Page 31 of The Billionaire's Teacher

“I love parts of it. I’ve been working a lot with Jackson Trent at the office to get my idea for Ballentine’s new undertaking off the ground. That has been incredible.”

“That’s great. I’m looking forward to hearing more as you get it set up. How’s everyone else?”

“Same as ever. Tristan was planning to check up on you today or tomorrow. At church he mentioned he’d seen an article about some hurricanes forming?”

I nodded. Leave it to Tristan. “That’s part of why I called. We’re rerouting because of them.”

“Your captain doesn’t think you should park and wait them out?”

“Not yet. She seems really confident that we’ll be safe if we move to the west side of everything. I trust her to know what she’s doing. I’ve already learned a lot from her.” Sunny had even had some good suggestions for my form that helped me use my air slower when I was diving. She was a good teacher.

“Her? I thought you had some grizzled old guy named ‘Sonny’ or something.”

I chuckled. “Yeah. Her name’s Sunshine. Sunny for short. It was a moment at the initial meeting.”

“Oh?” Noah’s voice held a hint of teasing. “A moment, eh?”

My face flamed. “Not like that. She’s older. It’s not—”

“Ah. So grizzled old lady.”

“No. She’s not grizzled.” Far from it. I got a mental flash of Sunny in her swimsuit as she peeled away her wetsuit, and swallowed. “Or old. Just older than me.”

Noah must have sensed some of my thoughts. “Hmm.”

“Don’t ‘hmm.’ I said it’s not like that.” Why had I thought it was a good idea to call anyone back home? Ugh. Time to get off the phone.

“But you want it to be.”

“It wouldn’t work. Her life is here. Mine’s up there. Plus did I mention she’s like ten years older than me? If she thinks of me as anything other than a paying client, it’s as a younger brother. An annoying one.” That was what I was going to tell myself at least. Because all of those were perfect reasons why nothing would work out anyway. And I didn’t want to ruin the rest of my trip because I got a weird idea and then made it awkward. Besides, she hadn’t given me any indication that she was interested.

Noah cleared his throat. “You hear yourself, right?”

“Noah. Just drop it. Okay?”

He sighed. “Fine. You didn’t push too much when I was figuring things out with Jenna, so I guess I owe you that much.”

“This isn’t like that.”

“I heard you.”

I could practically see the smirk that accompanied Noah’s words. “Whatever. Just tell everyone I’m fine, would you? I’ll keep the group chat updated if we make any other changes in the itinerary.”

“Will do. We’ll be praying you stay safe.”

“Thanks. Later.” I ended the call and dropped my phone on the seat beside me.

Why had Noah suggested the idea of something more happening between Sunshine and me? Well, fine, he hadn’t put the idea there—I’d had the idea. But I’d been doing a great job of keeping it firmly in the ridiculously impossible category.

Now, after talking to Noah, I could only wonder,What if?

10

SUNSHINE

Ihopped off the boat onto the dock. It was early. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, flaring out in deep reds that made it impossible to stop the sailor’s chant about weather from repaying in my head.

I was taking warning.

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