in places he had no business slathering. “Don’t worry about it.” Something was off. We didn’t ever seem to be on the same page at the same time. It was like we were always a beat off of the other’s rhythm. He flirted, I didn’t get it. I flirted, and he was bewildered. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but it was there. I closed my eyes again, resolutely. I needed to not worry about it.

Yet me not worrying was like the tide not coming in. It wasn’t going to happen.

“The only thing I’m worried about is making sure you enjoy every second with me.”

Even though I was holding his wrist, he was stronger than me, and he raised his hand to my face, running his thumb across my bottom lip. “One shot, I want to make it count,” he said.

For a minute, I was lost in his eyes. He had an intensity that just drew me in and held me there, in his grip. “One shot at what?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant.

“I’m going to make you mine tonight.”

There hadn’t been many moments in my life that were touchpoints, that giving a yes or a no would alter everything. That one decision would affect everything that followed. This was one of them though, and I knew it. A yes here meant that whatever happened later, I would always remember this.

And Ryan would always be the one. My first lover.

So with the sun shining across his face, his body looming large over mine, I just smiled. “Tell me about it. Stud.”

Ryan laughed, a low rumble that was so sexy, so inherently masculine, I knew that by this time tomorrow, I was going to be eternally grateful for falling down the stairs and knocking myself unconscious. Smartest dumbest thing I’d ever done.

nine

For once I got her movie nod. “I’m not going to tell you, Sandy, I’m going to show you.” I had made a decision and I knew it was what she wanted. I wasn’t going to dissect the right and wrong, I was just going to roll with my conviction that I was looking out for her best interest.

“Your place or mine?” She pretended to look at a watch she wasn’t wearing.

Neither option particularly appealed to me. My apartment was, well, gross. Not dirty exactly but not really clean either. I couldn’t tell you when I had washed those sheets last and the mattress was one I found on the side of the road on garbage day. It didn’t bother me because free trumped anything else and I had put a mattress pad on it, but it was kind of sketchy if I thought about it too long. Sure, she had already slept in my bed, but that was after a head injury. Not exactly the same thing. This was Isabel, not “Julia.”

I didn’t want to go to her place because she still had my teenage crap lying around that bedroom. It was weird. It threw me back to a time in my life when I had no sexual prowess, unless setting the world record for jacking off could be called prowess.

She deserved something better than either options, but I wasn’t sure what that was. “Is that a movie line?” I asked, suddenly not sure.

Isabel laughed. “No. Just me trying to flirt with you.”

“Okay. Just checking.” I took a sip from my water bottle. I lapsed into silence because I wasn’t sure how to say my apartment might have a few health code violations without alarming her, especially since she had already spent the night there. There had to be a better solution.

“Do you know how many movies were filmed in Miami and Miami Beach?” Isabel mused. “A lot. Frank Sinatra loved it here. He practically lived at the Fountainbleau in the sixties. Can you imagine what it must have been like then? None of these condos were here.” She gestured behind us. “And South Beach hadn’t been painted in pastels yet. Everything was white.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.” I didn’t give a whole lot of thought to my surroundings or the history behind them. Isabel thought about things. That was very sexy. I could never keep up with her intellect, but it was sexy as hell.

“There were plans to demolish most of the art deco buildings in the late seventies and as part of a campaign to save old South Beach, a movement to spruce them up resulted in all the colors you see now.” She leaned over and smiled at me. “Nerd alert. I shouldn’t know that, should I?”

“I wish I knew more,” I said sincerely. “But if you want to know how to do surveillance, I’m your man.”

The smile fell off her face and she looked contemplative. There was longing in her eyes that unnerved me. “Married to the Mob was filmed here. Scarface. The Bodyguard.”

I had lived here in Miami my whole life, on the Beach for over five years, yet there was nothing glamorous about how I lived. Maybe it was time to take a page from the party book, the reason people visited Miami Beach and bought property here. Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do. “Do you want to feel like you’re in a movie?”

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