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  A momentary pause, then, as Xavier stared at me with an unreadable expression on his face, his fingertips tapping against his thighs. What went through his mind? What caused him to continually pull away from the obvious openings I was leaving him? He was a mystery. Fascinating, compelling.

  "I...if you will take a seat, I will cast us off," he said.

  So, I took a seat and Xavier untied the line between the launch and the boat. He cast us off and started the engine, which gurgled to life and then caught with a throaty, powerful rumble. He spent a few moments examining the layout of the controls.

  "Can you drive this?" I asked.

  He nodded. "It is somewhere between a car and an outboard motor boat. I have not operated one of these particular kinds of boats before, but I think I will be able to manage."

  He slowly reversed us away from the larger boat, and then brought us in a wide arc so our bow--or is it prow?--was facing open water. With a gentle nudge of the throttle, the bow lifted and the engine snarled, and an immediate sense of momentum slammed me against my seat, making me cackle in surprised laughter.

  Xavier barked a laugh as he backed off the throttle. "This is no ordinary launch."

  "It does seem kind of powerful."

  "Um, yes, rather. Once we get away from the docks and into more open water, I would like to open it up, if you would be agreeable."

  I laughed, leaning back in the seat. "You could just say, 'I want to go fast.'"

  "Would you be frightened if I opened the throttle all the way?"

  He'd barely touched the throttle and I'd been pushed against my seat; if he opened it up all the way, how fast could we go? The idea sent a thrill of excitement through me. "That sounds like fun. Do it!"

  We trundled away from the docks, slowly, so as not to send a wake that would rock the other boats as we made our way away from Ketchikan. A mountain loomed green, with a white crown, behind the little city, which was tucked in against it, nestled in the teeming mass of the forest. Water rippled silver and green and blue, winking diamonds in the sunlight. There was a cruise ship approaching, huge and white. A trio of seagulls wheeled directly above us, cawing and screeching, as if discussing us far below them.

  I breathed deeply of the clean, fresh air, soaking up the sunlight on my skin. I let my eyes close for a moment, enjoying the breeze against my face, the sounds of the gulls, the rumble of the engine underneath me...the peacefulness. I didn't even have my phone with me. No assistant, no script to memorize, no upcoming shoots or events, no galas or brunches, no leaks or rumors.

  "This is perfect," I murmured.

  "Mmm. Yes, I agree." Xavier's voice was low.

  I peeked through my eyelashes, and saw that he was watching me as he navigated us away from land and past the approaching cruise ship, which towered dizzyingly above us as we passed it. His expression was obvious, this time: appreciative, raking over me from head to toe, openly, thinking I still had my eyes closed. I liked his gaze on me; I enjoyed wondering what he was thinking, not knowing what he would say or how he would say it, what cute and funny thing he would do next. I enjoyed the anticipation of wondering how this thing would go. There was clearly an attraction between us, but how would it play out?

  "Are you ready?" he asked. "I'm going to open the throttle."

  I sat up, whipped off my hat and clutched it in my hands, grinning at him. "Go!"

  He'd used a contraction, I noted with interest.

  He pushed the throttle forward in a smooth arc, and the powerful engine responded beautifully, roaring to life. The bow lifted until I couldn't even see the water ahead of us, and then we leveled off as our speed increased. Our bow sliced the water, sending white spraying off to either side, wind whipping against us. I laughed as he continued to nudge the throttle forward, until it was as far as it could go. The sense of speed was so intense it forced disbelieving laughter out of me. I owned this thing? How had I not known? Had I even been told the yacht came with a freaking speedboat?

  Xavier angled us toward open water, or what seemed like it. I had only a vague notion of the geography around here, and I felt like we were in a channel of some kind, so we weren't heading for actual open ocean, just a more open section of channel.

  "This is fun!" I shouted in his ear, grabbing his arm.

  He only smiled at me, glancing down at my hand, wrapped around his bare bicep. His jaw tensed, and his eyes narrowed, and he sucked in a deep breath, held it, and then I watched as the tension bled out of him. He smiled again, relaxing, and turned back to driving the boat. Did he have an issue with being touched, maybe? He didn't seem to mind it, now, so I held on to his arm, letting my fingers press into the smooth skin and hard muscle.

