Her laugh went straight to his groin and sent him into hard-on overdrive.

Why her? Benedict Jones asked himself for the hundredth time in as many days.

Her name was Lucy Moon.

When she first started coming to The Sinking Ship, Benedict callously labeled her. Fat girl used by the pretty girls to make themselves look better.

Part of the Spring Break college crowd slumming in the locals' bar. Using Daddy's money to buy her friends by buying their drinks.

But she had that laugh. Her laugh was unselfconscious, uninhibited, full of joyous notes that made everyone in the bar stop what they were doing to smile at her.

People gravitated to her table. Not just because the pretty girls hung around her. They wanted to talk with her, tell her jokes, maybe become the lucky one to trigger her laughter.

She drank strawberry margaritas with gusto and ate the bar food as though it was prepared by a Master Chef. His cook, retired from thirty years in the Navy, most of it in the galleys, heated up the pre-made hot wings, flipped pre-formed hamburgers, and fairly strutted in the cramped bar kitchen when the waiters popped in with "Lucy's compliments to the chef."

The Spring Break crowds ebbed and flowed through the bar throughout March. They left behind money and lurid stories, trashing the Island like the flotsam and jettison littering the northern part of the beach not manicured and sanitized for the tourist traffic.

During the third week of college kids, Benedict realized Lucy still came to The Sinking Ship three or four days a week with a different bevy of girls and boys in tow. He also noticed the majority of the boys had the strong, lean muscles of the surfer crowd and began to spot some to of the local surfers in the midst of out-of-towners.

Semana Santa, the Holy Week between Palm Sunday and Easter, caused barely a blip in bar's primarily locals customer base. The upper class Mexicans from Monterrey and Mexico City had no use for a small bar with indifferent food.

But Lucy still came. Sometimes she came with surfers, sometimes by herself. She never stayed alone at her table for long. Very soon after she wrapped her lips around the sugar-rimmed glass of her first strawberry margarita, people started drifting to her table, inviting her to play pool, join their domino game.

After Easter, the locals breathed a sigh of relief when they walked in, knowing they had a small break before the summer crowds ramped up the action again. By then, Lucy was a local.

Now she played dominoes with locals at the corner table. Benedict easily identified her companions: a maid from one of the hotels, a tattoo artist, and a masseuse. Benedict wasn't able to see the table from his spot behind the bar, but the way Lucy and the hotel maid were laughing, he figured the other two women were getting ready to lose big. Lucy held a domino above her head flaunting her last one.

She slammed the domino to the table. Her laughter rang out again. She jumped up and danced around the table. Her dark brown hair undulated in soft waves doing its own dance across her shoulders.

Lucy's jeans stretched so tight around her ass, Benedict found himself amazed they didn't split with her butt wiggling enthusiasm. Under her tight pink tee shirt, love handles snuggled above her beltline. Not that she needed a belt because there was no way in hell those jeans were going to come off without some serious tugging.

He had a sudden image of himself snuggling up to her body, then tugging those jeans off while Lucy encouraged him with her hands and laughter. He pulsed against his zipper.

Benedict tried to tell himself her body looked ridiculous, the way she danced around the table.

But his mouth dried and his dick hardened until he hurt. His dick didn't know it was the twenty-first century and Rubenesque bodies were passe. It went primeval.