Sea Kissed, A Crane Series Romance: Crane Series by Nancy Warren Page A

Marley’s ghost clinking and clanging, an endless round of mortification.
    “Right.” He didn’t laugh. The dimple didn’t even deepen, but she could tell it was an effort. “I thought you were a bit of a party girl.”
    Well, obviously now he knew her better he’d figured out that wasn’t the case. She shook her head, letting go of the brief fantasy. “That wasn’t even my dress. Or my shoes.”
    “I like the shoes you’ve got on better.”
    “You do?”
    “Sure. You can get about in those without tottering along like you’ve got bunions.”
    “Well . . .” She was so delighted she was almost speechless.
    He leaned a little closer. “I did like that dress, though.”
    The atmosphere between them seemed suddenly too warm and she recalled that moment just before he’d kissed her back at the office, when she’d wanted him to, felt him think about it, hesitate, and then quietly move in. She wanted him to kiss her again, so much she could hardly stop herself from making the first move.
    “So,” he said, suddenly seeming to reconsider and draw back out of imminent kissing range, “are you disappointed?”
    “Disappointed?” She was disappointed he hadn’t taken her up on her obvious invitation and kissed her. At the moment her mind couldn’t hold a lot more.
    “I’m a working man. I’m not sure what you were expecting, but—”
    “A surfer boy. That’s what I was expecting. A party-hard, life’s-a-beach, model-on-the-side-for-some-extra-cash surfer boy.”
    “That’s not me.”
    She started to smile. It began somewhere down in the region of her normally tortured belly and worked its way up. By the time it got to her face, it was a full-blown sunflower of a smile.
    “No,” she said. “It’s not.”
    He reached across the table for her hand. “Is that a good thing?”
    She felt as though something in her love life might be about to go right.
    “Oh, yes,” she said, the smile still stuck on her face. “That’s a good thing.”
    For another moment they stayed like that. She felt the warm current running back and forth between their hands, felt the calluses she should have noticed before, felt his eyes on her face, and a quick glance up told her what was going on behind them was as hot as what was going on in her mind. He pulled out his wallet and yanked out some of the cash she’d given him, threw it to the table.
    “Let’s get out of here.”
    His urgency fed hers, but still she hesitated. “We should get a receipt. This is a deductible expense.” He raised their joined hands and kissed her knuckles. “Oh, the hell with it,” she said cheerfully, confident that they’d grossly overpaid for dinner, would deduct not a cent, and that she didn’t care in the slightest.
     

Chapter 7
    It had seemed as though they’d walked quickly to get to the wharf, but that pace was a snail with a limp compared to the way they sprinted to get back to the hotel. Sprinted uphill. She gasped along, knowing the exercise was good for her, thinking maybe all her cellulite would turn to hard, trim muscle in the time it took to get back to his place, before her lungs gave out. As happy as she was that he was in such a hurry to be alone with her, she really needed to breathe. But not to slow the pace. There was only one solution.
    “Taxi,” she managed to gasp. Luckily it was Friday and the place crawled with cabs. Soon they were bundled in one and sliding smoothly uphill.
    Still she felt the tension in the man beside her, was certain she heard him mumble, “Come on, come on,” under his breath.
    She knew exactly how he felt. She half-expected him to grab her in the taxi, but whether from shyness or manners or maybe men just didn’t do that sort of thing in Australia, she was unmauled and anxiously wanting when they got to the hotel. This time she was ready with her company credit card, which meant an instant receipt and no wasted time or money. She started to pass the card forward, caught the urgent