Honor Bound by Joey Hill (speld decodable readers .txt) 📕

He smiled at her. “It was a long time ago, Ella. I’m okay with it.”

“You don’t have any brothers or sisters?”

“No. Just me.”

“So there you were at twenty-one with no family. That must have been hard.”

His gaze drifted out to sea. “I managed. I had my job, my friends.

I focused on those. Took college courses at night because the foreman told me I had a head for numbers and I should do something besides work my body to death like my dad had done. So I listened to him, and instead of partying my paychecks away, I went to school and got my degree. Eventually I moved up the ranks and ended up starting my own business.”

“A self-made man.”

He shifted his gaze back to her. “Something like that.”

“I admire your drive and ambition. A lot of guys that age would have pissed away their future. You didn’t.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to end up like my dad.”

Ella could only imagine how difficult it had been for him to lose so much at such a young age. Maybe that explained his inability to commit to any woman. Maybe he was afraid of losing someone he loved again.

She understood that way of thinking. The thought of loving someone that deeply

again—and then losing them—was unfathomable.

The line tugged and she focused her attention back to the fish. So did Clay, who moved behind her.

“Give it a little line,” he said, noticing she’d tensed up and was pulling against the straining fish. “You don’t want it so tight that it breaks.”

She unwound the reel to relax the line.

“Okay, now start reeling him in again, nice and easy this time. Bring him in closer. This is your game now.”

Clay stepped back and let Ella and the crew do the rest. By the time they hauled the squirming fish on board, Ella’s face was red, and she was dripping with sweat and utterly exhausted. But she grinned in triumph. She’d done it. The crew held it up and took her picture next to it. Not even half the size of Clay’s marlin, but to Ella it was magnificent.

“She’s a beauty,” Clay said as Ella left the stern, wiping her hands and face with a towel.

“That was so much fun. And grueling. I can see why you love it.”

He patted her shoulder. “You put some energy into it.”

She laughed. “Yeah, my arms feel like limp noodles right now.” She shook them out, needlelike tingles shooting down to her fingers.

“You’re tough. You can handle it. I’ll give you a massage later.”

She tilted her head back to accept the kiss he offered. “I look forward to that.”

After their first night together, they’d been inseparable. They’d gone snorkeling, sightseeing, bodysurfing and fishing over the past few days. And whenever they weren’t doing something outside, they were inside making love with a furious intensity that left Ella exhausted and more than satisfied.

Being with Clay had been more than she’d expected out of this trip. Being with someone she knew, someone who knew her, who understood her and had no expectations about who she was—now, that was a bonus. On the work site, Clay laughed and joked with her, treated her just like another guy, which was what she expected. He treated her like a colleague, and she respected him because of that.

But this past week he’d treated her like a woman. There was a comfort level with Clay that she could never have experienced with a stranger. How foolish of her to expect that she could have come out here and chosen some random guy and had the same kind of experience she’d had this week with Clay.

It had been like a honeymoon—without the love and marriage. They’d laughed, talked, held hands, kissed, made love and talked some more. They knew each other better than any two people could. And what they didn’t know they’d started to learn about each other in the past week.

It had been perfect.

Almost too perfect. Because she’d discovered she could care about a man again. That maybe love wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Every moment she spent with Clay made her realize that the time with him had become about more than just sex.

Her no-strings week had become something more binding—at least to her. She didn’t know what it had meant to Clay. Probably nothing at all. Just fun, no strings, exactly what he had promised her. Exactly what she had wanted.

At first.

After the boat docked they spent the rest of the late afternoon at the beach and the pool, just swimming and lying in the sun sipping drinks. It was relaxing and fun and, after her hard workout of marlin fishing, just what Ella needed. She even fell asleep under a shaded cabana with Clay massaging her aching shoulders. It wasn’t until he pressed his lips against her neck that she woke.

“Sun’s going down and you have goose bumps.”

She’d been sleeping hard, hadn’t even realized how tired she was.

They went upstairs—she had ended up staying the entire week in his suite—and Ella showered. She came out wrapped in a towel. Clay was on the balcony.

“What are we doing tonight?” she asked.

He turned to her, his gaze raking her body. God, she loved when he so unabashedly appreciated her like that and made no excuses for doing so. “What haven’t we done already?”

She laughed. “I don’t know. We’ve seen every inch of this island, been in the water and on top of it. We’ve fished, done a luau, gone to shows. . . . So, I guess we’ve done it all—except one thing.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“We haven’t gone dancing.”

He laughed. “I told you. I don’t dance. I want you to leave this island with good memories of me.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “You can’t be that bad.”

“Really. I can.”

“Okay. What would you like to do tonight?”

He stood and walked over to her, slid two fingers inside her towel between her breasts.

“Maybe stay in. Order room service.”

Her breasts swelled, her entire body flushed at his