She wrapped her arms more tightly around him, feeling hard muscles against her that told her he might be a scientist but he was also athletic. He made a low sound in his throat that seemed to slide down her spine, making her shiver.
Oh my.
They kissed for a long time, tasting, discovering, savoring. She didn’t want it to ever end. How had she forgotten how intimate a kiss could feel, as if he could learn everything about her by a simple brush of his mouth against hers?
This felt anything but casual. It felt...profoundly moving somehow, as if something significant had just shifted in her world, something she didn’t quite understand.
The night murmured around them. The water, the chirp of crickets, an owl in the treetops. She vaguely registered all of those sounds on some level but they couldn’t pierce the soft, dreamy haze surrounding her and Ian until Betsey suddenly gave a sharp bark.
The sound dragged her back to hard reality, to the knowledge that she was kissing a man she barely knew with an eager hunger that belied everything she had told him about looking for something deeper in a man than physical attraction.
What was she doing? She knew better. This had been a grave mistake, one she feared she would pay for eventually.
She slid her mouth from his and edged away on the bench, her heart pounding.
“I need to, um, go.”
He gazed at her, those blue eyes glittering in the moonlight. Why did he have to be all kinds of gorgeous?
“Do you?”
That voice. That accent, the low timbre. He hit every single one of her buttons, including several she hadn’t known existed until this moment.
She inhaled sharply, ignoring every instinct that urged her to simply slide back into his arms.
“Yes. Betsey and I have been gone too long. The puppies will be anxious.”
“Right.” He stood up abruptly and she shivered as cool air blew off the lake.
She couldn’t read his features clearly in the darkness. Was that regret she saw in his eyes? Was it because they had kissed? Or because they had to stop?
“Good night.”
She scooped up her dog, grateful for the buffer Betsey provided, and headed for the house. She had only made it a few steps before she realized Ian was following closely behind. They were in her own backyard. Did he really think he had to escort her to the door?
She wanted to tell him he didn’t need to bother, but by then they had reached her back step and she couldn’t see the point.
“Good night,” he said, some of his earlier stiffness returning to his voice.
She wanted to kiss him again, to wrap her arms around his neck and return to that magical place they had found by the water’s edge. Instead, she nodded, then let herself into the house, feeling as if something fundamental had changed inside her, something she didn’t want to examine too closely.
As soon as she closed the door, Betsey rushed to her water bowl and took a healthy drink. Sam followed her example, turning on the tap and filling a large glass with cold water.
Instead of drinking it, she pressed it to first one flaming cheek and then the other.
Holy moly. The man could kiss.
She didn’t know when she had ever completely lost her head over a kiss.
Starry-eyed Sam. That’s what her mother used to call her, in a mocking voice Samantha had hated, because of what Linda perceived as her daughter’s tendency to fall in love at the drop of a hat.
That was her past, one she wasn’t particularly proud of.
This wasn’t her first time letting her emotions get carried away.
Even with the other men she had kissed, she didn’t remember an embrace ever leaving her so breathless.
Contrary to popular belief, she was not really an expert when it came to men. At least when it came to sex. She had gone all the way with only two guys. One was her high school boyfriend, who was married now and living in Shelter Springs with his wife and their three kids. He worked at a home improvement store in the larger town. Yeah, that had led to a few uncomfortable conversations when she had to go in asking about garden hoses and pipe fittings.
Another had been a guy she dated while finishing her degree in business in Boise.
She had lived at home to help her mother with the store after class and on the weekends so she hadn’t had much of a social life. She did manage to date occasionally and had gone out for about six months with an economics major who was a few years ahead of her in school, Craig Bothwell.
She told herself she was in love and thought he felt the same. She spent those six months dreaming about the adventures they would have and how she was going to tell her mother she was leaving the boutique to go with him when he graduated.
He had taken a job in Dallas a month before graduation. As he prepared to pack up his belongings and move, she waited for him to talk to her about going with him. He didn’t. Finally, a week before graduation, she had gathered her courage and brought it up.
She could still remember the devastation scorching through her when he had told her that while he’d had fun these past few months with her, he didn’t see a future for them and he certainly didn’t want her to go to Dallas with him.
Brokenhearted, she hadn’t dated anyone else seriously in college, too busy licking her wounds. Only after graduation, when she turned her full attention to the boutique, did she begin to realize how limited the dating options were here in Haven Point. She lived at home with her mother in a town where everybody always seemed to be watching her. She couldn’t just sleep with any random tourist without word trickling back to her mother.
She
