Page 24 of Chasing Paradise

“More than we could possibly eat.”

Well, that was promising.

“You got sunburned,” he said, his finger swiping under my eye lightly, the touch chaste by all accounts but it made my stomach go liquid.

What waswrongwith me?

Had it really been that long since I’d been with someone that I was having the warm and tinglies just from someone’s fingers brushing my skin?

But I really didn’t like that math, so I went ahead and stopped the calculations.

“I have sunscreen,” he said, getting to his feet.

I didn’t watch his back.

Nope.

Not me.

“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked his retreating form. But he didn’t answer as he disappeared around the corner of the island.

By the time he came back, I’d eaten another orange and three bananas, and was getting that sloshy ache in my stomach from too much fruit. So I didn’t reach for another.

“How far did you walk?” I asked, watching him approach.

“A ways.”

Again, that weird suspicion nettled at me.

But then he was right beside me again, this time with a small tube of sunblock in his hands.

“Where’d your friend go?” he asked.

His nearness and the slight coconut scent clinging to him made my mind momentarily go blank.

“Who?”

“Your lizard friend.”

“Oh, Hank? He chased after a bug.”

“Hank.” Wick shot me a raised brow look, his lips twitching.

“Well, he spent half an hour feeling me up, I figured he deserved a name.”

Wick dropped down to his knees beside me as he squeezed some thick white sunblock onto his fingers.

I knew I should have told him that I could do it, that I was a grown woman who didn’t need help putting on sunscreen.

But I just let him kick up my chin with one hand, then gently wipe the cream across the tops of my cheeks and bridge of my nose, then work downward. And, finally, across my forehead.

“You burn quick.” My gaze slipped up to his, and I immediately realized my mistake. He was so close. And my body hadn’t exactly calmed down from the dream.

“I, uh, don’t spend a lot of time outside. I’m what you might call… indoorsy.”

He let out a little cough of a laugh at that as he used the remainder of sunblock on his fingers to rub over my ears.

He could have just, you know, done the tops, but he brought the sunscreen down to the lobes, rubbing it in with this delicious firm pressure that sent a little shiver down my spine.

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