Page 6 of Sweet Passions at Bayside
Laughter burst from her lungs.
He loved her loud, boisterous laugh and tried to prolong hearing it. “Hooters? Fun bags? Love apples?”
She fell to the side, holding her stomach. “Stop! Stop! I’m gonna pee!”
Laughing right along with her, he sat on the dirt. Dean had spent years as a trauma nurse, and it had changed his outlook on life. He’d always been pretty serious, but trying to save people on death’s doorstep changed a person. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost himself in laughter.
Oh wait. Yes, he could. It was Valentine’s Day, when he and Emery had FaceTimed. She’d been filling in for a friend, delivering singing telegrams, dressed up like a cupid in a skimpy red leotard complete with wings and foam arrows. She’d insisted on acting out every single telegram she’d delivered, and the recipients’ reactions to them. What had started as a holy-cow-you-danced-around-in-thatconversation had turned into rip-roaring hilarity.
“You should do that more often,” she said, wiping happy tears from her eyes.
He reached over and wiped a tear that had slid all the way to the edge of her jaw. “Do what?”
“Smile.”
Their eyes connected and his world halted, the temperature spiked, and the very air seemed to hum. But just as quickly as hope filled him, she pushed up to her knees, breaking the spell.
“Okay,boob man. Tell me about three-toothed squirrels.”
He knelt beside her, wondering if he’d imagined the heat.
“Cinquefoil.” He grabbed a plant, focusing on it instead of his overactive desires. “See the woody stem and evergreen leaves? They’ll grow little white flowers.”
“Sorry, Dean, but they still look like weeds to me.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that, because they’re small. They’re for groundcover, and really beautiful when they flower.” He picked up the hand shovel and gave it to her. “Dig a hole.”
“A hole? How big?”
“Big enough to replant this.”
She thrust the shovel into the dirt deep enough to bury a small animal. He reached around her, stilling her hands.
“The earth is already tilled,” he explained. His gaze caught on the glimmering gold bracelet on her wrist. The one he’d sent her for her birthday with the tiny delphinium flower charm. He slid his gaze to her other bracelets on the table. “Why didn’t you take that bracelet off?”
“I don’t know,” she said absently. “I never take it off.”
He wanted to read far more into that than she probably meant. Knowing Emery, the extra safety clasp he’d had put on the bracelet was just too much of a pain to fiddle with.
“You only need to cover what’s left of the roots. Like this.” He guided her efforts, his bare chest pressed against her warm, soft back. She smelled like sunshine and lavender, feminine andpretty, just like she had the weekend they’d first met. That weekend had passed in a whirlwind of celebrating Desiree and Rick’s engagement. Dean had grown up with Rick and his siblings, Drake and Mira. The weekend of the party, they had all hung out together in a group. And although he and Emery had spent nearly every minute by each other’s side, flirting like there was no tomorrow, he’d refrained from trying to take it any further because she was only there for a weekend and he wasn’t looking for a quick, meaningless lay. But then they’d kept in touch, and the desire to be closer to her had grown. And now all he wanted to do was soak all of her in.
She dipped her chin, and her hair brushed against his shoulder. He imagined it sweeping across his chest, spread out over his pillow, brushing over his thighs…
Torture. Pure torture.
He put a few inches of space between them, hoping to temper his desires…again.
“Good job.” He handed her the plant, giving him something else to focus on. “Now put this in and push the dirt around it.”
“Put it in the hole,” she said as she did it, “and pack it in good.” She smiled up at him. “How’d I do?”
He was still hung up on putting it in the hole and packing it in good. He cleared his throat and said, “Great. See? You don’t have a black thumb, just a confused one. Now we have to do the rest of them.”
They worked side by side replanting the garden and teasing each other as they’d done for months long-distance. This was so much better. Their friendship was easy and natural, and as much as he wanted more, he knew if he pushed for it, he could ruin everything. If he could keep himself in check, at least he had a chance for something more developing naturally.
That was a bigif.
When they finished planting he brought out the hose and watered the plants.
