Chapter Twenty-three
HOW stupid was he? If he was ever going to stroke out, King thought, this would be the time. When had he ever thought of sex as making love? He didn’t even consider the phrase viable.
Good thing the hellcat was pragmatic and comfortable with her sexuality. He might not have gotten away with that slip with another woman. He liked Harmony. Usually, if he liked a woman, he couldn’t have sex with her, or if they had sex, friendship was out of the question. Harmony was different. “You ever have a man friend?” he asked, resurfacing to find her waiting.
“No, I grew up in a convent. What the hell kind of question is that? Of course I’ve had men friends. You thought I was a virgin?”
“See, there you go mixing sex partner with friend. That’s why men and women can’t be friends. Women don’t have it in them.”
“Whoa. Wait a minute. Are you asking me to be your friend? Because you didn’t blooming say it that way. You asked—”
“I get my mistake,” he said. “Yeah, I think we could be friends.”
“Friends . . . who . . . have sex together?”
“I love the idea! Perfect, isn’t it? No commitments. No dating pressure. No, ‘why didn’t you call?’ We could play it by ear, do lunch, catch a quickie, roust a ghost, fight a jack-in-the-box.”
“Yeah,” she said with a raised brow. “I do those things with all my friends.”
“So . . . our friendship would be unique. I can live with that. You?” He pulled himself from the water and sprinted to the bananas.
“King Paxton, don’t you move!”
He froze.
She scoffed. “What do you have on your back?”
He lowered his head. “Busted.”
“You bet, bozo. A mermaid tattoo. No wonder you went overboard about men getting them and not women. Care to explain?”
“My feet are freezing. Can I come back in the water first?”
“Only if you bring the bananas.”
Raising them, he streaked back and jumped in, his arm raised to protect the bananas.
“Black,” he said, surfacing. “I told you.”
“Edible,” she said. “Mermaid?”
King sighed. “We were sailing The Sea Horse in the Pacific, anchored near an island, went exploring, got rip-roaring too-stupid-to-live drunk, and we all got tattoos.”
“We being? You, Aiden, and Morgan?”
“Who else?”
“What kind of tattoos did they get?”
King laughed. “Mine is tame compared to theirs. Aiden’s, well, never mind. You’ll never know, because I swore I’d never tell, or die.”
“That bad?”
King shook his head, but he chuckled. “I got a mermaid because I liked her curves.” He skimmed his hand up Harmony’s hip and along the side of a breast as he said it. “Like yours.”
“Speaking of which . . .” She broke off a huge banana, felt him up beneath the water, then she felt up the banana. “See, it just doesn’t measure up.”
“Well, you gave it a pretty hard workout.”
“I mean the banana, dumb ass.”
“Hey, is that a name to call a friend?”
She laughed. What a sound. Like tinkling glass stars. He took a lock of her hair, brought it to his nose, and sniffed. “Peppermint’s gone.”
She reared back. “I’ll wash it again. You smelled the peppermint? You got a nose like a bloodhound, or what?”
“It’s normal enough,” he said. “Like what’s that perfume you use? Makes a man really take notice.”
“I make it myself. It’s patchouli, frangipani, and honey-suckle oils.”
“You should bottle it.”
“I’m sure somebody already has,” she said. “What are the three scents you remember most from your childhood?”
He didn’t have to think long. “Chipped beef, shoe polish, sweat.”
“In the summer?”
“Military camp. Same smells.”
“Some childhood.”
“You’re right. It sucked. But I always got a couple of weeks here on the island. That was cool. What three scents do you remember from your childhood?”
“Patchouli oil, smudge sticks, fresh lavender. I was always trying spells to bring my mother back and turn us into a family.”
“You were a baby witch.”
Her laugh charmed the pants off him. No, those were already off. All the better to—
“Like you were a baby soldier. We’re pathetic. No wonder we play well together. We never played as kids.”
“If I knew about spells for families, I probably would have tried a few.”
“Watch and learn.” She took a banana and raised it in the air:
 
“In the cave of the Goddess
Mid the glitter of jeweled dew
Grant these poor souls a family
Hearts and homes to return to
Loved ones to cherish,
Nurture, protect, and love
So below as above
All that’s holy, hear my plea
Harm it none; this is my will; so mote it be.”
 
“Did you just spell us a family?”
“Not that it ever worked, but yeah. Who knows, maybe one of these days, our absentee parents will land on our respective doorsteps. I assumed yours were absent, with military school and all. Where were they?”
“My mother was/is career army. I lived at home with my dad until he ran off with a hairdresser. Then I lived at school. You?”
“A woman hairdresser?” she asked.
He laughed.
“Hey, I like that sound.” Harmony echoed his thoughts of her. “It’s a rusty laugh, but I could get attached. My mother ran before they cut the cord. Flew the nest before Dad came to pick us up from the hospital.”
“That’s why you said you and your sisters raised each other?”
“Yep. Dad was an absentee father even when he was present, usually with a liquor bottle in his hand. Now he’s flown the coop, too. Maybe he found my mother, and they’re lost together.”
“My father wanted a woman who hung around. The hairdresser hung, until he died, actually, but she didn’t want me hanging with them. I know, because I asked.”
