The two instantly pale at her threat and quieten down.
Red colours my cheeks, because it’s obvious I was the topic of their conversation.
“What were they saying?” I whisper to Sasha.
Squeezing the lotion onto her legs now, she answers, “Stupid shit, nothing to worry about.”
Okay, now I know it was something bad. “Come on, just tell me,” I urge her, a tiny shake in my voice. There’s this awful, self-destructive part of my psyche that makes me want to know things, even when I’m one hundred percent certain it’s going to hurt my feelings.
I can still feel Robert staring at me. He’s so caught up in looking at my chest that I don’t think he heard what Victor and Jacob said, either. That fact alone is almost enough to make me forget the current issue – almost.
“Lana, chicken, they’re a pair of arseholes when they want to be. Don’t pay any attention to them,” she tells me, her eyes soft.
I look to the brothers now, not understanding their meanness. They were nothing but mannerly and polite the last two times I met them. Victor catches me studying him and at least has the decency to look a small bit shamefaced. Sometimes people say mean things because they’re insecure, I try to remind myself. Sasha’s right; I shouldn’t care.
Giving up, I sigh and answer quietly, “Okay, then.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Robert asks me suddenly, at long last broken from his distraction of staring at my body. “You’ve gone all pale.”
Sasha glares at him, shaking her head as an indication for him not to push the matter. Unfortunately, Robert doesn’t take her silent warning.
“What? What did I miss?” he asks loudly.
“Nothing,” says Sasha as I turn to him, facing away from everyone else.
“Victor and Jacob said something rude about me, but Sasha won’t tell me what it was.” I keep my voice as low as possible so that nobody can hear but him.
Robert’s brown eyes study me for a long moment before he cocks his head to the guys and shouts, “Oi, fuckheads, if you’ve got something to say to Lana, you pass it by me first. Are we clear?”
The brothers seem confused by Robert’s sudden aggression, but they don’t talk back to him. Instead, they nod and return to their previous conversation. Robert dusts his hands. A feeling of heat sweeps through me. Robert defending me is not something I’m used to. Normally he’d be the person I need to be defended against.
“All taken care of. Now you can enjoy the beach,” he says, running a warm palm down my arm. Despite his heat, I shiver a little. I hope he doesn’t notice.
He’s laid out his towel, but he hasn’t yet taken off his jeans and T-shirt. Given this, I feel decidedly naked. I’m sitting down and he’s kneeling by me, which means I have to look up to meet his eyes. This close I can smell him, and the scent burns into my memory. He smells like clean skin with a hint of aftershave. I have the sudden desire to discover what brand he wears.
I also want to run my hands down the corded muscles of his neck just to see what it feels like. I’ve never felt that kind of an urge before. For a moment we float in a bubble of our own locked gazes, and it’s strangely erotic. When we were younger I was always aware of how attractive he was, but now there’s something extra there, something primal. Every tiny hair on my arm where he’s touching me stands on end. I might be mistaken, but I think he notices this, too.
My throat suddenly goes very dry, and I swallow hard. “Yeah, um, thanks.”
He pulls his hand away and I miss the touch, the connection. Then he draws his T-shirt off over his head, and although I saw him shirtless that first night in the bathroom, his chest is even more glorious out here in all this golden sunlight. When he starts on his belt buckle, I turn away completely.
The next time I look at Robert, he’s wearing a pair of black swimming shorts and little else. God, I feel a blush creep over my cheeks, and I have to try hard not to stare. His body is just so…perfect. For me, anyway. It’s sad to think that he’s the only person I’ve ever really had a crush on. I’ve found other guys attractive, of course, but none of them made my stomach clench with a mixture of butterflies and anxious fear the way Robert does. It’s not exactly a pleasant feeling, but it is an addictive one.
It’s always been him. Even when I hated him, there was love buried deep beneath it. Now that he seems to genuinely want to be my friend, the love is rising to the surface. I need to figure out a way to keep it buried.
“Hey, Sasha, come play some Frisbee with me,” Alistair calls. “None of these lazy wankers want to play.”
Sasha jumps to her feet. “Sure, Al.”
They find a stretch of sand to play in and begin flinging the thing back and forth to one another. Robert pulls an expensive-looking digital SLR camera from his bag and starts taking snaps of everyone. I think he might be doing it to piss Kara off, because he has the flash on even though we’re outdoors, and there’s a really loud clicky noise when he takes a shot.
A minute later he falls down beside me and throws his arm around my shoulder.
“Say cheese,” he tells me, a big smile on his face as he holds the camera up and takes a picture of us together.
“Um,” I say, not knowing how to react. I probably have a dumb, confused look on my face in the photo now.
In a passive-aggressive move to drown out the noise of Robert taking pictures, Kara picks up her phone and puts on some really loud dance music before returning to her sunbathing.
“God, I never noticed how shit her taste is,” Robert mutters to me quietly, pulling a bottle of sun cream from his bag and rubbing it into his bare chest. I stare at his fingers before pulling my eyes up to his face.