Seeing Red (7 page)

“Where are you, Mr. Rozhkov?” she whispered into the breeze as she passed their assigned cabana. She put her hand up to her forehead, shielding her eyes, and after a minute located his coppery hair in the distance.

He walked up the shore holding his flip-flips in one hand, and what looked like a book in the other.

She plastered a phony smile onto her face and held up a hand in greeting.

When he spotted her, he stilled for a few seconds, likely not sure what he was seeing, then returned her wave.

He cut across the beach at a diagonal, eyes slightly widened, and eyebrows raised.

“Come here,” she said through her clenched teeth, still grinning for the tabloids.

When he was close enough to touch, she stood on tiptoes, clasped her right hand to the back of his sun-warmed neck, and pulled him in close.

Her lips pressed against his, chastely. Briefly. She pulled back wearing a shit-eating grin.

Seth’s expression flitted from surprise to—was it annoyance?—to a forced gaiety.

Good. He gets it
.

There were obviously some perks to being married to a genius.

“Needed a good shot,” she explained with her back to the resort.

He merely nodded.

“Are you heading to the cabana? What’s that you’re reading?”

He turned the paperback around for her to assess the Cyrillic characters of the title. She couldn’t make heads or tails of them, and the picture beneath them—blueprint images of some sort of engine—didn’t elucidate her further on the content. Whether it was fiction or nonfiction, she didn’t know.

“Why don’t you come sit with me for a while? I’ll keep my hands to myself,” she said, shifting her tote to her other shoulder.

“I’m not concerned about the whereabouts of your hands, Megan,” he whispered, leaning in close so his lips grazed her ear. “Just tell me what the plan is so I don’t accidentally bungle it.”

She turned her face so it was her lips at his ears, and for show, pressed her body more firmly against his and draped her free arm over his shoulder. “No plan. Act like you want me. That’s all.”

“That’s all, huh?”

“You’ll be enjoying alone time again by lunch.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He shifted his book into the hand that bore his flip-flops and used the other to relieve Meg of her tote. She beamed at him as he took it, and they started the hundred-yard walk to the cabana.

Once inside, he set her bag on a table in front of the cushioned banquette and sank onto the seat. He put his feet up on the table, crossing them at the ankles as one of the bar staff poked his head in.

“Drinks? Snacks?”

Meg had three bottles of water in her tote and was going to refuse, but Seth, now thumbing through the pages of his paperback, said, “Is it too early for a seven?”

“No, sir. I can get one for you, no problem at all. Anything to drink?”

“Vodka tonic. Double.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man shifted away, scribbling on his pad, as Meg sank onto the bench next to Seth. She removed her hat and reached into her bag for a book of her own. It was some “deliciously erotic” story, according to Sharon, with cover art inconspicuous enough not to give its heat level away. Probably not the best thing to be reading while cooped up in an open cabana with the only man who’d made her come in two years, but she doubted she’d make much headway, anyway.

“What’s a seven?” she asked him, turning her body ninety degrees to the right and stretching her legs onto the bench. She lay back, carefully nestling her head into the valley of Seth’s legs.

He stared down at her, blank-faced for a moment, then slowly, reverently, rearranged her hair so it fanned over his left thigh rather than being tightly pinned under her neck.

“I don’t know who I got my red hair from,” he mused, winding a stretch of her hair around his index finger. “My parents were pretty much phantoms by the time I was old enough to ask about them, though I imagine it must be someone on my father’s side. And a seven is the resort’s steamer platter. Had it last night between beers four and five.”

“We have a lot of red in our family.” Meg overturned her novel and laid the open pages atop her chest, tipping her head back a bit to meet Seth’s gaze. “Me and Stephen, I mean. We get it from my mom’s side. Mutation must be on the X chromosome somewhere. Toby was born with black hair, and it fell out and made way for the flame.”

“Suits him.”

“I agree. I just hope he’s always so comfortable with it. His father used to tease him about it.”

Seth stopped twirling hair, and the muscles of his thighs tightened. Sore spot, maybe?

“Tease him? Why?”

“Who knows why?” She shrugged the best she could from her supine position, and picked up her book. “He’s a peculiar sort of man.”

“But you married him.”

“Let’s not go there, okay? Just keep twirling my hair and I’ll read my book and we’ll be copasetic.”

He mumbled something indecipherable under his breath and fanned his paperback open in one large hand.

Meg had just gotten her eyes focused on the header Chapter One when her bouncing head made her eyes cross and her book page blurred.

“Stop bobbing your knee!” she hissed.

“I’m bobbing my knee and that’s distracting to you, yet I have a half-naked woman with very prominent spotlights occupying my lap with her head right over my balls, and I’m supposed to be calm?”

Her cheeks twitched from the laugh she tried and failed to stifle. “Headlights, I think you mean.”

He mumbled, “I like my way better,” and lifted his book higher. He stopped bobbing his knee, though.

Poor guy. Meg couldn’t leave well enough alone. Agitating him in this way was kind of fun. “Sorry about the, uh, spotlights. They’re pretty much always on.”

Something beneath her head twitched, and she didn’t think it was Seth’s leg that time. She grinned even thinking of his body’s response. That was the way nature intended—no song and dance necessary. See a healthy, eligible person of the opposite sex—signal your attention.

“I can’t help it,” he said, obviously keen on the source of her amusement.

“I would imagine that by your age, most men would be desensitized to the occasional nipple.”

“Believe it or not, there are some men out there who don’t spend every evening with a woman in their bed.”

“Are you implying that you’re inexperienced?” She held her book in front of her face and stared at the opening line.

