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Lawrence nodded slowly, his bushy, black mustache almost stereotypical of a cop from the 1980s.
“Grant?”Bea asked, and he turned toward her.She wore a flowing white dress that was obviously a swimsuit coverup and not something she’d wear to church.
“Hey,” he said, waving.She came down the steps toward him, and he couldn’t contain the smile shining from him.
“Goin’ a little fast back there,” Lawrence said.
“Yeah,” Grant said, sliding his hand around Bea as she arrived at his side.Any man would hurry to see her, not just him.He pressed a kiss to her forehead and looked at Lawrence.“Sorry.I guess I was in a bit of a rush to get here.Bea’s promised me a picnic on the beach.”
Lawrence looked at her too, and Bea leaned further into Grant.“All right,” he said.“Slow it down, Grant.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, thinking a salute to be too much.Lawrence would probably see it as Grant mocking him, and he turned and went back to his police car.
“What did you do?”Bea asked as he backed out of the driveway.
“Speeding,” he said, turning his back on Lawrence.“I was in a hurry to see you.”He grinned and took her fully into his arms.
“Smooth,” she said, giggling.
Grant felt twenty years younger with Bea, and he kissed her hello.“I am hungry,” he murmured against her lips.“That required a lead foot to get here.”
“Come on then,” she said.“Come help me with the picnic basket.I’m afraid I may have overpacked it.”She led him inside the cottage, and Grant had never seen a picnic basket so big.
Or so full.He barely got it outside to the wagon he kept in the small storage shed behind the cottage, Bea put a half-dozen bottles of water beside it, then a blanket, a couple of towels, and her spotted purse with bottles of sunscreen spilling from the top.
“You’re not wearing your swimming trunks,” she said.
“They’re in my car.”
“Are you going to swim?”She pulled the shoulder of her dress up and back into place from where it had slipped.
“Probably not,” he said.“Are you?”
“I’m wearing my suit.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to get in.”He liked how confused she looked.
“I promised my friends I’d get in,” she said, turning away from him.
“You don’t have to do everything they say,” he called after her.
“I want to get in,” she called back.
Grant would meet one of her friends, Lauren, tomorrow when they had brunch, and Grant went to his car and got his swimming trunks from the back seat.
He changed in the extra bathroom in the house and exited the house with his clothes tucked into his backpack.He tossed that into the back of his car and faced Bea.She stood in front of the wagon, the handle in her hand like she’d be the one to tug it over the sand to the perfect spot on the beach.
She stared at him, and Grant didn’t like the appraising glint in her expression.Something else sat there, but he couldn’t place the emotions.
“Ready?”he asked, taking the handle from her.
She seemed to thaw, and she stutter-stepped out of the way.“Yes,” she said, clearing her throat.“Yes, let’s go.”
The first block was easy, as it was paved.Once they reached the beach trail, pulling the wagon got predictably harder.“My ex-wife used to want to do all kinds of things without any preparation.”
He wasn’t sure why he’d brought her up.“We’d go to the beach with nothing.Sometimes just in our clothes.”
“Would you swim?”
