Free Too Darn Hot by Pamela Burford

three gulls squabble over a crab carcass. A flash of blue about a hundred yards down the beach caught her attention, and she stopped. She squinted to make out the form loping toward her.
    “Good Lord,” she whispered.
    As Eric closed the distance between them in ground-eating strides, jogging along the tide line, she stared, mesmerized. Her greedy eyes took in every detail, from his sun-burnished, breeze-ruffled hair to his long, powerful legs and bare feet. Above royal blue running shorts hugging lean hips, his broad chest was bare. A wave broke and surged onshore, to tease his toes and lick away the footprints stretching behind him in the wet sand.
    Although his eyes were shielded by dark glasses, Lina could tell he hadn’t yet noticed her. All concentration was on his run. She stood close to the dune, out of his direct line of sight. As he neared her, she noticed the graceful motion of his arms, the sleek ripple of shoulder and chest muscles, the way his sweat-sheened body gleamed in the sunlight. Not once did he falter, his body as smoothly efficient as a well-oiled engine.
    Make that a warm, supple, thoroughly male engine, Lina thought, remembering all too vividly the intoxicating thrill of his aroused body pressed against hers during their stolen minutes behind The Cookhouse...the whisper-soft seduction of his lips against her bare shoulder under the starless cloak of night.
    Groaning, she tried to redirect her thoughts to the purpose of this excursion. When he was about fifty feet from her, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and pushed her hair behind her ear.
    His head pivoted in her direction. His churning legs lost their rhythm and the well-oiled engine stumbled to a graceless stop. A slow smile spread on his face. Gesturing for her to follow, he turned and jogged away from her, disappearing behind the dune.
    She followed the curve of the beach, emerging at last in a secluded nook tucked into the sheltering embrace of high, sloping ridges of sand. The breeze was minimal here, the sun now almost directly overhead, bathing the entire cove in the crystalline light of early summer.
    Here Eric had left a large yellow beach towel and a small plastic cooler, along with a gray T-shirt and white sneakers. His back was to her as he removed his sunglasses and wiped his face and chest with the towel. He extracted a bottle of ice water from the cooler and tipped back his head for a long swallow.
    Lina hated the way her breath grew shallow at the sight of Eric’s barely covered body, hated the way she couldn’t keep her gaze from dropping to zero in on his well-shaped buns. The thin blue nylon of his shorts served more to enhance than conceal what lay beneath. With merciless acuity she recalled their encounter behind the restaurant, and the way his denim-clad muscles had tightened and flexed when she grabbed his bottom to pull him closer.
    She dropped her sneakers to the sand and shoved her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs, fighting a crazy impulse to reacquaint herself with the feel of him. A gull shrieked and swooped in low, startling her, and she laughed nervously. He dropped the bottle back into the cooler.
    She broke the silence. “This is a lovely little cove. Do you come here often?”
    He gave her that toe-curling smile. “If you’re trying to pick me up, you’ll have to do better than that.” He squatted beside the cooler and struggled with the release catch. “I hate using this contraption, but when I don’t, the gulls have a feast. The minute I turn my back, bags and wrappers get torn open, food goes flying. It’s not a pretty sight.” He fished out a foil-wrapped parcel and wagged it at her. “Have you had breakfast?”
    “Nope.”
    “I’ll share my Fluffernutter with you.” He unwrapped the sandwich.
    “I don’t believe it.” Peanut butter and sticky white goo—Marshmallow Fluff—oozed from between slices of white bread. “It is a Fluffernutter! I didn’t think they even made