“Was there something else?” he asked.
“I, ah—”
“Saaammmy,” came a singsong feminine voice from just outside the workshop.
Vee started, twisting toward the doorway and the short, stacked blonde posing like an exotic dancer in it. The woman—whose name Vee didn’t know but whose face she recognized as a server in a local restaurant—was dressed in Daisy Dukes that showed off a perfect thigh gap and a teeny-tiny bikini top, barely saved from public indecency by the virtue of a gauzy swimsuit cover-up, courtesy of Bountiful’s summer stock.
“This is where you’ve been hiding.” The woman clip-clopped over to him in scarily high-heeled sandals, completely ignoring Ruby and Vee. She set a possessive hand on his elbow and brushed some sawdust off his chest, crimson-tipped fingernails resting for a brief moment over his heart. “You’re such a dirty boy, Sammy.”
Sam’s jaw bunched for a moment, then he smiled. “You’ve no idea. Kimberly, this is my friend Vee and her daughter, Ruby.”
Kimberly half turned toward Vee, and call her cynical, but she would’ve bet that week’s rent money the woman used the introduction as an excuse to bump her sizeable boob against Sam’s bicep as she did. “Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there. Is that V like a letter?”
Vee pulled her lips up into a tight smile, one she used when dealing with bank managers, unappealing men who hit on her while she was grocery shopping, and women who were practitioners of bitchcraft.
“Actually it’s V for Vanessa,” she said, demonstrating with a reverse peace sign and a Kiwi way of flipping someone the bird. “Pleasure to meet you, Kimberly.”
She got a cat’s-ass pinched smile in return—and not even a glance in Ruby’s direction—before Kimberly turned her attention back to Sam.
“Are you done for the day?” she asked.
Sam’s arm appeared trapped in the valley of her boobs, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Uh,” he said, apparently rendered incoherent by Kimberly’s cleavage.
“Because I’ve come to kidnap you. Don’t say no,” she said when Sam opened his mouth again.
His gaze flicked to Vee and she expanded the tight smile until her cheek muscles hurt. “Don’t mind us, we’re just leaving. Have fun, kids.” She bent and grabbed Ruby’s hand, leading her toward the door.
Ruby arched back at the doorway and blew Sam a kiss from her chubby hand.
“Buh-bye, Daddy!”
At Kimberly’s bulging eyes and sagging jaw, Vee didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe with embarrassment. Instead, she did neither, leaving Sam to explain her tiny offspring to his latest hookup.
Chapter 3
After putting in a long day at Kauri Whare, there was nothing better than hanging out on Bounty Bay beach. If by hanging out you meant studying the length of sand and sea between the red and yellow patrol flags, making sure no one did something stupid like drown themselves.
Not gonna happen under Sam’s watch.
Sitting on the portable lifeguard tower, binoculars positioned to take in the endless whitewash of crystal clear waves, Sam diligently scanned the ocean. Conditions were pretty perfect. Incoming tide, no nearby rips, baby-sized capillary waves. Four serious swimmers were beyond the surf zone and were all accounted for. The bigger clusters of people were mucking around in water no deeper than their chests, and a scattering of kids played in the shallows, none of them bothering with boogie boards since the waves were far too small. This kind of afternoon made his job that much easier.
As if drawn by an invisible string, his binoculars drifted over to a spot by the rock pools where Vee was stretched out on a beach towel. Nearby, her friend Gracie sat in one of the lukewarm pools with Ruby on her lap. Charlie and William, Owen’s orphaned niece and nephew whom he’d adopted, splashed around beside them. Every now and then the warm breeze would shift and he’d hear Ruby’s laughter drifting across the beach. He’d been surreptitiously watching Vee since she and Gracie and the kids arrived thirty minutes ago.
The tower vibrated beneath him and he jerked the glasses away from his face and looked down. Mike, one of his partners for the afternoon/early evening shift grinned up at him, his hand wrapped around a metal ladder rung.
