Free Tempted in the Tropics by Tracy March

the car, car on the left side of the road.”
    “Awesome, right? I’ve never driven like that before.”
    He winced. “Good to know.”
    She shrugged one of her shoulders. “I figured we’d go to the drive-in volcano on the way.”
    “Drive-in volcano?”
    “Yep.” She reached into her tote bag, pulled out a brochure with a smoky gray pit shown on the front, and handed it to him. “Simmering, steamy, and sulfur-smelling.”
    Lane scrunched his nose, then gazed straight into Paige’s eyes. “You had me at simmering and steamy.”
    She held his gaze for a beat, then blinked, a sultry smile at the corners of her mouth. “Good to know.”
    Was she actually flirting with him? The other day he could barely get an entire sentence out of her. Maybe being in the tropics, two thousand miles away from Maple Creek, had them seeing things from a different perspective. Or she just felt stuck with him until they got to the resort, and she didn’t want an argument about who was going to drive.
    They headed out to the SUV and Lane loaded their luggage. Paige settled in the driver’s seat, with him riding shotgun. As much as he’d rather be driving, he’d have a hard time concentrating on the road with Paige sitting next to him, her smooth, toned, and distractingly bare legs stretched out in front of her. He’d been trained to look at bodies clinically, but legs like hers really challenged his discipline.
    “Since you’re stuck with me until we get to the resort…,” Paige said. Had she read his mind? The magic thing was making him a little paranoid. “I was thinking we could call a truce.”
    So she’d been setting him up with her flirting. Whatever her reasons, he had to admit he’d enjoyed it. “A truce?”
    She nodded. “I kind of apologize for what I wrote in the letter to Mrs. Hawthorne.”
    “You kind of apologize?” Of course she couldn’t say she was sorry like a normal person.
    “Take it or leave it, Doc.”
    Lane tapped his fingers on the console, deliberately making her wait. “Guess I’ll take it, if that’s the best you can do.” He winked. “And I sort of regret how things have gone, too.”
    One corner of her mouth turned up as she put the key in the ignition.
    “Sure you don’t want me to drive?” he asked.
    She raised one of her perfectly arched eyebrows. “That would be against the law, Doctor. You haven’t filled out the proper forms and, as I recall, you’re quite a tight-ass about the rules.”
    She was right. He had come across as a tight-ass, and for good reason. But she had no idea what his reasons were, and he wasn’t going to explain them to her now. “Did you just call me a tight-ass?”
    Paige surprised him by blushing a little, then nodding defiantly and setting her chin.
    “Were you talking figuratively or literally?” He surprised himself with the question. Was he actually flirting with her ? A rush of excitement buzzed through him like a couple of energy drinks’ worth of caffeine.
    “Yes.”
    He laughed for the first time in who knew when.
    She smiled, seeming pleased with herself, and started the engine. “Buckle up, Doc. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.”
    …
    Lane had caught Paige’s eye from all the way across the airport—all tall and sexy, with his usual messy hair, dressed in worn-out jeans and a sort-of-snug T-shirt the same shade of green as his eyes. Thanks to the tee, she’d gotten her first glimpse of his ropy arm muscles, and a tease of six-pack abs when he’d lifted their luggage into the SUV. Sylvia and Liza couldn’t have hooked her up with a hotter travel companion, but they could’ve picked one she could actually get along with. Even so, she wasn’t going to let that stop her from seeing the sights she’d picked on the way to Caldera.
    Driving was a little trickier than Paige had thought. She’d managed to handle the opposite-side-of-the-car, opposite-side-of-the-road thing pretty well, but the real freak-out was the crazy local