“What are you doing back?” he asks.
I blink and force my gaze off his body and back to his face. But, much to my own annoyance, the sun feels too hot, my skin too flushed, my barely-there libido kicking into gear. And now that he’s closer, I see shadows of the boy I sometimes still dream about. I recognize the light blue eyes that used to talk to me without words.
The smile he’s wearing, though, I’ve never seen that. It’s…hard to explain. Cocky and dismissive. Arrogant and annoyed.
I’m annoyed too—at how my body is reacting to someone I haven’t seen in over a decade. “What difference does it make?” I ask, my tone snarky and aloof. “Or did you bet on that too—”
My last word is cut off when the dock under my feet falls away, and I drop like a rock. I barely have time to get out a sound before I plunge beneath the surface.
2
Levi
“Well, shit.” The words roll out of me on a wave of laughter.
Once I start, I can’t stop, and I’m doubled over when her head pops above the surface again. “What the hell”—she sucks air—“is wrong with you?”
My gut muscles release, and it takes me a second to catch my breath. “Damn, that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.” I straighten with a smile that just won’t quit. “I warned you, but, then, you never did listen.”
She treads water in a circle, looking for an exit, but I can see there’s no easy way for her to get out of the water short of swimming several hundred yards to a shallower section of the lake.
I toss out the ski rope. “Grab on. I’ll tow you to the beach.”
“You couldn’t even give me a hand?”
“Wouldn’t want to drop my beer.” I sit and stretch out my legs and prop them on the side of the boat, ankles crossed. I take a long pull from the bottle, watching the best entertainment I’ve had since my partner and best friend since kindergarten, Mitch Fielding, fell into a sink hole near one of our developments and was stuck there for hours. “You sure don’t need my help. You’ve always had mermaid in your DNA.”
Laiyla had won every swimming and breath-holding competition ever held at the lake in our younger years.
“Prick,” she mutters without any heat, reaching for the rope.
“Still sassy, I see. Thought the corporate ladder would numb you out.”
She doesn’t wait for me to reel her in, she does that herself, hand over hand until she drags her butt to the swim platform at the back of the boat, facing away from me. “I lost one of my boots, and they were freaking expensive. Goddammit.”
The water has turned her long hair, golden on top and darker underneath, almost black. It’s not as long as it used to be, but it still stretches past her toned, tanned shoulders and collects in a V between her shoulder blades. A rivulet of water trails from the bottom of the V and slides down her spine and beneath the edge of her blouse as she catches her breath.
It’s the same path my lips traveled once upon a time.
She drags off her other boot then her socks and pushes them into the lone boot.
“Are you going to sell this place?” I ask, studying the way her blouse—if you could call it that—had gone transparent, showing the rich tone of her olive-tinted skin through the fabric. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the flip side of this view. “Because I’d like to be first on the list to buy it.”
“You?” She glances over her shoulder, all attitude. “How could you possibly afford a place like this?
“I’ve been mowing a lot of lawns since you’ve been gone, and I guess I could cut back on beer.”
That gets a laugh, but she turns away, so I miss the smile. And I’m dying to see her smile.
“I’m not sure what I’m doing,” she says. “I’ll have to talk to my people.”
I snort a laugh. “Listen to you—your people.”
She doesn’t take the bait.
“Everyone in town wants to know what you’re gonna do with this place. And I, for one, have been wondering why it’s taken you so long to decide. Because in the meantime”—I use my bottle to gesture to the slowly disintegrating marina and its neglected houseboats—“it’s rotting away. I gotta tell you, this would cause Otto real heartache.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Her snap draws my gaze back to her face, on full display with her wet hair swept back.
I’ve seen a few pictures of her over the years. I sometimes went in search of them if I was feeling melancholy, usually when yet another relationship blew up in my face, or when nostalgia hit me.
She didn’t have much of a social media presence, and all I’d been able to find were a few professional headshots on the Saxon Hotels website sitting above a description of whatever position she held at the time. It was all so cold and sterile, so utterly unlike the woman I’d loved, that I finally stopped looking.
Last I read, which was about two years ago, she’d been the chief operating officer of the western hemisphere for Saxon Hotels.
But in person, she is even more gorgeous than I remember. Man, why couldn’t she pale in comparison to my fantasies? Now, her warm eyes flash with emotion, and her face shifts with micro expressions that pull me in and hold me captive. In person, she takes up space inside me. I can’t quite figure out where, but she’s in here. Only now, staring at her sitting on the end of my boat where she spent so many unforgettable summers, am I aware that she never really left.
“I have no idea what you know or don’t know,” I say, trying to keep my tone indifferent. “I know so little about who you are now, I wouldn’t begin to presume I could guess.”
“Presume?” she turns a little more, bending the leg closest to the boat and exposing the smooth, tan length of her inner thigh. I’ve kissed that path too. Something I sure as shit don’t need to see or remember. “Who the hell are you?”
“How long are you in town?”
“A week. I’m meeting some girlfriends for a getaway.” She glances toward the parking lot where her car, a silver BMW coupe, sits, so obviously out of place. “Can you take me back to the lot? Judging by the state of the marina, I’m going to have some cleanup to do at the house before my friends get here.”
I’m confused. “House? What house?”
She gives me a what-house-do-you-think look. “Grandpa’s house.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
“If you’re not going to drop me, I’ll swim. Just let me know so I can get going.”
I lower my feet and lean forward.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she wants to know.
All the fun and games drain out of me, and my heart takes on weight. “Are you serious right now?”
She pushes to her feet and releases a frustrated exhale. When she turns to climb over the edge and into the boat, I get one long exquisite look at her, clothes clinging to her dripping-wet body, and all my brains fall to my feet.
Curves, curves, and more curves. Way more than I remember. Her breasts are full and heavy, her stomach flat and toned, her waist small and tight. And water is still streaming down those legs that always did go on for-fucking-ever.