Page 24 of Obsession Under the Southern Stars

“He asked me to go for a drink with him at his hotel.”

He gives a short laugh. “Cheeky fucker.”

“Yeah, I thought so too.”

“So you’re not going?”

I meet his eyes. “No.”

He doesn’t say anything, but his gaze lingers on my mouth.

“I’m not going to bed with you, either,” I point out, shivering. I should have brought a jacket.

“Are you cold?” he asks.

“No.”

“Are you sure?” He looks amused.

I haven’t caught him eye-dipping me, but when I look down I discover that my nipples are poking through the satin, so hard they could cut glass. I look back up. “That’s rude.”

“I was referring to the fact that you were shivering,” he says sarcastically as he takes off his jacket. “Give me some credit.”

“You don’t need to do that.” It’s a feeble protest, and I sink back into the tuxedo, wrapping it around me. It’s warm from his body heat, and I can smell his ocean scent. It’s oddly intimate.

He leans back, resting his arm on the seat behind me, not quite around me, but also lending me the heat from his body where he’s sitting so close. Wow, he looks so gorgeous in his white shirt and black waistcoat, and sophisticated in his black bow tie. It’s strange to see him clean shaven, as he nearly always has stubble or a short beard. And his hair is so neat, albeit a little more ruffled now than it was when he first emerged from his hotel suite.

He looks at me, and our gazes lock, and I can’t look away.

I wait for him to say something. To laugh or look embarrassed. To tear his gaze away.

But he doesn’t. He just observes me leisurely. He looks into my eyes for a while, studying something, I don’t know what, and then his gaze brushes over the rest of my face like a feather. I can almost feel it on my skin—stroking across my cheeks, my eyebrows, down my nose, across my lips, before returning to my eyes. I’m hardly breathing, caught up in the moment. My nostrils are filled with his scent and the smell of the ocean outside; I can hear the roar of the boat’s engine and the laughter and chat from some of the other passengers; I can still taste the champagne, along with salt on the wind. My hands are cold where they’re clutching the lapels of his jacket, but my body is warm inside it. Behind him, the southern stars twinkle in the black velvet sky.

“I can see the moon in your eyes,” he murmurs.

It’s such a romantic, un-Joel thing to say that I just blink.

One corner of his mouth quirks up, and then he looks away, across to the flickering lights of Paihia that are approaching at a rate of knots.

Only then do I take a breath, trembling a little, even though I’m not cold anymore. This guy is so enigmatic. I can’t quite figure him out.

The boat pulls up at the jetty, and Joel helps me climb out. There’s a minibus waiting to take the passengers to any hotels in Paihia, so we climb in, and soon we’re on the way to the Sea Breeze. It’s only a short distance, and we don’t talk on the way.

When we get there, we thank the driver and exit the minibus, and head into the complex and through the foyer to the corridor to our suites.

My heart is racing. I keep thinking about the way he saidI can see the moon in your eyes. I’ve never been one for cheesy chat lines and I wouldn’t consider myself romantic, but for some reason that got to me.

We stop outside the doors and retrieve our key cards. I slip his jacket from my shoulders and pass it to him. To my surprise, he lifts it to his nose and inhales, then says, “It smells of you now.”

“Sorry.”

“It wasn’t a complaint.”

We study each other in the light from the lamp outside the suites. It casts a halo around his hair, which is ridiculous because he’s as far from an angel as it’s possible to get.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he says.

I swallow hard. Every part of me is yearning to invite him in. But I know—I just know—I wouldn’t be able to keep it to a one-night stand, and I don’t want more than that.

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