I blinked a few too many times before I took it. “Thanks.”
Avery frowned. “Where’s mine?”
She didn’t even look at him. “Sorry, but I like Theo more and I only had one spare mug.”
I nearly choked trying not to laugh, but she sashayed away, immediately jumping in to help pack supplies for the boat.
Avery stood beside me, sighing. “Why is she mean even when she’s happy?”
I laughed and clapped a hand on his shoulder, extending the travel mug toward him. “Do you want a sip?”
“No.” He tried scoffing, but it sounded like a snort of laughter instead. “I’ll make my own. Thanks.”
As he took off to go do that, I went over to help the group of guys who were restocking the coolers and loading in supplies for lunch. Luis connected a waterproof speaker to the boat and Jared, one of the guys from the feed store, produced and then promptly inflated a giant, floating monstrosity called aParty Island.
Paddleboards were offloaded from one of the trucks while sunscreen was passed around. It was getting hotter by the minute, so I took some, but I hadn’t even started smearing it on my shoulders when I spotted Raquel on the other side of the group, pulling off her shirt to reveal yet another bikini.
This one was red and tiny, instantly derailing my concentration. I only remembered I’d been about to apply sunscreen when I looked down at my hands and realized they were covered in thick, white goop.
She looked over at me just as I’d started rubbing the stuff into my chest, a mischievous smile spreading on her lips as our eyes met. I let out a quiet groan, already knowing she was going to spend the rest of the day screwing with my ability to think straight.
That fucking bikini is going to drive me nuts.
It showed off way too much of her gorgeous body and that made way too many memories of last night start playing in a torturous loop across my mind. Honestly, now that I knew whatit felt like to be between those legs, it was already going to be a long fucking day.
The bikini was just going to make it impossible to get through it without needing multiple, hopefully freezing, dips in the lake. But then I caught her sneaking another smile at me and suddenly a question I’d much rather have avoided shot into my mind.
Is this fair? To either of us?
I hadn’t been entirely honest with her and I couldn’t stay in Arizona.Could I?
My gaze drifted toward the lake and the mountains beyond. I couldn’t even believe I was thinking this. Alex had given me until New Year’s and then my time was up. I had to go back to Chicago, to being Theo Westwood, and to waiting at the end of the aisle for some woman I didn’t even know yet.
The weight of that responsibility sat heavily on my shoulders right now, pressing like an elephant. It was an unbelievably irresponsible thought I was disappearing into right now, but as I looked into those gray eyes, I wondered.
What if I could stay?
CHAPTER 20
RAQUEL
Our day out on the lake was loud and fun, but Theo and I were doing a terrible job at pretending nothing had happened last night. No one had seemed to notice so far, but maybe everyone had and they were either too hungover or too polite to say anything about it.
Or maybe they were just too busy swimming, dancing, drinking, and shoving each other off the party island to pay much attention to us. I wasn’t the only woman here, and it seemed to me a few other couples might be forming too.
Either way, every time I looked up, I found him already looking at me, and every time our eyes met, my stomach gave a little flip. It was crazy. I was thirty, not fifteen, but our impulsive hookup seemed to have rewired my brain.
Despite giving myself a stern talking-to this morning about how it’d only been a one-night thing and that I couldn’t get attached to him, he was the only person I really wanted to spend time with. He was goofing off with the guys while I watched, convinced one of them was going to lose a tooth if they kept jumping off the boat in such quick succession.
While it looked like he was having fun, he also kept glancing at me where I lay on the seat right at the front of the boat, myfoot bopping in time with the music as I soaked up the sun. Eventually, when I caught him looking at me again, I stood up and slid my sunglasses off, going over to where he was heaving himself back out of the water.
“Have you ever paddleboarded before?” I asked.
He glanced up at me, water running in little rivulets from his hair down to his chest. He smirked when my eyes dropped to drink in the sight, but then shook his head. “No. If it’s anything like surfboarding, I can guarantee that I’m bad at it, though.”
“You’ll be fine.” I laughed, motioning toward a pair of boards lying on the sandy banks of the shore. We weren’t far out into the water, people swimming back and forth all the time. “Come on, let’s go try it out.”
Without waiting for an answer, I dove into the lake, the water icy against my sun-baked skin, but also refreshing. When I surfaced, Theo was right beside me, grinning as I came up. “I’ll race you there.”
