Page 113 of Guilty as Sin
Paige smiled. “Tease him mercilessly, of course. He’s getting a little smug, especially since I’ve been being myself all this time. I want to see, that’s all. Come on. The boat’s going to be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe I’ll stay here and hang out by the pool,” Lily said.
Paige paused in the act of pulling her swimsuit up over her hips. “What? Why? It sounds like fun. Jace said the boat was fast. An adrenaline ride, he said. Don’t you like his parents? I know his dad can be a little gruff, but he’s not that way underneath. Just think how sweet Jace is. That didn’t come from nowhere. And his mom’s great.”
“No,” Lily hurried to say. “Of course they’re both wonderful, and I like Willow, too.”
“Ah,” Paige said, finally getting around to pulling up her swimsuit. “Rafe. So he’s a movie star. He’s notthatbad. You have to admit he’s charming.”
“You’re right,” Lily said. “It was silly. Never mind.” She finished getting dressed, picked up her bag, handed the other one to Paige, and said, “Ready?”
“Thanks,” Paige said. “I didn’t want to do it without you. It feels like an awfully big family.”
“I know,” Lily said. “But I’m here. Let’s go do it.”
Jace was sitting out on the terrace by the pool with Rafe, his parents, and Willow, having another coffee before they set out, when the twins came walking out together.
“Bugger me,” Rafe muttered under his breath.
“Overwhelming,” Jace agreed, “isn’t it?” He sat back and took them in. Two blondes, their golden hair gleaming in the strong Australian sun. Paige had somehow never gotten around to dying her hair back to brown, to his secret relief. They were both wearing swim costumes, sandals, and filmy little skirts tied well below the navel, but there was quite a difference.
One brief pink bikini, check, showings acres of pretty stomach, hips defined in a way that would get any man’s imagination working overtime, and more than a bit of cleavage. And one black tank suit, its sides and back scooping low. He knew what the legs would look like, too, when she took off that little skirt. They’d be cut almost to her waist. It was one hell of a costume.
He looked at it, and then he looked at her, and at her twin. Yeah, they were a sight to behold.
After that, he sighed, set his cup down on the table, and said, “Unless that’s what you want to wear, you can go back in and change. We’ll tell the boat to wait.”
His mother gasped out loud, then said,“Jace!”as if he’d worn his hat to the dinner table or mocked his dad’s CO.
“They’ve switched round, Mum.” He addressed Paige. “If this is a test, I pass. I’m always going to pass, so if it’s entertaining you, go on and do it. But I suspect you’ll like wearing your own costume better, or you’d have bought the same as Lily in the first place.”
The woman in the pink bikini said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Lily.”
“Sure you are. Show us your thighs.”
His mum said,“Jace”again, in despair this time, and he ignored her.
A toss of a blonde head, a yank at a filmy pink sarong that didn’t cover much at all, and there it was. A puckered scar where a bullet had passed. A through-and-through. The mark of her courage. “Satisfied?” she asked him.
He sat back and took another sip of coffee. “Yeah, baby. I am. And you should be, too.”
Lily said, “I told you, Paige. It’s body language. He reads it like a dog.” Then she turned a faint pink that matched her own costume much better than the black one she was wearing and said, “Notliterallya dog, Jace. Sorry. Just aswellas a dog.”
Now, everybody was laughing but Rafe. “Never mind,” Jace said. “Decide if you’re changing, because this boat’s coming, and the crew has a timetable.”
When they waded out through crystal water and climbed aboard the bright-yellow vessel with the help of a deckhand, Jace was holding hands with a woman in a black swim costume, and he may have been feeling a little smug, too. She said, “This looks very cool.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hope so. Want to sit on the edge and go fast?”
“CanI?”
“Yeah. You can.” He perched on the inflated side of the boat with her, and she told Lily, “There are three spots this side. Climb on beside us.”
Lily hesitated, then Rafe took a spot on the opposite side, and she said, “Sure,” and perched herself on the other side of Jace.
Jace said, “Go on, Willow. Hop up beside Rafe.”
His cousin, a pretty, fragile redhead, made a face and said, “Bit scary for me. I’m sitting on the benches.”