“You don’t tiptoe around words, do you?”

“I believe in cutting to the quick. Save time that way.”

“If you’re asking if I was a virgin before last night, the answer is no.”

She snapped the book shut and tossed it onto the table beside Seth’s feet. Once she’d rolled over and scooted down a bit on the bench, she propped herself up on her arms and tilted her face toward his. “I didn’t insinuate that.”

“What do you want, a number?” He turned the page of his book, and his forehead scrunched. Weren’t women supposed to be the multitaskers? She didn’t see how he could manage reading, given the nature of their conversation.

Annoyed, she grabbed in the general vicinity of his cock and squeezed.

He wheezed, back straightening and eyes widening, and finally closed his book, too.

“Would you give me one if I asked for it?” she asked, turning her hand and making him squirm just that much more.

He swallowed, and her hand did to his cheeks what the sun could not. “Why would you want to know?”

“Burning curiosity.”

“I’ll tell you if you let go of my fucking junk.”

“I don’t believe you.” She squeezed a bit harder, this time pressing the heel of her palm up his hardening shaft.

“Photographer at twelve o’clock. Near the water.”

“Don’t care,” she said. And she meant it. Private as she was, she had enough ego to want to show off for once, and hell, this was fun.

He dragged his tongue over his lips. “I understand now why people think redheaded women are witches.”

She pursed her lips at him and narrowed her eyes. “Well, some husband you are, insulting your wife that way.”

His jaw dropped open, and seeing the shadow cast by the barman, she unhanded Seth’s jewels and drew her hand away just before the staff member stepped into the cabana.

He cleared a space on the table, set down the covered tray, and handed Seth a receipt to sign.

Seth scribbled his signature on it and thrust it back with a grunt.

The barman strode away, taking the platter’s lid along with him.

She wriggled her eyebrows at her husband and propped her chin up on her fists. Goading him shouldn’t have been so fun. She didn’t know why she was doing it. Maybe she wanted him to react in some way? So far, he’d been exhibiting an enviable cool.

He stared at her momentarily, opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. Setting his bare feet on the sand, he drew the food tray closer and plucked a shrimp from the mound of cold seafood. In short order, he freed it of its shell and popped the meat in his mouth.

“Been enjoying your stay at the resort, Mr. Rozhkov?” she teased.

He crammed two more shrimp into his mouth and reached for his book. “Mm-hmm.” After a while, he swallowed and said, “I don’t cook, so it’s always nice to have a meal that’s out of the ordinary from the local fast-food fare.”

“I’d heard that about you.”

“What?”

“That you don’t cook. None of you do, really, huh? Not you, not Curt, not Grant. Stephen sure as shit doesn’t. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“There’s a difference between being unable to cook and lacking the knowledge to do it well. I assume we all fall into that latter category, though I can’t speak for Stephen.”

“You’re thirty-five. Haven’t you ever had any ambitions to do better for yourself? Feed yourself something that didn’t come out of a paper wrapper or off a menu?”

He shook his head and clamped a steamed oyster between his fingers. “People can’t be good at everything. Cooking isn’t the sort of science I excel in. And I make enough money to eat well without learning to cook.”

“So you can’t even grill a steak?”

He chewed thoughtfully a moment, then looked down at her, conceding, “I could grill a steak, if you could call it that. I like ’em bloody.”

She turned her lip up and made a gagging sound.

“You seem concerned about my dietary preferences, and yet I haven’t seen you eat so much as a forkful of lettuce the entire time we’ve been here,” he said.

“I eat,” she countered. There was that cheese Danish and… Well, there might have been a chicken breast prior to the wedding. It was hard to keep track.

“Right. If my grandmother were alive, she’d tie you to a chair and spoon fatty broth into a funnel shoved into your mouth until you perked up a bit.”

Now she sat up, curling her legs beneath her.

Seth’s eyes cast downward to the open vee of her legs, and he grinned before leaning toward his tray again. She could guess what he saw, given her bikini bottoms were a far cry from full-coverage, but she wasn’t going to double-check for quality assurance.

He’d seen it all anyway in the dim light of the bedroom.

She did wonder, though, why it was so easy for him to be calm when any other man would have tried to touch…arouse.

“Are you insinuating that I’m too skinny?” she asked him.

“Tell me what answer you want, and I’ll give it to you.”

Burn. Sad thing was, she didn’t know what answer she wanted, so she let the subject drop.

“So, really, what’s your book about?”

He tossed an oyster shell onto the tray and turned the book around so she could see the cover once more. “Theoretical spacecraft construction, more or less. It’s a couple decades old, but it’s always good to read the original source material you see cited.”

Oh.

“And that…makes sense to you?”

He snorted and smiled so the wrinkles at the corners of his hazel eyes deepened. “Does grammar make sense to you?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me in any language. That’s the way I’m programmed. I understand space, as much as any man can, I understand physics, and I understand engines. Subject-verb agreement might as well be oncology for all the sense it makes to me.”

“Even before I majored in English, I had a gut feel for the language. Could tell that things looked wrong, even if I couldn’t specifically put a label on why. Made sense that I became a technical writer.”

Slowly, he extended one hand and pushed back a swath of hair that’d fallen into her face. “Didn’t Grant fail you in writing your freshman year?”

Her cheeks burned hot, and she swung her feet down to the floor, standing. “Does everyone know about that?” She rooted a bottle of water out of her bag and angrily unscrewed the cap.

“No,
koshka
, not everyone. I know because Sharon told me. She told me a lot about you.”