WHEN SHE WOKE, Casey pulled the cotton sheet up around her neck against the ocean breeze spilling in through the open windows. The surf heaved itself against the beach outside, sighing with the effort. She blinked at the bright sunlight and the spinning paddle fan above her bed, reconstructing the night before. A half-empty decanter of port and the service staff melting for good into the darkness beyond the torchlight. A kiss under the moon.
She rose and showered and followed the scent of fresh coffee to the veranda outside the kitchen of the main house. Graham sat in a cotton robe with a glass of carrot juice, reading the New York Times.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Only ten,” he said. “Run on the beach?”
“Coffee first,” she said, pouring herself a cup from the silver urn and sitting so she could face the ocean.
“Good news and bad news,” he said, lowering the paper.
“Bad news first.”
“I got a text from our Captain Rivers. His engine blew a valve so he had to cancel our dive.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Good news is that he assures me we’re on for tomorrow and I was able to get Fifi Kunz to take us out for a half day to see a wreck I know you’ll love. Fish everywhere, like a galaxy of color.”
“Fifi Kunz?”
“Fifi.”
“And a real wreck?”
“Which is why it’s going to be so incredible,” Graham said. “I love an adventurous woman.”
“You’re just trying to get in my pants.”
Graham leaned toward her, eyes glittering, and said, “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
“I’m your enemy now?”
“No, your morals are.”
After lunch Fifi pulled his charter boat Hercules up to the beach and took them to a wrecked eighteenth-century English warship called the Endymion. Only thirty feet down, Casey was comfortable enough to lose herself in the ancient cannons, coral, and sea life. Before she knew it, Graham was tapping the gauge of his air supply and pointing toward the surface.
That night, Casey took the lime-colored Catherine Malandrino sundress from the closet and pulled her hair up, clipping it with a spray of purple orchids. When she met him on the terrace for a drink, his jaw fell and she blushed. They had the grilled lobsters he’d promised and they were as good as he said they would be. After a barefoot walk on the beach, they kissed again and she let his hands have their way until his fingers crept up her thigh from beneath the hem of the dress and she whispered good night.
“I knew it,” she said.
“What is it you want?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll let you know. I’m not shy.”