Slammed (4 page)

She pulled out a sundress which she hoped would be suitable for the restaurant. The resort seemed very casual despite the luxuriousness. She slipped on the bright orange halter-style cotton dress then returned to the bathroom to add a little makeup. She eyed her reflection in the full wall of mirror above the marble vanity. She’d thought she had a nice bit of color after the summer but compared to people there in Tahiti, including Dylan with his bronzed skin, she looked pasty. Whatever. Too much sun was bad for the skin.

She brushed a little color on her cheeks, added a few swipes of mascara to her lashes and then used a peachy lip gloss. Good enough. Now to find the restaurant.

She perused the directory in her room and located La Terrasse on the main floor, to the right of the reception desk. She could find that.

Dylan stood at the entrance to the restaurant, waiting for her. She took in his beige pants, the fitted white shirt that he wore untucked with the cuffs turned back on his strong forearms. He turned as she approached, his dark hair falling across his forehead, his hands in his pockets. She caught the flash of surprise on his face when he saw her.

“What was that look for?” she asked. She looked down at herself. “Am I dressed okay for here?”

“Yeah.” He blinked. “Hell yeah. You look gorgeous.” He frowned. “I don’t remember you being gorgeous in high school.”

She rolled her eyes. “You sweet talker, you.”

“I didn’t mean to be insulting! I just mean, why didn’t I notice you more in high school?”

“You were too busy fending off all the other girls who were after you.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, there is that.”

She shook her head, smiling reluctantly.

“I guess you weren’t one of those girls.”

“As if.” He would never have noticed her.

His mouth tightened a little, but he set a hand on the small of her back to guide her into the restaurant.

“Good evening, Mr. Schell,” the hostess said, with a flick of her eyes at Brooke. “We have your table ready.”

“Your table?” Brooke murmured, following the hostess.

“I called and booked one for us. It gets busy here the nights the show is on.”

They were seated at a table for two near the stage, which currently was dark and quiet. Soft music filled the room along with a hushed murmur of voices and clinking cutlery. Strategic lighting provided an atmosphere of intimacy despite the size of the restaurant.

“Very nice,” she said, pulling her chair in.

“The food’s amazing too,” he said.

“You’ve been here before, obviously.”

He lifted a shoulder. “I come here a few times a year, for the last…shiz, I don’t know how many years. Yeah, I’ve been here before.”

She looked around, took in the smiling, laughing guests, all of them dressed similarly to her and Dylan, casually but yet with an air of affluence. This was a little out of her league, but she kind of liked it. She picked up her menu and opened it.

“Is there anything you recommend?” she asked, scanning the selections.

“Hmm. Well I’m pretty partial to red meat, myself, so I’ll probably go for the Black Angus sirloin. But if you like fish or seafood, I’d suggest the mahi mahi.”

She nodded and read from the menu. “Mahi mahi with sweet vanilla sauce and pureed sweet potatoes. Vanilla sauce?” She lifted questioning eyes to him. “On fish?”

“It’s awesome,” he said. “Try it.”

“Okay.” She looked over the appetizers and desserts too. When their server approached, Dylan ordered a bottle of a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

“You’re pretty sophisticated for a surfer dude, aren’t you?” she commented once he’d ordered.

He grinned. “You pick up a few things when you travel around the world constantly. Even though you may think all I do is smoke dope and party.”

“I didn’t say that’s all you do,” she said, fiddling with her cutlery. “But you have attracted a little attention lately by doing that.”

“Whatever, dude.”

Her gaze snapped up to his face. “No, not ‘whatever, dude’,” she said, exaggerating his surfer drawl. “This is serious business, Dylan.”

“I surf for a living. How serious can that be?”

She stared at him in frustration. Was he serious? This was how he earned his living. This wasn’t a game or a party or a joke. This was big business. Millions of dollars big.

But then she saw the way the corners of his mouth dipped down, the shadow that crossed his eyes as he looked away from her. She nibbled her bottom lip.

The server returned with their wine. Brooke studied Dylan as the server uncorked and poured the wine.

“You folks just arrive here?” the young man asked.

“Yes,” Brooke said.

“Nah,” Dylan replied.

The server’s forehead creased but he smiled. “Well, hope you’re not leaving soon.”

“Why’s that?” Brooke asked.

“Big storm coming.”

She blinked. “Oh. Really?”

