“Myrna, don’t do this to yourself.”
“And if it’s a girl, I like the name Olivia.”
He guessed they were having this conversation whether he wanted to or not.
“That’s pretty,” he said. “And I’d like to name my son after my dad, but we are never naming a baby after my mother.”
Myrna turned her head and glanced up at him in surprise. “I thought you were close to your mother.”
Close wasn’t the word he’d use, but they got along okay. “It isn’t that,” he said. “One Claire Sinclair in the family is enough.”
She grinned. “How about Blaire Sinclair?”
He shook his head slightly. “No.”
“Flaire Sinclair?”
Brian laughed. “Flaire? Is that even a real name?”
“Or if we have triplets, we could name them Claire, Blaire, and Flaire Sinclair.”
“Triplets?” Having more than one at a time had never occurred to him. “I’m going to have to get a second job.”
Her mischievous grin told him she was teasing, but then it faded and her expression turned serious.
Myrna slid her free hand over the inside of Brian’s forearm and the tattoo of a dagger and bloody roses there. Her finger stroked the name woven among the thorns and petals. “If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Kara.”
Brian’s heart constricted and his arm tightened, crushing Myrna against his side. Would the pain of tragically losing his little sister ever leave him? “She’d like that,” he said, his breath caught in his tight throat.
Myrna rubbed his back, loosening muscles he hadn’t realized were knotted with tension.
“I think breakfast is getting cold,” she said after a long moment.
He released his grip on her and she shifted away, gifting him with a long, lingering kiss before she settled to sit beside him in his pile of pillows. While she retrieved the trays of food at the bottom of the bed and settled them over their laps, he lifted his gaze to take in the spectacular view of the ocean. In the privacy of their curtained oasis, it was as if he and Myrna were the only two people on the beach.
Well, almost. A person standing in the waves was the only exception to their solitude. The man was facing him and yet it took Brian a moment to recognize that the man was Kev and that he was staring right at him. How long had he been watching them? Kev lifted a hand in greeting and then slunk off out of view. Brian had had it with that dude’s invasiveness. He moved to climb from the bed and give that guy a piece of his mind and few pieces of his fist. Myrna looked at him, brow lifted, when he bumped the tray she was trying to settle over his lap.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.
“That guy—Kev—was standing out there in the waves watching us.”
Myrna glanced over her shoulder. “He’s gone now.”
“I aim to find him and make him realize that we’d like a little privacy. Since he doesn’t seem to understand things the easy way, he’s about to have it drilled into his head the hard way.”
“You’re going to pick a fight with him?”
“I thought I’d start with a nice sucker punch to the nose.”
Myrna grabbed his arm before he could climb from the mattress.
“Don’t do this now,” she said, her tone pleading. “It will ruin our entire day. And I wanted today to be perfect for you.”
“How can it be perfect when some asshole keeps spying on us?” He was still pissed at Kev, but Brian was sort of—okay, extremely—weak when it came to refusing his wife’s requests.
“He’s gone now,” she said, ever the voice of reason. “If you catch him at it again, I won’t stand in your way.”
He knew she would change her mind when the fists started flying, but she was right. Getting into a fight and maybe getting himself arrested or thrown off the hotel property would ruin their perfect day together. He leaned back into his pillows again and tried to breathe evenly so he could cool his anger.
“I forgot to mention it last night,” Myrna said as she settled beside him and lifted the lid from her plate of poached eggs, bacon, and toasted English muffins. “His fiancée was hanging around the front desk when I was talking with the concierge. I’m not sure it was a coincidence. It seemed as if she was eavesdropping on my conversation.”
Brian shook his head in annoyance. “Do you see what you married into?” he grumbled.
She sent him a beguiling smile, her head tilted just so, and his breath caught.
“Oh, I see it all right,” she said, her eyes fixed on his.
And suddenly he didn’t give a flying fuck about his fame or people encroaching on his privacy. All he cared about was keeping a smile on this woman’s face. And punching some jerk in the nose wouldn’t make her happy. He hoped that sharing breakfast and stealing a few kisses would.
After he finished his delicious breakfast with its great view and even better company, a server took their empty dishes and left them alone. The breeze blowing in from the ocean made the white curtains billow gently, but he was still a little warm. He peeled his shirt off and tossed it on the end of the bed.
“That’s better,” he said with a contented sigh.
“I’ll say.” She knelt behind him and said, “How about a massage?”
“That sounds wonderful.”
Her touch on the bare skin of his back was soothing at first—massaging away all the tension in his muscles, driving away every care. But as was the status quo with his wife, her touch soon turned sensual as her hands began to explore his chest and belly and biceps.
He turned his head to offer her a look of faux disapproval, but the heat in her gaze lit a fire within him that would not be extinguished until he possessed her. He dragged her beneath the covers and slid her skirt up her thighs, pulling impatiently at her panties until she took mercy on him and removed them. He jerked the front of his shorts down, too impatient to remove them entirely. Like a self-conscious novice making sure every naked body part was covered, he found the slick, beckoning warmth between her thighs and buried himself deep within her. His strokes were languidly slow as he focused on the feel of her beneath him, around him, and touching places within him no one else had ever reached. This woman consumed him on so many levels. On every level. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have found her.
He used a rhythm that matched the waves colliding with the beach at their feet and allowed the music in his soul to enter his mind and fill his heart. He always heard music in his head when he was inside her. He’d advanced to the point where he didn’t demand she wait while he wrote the riffs and solos down on paper, or on the sheets, or even on her skin, but he still heard the notes as clearly as he had the first time they’d made love.