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I feel everyone’s eyes on me as I climb down onto the dock. Coop’s smirking. Goldie’s watching me with unabashed curiosity.
Even the stews seem to slow their hustle, sensing the crackle in the air.
It’s obvious Lu told Goldie about what happened last night. Secret’s out.
Everyone wants a show, I’ll give ’em a show.
I stride over to Lu and take the bags out of her hands. Set them on the dock. The scent of her coconut body wash fills my head.
Her eyes follow me as I straighten. Her smile sends sparks flying inside my chest. “Hi.”
I wrap my arms around her waist. Pull her against me in a tight hug. The kind that has her going up on her tippy-toes. That has me burying my head in her neck.
Bare skin against bare skin. She wraps her arms around my neck. Electricity courses through me, gathering with an insistent heaviness in my balls.
“Hey, Legs,” I murmur into her neck.
“Did he just call her legs?” Goldie whispers.
“I did.”
Goldie claps her hands. “That’s hot.”
“Y’all need a minute?” Coop asks.
I chuckle, tilting my chin so my stubble catches on Lu’s skin. She shivers. I smile so hard I feel like my face is about to split in two. “More’n a minute.”
Lu pulls back. Gives me a wicked little smirk. “That’s being generous.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “You want it quick? ’Cause I can make it quick, Legs. We’ll just have to go hard.”
“I am so here for this,” Goldie says.
Coop grabs the bags and ushers her onto the boat. “Y’all just . . . yeah, be safe.”
I reach up and run my finger underneath the strap of Lu’s bikini top. Goosebumps break out across her skin, making the heaviness in my core pulse so fiercely it nearly makes me choke.
“You know I have to host twenty people on Dolly today, right?”
Lu digs her teeth into her bottom lip. “Very cool of you, yes.”
“And you thought I’d be able to do that with you wearing a fucking bikini? Especially that bikini?”
She lifts a shoulder. “I can always take it off.”
I laugh, happiness flooding my body. “You told your mama you ain’t coming home tonight, right?”
She’s biting her lip again.
I groan. “Four fucking hours until this thing is over. I may have to steal you away for a little mid-party nap. I promise it’ll take less than a minute.”
Now she’s laughing too. For a split second I consider leaving the party altogether and taking Lu somewhere else for the afternoon.
Back in the day, we’d fuck anywhere and everywhere we could without getting caught. Backseats. Beaches. Boats we stole.
But then I see Tuck approaching from the parking lot. I do a double take when I see our friend Abel walking with him. Didn’t think Bald Head’s busiest builder—and broodiest bachelor—would show. Mostly because he never shows up to anything.
But he and Coop are close, so makes sense why he’d come today. They’re expert fishermen. They also love golf, but are fucking terrible at it.
I lean in to whisper in Lu’s ear. “Later.”
“Later,” she says with another shiver.
“In the meantime”—I glide my hand down her arm and twine our fingers—“come say hi to my friends. It’s been a while.”
Lu pauses.
“Too soon?” I ask, holding my breath. Lu met Tuck and Abel briefly that summer ten years ago when the two of them and I were Biggers’ deckhands on a fishing charter her granddaddy hired out. I talked to her about them often. But because she only met them in passing, and because it’s been so long, I’m basically asking her to meet them all over again.
She grins. “I’d love to see them.”
Abel, being the asshole he is, lets out a low whistle when he sees Lu and I holding hands. “How in the world did I miss this?”
“Everyone did. Don’t take it personally. Abel, you remember Lu, Goldie’s maid of honor and an old friend of mine? Lu, this is Abel. He’s a prick on the outside, teddy bear on the inside. We hope he is, anyway.”
Lu takes Abel’s hand and gives it a solid shake. “Y’all are still close, huh?”
“Yep. Now he owns the land.” Abel tilts his head toward me. “I build on it. Been at it, what, five years now?”
I nod. “Abel here’s also a big reader. We’re both fantasy fans.”
“Really!” Lu’s eyebrows pop up. “I actually just read an awesome one. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.”
My heart skips a beat. I fucking love how Lu’s so into shit. Makes her interesting. An excellent conversationalist too.
Abel doesn’t smile, but the skin at the edges of his eyes creases. “Haven’t heard of it, but always like trying new things. Maybe we read it for our book club next month, Riley.”
Lu turns her stare on me. “Y’all have a book club? That reads romantasy?”
“’Course we have a book club,” I say. “And because you introduced me to both fantasy and romance, hell yes we’ll read it.”