“Yeah. They’re saying it should hit tomorrow. Could be a Category One hurricane.”

“Oh Lord.” She looked at Dylan with wide eyes. “Did you know about this?”

“No.” He grimaced.

Oh yeah, apparently he’d been partying too hard to pay attention to the weather.

“The brunt of it may miss us,” the server said cheerfully, setting the wine into the wine bucket. “It’ll probably hit more north of here, but we’re still going to get some weather.”

Brooke picked up her wine glass and took a gulp. “What does that mean?”

Dylan shrugged. “Who knows? If it’s expected to be really bad, they’ll tell us.”

He was so laid back about it. A freakin’ hurricane? Dear sweet Jesus.

“Can’t do anything about it,” he said, leaning back in his seat, once more smiling and relaxed. “So who’s paying for this dinner?”

“Jackson Cole.”

He grinned. “Great. Maybe I’ll have a lobster tail too.”

She dipped her chin to look up at him through her eyelashes. “I don’t think they’ll question my expense account for this trip.”

“Killer,” he said. “We can go into Papeete later and hit some clubs…”

She held up a hand. “Okay, they
might
question my expense account.”

“Darn,” he drawled.

“Are you ready to order?”

Brooke looked up at their server with a smile. “I think we are.” She ordered the Asian salad with shrimps, soy bean sprouts and peanut and coriander vinaigrette sauce, and the mahi mahi. Dylan requested the same salad and the sirloin steak. No lobster.

“Have you ever seen Tamure?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve never been to the South Pacific at all. Not even Hawaii.”

“Oh man.” He gave her a sorrowful look. “Some of the best waves in the world.”

She smirked. “Not San Amaro?”

“Well, I do have a soft spot for Breaker Beach.”

“You did well here.”

He grinned. “Hella good. I was frothing. The waves here are killer.”

“I’ve watched videos of you surfing. You’re pretty amazing.” She hated to stroke his already inflated ego, but it was the truth.

To her surprise he looked a little embarrassed. “Thanks.”

“You get to travel a lot, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Then he actually sighed. “Sometimes it gets kind of old. I mean, it’s fun, and I love surfing, more than anything. Really, I’m lucky I’ve been to some amazing places. Brazil, Portugal, Australia, Brazil.”

“I’d love to be able to travel more. I spent time in Europe after college, but now I never seem to have the time.”

He eyed her. “Workaholic?”

She made a face. “Pretty much, yeah.” She was also a bit of a homebody. She’d missed her hometown and all her friends and family so much when she’d been away at college, all she’d wanted was to go home.

“So maybe now you’ll tell me what you’ve been up to for the last ten years.”

She smiled crookedly. “Sure. Why not? We have all night, right?”

“If you say so, babe.”

It was like he couldn’t turn it off, couldn’t help that sexy flirting that came so easily. Sadly, she was apparently as susceptible to it as every other beach bunny that hung out with the pro tour. He probably didn’t mean a word of it, but it sure seemed like he did, like he looked at her and found her attractive, like he really did want to…oh God. He made her melt inside. He made her—dammit—like him.

“After I graduated, I went away to college.”

“Where?”

She repressed a smile. “Phoenix. I got my MBA in Marketing. I missed San Amaro a lot, so I came home to find a job after I graduated. I ended up in San Diego. I got a few years experience and then an opportunity came up at Jackson Cole. Their home office is right outside San Amaro and it was the perfect chance to move back. That was three years ago.”

“You like your job there?”

She looked down at her wine glass. “I do. I really like the work and I love the company. My boss is a bit…difficult.” She looked up and smiled. “But that happens to everyone at some point, right? I work with a great group, and the company itself is amazing. They’re doing some great things and I’ve learned a lot.”

“That’s good. I was really happy when they wanted to sponsor me. I liked the idea that we were both from San Amaro.”

She nodded. That was one of the things she’d used to sell him when they’d been considering the sponsorship.

“So I gather you’re not married.” He glanced meaningfully at her bare left hand.

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Eh…no. I was seeing someone for a while, but it kind of fizzled out.”

“Fizzled out?” He lifted one eyebrow. “Couldn’t have been that great, then.”

“It was okay. He was nice.”

“Nice. Huh. Sounds boring.”

She frowned. “He wasn’t boring. He was nice. He was…you know, comfortable.”

