Page 4 of The Beach House
I opened up the trunk and tried to get a good grip on my suitcase. I started to hoist it out, and wondered what the hell I’d packed for the next ten days that made it so heavy.
“Need to borrow some muscle?”
I let go of my bag with a surprised huff and it slid back into the car with a heavythunk.I looked over my shoulder, hair falling in my face, to see Noah, as sexy and handsome as ever, arching a dark eyebrow with his trademark smug look on his face.
My heart somersaulted in my chest and I couldn’t hold back my smile—even if I’d only just seen him two days ago. Noah grinned as I stepped toward him for a kiss, his arms wrapping round my waist to hold me closer. He smelled sogood.And looked good too, in his board shorts and a fitted white T-shirt.
“Hey, you.”
“Hey, yourself,” he murmured, his mouth smiling against mine. “So—want a hand with your bag?”
“It’s all yours, Superman.”
I couldn’t resist making that dig—just before we got together, I’d caught him wearing Superman boxers. And he’d actually been embarrassed about it! Noah Flynn, the school badass, the jerk who I always argued with…wearing Superman boxers.
He hated it whenever I brought it up. But teasing him was irresistible sometimes.
He dropped a kiss on my cheek before lugging my suitcase out of the trunk and following me up the steps of the porch. The white paint was always flaking, no matter how many times Lee’s parents gave us twenty bucks to spend an afternoon painting it. The bench on the porch creaked like it was about to snap in half every time you sat down; I ran a hand over one of its arms as I passed to go inside.
The beach house had a lot of rooms, but they were all small, packed tightly together. The furniture hadn’t been replaced in years; some of it was from when we were little kids. There was a pool outside and a table we usually ate at in the evenings if it wasn’t raining, and a path that was always overgrown with rough plants leading down to the beach. The whole thing was the polar opposite of the immaculately put-together Flynn home in the city with its modern decor.
We loved it exactly as it was—a little shabby, lived-in, and homey.
In my eyes, it was perfect.
“I’m just going to run and get some food,” June announced, walking out of the kitchen as I was coming down the hallway. She smiled when she saw me. “Hey, Elle, sweetie.”
I said hello and hugged her while Noah squeezed past to drop my suitcase in my room.
“Do you want some company to the store?” I offered.
“No, no, that’s okay. You stay here and unpack.”
Then, holding me at a little distance and looking at me with that gentle, motherly smile she always wore, June said something that caught me totally off guard, because it was so out of the blue.
“Look at you, Elle. You suddenly seem so grown-up.”
“Why? Because I had to use that special zipper that makes my suitcase expand?”
“No.” She laughed. “I don’t know—I can’t quite pinpoint it. You just seem like you’ve become a real young woman recently. Anyway—listen to me rambling on like this! I’m getting out of here before I find myself looking for any baby photos lying around! Oh, and tell the boys we’re having steak for dinner.”
“Sure thing,” I called as June headed back toward the kitchen.
I started down the hallway in the direction of the bedrooms. Lee and I had ours side by side with Noah’s, separated by a bathroom in the middle that we all shared. It might’ve made more sense for the boys to have a room together, but they’d always bickered so much when we were little, it had been Lee and me who’d shared—and we’d just never changed that. (And despite how cool June and Matthew were, they’d made a point of drawing the line at me sharing a room with Noah.)
Noah was on his way back outside, and stopped in the kitchen doorway.
“Thanks for the help with my suitcase.”
“What, that’s it? I don’t get a tip?”
I laughed as if to tell himNo chance.He caught my wrist and stepped in front of me in the doorframe to pin me there.
“Hey, I’m an awesome bellboy and you know it,” he said, his voice as serious as his expression.
I bit back a laugh, but a grin spread over my face. “You tell yourself that.” I went up on my toes to give him a peck on the lips. Instead of letting me pull away, though, Noah drew me in for a soft, sweet kiss, more intimate than the one we’d just shared outside. His fingers dropped from round my wrist to link themselves with mine.
A throat cleared—we both jumped.