“Something interesting going on in the rock pools, mate?” he asked. “I know you can drown in two inches of water, but the woman you’re staring at seems to have it under control.”
Sam snorted, setting the binoculars on his lap. “I’m not staring.”
He totally was. While Mike, who’d just celebrated his twenty-first birthday a few weeks ago, would’ve described Vee’s plain one-piece swimsuit as a granny suit, Sam couldn’t prevent his gaze from skimming the length of her lean tanned legs, the smooth arch of her spine above the suit’s low back, and the curve of her breasts pushing against the black fabric.
“Yeah, whatever,” Mike said. “Why don’t you have your thirty-minute break now? Vicki and I’ll take over.” He tilted his head to the side where Vicki strode toward the water’s edge with her rescue tube slung across her back.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Sam climbed down the ladder and handed over the binoculars. He stripped off his official bright yellow rash vest and tossed it over a rung. He jogged toward the water with the full intention of using his break to have a quick swim, but at the last moment veered to the left.
He slowed from a jog to a casual stroll—he hoped it looked casual—and approached Vee who sat upright with her knees bent and an open paperback resting on them. Her long dark hair was scooped back in a windblown knot, a few stray strands having come loose curled around her cheekbones. Below mirrored sunglasses, her teeth worried her full lower lip as she read. Whatever the book was, it held a hundred percent of her focus. She didn’t even glance his way as he crunched through hot sand and crushed shell fragments to stand in front of her.
And suddenly he became the teenage boy who’d joined Bounty Bay’s surf lifesavers because, although girls seemed to like him, he always felt more comfortable in the water than being one of the guys that horsed around with them on the beach. That, and girls thought lifeguards were heroic.
His heart doing a weird skittering loop in his chest, he cleared his throat. “Good book?”
Vee slowly lifted her chin, her lips pressing together in a tight line before she spoke. “Yes, it is.”
She didn’t seem surprised that it was him interrupting her peace, so she’d been a little more aware of his presence than she’d let on. She also had the pinched look on her face that women, in his experience, got when he’d screwed up somehow and they were still pissy about it. He didn’t have to rack his brains to come up with a reason: Kimberly. Though Vee often seemed to be pissed with him for no reason other than Gracie’s and Nat’s guys were his best mate and brother, and she’d been seeing a lot more of him than she had since they were kids.
Vee closed the book and set it on the towel beside her. He got a quick glimpse of a bare-chested male on the glossy cover and opened his big mouth before his brain could kick in. “Now that’s some quality literature. Mummy porn, is it?”
Her forehead crinkled above her sunglasses. Pretty sure she was giving him a dagger-laden glare. “Only a man who’s never read a romance novel would make such a misogynistic statement.”
He folded his arms and offered his cheesiest smirk. “Misogynistic? I bet you didn’t read that word in your Spanish Prince’s Secret Bastard Baby with the Governess.”
Inwardly his brain face-palmed and hung a Closing Down sign. Honestly, he hadn’t intended to fall back into the pattern of winding Vee up because he didn’t know how to relate to her on any other level. It was a habit developed over the past year or so of regular exposure to each other. The gulf between them from kids who grew up in the same town to adults who moved in different circles for over a decade—but now were forced to share a social group connection—was spanned by the most unstable of bridges.
“Did you want something, Sammy?”
“Uh-huh.” And God help him, his gaze dropped to the swell of her breasts so the words came out a little rough around the edges. Thankfully his sunnies hid this dick move of ogling Vee’s assets—dick move, because if she’d caught him, she’d never consider the proposal he’d spent the past two restless nights working out.
“Spit it out, man,” she said with a huff that made her chest wobble. “Even if I were a mind reader, I wouldn’t want to explore that dark cavernous space beneath all that pretty-boy hair.”
He shoved his sunnies up onto his pretty-boy hair—courtesy of genes gifted from his dad, who at sixty-one still had a full lawn of thick salt and pepper up top—and grinned. “I was coming to see if you wanted to race to the marker buoy.”