  After a few minutes of daring, breathtaking speed, he backed off the throttle until we reached at a nice, leisurely pace, cruising down the channel. Another mile or so, and another channel or something opened up on our left, and he angled toward it. I was enthralled with the lush, green beauty of this place. I'd seen plenty of movies set in Alaska, and they always featured scenes exactly like the one I was in: forested hills to either side, placid, glassy water, clouds wisping across the sun, fish leaping up to splash dramatically, gulls wheeling and cawing. I scanned the sky, half expecting a bald eagle to soar overhead, keening. Really, the movies didn't do it justice. The beauty was almost overwhelming, making something in my chest expand and throb, the sheer, unadulterated, majestic beauty filling some primal void inside me. The natural beauty just...resonated.

  "It's really, really amazing here, Xavier," I said, after a while.

  He nodded. "I grew up here, and it never gets old."

  I spent the next few moments openly examining Xavier's features, the sharp lines of his jaw, the column of his neck, his thick, dark eyelashes. Curly, artfully messy, thick black hair. He really was incredibly beautiful. Hot wasn't a good enough word, not to properly encompass what he truly looked like. Hot guys were a dime a dozen. Truly beautiful men? Not so much. He was masculine, utterly so-- in his posture, in the way he carried himself, his stride. Even sitting at the wheel of the boat, he was effortlessly and unconsciously posing in a definitively masculine posture, one arm tossed over the side, the other hand confidently steering the boat. His vivid green eyes were always moving, always darting, and his hands were never still. One would slide around the steering wheel, tracing the leather, the stitching, the seam, and the other would be tapping at his knee, or his thigh, or plucking at his shirt or a thread of his jeans--other than his eyes and his hands, though, he was otherwise utterly motionless, a strange dichotomy of stillness and restlessness.

  A thought occurred to me. "We were going fishing, weren't we? I don't think there's any tackle or whatever it's called on this boat."

  He gestured ahead, at a large red and white seaplane with two propellers, which was anchored in the distance, off to one side of the channel, engines off. A pair of figures could be seen sitting on the floats, fishing poles angled up and away, lines vanishing into the water. "That is my brother, Brock. He has plenty of extra fishing gear, which he has agreed to loan to me. We were going to be in the same area, so I figured we may as well just meet up with them for a moment."

  Meet up with his brother.

  Shit.

  SHIT.

  I froze, tensed.

  I had sunglasses on, and a hat. My hair was in a ponytail, pulled through the back of the hat. I was still recognizable, though. Shit. How did I get out of this without getting recognized? I didn't want to have to switch into entertainer mode. I didn't want to have to answer questions or sign autographs or take selfies. I wanted to sit in a boat alone with Xavier and pretend I was just any other girl.

  Was that so much to ask?

  3

  Xavier

  * * *

  I glanced over at Low as we approached the seaplane: she sank lower in the seat, tugged her hat brim down, and settled her bug-eyed sunglasses higher on her nose. Was she shy? She didn't seem shy, but for some reason her
body language indicated, as best I could read, that she was uncomfortable in this situation for whatever reason. Was it me? Was she a recluse? She had allowed me aboard, and was willingly spending time with me, so it didn't follow that she was a recluse.

  I knew I would not be able to figure it out or understand on my own.

  "Are you uncomfortable in some way?" I asked.

  She shrugged one shoulder. "You said it would be just you and me. I wasn't expecting to meet anyone else."

  "It's just my brother and Claire. We're only staying long enough so that I can borrow Brock's fishing supplies."

  She hesitated, and then sighed. "Okay."

  I slowed the boat to a stop as we pulled alongside the seaplane; Brock and Claire were sitting on the float, fishing poles in hand. As we stopped, Brock waved, and Claire wiggled her fingers at me.

  "Nice boat, Xavier," Brock said by way of greeting.

  "It belongs to my friend, Low," I said, gesturing at her. "Low, this is my brother Brock, and this Claire."

  "Nice to meet you," Low murmured.

