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“I’ll take it,” Dex said, and Maggie gave Samantha a soft look before handing him the phone. He silenced the device and shoved it into the back pocket of his trunks. “I’ll handle things,” he whispered to Maggie.
She nodded and quietly left the room.
Dex drew a deep breath and stepped closer to Samantha, placing what he hoped was calming hands on her shoulders and turned her toward him. He expected tear-stained eyes.
Instead, she was laughing, catching him off guard.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“My life is absurd! My family has been giving me the space I asked for… well, all except Ian, but Jeremy? He hasn’t stopped leaving messages, phone calls, and texts. As if I believe a) he’s sorry, b) I misunderstood what I heard, or c) we can start over again.” She shook her head and laughed. “As if… any one of those things were true.” Her voice rose to a higher pitch.
Unsure if she was happy, sad, or both, he sighed, knowing this was one of these female moods he wouldn’t understand. All he could do was try to keep her mind off yesterday and her ex-fiancé—after he gave her a message from her brother. But he took one look at her face, her mouth parted as if she was about to say something more, and decided Ian could wait.
Samantha came first. “Since you’re ready for the beach, how about if we take a walk?”
She raised her eyebrows. “A walk means we might talk some more, and I’ve had enough. No offense. What if we do something different?” She grabbed something from the chair and slid a short dress over her bathing suit, covering up her luscious body.
“Like what?”
“Parasailing.”
He raised an eyebrow. That was the last thing he’d expected her to say but he sensed she still needed to talk. To expunge the poison inside her caused by her ex. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll go parasailing if you’ll take that walk with me later on. A sunset walk.”
He’d give her the day to think and process and then see if she needed a shoulder to lean on. It was the least he could do for his friend’s sister.
Chapter Five
There was nothing better than the moment the winch system brought her high in the air and all she could see or think about was the beauty around her. Being four hundred feet above water in a tandem harness, side by side with Dex, floating peacefully in utter silence, allowed for time to put things in perspective. For the next fifteen minutes she could decompress.
Once she landed and heard the ring of a cell phone, or as Dex reminded her of her brother’s need to speak with her before they stepped on the boat for their adventure, she’d be forced to reckon with her decisions.
Brandy was handling Samantha’s part of the business while she was gone, which enabled her to shake off thoughts of what waited for her on solid ground. Instead, she absorbed the utter beauty of the island and the surrounding water. She stared at the blue ocean below and looked out at the pink sandy shore, and the houses and hotels beyond, appreciating both nature and the pastel man-made structures that dotted the island.
Growing up wealthy, Samantha had always known how fortunate she was to not want for anything. The one time they’d realized money couldn’t buy happiness was when they’d found out their father had another family and her half-sister needed compatible bone marrow to live. That was also when she’d learned that life wasn’t perfect but if she looked hard enough, sometimes she could find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Samantha was an optimist, it seemed, and after the storm that was her father’s destruction of their family, the rainbow came in the form of her new siblings. And the pot of gold was Sienna’s recovery, thanks to Avery’s generosity.
Hanging on to those memories would be what got her through the fallout of her wedding that hadn’t happened, her cheating fiancé, and the fact that she still owned a business with the son of a bitch. She’d survive this because something better was waiting for her on the other side. After she fought through this trauma.
She closed her eyelids and drew a deep breath, letting the warm breeze take her away, the silence and peacefulness making her smile. When she opened her eyes, Dex’s powerful body was facing her. He stared right at her and returned her grin, causing her belly to twist in an excitement that had nothing to do with parasailing.
The man was as handsome as they came, with his jet-black hair and light blue gaze hidden from her view by his sunglasses.
Still, when he looked at her, she felt like she was his sole focus. No one else mattered. God, she wished they’d had their chance years ago because now was the epitome of the wrong time to be thinking about any man.
The boat slowed, taking her focus back to the upcoming landing. They were lowered and put into a gentle free fall until her feet and butt dipped in the water. She rose once more, and then the captain finally landed them back in the boat.
“That was amazing,” she said, once they’d unbuckled their harnesses and life vests, returned to shore, and were walking back to the chairs they’d paid for at a nearby hotel.
“Exhilarating,” he agreed.
They reached their loungers and he picked up a towel, drying himself off.
Unable to stop herself, her gaze strayed to his bare chest, and the six-pack and muscles he maintained even after leaving football.
“Asher has a gym in the house,” she blurted out.
“What was that?”
She shook her head and lowered herself to the seat. No way would she repeat the words and embarrass herself.
