“No,” she said, shaking her head slowly but adamantly as she stood. “Dinner with you and the family is okay.” Safe. “But I’ll buy my own, and no walk.”
He tilted his head and looked at her hard, as if trying to determine if he could wear her down. Get her to change her mind. The spark of determination in his eyes unnerved her, but he merely nodded.
“Dinner’s a start. You ready to go back above?” He checked his watch. “We should be about twenty minutes from shore. We’ll see if there’s a shady spot for you.”
Zoe nodded and preceded him without taking his offered hand. Another minute down here, alone with Cooper, and she was liable to do something stupid, like give in to temptation and allow herself to love him for one more weekend.
7
Zoe was an idiot a hundred times over.
Mistakes so far tonight: Wearing the short sundress and heels she knew Cooper loved on her, showing up for dinner with him and her family, ordering a second glass of wine. But her biggest and baddest screw-up was giving in to the walk on the beach with him.
And right now, she wasn’t entirely sure she cared.
He’d been relaxed and charming throughout dinner. Not pressuring her in the least bit. Interacting with her family, reminding her of how engaging and caring he’d always been. Reminding her of all the reasons she’d fallen for him in the first place.
The faint moonlight from the sliver of moon and the din of the waves cast a spell over them now. A dangerous spell. They insulated her and Cooper from the universe as they walked, her shoes dangling from her hand and her feet bare, along toward the north end of civilization on the island. Gave them an illusion of being unaffected by any moment but the present. Made it tough to think about their past, irrelevant to consider the future.
When he’d taken her hand, she’d woven her fingers with his without hesitation, drawn in by the familiarity of his touch, his heat and strength. Some nights in the past, they’d been content to walk in silence, but tonight they’d talked nonstop, as if making up for lost time, reminding themselves of the ins and outs between them. Keeping it light, as if they were both afraid any deep topics would bring them back to their impasse.
They reached the dunes just outside of the city limits, where patches of sea grass became more prevalent and the waves always seemed a little wilder.
“Want to keep going?” Cooper asked.
She knew the island stretched for several more miles, but they’d never trekked much farther than this. Her blood heated as she thought about why they’d always been too impatient to keep walking, too in a hurry to get back to the privacy of Cooper’s condo.
“It’s safe, right?” There were no lights ahead. No development. No people. The darkness promised to protect them from the real world, to keep reality from infringing on them. Maybe it was that second glass of wine talking, but that’s what Zoe longed for right now. Just a little more time without thinking, without worrying. Just … being. With Cooper.
“Pretty much,” Cooper said. “Except…”
“Except what?” A pulse of alarm beat through her chest.
“Well, there’s that pack of werewolves that’s been reported…”
A laugh escaped her. “Ooh, I’ve always wanted to see a werewolf. As long as it’s not the kind that bites humans?”
“Never know.” He looked down at her with a possessive grin. “Good thing you have a badass firefighter to protect you.” He dragged her closer to his side as they kept walking.
“You need to work on your technique,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “The protect-you-from-werewolves thing is glaringly obvious.”
“Damn. Out of practice, I guess. I had this hot chick for over a year, and I pretty much had to fight her off rather than lure her in.”
She couldn’t help smiling, caught up in the solid feel of him under her cheek, the clean, earthy scent of him, the lulling, low timbre of his voice. “No luring allowed.”
She forced herself to straighten and lift her head from his shoulder. The recognition that this was a stolen moment and that it would have to end soon nudged at her consciousness. She soaked in every detail, filing them away for later, when all she would have was the memory.
“What’s that?” She stopped walking, her eyes trained on a spot in the water ahead of them. “The waves look like they’re glowing.”
Cooper made a deep sound of acknowledgement, of contentment. “Ahh. Magic,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Werewolf magic?”
“Algae magic. It’s the glowing algae. Probably from a red tide.”
“It’s blue, not red.”
“It’s a kind of algae that makes the water look red during the day. When there’s a disturbance in the water at night, they put on a show.”
