San Amaro Singles: Slammed Part 3

"Yes," Brooke said.

"Nah," Dylan replied.

The server's forehead creased but he smiled. "Well, hope you're not leaving soon."

"Why's that?" Brooke asked.

"Big storm coming."

She blinked. "Oh. Really?"

"Yeah. They're saying it should hit tomorrow. Could be a Category One hurricane."

"Oh Lord." She looked at Dylan with wide eyes. "Did you know about this?"

"No." He grimaced.

Oh yeah, apparently he'd been partying too hard to pay attention to the weather.

"The brunt of it may miss us," the server said cheerfully, setting the wine into the wine bucket. "It'll probably hit more north of here, but we're still going to get some weather."

Brooke picked up her wine gla.s.s and took a gulp. "What does that mean?"

Dylan shrugged. "Who knows? If it's expected to be really bad, they'll tell us."

He was so laid back about it. A freakin' hurricane? Dear sweet Jesus.

"Can't do anything about it," he said, leaning back in his seat, once more smiling and relaxed. "So who's paying for this dinner?"

"Jackson Cole."

He grinned. "Great. Maybe I'll have a lobster tail too."

She dipped her chin to look up at him through her eyelashes. "I don't think they'll question my expense account for this trip."

"Killer," he said. "We can go into Papeete later and hit some clubs..."

She held up a hand. "Okay, they might question my expense account."

"Darn," he drawled.

"Are you ready to order?"

Brooke looked up at their server with a smile. "I think we are." She ordered the Asian salad with shrimps, soy bean sprouts and peanut and coriander vinaigrette sauce, and the mahi mahi. Dylan requested the same salad and the sirloin steak. No lobster.

"Have you ever seen Tamure?" he asked.

"No." She shook her head. "I've never been to the South Pacific at all. Not even Hawaii."

"Oh man." He gave her a sorrowful look. "Some of the best waves in the world."

She smirked. "Not San Amaro?"

"Well, I do have a soft spot for Breaker Beach."

"You did well here."

He grinned. "h.e.l.la good. I was frothing. The waves here are killer."

"I've watched videos of you surfing. You're pretty amazing." She hated to stroke his already inflated ego, but it was the truth.

To her surprise he looked a little embarra.s.sed. "Thanks."

"You get to travel a lot, don't you?"

"Yeah." Then he actually sighed. "Sometimes it gets kind of old. I mean, it's fun, and I love surfing, more than anything. Really, I'm lucky I've been to some amazing places. Brazil, Portugal, Australia, Brazil."

"I'd love to be able to travel more. I spent time in Europe after college, but now I never seem to have the time."

He eyed her. "Workaholic?"

She made a face. "Pretty much, yeah." She was also a bit of a homebody. She'd missed her hometown and all her friends and family so much when she'd been away at college, all she'd wanted was to go home.

"So maybe now you'll tell me what you've been up to for the last ten years."

She smiled crookedly. "Sure. Why not? We have all night, right?"

"If you say so, babe."

It was like he couldn't turn it off, couldn't help that s.e.xy flirting that came so easily. Sadly, she was apparently as susceptible to it as every other beach bunny that hung out with the pro tour. He probably didn't mean a word of it, but it sure seemed like he did, like he looked at her and found her attractive, like he really did want to...oh G.o.d. He made her melt inside. He made her-dammit-like him.

"After I graduated, I went away to college."

"Where?"

She repressed a smile. "Phoenix. I got my MBA in Marketing. I missed San Amaro a lot, so I came home to find a job after I graduated. I ended up in San Diego. I got a few years experience and then an opportunity came up at Jackson Cole. Their home office is right outside San Amaro and it was the perfect chance to move back. That was three years ago."

"You like your job there?"

She looked down at her wine gla.s.s. "I do. I really like the work and I love the company. My boss is a bit...difficult." She looked up and smiled. "But that happens to everyone at some point, right? I work with a great group, and the company itself is amazing. They're doing some great things and I've learned a lot."

"That's good. I was really happy when they wanted to sponsor me. I liked the idea that we were both from San Amaro."

She nodded. That was one of the things she'd used to sell him when they'd been considering the sponsors.h.i.+p.

"So I gather you're not married." He glanced meaningfully at her bare left hand.

"No."

"Boyfriend?"

"Eh...no. I was seeing someone for a while, but it kind of fizzled out."

"Fizzled out?" He lifted one eyebrow. "Couldn't have been that great, then."

"It was okay. He was nice."

"Nice. Huh. Sounds boring."

She frowned. "He wasn't boring. He was nice. He was...you know, comfortable."

"Oh, babe." He leaned forward, those silver-gray eyes gleaming like moonlight. "Comfortable is boring."

She s.h.i.+vered with little ripples of excitement. No one would ever call Dylan Sch.e.l.l comfortable. Or boring.

"So if you've been with Jackson Cole three years, why didn't I meet you when they signed me?"

She pursed her lips. "I was just a junior Marketing a.s.sistant at that time. Very much behind the scenes."

"And look at you now. In the big time, baby, traveling all the way to Tahiti."

She snorted. "Hardly. I'm now an a.s.sistant Manager, but that's not even close to the big time." She didn't tell him how much she wanted to manage her own marketing unit, not only for the additional responsibility, which she knew she was ready for, and not only because of all the ideas she had for innovative ways to market their products, but because then she'd report to the Head of Cross-Channel Marketing, instead of to Barrett.

