Page 79 of The Sebastian Guarantee
“You bet your playboy-ass I did.”
Phoebe looked over her shoulder as two grown men repeatedly whacked their paddleboats into each other like two deranged goats headbutting—the slow-motion water version.
Thunk, thunk, thunk!
“Wait a bloody second! I’m taking on water.”
“So am I,” Jeremy howled.
“Pheebs!” the men cried.
“We’re sinking! Save us!” Jeremy called.
She chewed her lip and pondered the situation. Would it be that bad if they sank? Sure, the water was cold, but they weren’t that far from shore. Wasn’t a girl’s sanity worth the price of a few shipwrecked—or paddleboat-wrecked—dudes? She took off her glasses and pinched her nose.
“Phoebe,” Jeremy whined.
She wiped the rain out of her eyes and put on her glasses. Shaking her head, she nixed the sanity sink-or-swim plan. “I’m coming,” she called and pedaled backward, reversing course. She got to Sebastian first. “Get on.”
“What’s going on with you?” he asked like she was the crazy one.
“Are you kidding me?”
He settled into the seat with his backpack in his arms. “Phoebe, the success you want is at your fingertips.”
She stared at her best friend. “Sebby, I’m not sure—”
“Phoebe,” Jeremy wailed, cutting her off. “Hurry, I’m sinking!”
She flicked her gaze from Sebastian and eyed the blubbering man. “Jesus, Jeremy, you can literally see me. We’re ten feet apart. Give me a second.” Maneuvering past Sebastian’s out-of-commission boat, she sidled up to Jeremy, then checked the slim deck behind her seat. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but her ex was the smaller of the two men, and he could fit if he sat with his legs extended. “Get onto the back shelf. It’s not ideal, but it’ll do.”
The horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing man pouted as the rain flattened his man bun. “Why does Sebastian get the front seat?”
“Because I’m the manlier man here,” Sebastian growled, shielding his eyes from the rain. “Bunettes ride in the back.”
Jeremy hemmed and hawed, then pulled himself onto the back shelf. “I still don’t think it’s fair.”
“Stop acting like a crybaby,” Sebastian muttered.
Jeremy shifted his weight. “I’m not acting like a crybaby.”
“You are!”
“Am not!”
“You are!”
“Am not!”
“You—”
“One, two, three,” Phoebe snarled on the brink of losing her mind, “eyes on me!” she finished, stealing a line from her first-grade teacher’s playbook. The men complied, and she exhaled an aggravated breath. “There is no talking on the paddleboat. Anyone who talks is going into the lake. Don’t say a single word. Nod if you understand.”
Blessedly, the men must have detected the thread of homicidal maniac in her voice. Both nodded, and neither said a word as she steered them toward the dock, cutting a painfully slow line across the lake’s rain-pebbled surface. All she wanted was a minute to herself. But that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. Her stomach dropped. A crowd had gathered. Armed with umbrellas, gawking men and women spilled from the boathouse onto the dock and along the rocky shoreline. And to make matters worse, her stomach was at it again. This time, it growled as the scent of grilled hot dogs cut through the air. The staff had set up a canopy near the water’s edge, and chefs were grilling the evening’s meal beneath it.
If anyone on the planet needed a hot dog, it was her.
Hungry and fed up, she eased alongside the dock. She secured the watercraft, then sprang onto the wooden planks and set her sights on the only thing that could bring her comfort: a table piled high with condiments, buns, and trays of freaking hot dogs.
