“Tomorrow should be a great day on the water,” Marie said as she wiped the counter. “I bet you’ll have a fantastic haul. Marlins and groupers galore.”
“Excellent. That’s what I want to hear.”
“What else will you do while in town? Snorkel trip? Dive? Stingray kiss?”
He arched an eyebrow at the last one but quickly answered her, resting his elbows on the bar. “Let me tell you something. I’ve always wanted some island art. Gonna just come right out and admit it,” he said, as if he were confessing, even though he was clearly teasing. “It’s kinda like a thing of mine. Some painting of a fish jumping out of the water,” he said, gesturing to the right, to indicate the art gallery run by Eli’s new woman. He’d wandered past it earlier and gotten an eyeful of unframed canvases of angles, squares, and trapezoids in a showing of modern geometric art by an artist name Lynx. Yup. One of those one-name-only artistic types. A bunch of the frames had SOLD signs on them with a price tag of either $5,000 or $10,000. Too hard to tell from his quick visit if any of those canvases were the ones Eli had ferried out of the United States or, frankly, if said art would even be hanging on the wall at a gallery. But he wanted a local’s opinion on the gallery, and no one was more local than a bartender. “Is that what I can get a few doors down?”
She whipped her head back and forth. “No way. You find that kind of stuff at cheap little tourist shops—” She clasped her hand on her mouth. Her brown eyes widened in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to seem like I’m saying bad things about tourists.”
Jake laughed and reassured her. “You’re all good. You’ll have to work pretty hard to offend me.”
She wiped her hand across her brow. “Phew. I’m always just saying whatever comes to mind,” she said, then dropped her voice to a whisper, since the bar was starting to fill up with other customers. “Not always the best trait for a bartender. Anyway, that gallery is more for fancier things.”
Privately, he wondered precisely how fancy. Like $10 million fancy.
“Like my Renoir?” he asked drily.
She shot him a curious stare. “You better be joking. You don’t really have a Renoir, do you?”
“Maybe I do. He was famous for his fishing scenes, right?”
Marie picked up the baton easily. “I believe the Louvre has some of those, don’t they? Anyway, the gallery sells some fancy stuff, but nothing on that level. If you decide you want to turn that Renoir into diamonds instead, we’ve got plenty of shops for that, too.”
“You’ve got a big diamond business on the Islands, right?”
“That we do. The great thing is when you buy one in the Caymans, it’s tax-free. Business here is booming. All along the main street, and even the little shops on the side streets near the banks. Down on Wayboard Street—those guys have the best deals,” she said, washing some glasses.
“So Wayboard Street is where I should go after I sell my Renoir to the lady next door?” he said with a wink.
“Absolutely,” she said, pointing far off in the distance, as if to show him the street. “You pass this swank restaurant Tristan’s, take a right, take your next right, and”—she stopped to issue a dramatic pause, fluttering her fingers like she was onstage—“and prepare to be dazzled.”
He laughed and filed that data in the mental banks.
A group of new customers walked in, so Marie scurried to the tables, and Jake took out his phone and entered some notes. He finished his beer, tossed some bills on the bar, then some extra for Marie. That woman was a gold mine so far.
When he stood up to leave, he spotted a dartboard on the wall. Satisfied with his work so far today, he ambled over to it, picked up a few darts, then backed up several feet. Narrowing his eyes as if zeroing in on a target, he mimed tossing the dart once, twice, then a third time.
“You’re shooting too high. You’ll miss.”
As he let the dart fly, his brain registered adjectives.
Sexy. Pretty. American.
He turned his head in the direction of the voice and . . . holy smokes. His assessment needed to be revised.
She was . . . beautiful.
Dark-blonde hair. Killer body. Legs a mile long and sculpted to toned perfection. Standing at the bar, knocking back a glass of whiskey. Totally at ease in her element.
He snapped his gaze to the dartboard. The dart was nowhere to be seen on the board. He’d missed by a mile, as predicted. The effect of a gorgeous woman. He turned his focus to her. “Seems I’m in need of a dart coach,” he said, quirking up the corner of his lips, his acknowledgment that she’d bested him.
Setting her glass on the corner of the bar, she strolled past him and bent down.
Don’t stare down her shirt. Stop gawking at that ass. Look away from the most perfect pair of legs you’ve ever seen.
As she plucked the dart from the ground, he tried to follow his own orders. He really tried. But he was failing on all accounts. Especially when her short little tank rode up and he caught sight of a sexy-as-sin belly button piercing.
Ah hell. That was just too tempting.
He drew a quick breath, as if that would settle the blast of lust threatening to camp out in his body right now. As she stood, she flashed him a bright smile, the kind that only an all-American girl could pull off. She looked that way, too—athletic, blue-eyed, and fresh-faced. Her hair was piled high on her head in some sort of ponytail contraption.