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“Teaching you to swim.”
My body went cold. I swallowed. “That’s okay. We don’t have to.”
Vaughn’s face went serious. He stood and came around the table, going to one knee beside me. Cade pushed his chair back to make room. “Rowan mentioned it in passing this morning. If I’m overstepping, I apologize. But I promise I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We don’t have to do any lessons, but I’d like to be in the water with you. And if it’s too much, we’ll stop.”
Nothing but earnest truth showed on his face. He wanted this. It wasn’t a trick to humiliate me or get me to do something silly, he just wanted me. “Okay,” I said softly. “I can try.”
“Thank you.”
“But you’re putting the sunscreen on me,” I warned him. “Or Ellie will kill you because one of her bridesmaids looks like the worst kind of contrasting reds because I fry like I’m an ant someone is burning under a magnifying glass.”
Standing and leaning down, Vaughn kissed me. He tasted sogood. I smiled into the kiss. Rowan didn’t have to worry. If they all tasted the way they smelled, I would definitely moan when I put them in my mouth.
Vaughn spoke against my lips. “Putting sunscreen on you will be no hardship, Isolde. I might have to do it more than once, just to make sure you’re fully protected. And I know we don’t usually put on sunscreen beneath clothes, but we should be extra safe.”
When he pulled away my body followed him, silently asking for more. I forced myself to stay sitting and finish my waffles, because if I was going in the water, the last thing I needed was to be nervousandhungry.
Cade leaned back in his chair and set his arm across the back of mine like it was the most natural thing in the world. His fingers brushed the bare skin of my shoulder, which felt more like electric shocks. In a good way. “Yesterday while you were out we got a chance to talk to Warren,” he said. “Seems like a decent guy.”
“He is.”
“Then why is he friends with someone like your ex?”
I froze. Literally the same question had come from me, from Trinity, from Ocean, from everyone. I still didn’t know the answer, but I suspected it was a lack of information. “I don’t know. But like I told you, Beau is charming. He probably told everyone the breakup was my fault, or that it went differently than it did. Taste in friends aside, he’s really great, and I’m happy he and Ellie found each other.”
“I’d like to set him straight on a few things,” Hawk muttered under his breath before downing what little was left of his orange juice.
“I wish.”
Hawk’s eyes found mine, filled with heat. All I could think about was the feeling of him behind me, long and hard, while he held me still for everyone else. “I can take him aside and tell him the truth. It would be my pleasure.”
“I don’t want to make this whole thing about me. It’s already focused on me enough. I don’t need to throw a bomb into themiddle of the bridal party. Besides, for all I know Warren knows the truth and just decided to stay out of it. I wouldn’t blame him for not touching this mess.”
He didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. “Say the word, baby girl. I will make sure he knows exactly the kind of person his best man is. A man who would kick a woman out of his home and steal her jewelry for his new fiancée.”
Did Angela know the bracelet was mine? I hoped she didn’t. But I had hoped a lot of things about Beau, and as it turned out, not a single one of them was true. Why should this be any different?
Suddenly I didn’t have an appetite anymore.
“I’m finished. I need to grab a couple of things before we head down to the beach.”
“Geoffrey gave me some towels this morning, and I have sunscreen.” Vaughn pointed to a bag sitting at the top of the Veranda steps.
My eyebrows rose. “You’re prepared.”
“When I know what I want, I make it happen.” The way he was looking at me made me doubt it was the sunscreen he was talking about. Butterflies fluttered around in my stomach, and for the first time in what felt like forever, they weren’t nerves, but anticipation.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
________
ISOLDE
Vaughn dropped the bag on the ground, spread out a huge beach towel, and grinned. We were all the way at the end of the beach, where the bonfire had been, and further, near the cliffs. The shade was perfect in the heat of the summer sun, and there was a smaller chance of me burning to a crisp.
“Time for sunscreen?” He shook the bottle in his hand. One of the spray-on kinds.
“You’re enjoying this far too much.”