“Oh, babe.” He leaned forward, those silver-gray eyes gleaming like moonlight. “Comfortable is boring.”

She shivered with little ripples of excitement. No one would ever call Dylan Schell comfortable. Or boring.

“So if you’ve been with Jackson Cole three years, why didn’t I meet you when they signed me?”

She pursed her lips. “I was just a junior Marketing Assistant at that time. Very much behind the scenes.”

“And look at you now. In the big time, baby, traveling all the way to Tahiti.”

She snorted. “Hardly. I’m now an Assistant Manager, but that’s not even close to the big time.” She didn’t tell him how much she wanted to manage her own marketing unit, not only for the additional responsibility, which she knew she was ready for, and not only because of all the ideas she had for innovative ways to market their products, but because then she’d report to the Head of Cross-Channel Marketing, instead of to Barrett.

“So what exactly do you do?”

“Lots of things. I manage day-to-day relationships with external PR agencies, I do online media monitoring and crisis management. My department creates communication strategies, in collaboration with store operations, of course. We also work with legal, finance, merchant and marketing teams. I develop relationships with journalists, bloggers and PR agencies, respond to media and blogger inquiries and work on developing written materials like marketing briefs, press releases, corporate messaging. That kind of stuff.”

“Huh.” He looked thoughtful. “So it was media inquiries about me that started this whole thing?”

“Yes.” She held his gaze.

Their salads arrived and they chatted more throughout the dinner, Dylan telling her surfing stories and things about Tahiti, reminiscing a little about San Amaro.

“When was the last time you were back there?” she asked.

“About a year ago. I spent some time there when I was out with my broken foot.”

“Oh that’s right. That must have been tough.”

He shrugged and laid his cutlery on his plate to indicate he’d finished. “I survived. How was your fish?”

“It was amazing. Your steak was good?”

“Bitchin’.”

She grinned.

“Do you have room for dessert?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. You go ahead.”

“Nah. I don’t do sweets.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “You follow a special diet?”

“As much as I can. Traveling makes it hard sometimes. Mostly I do high protein, low carb. I haven’t worked out the last couple of days since the competition, so better not do dessert. And…” he made a face, “…I’ve had a few digestive problems lately. Some kind of acid reflux thing. Christ, that makes me sound like an old geezer.”

He was an athlete, she had to remind herself. His discipline with his eating seemed at odds with the hedonistic lifestyle he lived. “Of course it doesn’t,” she said. “It’s good that you manage it. It sounds like you’re very disciplined.”

He met her eyes. “With some things,” he drawled.

Um. Yeah.

The show started, so when their table was cleared they both shifted chairs to face the stage, which brought them closer together. The lights dimmed and spotlights illuminated the stage as seductive drumming music began. Tribal and insistently throbbing, it set off an echoing pulse inside Brooke’s body.

Dancers filled the stage, moving to the drum beats, girls dressed in swaying skirts and bikini tops with flower wreaths around their necks and on their heads. Their arms moved in fluid lines, their bare feet graceful on the stage. At first Brooke thought it similar to hula dancing as the rhythm alternated between smaller, faster drums and deeper, thudding drums, the girls shaking their hips in perfect unison. Then the tempo picked up speed, the girls’ hips moving so incredibly fast yet in perfect rhythm, the dancing became almost frenzied.

The girls were so beautiful with their dark hair and eyes, lots of smooth skin, the costumes revealing toned midriffs and bare arms and legs. The dancing was sensuous and suggestive. She snuck a glance at Dylan from time to time, his face illuminated red then gold in the stage lights, his attention focused on the dancing, even though he’d likely seen it many times. Then as she looked at him, he turned his head and met her eyes and smiled. “Enjoying the show?” he asked, leaning closer to speak into her ear.

His scent rose to her nostrils, a fresh clean scent, like wind and water, warm and male. She breathed it in and it filled her head. She nodded with a quick smile for him, then turned back to the stage. Aware of his big body near hers, his big dark hands lying on the white table cloth then lifting to applaud at various times, the flash of his white smile at the entertainment. At one point, one of the dancers smiled back at him, holding his gaze and he lifted his wine glass in a subtle acknowledgement. Brooke slanted a glance sideways at him. Did he know her? Oh what was she thinking
–
he probably knew
every
dancer up there. Intimately. Her insides clenched at the thought.