Riding the Thunder - Deborah MacGillivray [31]
“Done!” Netta did a pass with her hand, pointing to the chaise lounges. “Let’s plop our fannies down and watch the show. Better than television, and less fattening than chocolate.”
“I thought there wasn’t anything you liked more than chocolate.” Asha spread a towel and then stretched her legs out on a chaise.
“Sugarplum, if I had your brother near for 365 days a year, I’d give up chocolate in any form.” She studied Asha intently. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“You giving up chocolate?” Asha laughed, shifting her eyes to the swimmers, and enjoying the show.
“Would it create a sticky situation if I were to see Liam?” Netta’s expression was serious.
“You mean you cannot see him?” Teasing, she waved a hand before Netta’s eyes. “Maybe you’re suffering an overdose of chocolate.”
“Get stuffed, Asha. I’m serious. You and I are nearly ten years apart in age, but our friendship isn’t something I’d risk lightly.”
“I get along with you like a sister,” Asha said. “As far as Liam, you’re adults—you don’t need my approval.”
“I want it, though.” Netta glanced at Liam, who lagged a meter behind Jago now. “I’m a couple years older than he is. I’ll be forty come January.”
“That means anything? You don’t look it. If I hadn’t taken your job application, I’d guess you were about my age. As for my idiot brother, you have my blessings. You’d be good for him. Sometimes he’s too wrapped up in the horse farm. I worry about him should this sale go through. Also, he’s lonely, I think.”
Liam surfaced under the diving board, held on to the drain with his left hand, and snorted water from his nose. Jago did another lap, then surfaced to take hold with his right. Their words were low, but then their laughter rang out, filling the glasshouse.
“I won the bet.” Asha wiggled her toes.
“I’m telling you, if you don’t latch on to Jago Fitzgerald and hogtie him, you’ve got rocks for brains, sugarplum. There aren’t many with such elegance, raw sexual power, grace and smarts, and he’s got them in spades.”
“Jago scares me, reminds me of a beautiful black wolf. He hangs back, watching, singling me out of the herd. It spooks me.”
“Yeah, I thought that when he showed up. I told you—he was waiting for you.”
“Why me?” Asha mused, slightly unsettled by the idea. Her little voice warned she needed to consider that further, but then her eyes met his across the pool, locking, and all thoughts fled her besotted brain.
“When you have the Big Bad Wolf cutting you from the pack, you learn to smile and play Little Red Riding Hood. ‘My what a big tongue you have—all the better to . . .’” Netta’s sexy laughter taunted Asha. Rising, the blonde untied her robe. “Remember, wolves mate for life. Now, that drop dead gorgeous brother of yours reminds me of a Siberian tiger. That loose-gaited stalk belies all that muscle. Excuse me while I go bungle in the jungle.”
Netta strolled the length of the pool, long-legged and barely covered in her baby-blue striped bikini. Her saunter was natural, with no jiggling, as if she’d learnt to walk with a book on her head like a runway model. Both men couldn’t take their eyes off the sexy blonde. It wouldn’t have surprised Asha if the water at that end of the pool rose ten degrees. Netta stepped up on the diving board, then jack-knifed perfectly into the water.
Jago turned back to Asha and lifted his brows, challenge in his dark eyes. Quite odd, she read his mind so clearly, that almost tangible link between them rising again. His unspoken question could not have been plainer—Can you top that?
Asha was suddenly riddled with near crippling self-consciousness. When she’d changed in the bungalow, instead of donning her royal blue suit that she usually wore, the super sexy one she’d purchased years ago for a honeymoon trip to the Bahamas snagged her eye. The wedding had been cancelled two days after she’d bought it, when she’d caught her fiancé giving the stiff one to his blonde-bimbo secretary. The swimsuit