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“Thank you, ma’am.” He pushed her shirt up and helped her take it off. “I have other talents too.” He nuzzled her breast, licked her nipple and blew on it.
“What kind of talents?”
“I’ll have to show you.”
Later, once they’d made love again and Nate had convinced Damaris that she should sleep with him in his bed and she didn’t need to put any clothes back on, he thought about the night. Damn. He’d known he was in love with her before this. Now he was absolutely, totally, crazy in love with her.
He’d wanted her since they met. He could admit to her that he wanted her, but not that he loved her. If he admitted he’d been in love with her for almost as long as he’d known her she’d bail so quick his head would spin around like the girl’s in the Exorcist.
But things were definitely looking up.
*
Damaris and Nate made love a lot during the night. Had sex, she corrected herself. But it didn’t feel like just sex. It felt like…maybe not love but definitely more than just sex. If she thought about it too hard she could freak out. So she tried her best to simply enjoy the time.
The next morning they went to the San Diego Zoo. Nate had a whole list of things to do and had given her a choice of what their first stop would be that day. “I haven’t been to the zoo in forever,” she told Nate. “What’s your favorite exhibit?”
“The big cats,” he answered promptly. “What’s yours?”
“I can’t make up my mind. I like the lions and tigers, of course. And the zebra and antelope. The birds. Elephants. The reptiles not so much.” To her, snakes meant something her horses shied from. Most of the snakes she saw were innocuous but there were definitely rattlers on the ranch.
“Gotta agree with you there. What about the monkeys?”
“I like them too. But I read somewhere that an orangutan can tear off a man’s arm and beat him with it. I have to admit, that kind of cooled my admiration of them.”
“Gee, thanks for the visual. Note, no orangutans.”
It had been so long since Damaris had done something different from her usual activities. Horses, girls’ night out, Booze’s, on occasion Baron’s Steakhouse, all in Whiskey River. Sometimes she went to Austin to buy something for the ranch, and sometimes she drove other places to pick up a horse or take a horse somewhere. So San Diego with its wealth of things to do was a new experience. One she found she liked very much.
Nate kissed her in front of the elephants. And at the big cat exhibit. He would have kissed her at the monkey exhibit but the chimps chose that moment to fling poo at them so they left quickly. Kind of spoiled the mood.
They ate lunch at a tiny place they’d heard was a locals’ favorite, then in the afternoon they went on a kayak tour of the La Jolla sea caves. Damaris was a little hesitant since she’d never been kayaking before, but they were in a double kayak and Nate clearly had experience. He told Damaris he’d done a tour of the sea caves a number of years ago, but they hadn’t seen much wildlife for some reason.
That wasn’t the case this time. They were also able to go into the caves, which Nate said didn’t always happen. Sometimes the conditions didn’t allow it. They saw leopard sharks, sea lions, a couple of dolphin, as well as pelicans and several other birds.
“That was fun,” she said when they finished the tour. “What are we going to do next?”
“Have dinner,” Nate said. “There’s a nice restaurant near our hotel. Then, if you want, we can check out the night life.”
“Let’s eat dinner and then decide.” Damaris was much more accustomed to going to bed early and getting up at the crack of dawn. She wasn’t sure she could stay awake long enough to go dancing. Especially since neither of them had gotten much sleep the night before.
And she suspected they wouldn’t get much sleep tonight either.
Chapter Fifteen
Damaris wasn’t sure what Nate had planned for their last night in San Diego. Each time she asked him he distracted her by kissing her and soon they were making love again and she’d completely forgotten her question.
Early that evening, Damaris stood outside Nate’s room on the balcony. There was a gorgeous bayfront view, made even better by the fact that they were on the twenty-third floor of the hotel. The wind was blowing, gently for a change, and there was a salty tang to the air.
Damaris had been to the ocean before. The Gulf of Mexico in both Texas and Florida. But she’d never seen the Pacific until this trip. She’d never taken a sunset cruise, or gone whale watching, or kayaking or many of the things they’d done. One afternoon they’d rented bikes and ridden them around Coronado Island. Sure, she’d ridden bikes before but never in such picturesque surroundings and not for many years.
All in all, though, she felt guilty, knowing Nate must have spent a fortune on the trip, but when she asked him to split the cost with her, he’d flatly refused.
“No way in hell,” he told her. “I invited you. I pay.”
She’d protested but he’d kissed her and soon they were making love again. So, she brought it up when they were at the beach that afternoon, where he couldn’t totally distract her. They were lying side by side on their beach towels when she said, “You need to let me pay for my part of this vacation.”
“What is with you? I asked you to come with me. This was my idea and I know you had to call in favors to have your responsibilities at the ranch covered. So let me do this.”
