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Daniel exploded to the surface beside Austin and shook the water out of his face.
Austin paddled, his water wings bobbing, and shouted between huffing breaths, “Mary Elise, come in. We’re gonna play baseball.”
Trey splashed him. “Volleyball, you dweeb.”
“Yeah. That.”
Mary Elise pulled her feet out of the water. “I’m not swimming today, sweetie. You just have fun with your brothers.”
She backed away, mentally recording the image of Danny swimming with Austin’s spindly arms locked around the strong column of big brother’s neck. Daniel, a man so different from the steely warrior who’d drawn down an enemy guard in a foreign country to save his brothers less than forty-eight hours before. The dual image left her dry-mouthed. Rattled.
Intrigued.
She could watch. And she would enjoy. But she needed to keep enough distance so she could still leave.
* * *
Daniel spiked the ball back toward Tag. For all the good it did him. The loadmaster tapped it in the air with ease, setting up the next shot as he passed the volleyball to his teenage son.
Who missed it—hallelujah—since the boy was too busy ogling the high schooler springing off the diving board, Zach Dawson’s daughter, Shelby. Teenage hormones packed a ferocious punch.
Daniel’s gaze drifted back to Mary Elise. He looked beyond the new lines of worry and fatigue around her eyes to the clear green gaze he’d fallen hard for in his youth. Remembered how they’d known everything about each other. Shared every thought, no matter how personal.
Maybe it was the swimming scenario hammering him since they’d enjoyed countless hours in his parents’ landscaped backyard and kidney-shaped pool growing up. He’d shut down those memories after they split, but now he’d have to learn to live with them bombarding him from more directions than antiaircraft fire.
“Crusty?” Tag shouted. “You with us, man?”
Daniel nodded, rejoining the game, his mind lofting back to the past as surely as the ball sailing through the air...
“I’m not swimming today, Danny.”
Daniel stroked his way through the numbingly cold pool. His teenage body hungered for exercise outside the stifling formality of his parents’ house. Early spring weather in Savannah made for chilly water, not that he cared. And usually Mary Elise didn’t care, either.
“Why not?” He stopped inches from the cement edge where Mary Elise perched gripping her knees. “Scared of a little freezing water?”
“Of course not.”
He hauled himself out to sit beside her. “What’s the matter? Really? Come on, spill, because I’m not buying the scared-of-cold-water garbage for even a second.”
She scooped her hand through the pool and flicked his face with water. “I didn’t bring a suit.”
“There’s an extra suit in the pool house.” He reached to tug the rope of red hair trailing over her shoulder, then paused. When had Mary Elise gotten breasts? Not much to them, but they were absolutely there. He jerked his hand away.
“I can’t, Danny. Can’t. Okay? I’m a girl and there are days it’s just easier for a girl if she doesn’t swim.”
He felt the color drain from his face and knew it didn’t have anything to do with the freezing water. Some stuff a guy just didn’t want to know. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. Now go swim and enjoy the fact that you’re a boy and can swim all thirty-one days of this month. I’ll soak my feet here while we talk about something else.”
And he wanted to do just that. Well, until he saw the downward tilt to her mouth, the mini-furrow on her serious brow.
Who needed to swim laps, anyway?
Standing, he extended his hand without a word while he waited. He could handle this. Sure, he wanted to dive to the bottom of the pool where he wouldn’t have to even think about this discussion. But he was a practical guy, and this was Mary Elise after all. They could talk about anything.
Even if she had developed breasts overnight.
He shoved his hand closer.
