Page 20 of Should've Been Us
Chapter Five
“You have gotto be the worst sandcastle builder in the entire universe.” Connor groaned and Lulu stuck her tongue out athim.
“You’re the architect of thiscatastrophe.”
“I said to build a moat. How do you mess up amoat?”
“A moat has water, Connor!” She raised her voice as she threw her hands in the air, “If you didn’t want me to put water in the moat you should’ve saidso!”
“You didn’t just put water in the moat you dumped a fucking pail of it on our castle and now it’s just a pile ofsand.”
“Newsflash genius, it was always just a pile ofsand.”
“You’reimpossible.”
“You’re ridiculous.” She shot back when he rolled his eyes at her and God help her if she wasn’tgrinning.
She was having fun. With Connor of all people. Jesus, she was seriously low on friends if she was resorting to playing with theenemy.
Connor laughed, his deep chuckle making her smile widen. It wasn’t often that she heard him laugh. Usually if they were anywhere near each other they were fighting, but something had changed between them at some point between last night andtoday.
She didn’t know what it was exactly. Connor had been nice to her for starters. He’d taken care of her last night, gotten her a drink when she needed one and then to her room when she’d needed to leave. This morning he’d brought her coffee and breakfast and made sure she didn’t bail on this stupid activity. He’d even apologized when he’d been an ass about her swimsuit and he’d told her she lookedbeautiful.
Yeah, calling her beautiful had probably been what softened her towards him. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called her beautiful. Her parents and brother totally didn’tcount.
The rest of his good deeds didn’t hurt either. She’d really needed that coffee after all. They weren’t new best friends or anything but she also didn’t want to smack him in his too pretty face every time he opened his mouth. That was somethingright?
Oh, they were still fighting. They’d been arguing and shooting barbed comments at each other all day. They’d yelled at one another so many times during this stupid sandcastle building game that Derek had threatened to separate them but Connor had held his hands up innocently and their friend had gone back to his fiancé without a backwards glance. They’d gone back to working together to complete the monstrosity that didn’t have a chance in hell of winning and they’d gone right back to arguingtoo.
The difference was that neither of them had stormed offtoday.
They’d stuck it out. Argued and fought and then let it go. They’d smiled and laughed together, something she wouldn’t have thought was even possible before today. But there it was, she was having fun fighting with Connor on thebeach.
And she could admit, at least to herself, that it was hard to let her anger get the best of her when he was wearing nothing but a pair of swimtrucks.
He might be rude. He might be condescending. He might be a know-it-all that got on her last nerve and she might want to punch him as often as she wanted to speak to him, but holy Christ the man was nice to lookat.
His skin was tan, glistening bronze with a mixture of sunscreen and sweat. His hair was damp from the water she’d thrown on him earlier in a fit of childishness and it was curling as it dried. His broad shoulders and biceps bulged as he scooped at the sand, trying to fix the damage she’d done. Trickles of ocean spray ran in rivulets down his well-defined abs, finding the creases and then the hem of his shorts which sat low on his hips, showing off that ridiculous V that made women lose theirminds.
She’d always thought she was immune to Connor’s good looks. She’d known he was handsome but it had never really affected her, at least not to the point that she couldn’t deny it. But watching him crawl around in the sand, hot and sweaty, looking sexy as hell, she had to bite her lip to keep fromdrooling.
“Lu?”
His voice jolted her out of the dirty thoughts she’d been having about just what lay beneath those board shorts. Shit. She jerked her eyes upward but it was too late. He’d caught her staring at him. She knew he had because that knowing smirk inched up his chiseled face and his eyes twinkled withamusement.
“What?” She snapped, more annoyed with herself than with him in thatmoment.
If he mentioned it at all, she swore she was going to stab him with the sand rake they’d been using to smooth out their work surface. He was accustomed to women staring at him. She’d been around him long enough to know that, to have seen it for herself. That was why she had always been so very careful not to let him catch her looking. Because she wasn’t one of his groupie bimbos that thought he was charming. No, he ruined that thought the moment he opened his mouth, every damntime.
He sat upright on his knees on the ground. His hands were caked in wet sand. He stared back at her for so long with those fathomless blue eyes that she fidgeted uncomfortably. She’d never liked it when he stared at her and she’d certainly caught him doing it more times than he’d caughther.
“What?” She said again, putting her hands on herhips.
Connor only smiled and clapped his hands together, shaking off the sand, “I said this is a complete loss. There’s no point trying to fix it. There’s nothing to do but get a drink and grab a lounge chair while these idiots finish this stupidgame.”
“It isn’t stupid! It’s fun!” Aubrey yelled from a few feet down the beach where she and Derek were putting the finishing touches on a castle that miraculously resembled the one atDisneyland.
“You say that because you’re winning.” Connor shotback.