  Claire's brows drew down as she glanced at Low, but then Brock hopped up onto the float and reached into the open door of the airplane. He withdrew a tackle box and two fishing poles, with bobbers and lures already set, the hooks latched onto the eyelets near the reel so the lines wouldn't dangle or tangle. He handed these to me and I set them onto the backseat of the boat behind Low and me.

  "Didn't know you liked fishing," Brock said, smirking at me.

  "I do not enjoy it as a sport or activity by itself, but I do enjoy an opportunity to sit in the sunlight with my new friend. This activity provides a diversion to pass the time."

  "Where'd you guys meet?" Claire asked.

  "I was running, and she was doing yoga," I answered.

  "What he means," Low put in, "is that I fell and hit my head, and he helped me."

  Claire was still frowning at Low. "You look familiar."

  Low shook her head, an uncomfortable, tight smile on her face. "I'm new to Ketchikan, just here for a little vacation. I'm sure we've never met."

  Claire shrugged. "Well, whatever. Enjoy the beautiful day!"

  "Thank you," Low said, relaxing a little. "You too."

  Claire began squealing excitedly just then. "I've got one! Brock, Brock, Brock! I've got a fish!"

  Sure enough, her pole was bent almost double, and the reel was singing as the fish ran out the line.

  "Start reeling, baby!" Brock said. Claire started reeling, but the wrong direction. "No, babe, the other way. Reel it forward, Claire."

  "Shut up, it's an honest mistake. I want the fish to come to me, so I figured I'd have to reel it toward me." She was reeling and reeling, giggling and cackling. "God, this is hard!"

  "Lift the tip, Claire--no, like point the rod toward the sky and pull backward and then reel like crazy," Brock said.

  Claire did as he instructed, but shot Brock a saucy look. "I'm gonna lift your tip as soon as Xavier and his girlfriend leave."

  "Yeah, right into your mouth."

  "Really? What am I gonna do, kneel down on the water like a blowjob Jesus?"

  "HERESY!" Brock shouted, laughing. "That's got to be, like, at least fifty Hail Mary's."

  "I stopped being Catholic a long-ass time ago, babe. Me and Jesus have an understanding."

  "Yeah, he understands that you're a dirty slut." Brock tossed his rod into the doorway and snatched Claire's rod from her. "You're not reeling, Claire! You're gonna let the fish get away!"

  Claire watched as Brock fought the fish, which by all appearances was a rather large one, and then turned to straddle the float, reaching for Brock's fly.

  Glancing at me, she winked. "I'd motor that boat on out of here, kids, it's about to get nasty."

  Low's head swiveled and she fixed me with a stare I could feel through her sunglasses, and then she turned to glance back at Brock and Claire. "She is not about to--oh, yep, she is. Wow. Okay, ummm, Xavier, she's--wow. I mean, damn, girl, way to deep-throat, holy shit."

  I wasn't watching, as I'd learned very quickly that Claire and Brock had no qualms about their sexual activity, and when Claire wanted Brock, she didn't care who was around. "Just...look away, Low. That's just how Brock and Claire are."

  I already had the boat puttering forward and away before Claire warned us, but not before I heard Brock start to curse. Once we were a few feet away, I nudged the throttle forward a bit, still slowly so as not to create a wake.

  "That's a big motherfucking fish, Claire!" Brock said, clinging to the strut of the wing with one hand and lifting the fish on the line into the air with the other.

  Claire's response was unintelligible, sounding something like "omph-oh, om-uh-omph," which could have meant anything.

  "Would have been kind of funny if you'd sent a big wake to knock them over," Low said, glancing at me with a smirk.

  "I suppose that would have been humorous. I did not think of that."

  Low shook her head. "So they're...open."

  I shrugged. "Yes, they are rather blase about conducting sexual encounters regardless of whomever may be watching."

  "Is all your family like that?" Low asked.

  I shook my head. "No, not at all. There is a lot of sexual innuendo flying around pretty much constantly, but no one is willing to do whatever whenever the way those two are."

  "I mean, she just started sucking him off right then and there. You're his kid brother, and they don't even know me!"

