It seemed an innocuous enough suggestion to Burke—walk along the beach for a bit, loosen up, maybe come up with some kind of a game plan before plunging into the investigation. The beach ran the length of the resort, so it would give Burke a chance to scope out at least part of the territory. He also might meet some of the other guests.
The sand slid soft under Burke’s feet, the sun almost uncomfortably hot on his bare shoulders. The constant throb of the waves drowned out the conversation of other beach patrons. Regan walked a few feet behind him. Occasionally he caught a flash of her auburn hair in the corner of his eye, as the wind lifted it, and spread it across the width of a warm breeze.
Taking this case might not have been his first choice for how to spend the next few days, but at least it had brought him to a pleasant location. The sun was warm, the sand soft, the women lovely—
Burke came to a sudden halt, staring. Then he realized he was staring and looked away, feeling heat fill his face, and it wasn’t from the sun.
“Regan,” he said, his voice strained thin.
“Yes?”
“That woman over there,” he said. “She’s naked.”
He dragged his eyes away and looked at Regan.
And blinked.
She was naked, too.
The dental floss bikini hadn’t covered much, but now he realized exactly what a profound difference it had made. The Regan in the bikini had seemed to him to be a girl pretending to be grown up. But this Regan was a woman.
He tried very hard not to look at the evidence, but with is displayed so blatantly he found his efforts to be futile. The breasts, small but perfectly formed. The slope of her hips. The glint of the ring in her navel. And—though he did his best to keep his eyes from going there—the coppery curls between her legs.
“Put your clothes back on,” he snapped, the curtness of his voice surprising him.
Regan’s eyes sparked. “It’s perfectly legal on this beach, and you can’t stop me.”
He couldn’t explain it to her. Couldn’t tell her what seeing her sleek, nude body was doing to him. He wasn’t ready to admit it to himself—how could he bring himself to explain it to her? So he just stood there, staring at her, trying perhaps to stare her down. He wasn’t sure. His brain was too muddled by the blinding image of her. She was so clear and clean and bright it made afterimages in his retinas.
Under the force of his glare, she tilted her head back and smirked. “Feel free to drop your shorts.”
“Not in your lifetime.” Maybe if he hadn’t gone startlingly erect. Or maybe not. Definitely not.
“Typical male. You like to look, but you won’t display.” She spread her arms and twirled around once, giving him an intriguing look at her tight, round ass. “Well, I’m going to work on my tan.”
Resolutely, he looked away from her. “What tan?” He resumed walking, looking straight ahead. “You’ve never had a tan in your life.”
“Then give me points for persistence.”
He looked at her, then away, as she deliberately thrust her breasts at him. She seemed determined to remind him she was all grown up, taking a “you’re not the boss of me,” stance. Overdone, as usual.
He shook his head sharply, jolting his brain back to the problem at hand. “Let’s just get on with this.” Regan jogged to catch up, walking shoulder to shoulder with Burke as he continued. “If Heath is really involved in some kind of industrial espionage, why would he be doing it here?”
Regan shrugged. “He took a sudden, unplanned vacation. There were some mysterious notations in his day planner I’ll have to tell you about later. Based on that, my guess is he’s meeting somebody and the vacation is a cover.”
Burke shook his head. “You snooped through his day planner? Why didn’t you just hack into his computer files? You could have gotten all the evidence you needed and avoided all this surveillance.” He knew she could have, too. Her first year of college, she’d been caught hacking into a secured database under the tutelage of a boyfriend who didn’t exactly have her best interests at heart. The head of the computer science department had put a stop to it. He could have thrown her out of school; instead he’d convinced her to take one of his classes. As Paul told it, that was all it had taken to get her hooked. Nice, Burke thought, that at least one of her escapades had led to something positive.
“I thought you knew all this professional stuff,” Regan chided. “I wanted legally obtained evidence—it tends to stand up better in court.”
“Correct, of course, but I’m surprised you held back long enough to think about it. We’ll just have to keep watching him to see if we can figure out what he’s up to.” As he’d hoped, concentrating on the facts helped him ignore his hormones. “Have you seen anybody else here that you recognize?”
“Not yet.”
“If you do, you’ll let me know, right?”
“Of course.”
Burke’s easy walk turned to a trudge as he continued, turning his attention to the beachside cabins and the people wandering the sand. Clothing optional it might have been, but a good many people had opted for clothes. Strangely, most of them were men.
Burke wondered if Regan was right, that he refused to walk around nude because he was insecure. Then he decided it didn’t matter. If he was insecure, he was getting too old to do anything about it.
Still, his curiosity had been piqued, and he couldn’t help the next question.
“Is this kind of thing a hobby of yours?”
“What?” She turned to face him, walking backwards. Burke allowed himself one quick sweep. What she lacked in curves she made up for in panache, carrying herself with a complete lack of self-consciousness. There was something truly appealing about a woman who wasn’t concerned about her looks. Not that she had anything to be concerned about. Unconventional she might be, with her pierced navel and the little tattoo—which, truth to tell, he was starting to like—but there was nothing at all wrong with her body.
“What?” Regan repeated, and Burke realized his mind had wandered so far he’d forgotten what he’d asked her. He shook his head and a piece of short-term memory fell back into place.
“Running around naked in public. Is it a hobby these days? I figured you would have outgrown it.”
“Sure, when I’m allowed.” She smirked. “I think if everybody was naked, we’d all be a lot more sensible about each other.”
“Oh, really.”
“Absolutely. Which is why you should take off your pants.”
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