Sun Kissed by Joann Ross

complaint?” she asked in a soft, breathless voice.
    “I don’t know.”
    They stared at each other, both searching for answers as the soft rain continued to fall. Finally, Donovan lifted a few heavy strands of wet hair off her face, bent his head, and brushed her cheek with his lips.
    “You taste like rain.”
    “Liquid sunshine,” she said, closing her eyes as his mouth skimmed over her face. “It never rains in paradise, Donovan. Didn’t Nate tell you that when he was sending you down here to seduce me?”
    “I didn’t come here to seduce you.”
    “Newsflash, Detective.” Eyes wide open now, she trailed a fingernail down the front of his T-shirt. “You really wouldn’t have to.”
    “Now who’s seducing whom?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “I think it does.” He was drowning here. Drowning in her huge mermaid eyes and warm silky lips he knew he’d be tasting in his sleep. The breeze from the sea was pressing the flowered silk against her body in a way that left very little to his imagination. An imagination that kicked into overdrive as he fantasized about those mile-long legs wrapped around his hips.
    “Anyone ever tell you that perhaps, just maybe, you think too much?” she asked. “Not everything has to be so complicated.”
    She wasn’t the first person to tell him that. Most recently her brother and Tess. “It’s late,” he said quietly as he dropped his hand and took a step back. Literally and figuratively. “And you’re getting wet.”
    “So are you.”
    He glanced down, surprised to find his own clothing soaked. “It looks better on you.”
    Her laugh was as silvery as the moonlight streaming over them. Then she flashed him an unaffected smile that jolted him to the core. “We have a saying around here, Donovan: The faster you go, the more you miss along the way.”
    Rising up on her bare toes, she brushed her lips lightly, tantalizingly against his. “You wouldn’t want to miss anything, would you?”
    Bending down, she scooped up the sandals she’d dropped and went running up the beach toward her cottage. As the Pacific trade winds carried her laughter to his ears, Donovan picked up his wet shoes and resumed walking toward Nate’s beach house, fighting the urge to follow Lani and continue where they’d left off.
    But that would be giving in to impulse, and it had been a very long time since anyone had accused Donovan Quinn of being an impulsive man.

5
    The phone, which he’d left on the bedside table, jolted Donovan from a blazing-hot dream of making love to Lani on the edge of a volcano. He fumbled for the receiver without opening his eyes.
    “What?”
    “So much for Orchid Island filling you with the old aloha spirit,” the deep male voice said with a laugh.
    “Aloha spirit be damned,” Donovan muttered as he sat up in bed. “What the hell did you have in mind, anyway?”
    “Concerning what?”
    Donovan’s scowling gaze circled the room. “Your redecorating, for one thing.”
    “How did it turn out?” Nate inquired interestedly.
    “Like something out of an old movie: me Tarzan, you Jane. For God’s sake, Nate, haven’t you ever heard of overkill?”
    “Sounds like Lani followed my instructions to a T.”
    Donovan could hear the smile in his best friend’s voice. “Speaking of your sister,” he began, not bothering to hide his belief that Lani had been right about one thing: Nate had definitely set them up.
    Nate’s next words confirmed his suspicions. “Isn’t she something? Face like a Botticelli angel, figure as sleek as a Thoroughbred, and a spirit to match.”
    “She told your parents that you sent me down here to seduce her.”
    “Actually, I sent you down to the island to reboot your personal life, which has pretty much been in the toilet lately. And okay, maybe I hoped Lani might be able to help you lighten up and relax, because that’s pretty much what she’s always done. Even when she was working on that reality show, she was more about taking