  "Well, she did warn us."

  "Still, that's a little...kooky, if you ask me."

  "My family is...far from normal."

  "I didn't mean for that to sound so insulting."

  I smiled at her, hoping it was a reassuring smile. "I did not take it as an insult. My family, as I said, definitely falls within the definition of kooky. Particularly Claire. She is very...aggressively and openly sexual, I suppose one might say."

  "Yeah, that's for sure." She glanced back once more. "Wow, she's still going."

  "I have a feeling they will spend more time fornicating than fishing."

  She turned to me with an odd look in her eye. "I mean, except for the part about having an audience, I think that actually sounds...fun."

  I blinked at her. "I...um..."

  How was I supposed to respond? Was that an innuendo directed at me? A joke? A direct come-on? I had no clue how to interpret her expression nor her words. A roiling in my stomach and a tightening in my jeans and the thunder of my heart made me aware that I was hoping, absurdly, most likely, that she meant it as a direct come-on to me, that she wanted that with me. But how to know? If I acted on that assumption and was wrong, I would be mortified beyond all comprehension.

  "We are approaching the spot I have scouted out as the best location for potentially catching fish." I knew my cop-out response was cowardly, and hated myself for it.

  My head was buzzing with thoughts, wishes, desires, fears, doubts--a swirling maelstrom of them.

  How could she want me? That's ridiculous.

  But yet...she met me on the boat clad in nothing but a partially tied scrap of silk, so surely that meant she did not--at the very least--mind me seeing her in a state of undress, which would logically lead one to theorize that she also felt a measure of attraction to me. She has put her hands on me, innocently, albeit, several times; does that hint at potential desire?

  What about her reticence to meet my brother and Claire, and her obvious discomfort around them?

  Her latest comment contained more than one potential meaning and inference, all of which would lead me to theorize she felt some kind of chemical, physical attraction to me. But how could she be attracted to me? I'm so awkward, so unsure. I am not at all confident like Bast, or Zane, or Bax. Or any of my brothers, really. Women are attracted to confidence, I have read--so how could she be attracted to me, when I lack that kind of direct, alpha male bravado?

  Perhaps I could fake it.

  Perhaps if I did, she might b
e attracted to me.

  And if she were to be attracted to me, she might be inclined to pursue a physical relationship with me. Which I want.

  But also, I am scared of that.

  I doubt very seriously my own ability to carry out such a thing, to go through with it, to allow it. Any kind of physical contact is difficult for me, even my own. Her hand on my arm nearly sent me into a paroxysm of discomfort.

  But yet...there was something beneath that discomfort, a sizzle, a tingle, a fleeting, ephemeral sense of...perhaps. Of potential pleasure. A lessened discomfort at her hand on my skin.

  "Xavier?" Low's voice was confused.

  I was jolted back to awareness, and realized I'd stopped the boat and had been staring into nothingness, lost in my thoughts.

  "My apologies. Sometimes my own thoughts consume my attention to the exclusion of all else." I glanced at her. "You appeared noticeably uncomfortable around my brother and Claire. May I ask why?"

  We were bobbing in the middle of the channel, and I powered the boat forward, taking us past Beaver Falls where it was unlikely we would see any other people. Low didn't answer my question right away. It wasn't until I chose a spot a few hundred feet offshore and shut off the boat that she spoke again, several minutes after I'd asked the question.

  "I guess it's just that my job requires me to be around people constantly, and I came up here to be alone."

  "You are with me, are you not?"

  She smiled gently. "That's different."

  "It is? How?" I produced the fishing poles, stood up, unhooked the lure from the eyelet, and cast the line far out into the water, and then handed the pole to Low. "The little round yellow and orange thing floating on the water is called a bobber. If it dips underneath the surface of the water, it means you have a fish on the line, and you should rotate the knob and handle on the side of the reel forward, away from you, as you saw my brother do."

  She nodded. "Easy enough."

  "That is literally all there is to it."

  Low and I sat in silence for a while, and I began to think she'd forgotten my question again.

  "It's different because..." She glanced at me, pausing. "Because I like hanging out with you."