“Yep, that’s what they all say,” she gripes as I follow her downstairs. She locks up the house and loops the key on her own dog tags, and then we stretch on the lawn before making our way across the street to the beach.
We keep a slow pace, just enough to get the heart pumping but not enough to make my grouchy girl hate me so soon. I’m sure I’ll give her ample opportunity for the emotions sometime in the future. Why rush it now?
After we make our way back down the beach, the sun rising just above the water, MacKenzie flops down onto the sand on her back. I sit down next to her and watch the sky.
“See? Fun.” I hold my arms out to my sides and shrug my shoulders.
She turns her head and looks at me, her face blank, and then her eyes widen. “Oh God,” she gasps and I think something is really wrong. Maybe she left the coffee pot on and she’s afraid that she’s going to burn the row of million dollar condos down like Old Lady Leary's cow. Maybe she just had a psychic vision that her great grandmother hid millions of dollars in her old mattress and they burned it in an incinerator and now her fortune is lost forever. I don’t know.
“What?” I ask, now terrified of what’s going to come out of her mouth next.
“You’re a morning person,” she answers with mock terror on her face.
“Guilty.” I laugh. “And you are decidedly not. Lucky for you, I think it’s adorable.” And then I drop a kiss to her grumbling mouth.
“So the SEALs?” she prompts.
“Yep,” I answer her. “I always wanted to be a SEAL. What made you want to join the marines?”
“Family tradition,” she answers cryptically.
“Your dad?” I ask.
“My dad, my grandpa, my brother and sister, everyone.” She shrugs like that explains everything when really, I want to know so much more. I want to know it all.
“All pilots?” I ask her.
“Yeah.”
“That’s exciting.”
“You ever fly?” she asks.
“A little,” I answer her honestly. “They like us to be able to do a lot of things, but not like that. Mostly, I jump out of them.”
“So I heard, Tarzan.” She laughs, and it lights up her whole face. I want to know everything about her from her first crush to her last flight.
“You ever surf?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Like Gidget on a board?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“No,” she says, looking a little terrified.
“Well today is your lucky day.”
“Uhn uh,” MacKenzie mumbles. “I don’t know about that.”
“Come on,” I tell her as I jump to my feet and offer her a hand so she can stand up, because I’m a goddamn gentleman, even if I have done very ungentlemanly things to her person. And I plan to do a lot more of them. “Let’s go change.”
“You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?” she asks me for the second time today.
“No.” I smile my victory at her again.
“Oh, all right.”
She places her tiny hand in mine, and I pull her to her feet before leading her up the beach and back across the street to her condo. At her doorstep, I lean in so close that her lips almost touch mine and her breath puffs over my cheek. I dip my finger into the neck of her T-shirt and hook the ball chain of her dog tags on my index finger. I pull them up over her shirt, unhooking the house key as I go.
