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He would be gone tomorrow. She didn’t know if she could stand it all alone with just her mom. Not that she wouldn’t have a good time, but she craved the jolt she felt with Carter. Leaning over the armrests between them, she kissed his cheek. “I adore your hot tub.”
But when she would have flopped back on her lounger, he cupped her nape, holding her there. “I’m going to kiss you, Sienna Walker. Is that all right with you?”
“Do men even ask anymore?”
“I do.”
She answered softly, “Yes, you may kiss me.”
His kiss was soft and sweet and closed-mouthed. Until he licked the seam of her lips, and she opened to him, touching her tongue to his, testing him, tasting him. It was slow and honeyed, just the way a first kiss should be, lingering, a silent conversation, getting to know each other.
When he backed off to look at her, he sighed. “Way better than I imagined.”
Would he call her when they were back home? She wanted to ask. She was thirty years old, a year older than him, and she should be able to ask. But somehow, she couldn’t.
He grabbed her hand. “Let’s dive in.” Hauling her up, he ran with her into the sea.
They played like his friends, splashing each other and rolling with the waves as Sienna’s body grew accustomed to the water. Someone said the sea would be warmer in July, August, and September, and while she certainly wouldn’t call it cold now, she enjoyed its freshness.
They all climbed out together when Tamryn said she was starving. The guys took everyone’s orders and jogged up to a restaurant along the front.
Tamryn threw herself down on Carter’s lounger, and when Sienna opened her mouth to protest, Tamryn waved her off with a smirk. “I’ll move when they come back.” Then she flopped back, closing her eyes to soak up the sun. Without even looking at Sienna, she asked, “So, like, how old are you?”
Sienna turned her head and stared. Tamryn’s eyelids didn’t flicker. “Thirty,” she said. What an odd question. Did Tamryn think she was too old for Carter?
“So, like, when’s your birthday?”
“Why do you care?”
Tamryn cracked one eyelid. “I’m curious about everything.”
Sienna still didn’t see what Carter saw in Tamryn, even as a friend. But then maybe that’s why Tamryn acted the way she did, because Carter was just a friend. She wanted more, and she didn’t like that Sienna was spending so much time with him.
“March,” she said.
Tamryn whispered something under her breath, then lay in silence for several minutes. Sienna thought she’d fallen asleep.
Until Tamryn speared her with a look. “So, like, when was your mother over here?”
Tamryn knew very well. Sienna’s mom had said it more than once, and she didn’t have to feign her frustration. “Thirty years ago.”
The woman stared, unnerving Sienna. She was about to get up and find Carter when Tamryn said, “So, like, isn’t it weird that you’re thirty, and your mom was here thirty years ago?”
Sienna wanted to shout at her to stop prefacing everything with those words, so, like. And yet Tamryn was making her think. Was it exactly thirty years ago? Her mom was fifty-three, and she’d gone to Greece right after college graduation. She would have been twenty-two. Which made it thirty-one years.
Tamryn’s unblinking gaze made her itchy. Her parents got married right after Mom returned from Santorini, July or thereabouts. They’d never celebrated anniversaries, so she wasn’t sure of the exact date. Her parents were unsentimental about that stuff. Then she’d been born in March. Her mother had always said she was premature. But Sienna read somewhere that first-time babies were much more likely to go past the due date.
She didn’t like the turn of her thoughts. She didn’t like the way Tamryn eyed her. She didn’t like the way her stomach churned.
Her mind feeling blurred, she counted the months on her fingers. Numbers were her thing, but she couldn’t seem to make them work.
If she hadn’t come early, the way her mother always said, if she was a week or two late…
She forced her mind to go quiet. She couldn’t allow that thought, absolutely could not.
Until she couldn’t block it any longer. If she wasn’t premature, she would have been conceived in June.
When her mother was in Santorini and her father was back in the U.S.
