“Look,” he said, “Let me carry it. It’s not a commentary on your worth as a human being. It’s heavy, and you’re—”
“Weak?” she interrupted as if daring him to agree.
“That wasn’t what I was going to say,” he shot back, annoyed that she still thought so little of him. “I was going to say new at this. Plus, this thing probably weighs almost as much as you—no exaggeration. Here, you carry our paddles.”
Pursing her lips, she stepped away from the board. She saw this as a defeat somehow, when really it was simply about the laws of physics. She didn’t like situations she couldn’t control, he knew, but she was being unnecessarily obstinate.
And he was being unnecessarily pissy. But he couldn’t help it. They’d spent so many years at each other’s throats that it was sometimes impossible not to fall back into the old patterns with her. He hoisted a board under each arm and marched on ahead, knowing it was better not to speak.
In a few minutes, they’d reached Ward’s Island beach, which was on the north side of the island, so it faced the lake proper and not the harbor.
“It looks like the ocean,” Amy said, eyes wide.
“Yeah, it’s a big lake,” he answered, feeling himself thaw a bit as he let the boards drop to the sand.
She started rubbing sunscreen into her legs. He tried to ignore her, setting up the boards and oars at the edge of the water. By the time he finished, she was working on her arms.
“Want me to do your back?”
Where the hell had that come from? In what universe exactly was it a good idea for him to rub lotion onto her back?
She paused. Caught her lower lip with her teeth. And did she sigh a little? It was hard to tell. If she did, it had been barely audible. “Nope, I got it.” She squirted lotion on the back of her hand and contorted her arm so it slid up her back as she stuck her chest out and squirmed around in order to achieve maximum reach and coverage.
Yeah. That was so much better than putting the lotion on her himself.
When she was ready, he gave her a quick rundown of stance and technique, half expecting her to object to being lectured to, but she listened intently and mimicked his movements.
“It’s hard to paddle with your arm straight,” she said when he reached out to straighten her lower arm as she practiced a stroke.
“Yeah, the impulse is to want it to be like a canoe, but keeping the bottom arm straight and strong means you’re using your body weight and not just your arms to propel you. It will make it much easier once you’re in the water,” he said, watching her refine the movements she was making. “You’re getting it now. Ready to try the real thing?”
She grinned. “Yes!”
For some reason, he’d thought she’d be more tentative. It was hard to imagine the woman who’d had her whole life planned out by the time she was twenty-two just hopping onto a hunk of fiberglass and floating out into a lake where she was likely to fall over, get a sunburn, or run into any number of situations she couldn’t control. Hell, it was hard to imagine Miss Frostypants voluntarily getting wet.
“Hey, what’s so funny?”
He’d been grinning when his old name for her popped into his head. He hadn’t thought of her as Miss Frostypants for a while. He could see now that although she could still be prickly and irritating, “frosty” wasn’t the right word to describe her at all.
She also wasn’t wearing pants.
He cleared his throat. “Okay, walk your board out a ways and then just hop on.” He demonstrated. “It’s easier to start kneeling. We’ll paddle like that for a while, and then when you’re feeling steady, we can stand.”
She laughed as she clambered onto the board. For a few minutes, the only sounds were their oars slicing through the water, the cawing of seagulls, and the occasional “whoa!” from Amy as she got used to balancing on the board. She was a quick study, though. After only a few minutes, he talked her up onto her feet, and they began paddling in a straight line parallel to the shore—he didn’t want to get too far out on her inaugural trip.
They went for ten minutes or so, then he slowed down—he’d gotten too far ahead of her. He turned around and watched her approach. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in some kind of updo, and that, combined with her vintage swimsuit and her bright red sunglasses, made her look like an Esther Williams-style pinup girl from another era.