Free Operation Saving Daniel (Entangled Covet) by Nina Croft

cook? That’s new.”
    “No I can’t. That’s why you’re helping me. You can stun him with your culinary prowess.”
    “What culinary prowess?”
    “Oh dear, poor Jason.”

Chapter Six
    A handful of steps led down to the pool at the Spanish villa and Lissa hesitated at the top. Below her, Daniel lay stretched out on his stomach on a sunbed, his head resting on his folded hands. Sophia perched beside him, rubbing suntan lotion into the golden skin of his back. Her scarlet bikini showed off her perfect figure. Curvaceous in all the right places, she made Lissa feel like a stick by comparison.
    “Bitch,” Julia muttered from beside her. “Look at her smug expression. She thinks she’s caught him.”
    “She has.”
    Sophia glanced up and met Lissa’s gaze. Her hands slowed, her movements becoming sensual, gliding lower to slip beneath the waistband of Daniel’s dark blue swim shorts.
    “Excuse me while I go lose my lunch,” Julia muttered.
    “I might join you,” Lissa replied. The sight of Sophia touching Daniel, as though she had every right to, made her nauseous. She wanted to stride across, drag the other woman away from him, and toss her overheated ass into the pool. Sophia obviously needed cooling down.
    Daniel must have sensed something because he shrugged off the hand, rolled over, and sat up.
    Whoa. Where had those muscles come from? He was totally ripped. “Has your brother been working out?” she asked.
    “I guess he must have been.”
    His skin stretched taut over the smooth swell of muscles. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his stomach flat, almost concave and ridged with muscle.
    Something nudged her in the side, and she jumped.
    “You’re gawping,” Julia murmured. “Not that I blame you. When did my brother get so hot?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He’d always been good-looking, but this was way beyond handsome. He was…mesmerizing. She’d felt that hard body against hers the other day but seeing it in the bright sunshine was a completely different matter.
    “You’re still gawping and I think The Evil One has noticed.”
    Lissa shook her head and kick-started her brain. She dragged her gaze from the truly drool worthy sight of Daniel in nothing but a pair of swimming shorts and looked at the woman at his side. And wished she hadn’t. Sophia’s body matched his flawless physique—and Lissa hated her.
    The perfect couple.
    She turned her attention back to Daniel and found him watching her. Holding her gaze, he lifted his hand and rested it on Sophia’s shoulder, curled his fingers around her neck, and pulled her close against his body.
    Sophia snuggled in, turned her head, and kissed him full on the mouth. Daniel’s other hand came out and he cupped her chin and deepened the kiss.
    For a second, Lissa’s hands clenched at her side, and then she relaxed her fingers one by one.
    “Yuk,” Julia muttered.
    “Isn’t it sweet?” Pamela, Julia’s mother, came up behind them with a tray of cocktails, and Lissa thankfully turned from the show in front of her. “I’d despaired of Daniel ever settling down and finding someone to love and now it’s happened.”
    Lissa couldn’t convince herself that love came into this little scenario anywhere. She glanced back at the couple. They were still kissing, but as she watched, Daniel opened his eyes and stared straight at her. His expression was totally detached. As though he felt nothing.
    Finally, he drew back and put Sophia from him. She pouted but rose from the bed, and went to stretch out on the one next to him, bending one knee and posing like a model.
    Ignoring his girlfriend, Daniel still watched Lissa, and she stared back as she untied the belt of her robe and shrugged out of it. Beneath it, she wore a one piece she’d bought on her shopping trip with Julia. The saleswoman had called it a mono-kini—a very skimpy bikini with a diagonal strip of material that crossed her belly.
    It suited her. While she was still a little