Beach Bar Baby by Heidi Rice

broke away first, the pants of his breathing as thready as her own. ‘I’m going to take that as a yes.’
    She nodded, not sure she could speak around the joy closing off her throat.
    Standing, he gripped her hand and hauled her out of her chair. He tossed a few dollars on the table, and sent Henry a parting salute. She waved her own goodbye at the barman, who was stacking glasses, a rueful smile on his face.
    ‘See you around, pretty lady.’ Henry waved back, shouting over the murmur of goodbyes being thrown their way by the bar’s other remaining patrons. ‘And don’t you be doing anything I wouldn’t, Coop.’
    Coop dragged her outside, sending her a wicked grin over his shoulder as the night closed over them. ‘Given what you would do, man,’ he whispered for her ears alone, ‘that gives me a hell of a lot of options.’
    For some strange reason she found the comment riotously funny, her chuckle blending with the fading beat of music and the sound of the rolling and retreating tide as they stepped off the deck onto the beach. He laid his arm across her shoulders, tugged her into his side to lead her along the sand and into the darkness.
    Crickets and night crawlers added an acoustic accompaniment to the flickering light of the fireflies in the undergrowth and the hushed lap of the water. She kicked off her sandals, picked them up, and let her toes seep into the damp sand.
    The walk in the moonlight he’d promised went past in a blur, neither of them speaking, the only sound the sea, the insects and the rhythmic bump of her own heartbeat. A one-storey shack raised over the beach on a wraparound deck appeared as if by magic out of the undergrowth on the edge of the sand. A lamp suspended from the porch rail shone like a homing beacon, illuminating the rudimentary clapboard structure.
    He dropped his arm from around her shoulders, to lace his fingers through hers and lead her up the steps onto the porch.
    ‘You live here?’ she asked, enchanted by the spartan dwelling.
    ‘Yeah, mostly.’ He held open the screen door to reveal a large, sparsely furnished, but tidy room. A sofa with well-worn cushions made up the living area, while a large mattress, the sheets neatly folded across the bottom, stood in front of the open deck. A tiny kitchenette cordoned off by a waist-high counter took up the hut’s back wall, next to a door that she deduced must lead to a bathroom.
    But it was the open deck, blending the hut’s interior with the beach outside, that took her breath away. The silvery glow of the moon dipped over the horizon, shimmering over the water and making the dark sand look as if it disappeared into oblivion. The fresh scent of sea and salt and exotic blooms only added to the feeling of wild, untamed freedom that was so like Cooper himself.
    ‘It suits you,’ she said.
    He huffed, the half-laugh both wry and amused. ‘Why? Because it’s cheap?’ he said and she heard the cynical edge.
    ‘No, because it’s charming and unpretentious and unconventional.’
    He turned up the lamp, giving the modest hut a golden glow.
    Walking to the open deck, he closed two large shutters and then slid the screen door across, cocooning them in together against the Caribbean night. Only the sparkle of moonlight and the sound of surf and chirping insects seeped through the slats.
    ‘Don’t want to risk getting our butts bitten off by mosquitos,’ he said, crossing the short distance back to her.
    She laughed, the rough stubble on his jaw ticklish against her neck as he gripped her hips and nuzzled the sensitive skin beneath her ear.
    ‘Especially such a cute butt,’ he added, giving the butt in question an appreciative squeeze.
    She wrapped her arms around his lean waist and slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of his jeans, to caress the tight muscles of the backside she had admired that morning in wet denim. ‘I can totally get behind that sentiment.’
    He chuckled, warm, callused palms sneaking under her