I followed his gaze. “This is why the Slippery Crab is a menace. He must be stopped before?—”
A tug on my wrist made me drop the crab, and suddenly sand became sky as Cade hauled me over his shoulder and took off across the beach.
“What—?” I braced my hands against his back, bouncing haphazardly on his shoulder. His hand on my thigh was the only thing keeping me from falling, and I burst into laughter until I realized he was heading toward the water.
“Cade, wait!” I cried, wincing as his shoulder dug into my stomach. “You don’t have to do this.”
His grip tightened on the back of my thigh. “It’s only fair that you take a trip to the ocean after all the ones you made me take filling buckets.”
“But I can’t swim!”
Those were the last words I got out before Cade tossed me straight into an incoming wave.
The shock of the water pierced me on impact, jarring my lungs and stealing my breath as my laughter cut off.
I held my breath, limbs flailing in all directions. It was shallow enough that my toes found the wet, sandy floor right away, but I couldn’t get purchase with the waves.
When I got a strong enough hold to stand and pop out of the water, wet hair was plastered to my face. “Traitor!”
I’d barely taken one step toward the shore before another wave crashed into me and knocked me onto my butt underwater.
Almost instantly, a hand gripped my arm and tugged me to the surface. Cade lifted me back into the warm sunshine, and I didn’t hesitate before throwing my arms around his neck. Caught between coughing and laughing and feeling like a drowned cat, I wrapped my legs around Cade’s waist and clung on tight.
He stood unmoving with me in his arms and the water at hip height, even as waves that would’ve flattened me like a pancake pushed against him.
When my coughing stopped, I whacked his shoulder. “I can’t believe you actually threw me in.”
“I can’t believe you destroyed my moat,” he shot back.
I laughed and clung tighter to his wet, slippery shoulders as another wave hit. “So attempting to drown me was my punishment?”
“Relax, Darling,” he said dryly, shifting me higher. “I need you too much to let anything happen to you.”
…It almost sounded romantic, and a shiver raced down my spine. I cleared my throat. “Careful. I’m going to start thinking you’re sweet if you say things like that.”
Cade waded through the water with me in his arms, heading toward the shore, while I tilted my head back to soak in the sun.
“I meant I need your sandcastle skills,” he corrected. “Come on. We need to rebuild the east wing and reconstruct the moat.”
My eyebrows rose. “Hold on. A couple hours ago, you didn’t even want to build a sandcastle.”
“That was before we started one, and now we need to see it through.”
I bit my lip, amused by his resolve. That helped explain his success with work.
Our castle had company when we returned. Harrison stood beside it with his arms crossed, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses. Cade ignored him at first, setting me down and kneeling next to his precious moat to fix it.
When his brother only continued to stare, Cade sighed. “What do you want?”
Harrison turned to me and took off his shades. “What the hell have you done to my brother? Did you replace him with an alien?”
“Piss off, Harry,” Cade said flatly.
“Nope. This is historic.” Harrison squinted at his brother, crouching to his level. “You’ve never built a sandcastle in yourlife, and then you went and played in the water. And you’ve been smiling all day. Whatever you’re taking, I want some.”
I tried to stifle a laugh but failed. Cade had called it.
“Andyou.” Harrison spun toward me, jabbing a finger in my face. “I love my brother, but he’s a workaholic who’s been incapable of fun for the last decade. Every year he becomes more of a stick-in-the-mud. What do you even see in him?”