Her face angled sideways as she craned around him to look at the bright orange buoy bobbing around six hundred feet out in the bay. As Bounty Bay kids it was a rite of passage to race to the diving platform anchored close to shore every summer, but only strong swimmers would attempt to reach the marker buoy way beyond it.
“What are we, twelve?” she asked.
“Last time I saw you swim to the buoy was the summer you were sixteen and you beat all of your friends.” He rolled his shoulder, pulling a whatever face. “You didn’t beat me, though. Guess you couldn’t now even if I gave you a head start.”
Her eyebrows arched up and she pulled off her sunglasses, her gaze shooting gas-flame blue bullets at him. “Are you baiting me?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
He went for a mixture of truth and evasion. “I need to burn off some energy, and you’re the only one here—other than Vicki and Mike, who’re working—that can challenge me in the water.”
“Kimberly not much of a swimmer, huh?” she asked with saccharine sweetness. “Too buoyant?”
He grinned. “You realize she’s one step away from a restraining order, don’t you? No need to be jealous.”
Oops—that last comment just rolled off his tongue by accident. Apparently, Vee took it as a gauntlet being thrown down because she rose gracefully to her feet. “Perhaps you should apply for a discount on all those restraining orders you’ve needed over the years.” She gave him a wide berth and headed for the water.
Dropping his sunnies beside hers, he followed, catching up easily with his longer stride.
“Or you could try not leading so many women on,” she added, keeping her gaze fixed on a group of kids building a massive sandcastle.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked as they crossed the sprinkling of crushed shells, driftwood twigs, and seaweed drying in the sun that marked the high-tide line.
Vee reached the cooler, hard-packed sand first and stopped, hands on hips, meeting his gaze square on. “Do you need it explained to you in interpretive dance? You know exactly what I mean. Women are always falling in love with your laid-back sinfully hot surfer dude slash tortured artiste persona. And you encourage it, don’t deny it.”
Sam found himself staring at her mouth, listening only with half an ear and hearing blah, blah, Sam, blah blah—then the words sinfully hot slapped him upside the head. Vee thought he was hot? His mouth curled into a smile, one that probably exposed ninety percent of his teeth and a hundred percent of smug male satisfaction.
Yeah. Vee thought he was hot. Well, hell. Things just got more interesting, and maybe a little more complicated.
Vee’s mouth puckered in and this time he caught more of her words because she’d moved in closer and given his chest a not so gentle shove. Her palms didn’t budge him an inch but she looked so cutely irritated it made him grin all the more.
“It’s not funny, you giant shithead in shorts.”
Something flashed through her big blue eyes that caused his smile to dial down a notch then fade away.
“I’ve never promised any woman more than a good time while it lasted,” he said softly. “And I think them falling in love with me is a slight exaggeration, don’t you? It’s not like any of them have started up a twelve-step programme.”
Nope, Sam hadn’t left a trail of broken hearts as his serial dater reputation would imply. Women liked him, and he liked them. But love? You had to truly let someone into your heart for love to take root, and he couldn’t do that. Didn’t know how.
“You’re still a smug ass,” she said.
“According to you I’m a sinfully hot smug ass.”
Vee’s eyes widened but it wasn’t irritation that flashed through them this time, but something else entirely. Something hotter than the afternoon sunshine beating down on his bare shoulders.
His mojo reappeared with a vengeance and he chuckled. “I’ll give you a thirty-second head start.”
Vee didn’t bother to argue; instead she sprinted into the shallows, giving him the perfect view of her sinfully hot ass.
Day-um.
Splashing through the surf, Vee couldn’t reach deeper water soon enough. Small waves surged past her, the difference in water and sun-warmed air temperature raising goose bumps on her legs.
Sinfully hot surfer dude slash tortured artiste.
Trust Sam to only hear the ego-stroking phrase. She’d let her mouth run off again. Let Sam goad her into gobbling up his teasing bait like a snapper on a fishing line.
