Sun-kissed (The Au Pairs 3)

"That night we slept on the beach? Remember? That first summer?"

"Mmm ..." Ryan agreed, his eyes closed.

Mara snuggled up under his chin, marveling at how his lashes lay flat against his fair cheek. He was just so handsome. He was the kind of guy she'd never thought would ever, ever, in a million years be interested in someone as ordinary as her. But he had stopped being "that guy" anymore. He was just Ryan. Her Ryan.

He rolled on top of her suddenly, pinning her to the ground with his body. "I wanted to do this that night," he said as he held her arms down with his.

289

"What stopped you?" Mara asked.

"It was kind of hard to do since you were all zipped up in your own sleeping bag." He laughed.

"What's stopping you now?" she asked, looking at him through half-lidded eyes. The sound of the waves crashed behind them.

"Absolutely nothing," he replied, pulling up his sweater and throwing it over her head so that the two of them disappeared underneath. Thank God it was so roomy. . . .

Later, back at the boat, Mara was trying to wash the sand out of her jeans. That's what you get for having sex in the sand, she thought, a bit amused. Her hair was mussed, and her lips were red from his kisses. She had been wrong earlier--love was enough. Love was all she would need ever. She didn't want anything else but Ryan. Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. His name was written in the stars above her head in the night sky; she had called his name out again and again.

There was a tap on the bathroom door.

"Come in," she said, smiling up at him. He was wearing only his boxer shorts, his perfectly sculpted lateral muscles shining in the dim light.

"I found this on the kitchen table," he said.

He held up the white envelope with a Dartmouth address. "Why haven't you sent it in yet? Wasn't it due yesterday?"

290

Mara was momentarily caught off guard. The acceptance form. She had been meaning to mail it in all week and somehow had never gotten around to it.

She didn't know what to say. She'd deliberately forgotten to mail it because she was still on the fence about whether to accept their admission. The prospect of turning down Columbia seemed wrongheaded now, especially in light of how quickly she was amassing press clips.

"Anyway, don't worry about it. I can make another call to the admissions office," Ryan assured her.

"Another call? Ryan, did you do something?" she asked, finding it difficult to breathe. She was starting to get really angry.

Earlier that summer, Ryan had offered to ask his dad, a prominent alum, to put in a word for her application--but she had expressly told him not to. Had he ignored her request? How could he not respect her wishes? How could he go behind her back like that?

"Did you ask your dad to help get me off the wait list at Dartmouth?" she asked, fixing him with a glare.

"What are you talking about?" Ryan asked, offended. "Of course not. You told me not to."

"But you just said you were going to 'make another call.' Don't lie to me, Ryan," she threatened. "I'd never lie to you."

Ryan shook his head. "I only wanted to make sure the two of us could be together. Was that so wrong? Don't you want to be together? What's the matter with you?"

291

"I can't believe it," Mara said. "I just can't believe you would betray me like that."

She stormed out of the cabin. She had to get away from Ryan just then. He had actually called his dad and asked him to pull some strings on her behalf! He'd actually used his connections to get her off the wait list! How could he? He knew she didn't approve of that--she had wanted to get in on her own, not because her boyfriend's dad was golfing buddies with the university president. It was all so ... so .. . wrong.

He would never understand her.

292

the runaway bride