Harmony placed her head on his chest and stroked his arm, and King thought her empathy felt almost as good as sex. “It’s hard to ask for family support,” she said. “I’ve done it, too. We found our older sister—from my father’s first marriage—when we needed her most. She didn’t know we existed, but she took us in. Her name’s Vickie. She was our best break ever. The shop was hers. Now we’re partners.”
This was getting too touchy-feely for him. He needed to get them back to earth. “You want a banana for dessert?” he asked.
“No thanks. Maybe we should save a couple for breakfast.” She made curls in his wet chest hair. “We can have each other for dessert.”
King set the bananas by the pool and floated into the kiss. He liked her sexual willingness. Ah, who was he kidding? He liked a lot of things about her. He wanted to make her childhood better. Weird. He lifted her and impaled her as they kissed. She sighed and moved along his shaft. Slick, sweet, and hungry, a seductress, pleasure her only goal. Life didn’t get any better than this.
A cough echoed in the cavern, and Harmony pulled from the kiss. She looked over his shoulder. “Hey, scraggly stud muffin. How come you keep finding us like this? You a Peeping Tom or something?”
“I’m a disappointed rescuer, is what I am. And I’m thinking this doesn’t bode well for our upcoming date.”
“It doesn’t,” King said, turning Aiden’s way, using his body to hide Harmony’s. “You want to turn around so the lady can dress?”
“Sure, but . . .” Aiden picked up the lemon lace panties and bra and inspected them.
“Give me the damned things,” King snapped.
“How about I give them to the lady?” Aiden asked hypothetically, as he gathered the rest of Harmony’s things and put them on the edge of the spring.
King helped her out of the water and watched her dress, well, he guarded her privacy while she dressed. Yeah, right. That’s what he was doing, but he couldn’t find her sea horse tattoo before she gave him his clothes.
Harmony slicked her wet hair back and went to Aiden. “How did you get down here?”
“The same way you did, I presume?” He indicated the ice slide.
“Funny, we didn’t hear you coming.”
“We shouted our heads off. Thought you cracked yours in the fall.”
“I’ll bet we were underwater,” Harmony said.
“Swimming,” Aiden said, “that’s what you were doing?”
“Are they down there?” Morgan called.
“They are.” Aiden tied a rope around Harmony’s waist. “Here comes Harmony. Take care.” He tugged on the rope, and she slid up the slippery slope.
Aiden faced him. “You’re gonna hurt that girl bad when you dump her. I hate to see it happen, because she’s a hell of a lot better than the usual.”
“She and I are friends,” King said, sounding foolish even to himself.
Aiden barked a laugh. “If you’re only friends, then I’m damned well gonna take her out on that date, after all.”
“It’s up to her,” King said, itching again to hit something or someone. He and Harmony must be friends. She made him laugh, the way she was laughing with Morgan above them right now. She asked things he hated talking about, but her, he answered. Who knew you could talk to a woman? They were more than sex partners. He had no hold on her, but as her friend, he’d warn her off Aiden. She wasn’t looking for commitment, but Aiden was tired of roaming, even if he didn’t know it yet.
King rode the rope up to the cave and put an arm around Harmony, as if he’d missed her. He thanked Morgan, and Aiden, when he joined them, but he didn’t think Harmony’s thank-you kisses were necessary. “Where are the bicycles?” he asked.
“On their way back to the castle. It’s dark out, you know. Everybody’s been out looking all day. Aiden and I came to work on the dining room and heard the wailing before we hit the dock.”
Harmony adjusted her hoodie to cover her Orgasm Donor shirt. “What made you think to look here?” she asked.
“We didn’t think of it right away,” Aiden said, “but King tried to get in when we were kids. I was with him a couple of times, but his nanny was strict, and she kept him in tow.”
King closed his eyes as Harmony rounded on him. “You had a nanny?”
“Don’t go there.”
“But I thought you went to a military summer camp.”
“He did, but even his nanny was military,” Aiden said, “with a regime that could kill a normal kid. King got sentenced to two weeks with her here every summer, but he loved it.”
“Will you shut up?” King snapped. “You gossip worse than a woman.”
“I beg your pardon,” Harmony said. “I’m a woman, and I’ve kept a hell of a lot more secrets than you have.”
“Don’t bet on it, Hellcat.”
“You bared your soul to me down there.”
“Wrong. My soul’s a lot darker than you’ll ever know.”
“So much for friendship.” Harmony walked to the castle in a huff.
“I don’t think you’ve ever kept a female friend so long,” Aiden said, and King decked him.
In the castle kitchen, he found Harmony talking to a teenager who was chewing her hair, staring at the floor, and giving one-word answers.
“What’s going on here?” King asked, and the teen jumped.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Did your boat run aground?”
“I’m looking for somebody,” the kid mumbled.
“Somebody here?”
She nodded.
King rolled his eyes. It had been a long day, his butt cheek ached, and his fuse was short, but Harmony put her hand on his arm, and he calmed. Damn, she was using that peace maneuver again, and he wished to hell he didn’t like it so much.
He sighed and tried to look into the teen’s face. “What’s your name?”
“Reggie,” she said.
“Reggie? That’s no name for a girl—Regina?”
She raised her head just enough to meet his eyes. “Daddy?”
Light-headed, King tried to make sense of the rag-bag teen when a little boy, tiny, dark as Regina, peeked around her torn skirt.
“Are you my grampa?”