"So what exactly do you do?"

"Lots of things. I manage day-to-day relations.h.i.+ps with external PR agencies, I do online media monitoring and crisis management. My department creates communication strategies, in collaboration with store operations, of course. We also work with legal, finance, merchant and marketing teams. I develop relations.h.i.+ps with journalists, bloggers and PR agencies, respond to media and blogger inquiries and work on developing written materials like marketing briefs, press releases, corporate messaging. That kind of stuff."

"Huh." He looked thoughtful. "So it was media inquiries about me that started this whole thing?"

"Yes." She held his gaze.

Their salads arrived and they chatted more throughout the dinner, Dylan telling her surfing stories and things about Tahiti, reminiscing a little about San Amaro.

"When was the last time you were back there?" she asked.

"About a year ago. I spent some time there when I was out with my broken foot."

"Oh that's right. That must have been tough."

He shrugged and laid his cutlery on his plate to indicate he'd finished. "I survived. How was your fish?"

"It was amazing. Your steak was good?"

"b.i.t.c.hin'."

She grinned.

"Do you have room for dessert?" he asked.

"I don't think so. You go ahead."

"Nah. I don't do sweets."

"Oh." She blinked. "You follow a special diet?"

"As much as I can. Traveling makes it hard sometimes. Mostly I do high protein, low carb. I haven't worked out the last couple of days since the compet.i.tion, so better not do dessert. And..." he made a face, "...I've had a few digestive problems lately. Some kind of acid reflux thing. Christ, that makes me sound like an old geezer."

He was an athlete, she had to remind herself. His discipline with his eating seemed at odds with the hedonistic lifestyle he lived. "Of course it doesn't," she said. "It's good that you manage it. It sounds like you're very disciplined."

He met her eyes. "With some things," he drawled.

Um. Yeah.

The show started, so when their table was cleared they both s.h.i.+fted chairs to face the stage, which brought them closer together. The lights dimmed and spotlights illuminated the stage as seductive drumming music began. Tribal and insistently throbbing, it set off an echoing pulse inside Brooke's body.

Dancers filled the stage, moving to the drum beats, girls dressed in swaying skirts and bikini tops with flower wreaths around their necks and on their heads. Their arms moved in fluid lines, their bare feet graceful on the stage. At first Brooke thought it similar to hula dancing as the rhythm alternated between smaller, faster drums and deeper, thudding drums, the girls shaking their hips in perfect unison. Then the tempo picked up speed, the girls' hips moving so incredibly fast yet in perfect rhythm, the dancing became almost frenzied.

The girls were so beautiful with their dark hair and eyes, lots of smooth skin, the costumes revealing toned midriffs and bare arms and legs. The dancing was sensuous and suggestive. She snuck a glance at Dylan from time to time, his face illuminated red then gold in the stage lights, his attention focused on the dancing, even though he'd likely seen it many times. Then as she looked at him, he turned his head and met her eyes and smiled. "Enjoying the show?" he asked, leaning closer to speak into her ear.

His scent rose to her nostrils, a fresh clean scent, like wind and water, warm and male. She breathed it in and it filled her head. She nodded with a quick smile for him, then turned back to the stage. Aware of his big body near hers, his big dark hands lying on the white table cloth then lifting to applaud at various times, the flash of his white smile at the entertainment. At one point, one of the dancers smiled back at him, holding his gaze and he lifted his wine gla.s.s in a subtle acknowledgement. Brooke slanted a glance sideways at him. Did he know her? Oh what was she thinkinghe probably knew every dancer up there. Intimately. Her insides clenched at the thought.

Another woman came on stage to perform a solo dance to the beat of a single bongo-type drum. Her long, black hair hung to her waist and s.h.i.+mmered in the spotlights. She wore a red flower over one ear, a red bandeau bikini top and a wrapped skirt rolled at her hips. She began to sway to the music and again the tempo picked up, the drummer playing faster and faster, the woman's graceful arms waving and her hips s.h.i.+mmying. When she turned her back to the audience, her skirt twitched and swung as she rotated her hips with jaw-dropping speed. Brooke couldn't take her eyes off the way she moved, the s.e.xuality in her motion.

When the show ended, she turned to Dylan. "That was amazing!"

"I thought you'd like it."

"I wish I could move my hips like those girls!" Their grace and control amazed her.

"You could learn."

She laughed. "I don't think so. That's mind boggling how they move like that."

He leaned closer. "When missionaries arrived on these islands, they were horrified by how suggestive the dances-and how naked the dancers-were. They thought it was s.e.xual and sinful, so they banned it."

"Um. It is pretty suggestive." That sounded prudish. "Not that I don't like s.e.x." Oh my G.o.d. She'd obviously had too much wine at dinner. "I mean, those girls are beautiful and s.e.xy." Heat swept over her face. She turned to the breeze that drifted into the restaurant through large opened windows, letting it blow her hair back and cool her hot cheeks.

"Hey, don't worry, you're just as s.e.xy as they are."

"I wasn't worried," she muttered, s.h.i.+fting back from him.

"Well, good. So...what now?"

"Um..."

"Do we call it a night?"

"I guess so." Fatigue rolled back over her. "I'm really tired. That was a long flight and I didn't sleep much."