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They both watched as he slowly poured water into the trench around the little castle. It began to soak back into the sand quickly, but for a moment, it looked like a real moat.
“The tide is getting higher,” Gage said, glancing worriedly back at the water. “Maybe we should have built it further away.”
“I told you, that’s the magic of a sandcastle,” she reminded him as she watched the level of the moat drain down almost to nothing. “It doesn’t last forever. You have to enjoy it in the moment.”
“Like gardening,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “You plant, weed, harvest, and start over again. The joy is in the experience.”
“You’re a gardener?” she asked him, slightly surprised.
“Yes,” he said. “Is that so strange?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess I thought if you traveled so much for your job, that wouldn’t be something you could do.”
She held back her further opinion that gardening was for patient people who loved a simple life, not for rich galaxy-trotters, like Gage.
“When I return home, I will not be traveling as much as before,” he said. “I have a garden that I plan to spend lots of time in.”
The baby. Of course.
She smiled up at him, glad that he wasn’t planning to drag a child all over the universe.
“Now that your sandcastle is complete, would you like to try body boarding?” Oberon offered.
Gage arched an eyebrow at Naomi.
“Sure,” she said, feeling almost giddy with excitement.
“Excellent,” Oberon said.
For a moment, the sun seemed to shine a little brighter, as if the fluffy clouds had suddenly parted.
Then things were the same as before, except for the two body boards that appeared beside them on the sand. One was a faded purple, like the bikini Naomi wore under her dress. The other was slightly larger, in a pale green that matched Gage’s skin tone.
They got up and peeled off their clothes.
Naomi was a little shy about her skimpy bikini at first. But when she saw Gage wore a pair of form-hugging trunks, she was too distracted to think about herself anymore.
Excitement bubbled in her chest as she raked her eyes over what looked like miles of hard muscle.
When her eyes reached his face, she realized he was staring at her body, too.
Heat flooded her senses, and it took everything she had not to fling herself into his arms.
“Ready?” he asked.
You have no idea…
“Yes,” she said.
His eyes were slightly hazy with need as they met hers, but when she bent to grab her board, he followed suit.
Laughing, she jogged down to the water, knowing he would follow.
The warm water tickled her toes as it retreated, leaving tiny, shelled creatures wiggling under the sand.
When it rushed back in, she turned to see Gage was behind her, with Athena by his side, a furrow in her furry brow.
“Athena, did you want to swim too?” she offered, using her regular voice with the dog, as she had heard Gage do.
