Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters 2)

They were happy at the villa.

There was time to relax, lie in the sun, and sleep late. Life took on a lazy rhythm.

They sailed. They swam. They slow-danced on the beach to music from the villa’s sound system.

And they talked.

Zach had been to lots of places around the world. So had Jaimie. They’d been to some of the same places, maybe even at the same time.

“If you were in stationed in Spain your first overseas tour,” Jaimie said as they strolled along the shore while the sun dipped toward the sea, “you were, what, eighteen?”

“Uh huh.”

“So, let me see, I was twelve. And my father was in Spain and we flew there that summer.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Just think! We might have met.”

Zach curved his arm more tightly around her waist.

“Good thing we didn’t,” he said, returning that smile. “You’d have been jail bait.”

She laughed. “And you wouldn’t have been interested.”

“Well, no. I was too busy discovering that European women thought it was cool to go topless on the beach.” He grinned. “It was one hell of a revelation.”

“We crossed paths without knowing it.”

“The daughters of generals don’t cross path with grunts, babe. They hardly breathe the same air.”

Jaimie stopped, bent down and picked up a small pink seashell. As far as Zach could tell, it looked like the zillion other shells she’d picked up over the last ten days, but he already knew better than to mention that.

“But you could have crossed paths with my brothers,” she said, tucking the little shell into the pocket of her shorts. “Did I tell you they were all in the service? Well, two of them. Not the third. My brother, Caleb, was in some secret agency. Kind of like you.”

“What do you mean, like me?”

Was his tone a little sharp? Maybe, because Jaimie gave him a strange look.

“That’s what you said, Zacharias. That you’d been in some sort of ‘if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you’ government organization, remember?”

“Yeah. Well, you know how it is. The government figures the alphabet is theirs to toss around. Sometimes I think they must have an Acronym Department.”

She laughed. He let out his breath. How much longer could he lie to her? Didn’t he trust himself to tell her the truth? Or didn’t he trust her? What did he mean to her? What did she feel for him? Did he matter enough for her to overlook the lies?

Damn.

Where was he going with this? He—he cared for her. And if she—if she cared for him…

“Zacharias?”

“Jaimie.” He stopped walking, turned toward her, took her hands in his. “Honey. We need to talk.”

He’d expected her to say, “Talk about what?” or “We are talking.” But she didn’t. Instead, she gave him a steady, sobering look and said that yes, they did.

“I love it here,” she said softly.

He smiled and brought her hands to his lips.

“But,” she said, “we can’t live on an island forever.”

“The place is ours for as long as we want it.”