Damien expected Mandy’s touch to be soft and gentle. He’d misread her again. Her strokes were bold, sensual, the lotion making a squishing sound between her fingers as she moved across his back methodically.

“It’s not being difficult when you’re right. And I caught you just in the nick of time—your shoulders are pink already.”

“I’ve only been out here for ten minutes.” Damien fought the urge to close his eyes and sigh. He had forgotten how good it felt to have a woman so close, hovering behind him, warm and alive and concerned for him. To smell her, to have her hair brush against him.

“What’s this? A tattoo? Why, Mr. Sharpton, I’m shocked.” Her voice was teasing.

Damien stiffened. He only had one tattoo and he did not want to discuss…

“Jess. Who’s Jess?”

Pain kicked him in the gut, pain he thought he’d buried down deep under a layer of work and exhaustion. What could he say? Jess had been his wife. His beautiful, successful wife, and she had been murdered. How was that for a little light, lounging-in-the-sun conversation?

Since the tattoo was on his upper arm, he rarely looked at it and could effectively ignore that Jessica’s name was scrawled on his skin. Branding her to him forever, the physical manifestation of what was interwoven in his soul. Jessica had laughed that day he’d come home with it, her blond hair falling over his chest as she had inspected it. It had amused her, pleased her that he had taken such a dramatic way to display his feelings.

What I love about you, Damien, is the way you love me.

How many times had she said that?

He had lost himself in her all those years ago, and had never found a way back out.

“A woman,” he said. “She was a woman.”

Mandy’s fingers slowed. Her voice cooled. “Is this woman still in your life?”

God, if she only knew how much Jessica was still in his life. Damien dug his toes into the sand. “No. No, she hasn’t been for a long time.”

“Then you should get her name turned into something else. A celtic cross, or flowers. No, flowers are too feminine…maybe barbed wire, or you could switch Jess to Jesus.”

Damien felt the tightness in his chest lessening as Mandy spoke. She was doing the unimaginable—talking about Jess with a flippant, irreverent attitude. But she didn’t know the whole truth, and for some reason, hearing her joke about his tattoo eased the peach pit that had lodged in his throat.

“It could say ‘Jesus is my home boy.’”

A startled laugh burst out of his mouth, surprising him. “That doesn’t really sound like my style.” And it sounded downright hilarious in Mandy’s British accent.

Her fingers strayed to his stomach, and she wiped back and forth. “Extra sunscreen.”