“Can’t be that long,” she says, still grinning. “I’ve figured you out.”
“You have?”
“Yes. You’re only six years older than me, but you can’t have spent all these years business-building. You told me you used to climb. What else did you do?”
“A lot of things.”
“So descriptive,” she says, and there’s teasing in her voice.
“A bit of hiking. Kayaking. Skydived once.”
“Whoa. That’s intense.” She sits down on one of the lounge chairs and peels her wet suit down long, tan legs. I look out onto the ocean. “Did you like it?”
“Yes. But I have no desire to do it again.”
She chuckles. “I feel the same way, and I haven’t even done it.”
“How about windsurfing?” I ask. “Think it’s something you’ll do again?”
“Honestly, yes. I wasn’t expecting to feel that way. It was something I added to my bucket list because it felt like a challenge, something completely unlike me, but it was fun.”
I look back to her shaking off sand from the wet suit. Water droplets across her skin shimmer like diamonds under the sun. “Want to walk back?”
She tosses the wet suit over an arm. “Sure. Along the beach?”
“Yes.”
“Let me just return this to Brody.”
Because I’m shameless, I watch as she jogs across the beach to where the two instructors are working. If I’d had trouble being around her before, it’s nothing to what seeing her in a bikini does. She has the body to match her wide, beautiful smile, and before I met her, I’d never thought of describing someone like that.
Now I don’t think I’ll ever want anyone else.
Summer shrugs into a sundress when she returns and takes Ace’s leash from me.
“Thanks for watching him,” she says.
“I didn’t mind.”
She puts on a pair of sunglasses and sweeps her wet hair to the side. “Did you get some work done, at least?”
“Some, yes.”
“I feel kind of guilty for not working.”
“But your aunt gave you these days off, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but the company is in such a delicate state, I can’t… No, Ace, don’t touch that.” She tugs softly on the leash and the golden trots away from a jellyfish resting on the shore. Her phone dings and she digs it out of her bag. “Oh, look at this,” she says, showing it to me.
I have to shield my eyes from the sunlight to make out what’s on the screen. “They’re fixing the windows?”
“Yes, Vivienne stopped by to check on the progress.”
“Where did you tell her you were this weekend?”
Summer smiles. “Well, I said I was with a friend by the beach.”
“Right.”