Page 62 of Guarding My Love

“What did you think I was going to do when I picked you up?” he asked, grinning and putting a kiss on her lips. He tossed her dress up onto the boat. It’d dry easily enough.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe hug me.”

“A hug is like this,” he said, wrapping her tight. “That was cradling you to toss you over.”

“Now I know,” she said. “Good thing I know how to swim.”

“I asked you first,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t know how. Or I would have jumped in quick to get you.”

“And scarred me for life in the process,” she said, giggling and pushing him away. She swam to the back of the boat and pulled herself up and he got a good look at her navy bikini.

The simple halter top with white trim wasn’t anything overly sexy, but it looked it on her. Her bottoms had more of the same style of navy and white trim. Almost nautical and he wondered if she did that on purpose.

“You look like a wet dog shaking your head and hopping like that.”

He pulled himself up and barely caught the towel that was thrown at his face.

“I’ve got water in my ear and I’m trying to get it out.” She hopped two more times on one foot. “There.”

“Keep doing it,” he said, his eyes on her breasts jiggling. They weren’t large but the right size in his mind. Enough to give the movement he was enjoying.

“You don’t get to tell me to keep doing that unless we are in bed,” she said, lifting her chin.

“I can bring you back there,” he said. “But I thought we established we don’t only have to be in bed.”

“Are you going to take me right here out in the open?” she asked.

He was tempted. Or she was tempting him, but he wouldn’t do that.

There was a line he’d never cross that would get back to his brother.

Nor would he want anything to happen to Charlotte or have her be embarrassed.

“I don’t think either of us wants to risk that,” he said.

“You’re right. It might be exciting, but I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.”

She put the towel down and then sat on the bench. The sun was shining and they’d both be dry soon enough.

“I don’t know why people find so much excitement in it. There are other things to do without the risk.”

“Like throwing me in the water,” she said. “Which is a first for me too.”

He frowned. “No one has ever tossed or pushed you into the water before? Kids do that shit all the time.”

“Nope,” she said. “You didn’t roughhouse around my parents. And no one I’ve dated would do anything like that. They were probably too old to lift me and were afraid of pulling their groin.”

He lifted one eyebrow at her. “You said it, not me.”

“You were thinking it,” she said, giving him a tiny playful poke. “And it’s wrong of me. You saw Landon. He wasn’t some frail guy. I mean he wasn’t elderly.”

“But he wasn’t thirty-two,” he said proudly. He’d said it a few times around her so she remembered he was nothing like any of her exes.

“I know,” she said. “I’m the old one. I’ll be an old maid soon.”

“Hardly that,” he said. He didn’t want to get into a marriage or children conversation. They weren’t there and it was best to guide them away from it.

“Can I ask you something without you thinking I’m fishing?”

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