She risked a glance over her shoulder. He stood in the same spot she’d left him at, arms folded across his broad, smooth chest, his black-inked bicep stark against his tanned skin. He was watching her, the intensity of his stare pulling her back toward him as effortlessly as the incoming tide wanted to draw her back to shore. Every part of her body—even the bits tingling from the cooler water—grew warm. Heat flushed up her body and she turned back to the horizon, pushing herself through waves with renewed determination.
Finally the sand beneath her feet sloped away and she dived under the next breaker, using her years of free membership to the Bounty Bay aquatic training center—aka, the beach—to power through the waves until she ran out of air and had to surface. One deep breath and then her head was down into a strong freestyle stroke in the direction of the marker buoy.
She didn’t check to see if Sam had pursued her into the water; the man was way too strong a swimmer to give him even a second’s advantage. As best friends with Tui, she’d been to a few junior surf lifesaving carnivals to watch Sam compete. Having spent more energy training and surfing than on homework—according to Tui—Sam had blitzed the competition and won nearly every event for his age group. Lean and muscled even as a sixteen-year-old, Vee had struggled to keep her expression dialed to bored disinterest while watching him. There was no way her fourteen-year-old self would’ve admitted under any kind of torture that she’d had a teeny-tiny crush on Tui’s big brother.
She raised her head to check her progress toward the buoy. Water streaming down her face, she blinked in disbelief. Sam was already at the buoy, treading water on the spot and wearing the same smirk that had goaded her into this stupid dare in the first place.
She was about to offer congratulations because she wasn’t a bad sport and she’d known the chances of beating Sam were virtually nil, when a sharp slice of pain stabbed into her left calf muscle. She cried out, a squeaky whimper really, and clutched her lower leg, immediately sinking beneath the waves.
Cool water closed over her head and she sucked in a mouthful of salty brine. Her lungs burned with the need to cough and she floundered, eyes stinging from the salt. White water and bubbles churned around her, then a hand seized her wrist. Sam dragged her to the surface and she coughed up what seemed like a gallon of seawater. The cramp hadn’t released its claws from her calf and she gritted her teeth.
Sam’s arms closed around her middle and he leaned backward, floating the
m both on their backs. Splashes from the waves flicked into her face. Her leg hurt so much she could only focus on the water droplets and the squawking of seagulls overhead, and not Sam’s muscular body beneath her.
But once the cramp finally subsided, oh boy, was she aware of the man holding her. She also became aware he was speaking quietly into her ear, saying things like, “It’s okay,” “You’re doing good,” and that his strong hands were knotted beneath her breasts. It also occurred to her that Sam had probably saved her life.
She didn’t like the idea one little bit.
Though, she liked the idea of drowning even less. So as much as she wanted to push him away, she didn’t. Instead, she allowed herself to just float in his arms. She wriggled her toes experimentally, but so far the cramp hadn’t returned.
“I’m good now,” she said.
“You sure?” His gravelly voice came from behind her head.
“Yeah.”
He let her go.
She wrestled around in the water to face him. “You won, fair and square.”
“It was never about winning.”
She circled back to face the beach, suddenly embarrassed to meet his gaze and scared to ask what this race had been about. They were a long way from the beach, Gracie and the kids only small colorful dots sticking out of the rock pools. A long way from the other swimmers, from anyone else who could show up and ease the awkwardness of her current situation.
“That was a bastard of a cramp,” Sam said.
He kept his distance, and even though she couldn’t see him except in her peripheral vision, she knew he continued to watch for any sign of her cramp coming back. Doing his civic duty. It wouldn’t look good if she drowned while swimming with Bounty Bay’s star lifeguard.
“Guess I owe you one for saving me the embarrassment of having Mike and Vicki swim out with the rescue tubes.”
“Guess you do at that.”
Something in his tone caused her scalp to prickle. She found him staring at her with an odd look upon his face.
Break Your Heart: A Small Town Romance (Bounty Bay Book 5) Page 4