Page 32 of Fighting Fate
At five o’clock she quit reading through job listings, still undecided about which, if any, she might want to put her name forward for. Maybe she shouldn’t be limiting herself to Sydney.
Maybe I should talk to Adam tonight, find out if he really does plan to settle there. If he’d be interested in seeing me again, if he does. Or I’m taking a major step and committing myself to this for no good reason at all.
Closing down her computer and locking up the office behind her, she headed to her cabin for a welcome shower. Jill wasn’t around, for which Rosie felt guiltily grateful. She really wasn’t in the mood for the sort of interrogation Jill would undoubtedly dish out.
She’d sent Adam the link to the Asian restaurant’s menu earlier, asking what he’d like, but he didn’t reply until she was toweling herself dry and trying to decide what to wear.
Sorry, been out on a boat trip.
Sounds like fun. What would you like to eat? I’ll order it now and be at yours in about 30, she sent back.
He sent back a list of dishes long enough to make her laugh out loud; it would feed her and any six of her girlfriends. Maybe Adam planned to have leftovers for lunch and dinner tomorrow… or maybe he was just hungry.
*
Adam found himself yawning as he showered, scrubbing the salt spray from his skin. The wind had picked up as Jace piloted the boat back, sheeting spray over them both as the boat sliced through the waves. It had been invigorating, but left him feeling slightly gritty and sticky when he eventually made it back to the villa, hoping he’d have time for a shower before Rosie arrived, though he’d left the front door propped ajar just in case she did arrive while he was washing up. He didn’t want to leave her waiting outside in the mosquito-ridden darkness.
As it happened, he was just pulling a clean shirt over his head when he heard the crunch of wheels on gravel, and a slight squealing of brakes, which made him raise his brows. He hadn’t even realised you could make the brakes on a golf cart squeal.
He arrived at the front door in time to pull it wide for her, leaning down to press a welcoming kiss to the corner of her mouth and relieve her of the large paper sack she was carrying.
“Hey, beautiful.” She looked tired, he thought with a pang of guilt; since he was basically retired, and the whole island lent itself to a permanent holiday feeling, it was hard to make himself remember that Rosie was working a full-time job.
Adam was smart enough to know that you should never tell a woman she looked tired, though, so instead he asked “Busy day?” as they walked through to the kitchen together.
“Ugh,” she said, flopping into a chair, so he took that as a yes.
“Wine?”
“Oh, please!”
He grinned and reached for plates and cutlery, setting them on the table and indicating she should serve herself while he poured her a glass of wine and grabbed a nonalcoholic beer from the fridge for himself.
The food was excellent. Rosie had only added one dish to the list he’d sent her, but sampled everything he’d ordered, laughingly saying she was boring normally and always ordered the same thing; it was nice to get to try some of the other things on the menu.
She finished eating before he did, of course, and sat gazing out of the window a little wistfully. Looking around, Adam realised she was admiring the villa’s pool, lit up blue in the dark night.
“Fancy a swim?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“The pool’s not overlooked.” He gave her a challenging grin. “I’ll skinny-dip if you will.”
Rosie never even hesitated, just kicked off her shoes and discarded the rest of her clothes on the way out the door, executing a surprisingly good racing dive into the pool with her laughter hanging in the air behind her. Adam was left scrambling to strip his own clothes off and catch her up.
She swam like a fish, fluid and graceful in the water, a fast smooth crawl he couldn’t come close to keeping up with. He had to wait for her to do a tumble-turn at the other end and meet her on the way back; she swam right into his arms, laughing at his surprised face.
“I swam competitively all through high school. Wasn’t fast enough to compete at state level, but it kept me fit.”
“Still does, I reckon.” His hands skimmed down over her hips and thighs, thick with muscle.
“I don’t have the time for it these days. The ninety-minute sessions four or five days a week are long in the past, I’m afraid. I’d die if I tried to do swim that long now, don’t have the stamina for it!”
“You’ve got plenty of stamina for my purposes,” Adam said with a wicked grin, and Rosie laughed, hooking her legs around his waist.
“Gotta keep up with you somehow!”
She was warm and soft and willing in his arms, and all he wanted was to thrust inside her then and there, but he didn’t have a condom on, couldn’t get one in the water either. So instead he curved a hand under her thigh and reached to stroke the heated cleft between her thighs, finding her nub and tweaking it, again and again until she cried out, her head tipping back, hair floating on the water as her nails scraped on his shoulders.