I refrain from laughing at how adorable she is. “I’d love to watch you dive for rings.”
She bounces over to the edge of the pool and tosses five rings in the shallow end. “Cole?” she yells at him. “Cole?”
I look at him to see why he is ignoring her, but when my eyes meet his, he’s staring down at my chest. His jaw tight and eyes glaring with anger.
I look down to see what he is staring at. “Geez,” I mutter to myself. She soaked my white shirt, and I don’t have a bra on.
I hunch over and pull it away from my chest. Standing up, I go to walk away, but Lilly stops me. “You’re not gonna watch me?” She pouts.
Shit!
I reach over and grab a blue towel off the back of a lounge chair and drape it over my shoulders. “Of course, I am,” I tell her, sitting back down and plastering a smile on my face.
I ignore Cole, but I can still feel his gaze on me for a few more seconds before he turns to her and helps her out with diving for her rings.
We spend another hour out in the pool when Cole finally announces that they have to get going. At first, Lilly tried to beg him for another five minutes, but he didn’t budge. He’s better than I would have been because the moment she pushed that bottom lip out, I would have caved. Then she threw a fit. He glared at her, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to swim.
“She can stay out here with me,” Celeste tells him.
“I don’t think …”
“Please?” Lilly begs, interrupting him. She hugs his shoulders while they still stand in the pool.
“Lilly …”
“Let her swim a little longer, Cole. It’ll be dark shortly. She can stay the night. We can have a girls’ night. You kids go have some fun.” She looks at me, and my brows rise. What is her deal with Cole? Does she not know how much he hates me? That he wants me in jail? Or worse, dead?
“Please? Please?” Lilly begs. “I wanna stay. I wanna swim. And have a girls’ night.” She splashes the water around them with her hands.
“Fine,” he says with a heavy sigh. “Just tonight, though. Okay?”
“Thank you.” She hugs his neck, and he pats her back.
“Yay.” Celeste claps her hands excitedly. And it makes me wonder why she and my father never had a child of their own. I’ve never thought about it. And sure as hell never asked. Then she looks at me. “Austin, we have a ten o’clock appointment at the salon in the morning.”
“For what?”
“I figured you’d want to get you hair done.” She shrugs. “Something new for school. And it gives us time together.”
“Thanks.” I’m not really into spending time at a salon, but I’ll give her this. Celeste has been more of a mom in the past twenty-four hours than my mother has in the past seventeen years.
She claps excitedly as Cole hands her Lilly. She bounces on her raft, straddling Celeste’s legs.
Cole goes under the water and then his head pops up in the shallow end. He stands, and I watch with complete fascination as he climbs the stairs to exit. Water drips off his lean body. Shelby had mentioned that he was the captain of the swim team, and I didn’t understand what that meant until just now. His black swim trunks hang low on his narrow hips. He turns to face me, and my mouth starts to water at the defined V that dips into his shorts and his chiseled abs. Thoughts of him pinning me down to the ground last night come back, reminding me of how strong he was. You can still see the faint marks my nails left when I clawed at his chest.
He isn’t overly muscular; he’s lean. But what he does have is chiseled, and my legs threaten to buckle. Good thing I’m sitting down.
“You have my towel,” he speaks, making me jump.
“Oh, sorry,” I say in a rush and yank it from my shoulders and toss it to him.
I look up at him through my lashes when he just stands there in front of me, and now, he’s the one looking down at me like he wants to push me up against the wall. Or down onto the lounge chair.
That’s when I remember why I had his towel in the first place. My shirt is still wet. And my nipples are hard from the wind making me cold. “Excuse me,” I say as I jump up. Turning around, I take off into the house.
CHAPTER SIX
COLE
Fuck!
That’s the second time since she’s walked out here in the past hour that she has got me hard. I fist my hands down by my sides. I don’t have time for her. To be some teenage boy obsessed with a set of tits and ass. Especially Bruce Lowes’s daughter.