by Ranae Rose
She snorted, couldn’t help it. “I’m taking over breakfast from here. Just sit down and try not to burn anything.”
In truth, she was glad to have an excuse to escape his presence. Ever since he’d walked in on her freaking out, she’d felt woefully exposed – like all her crazy was showing through, and she couldn’t cover it back up while he was still looking.
Alone in the kitchen, she’d have a chance to regroup – pull herself back together.
A split second of solitude was all she got. Instead of staying put and resting on the couch, Grey followed her into the kitchen.
“I already made the bacon and put on a pot of coffee. Eggs too – they’re on that plate, under the paper towel.”
Kerry surveyed the breakfast buffet he’d laid out on the counter. It was really … something. “Grey, are you normally this bad at cooking, or do I need to take you back to the doctor?”
Good lord, breakfast looked like it’d been prepared by a well-meaning six year old. The bacon was still sizzling in a hastily turned-off skillet, charred black, and the eggs… When she whisked the paper towel off the plate, she discovered a gelatinous mass of pale white goo that was burnt around the edges, like a ghost of the scrambled eggs he’d tried to make.
The coffee, to his credit, looked and smelled great.
He raised a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed, frowning. “I guess it’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”
“What did you do to the eggs to make them colorless?” They looked like they’d been painted white.
“I know how into healthy eating you are – I figured you were one of those people who only eats the whites. So I removed the yolks … mostly.”
“Oh. Actually, I eat the whole egg.”
“Damn. So much for my manly intuition.”
“Is that a thing?”
“Apparently not.”
“Well, it was nice of you to think of that.” Actually, it was one of the most considerate things she could remember anyone ever doing for her. Now that she knew, she looked at the colorless eggs in a new light. “Here, let’s eat – I bet the eggs are fine. I just thought they looked weird before I realized it was only the whites.”
“They’re burnt.” He said it like he was confessing some sin.
“Only a little.” She divvied up the charred delicacies onto two plates and poured two mugs of coffee.
They ate in silence for a good minute or two.
It was Grey who eventually broke it. “Is it just me or…”
Kerry pasted a smile firmly onto her face, preparing to praise his cooking no matter what he said. She still felt guilty over her bad cooking comment, especially since he’d gone out of his way to make things in a way he’d thought she’d prefer. Breakfast was burnt, nearly flavorless and weirdly gritty, but she wasn’t about to admit it.
Grey met her gaze over the little kitchen table. “…am I an awesome cook?”
She nearly choked on her latest mouthful of egg whites, had to wash them down with an enormous, mouth-scalding swig of black coffee.
“I thought the food looked crappy,” Grey continued, “but it tastes better than it looks. Thank God.”
“Thanks again for cooking,” Kerry said, studying his eyes for any sign of abnormal pupil dilation, like the doctor had instructed her to. Grey’s eyes were so dark that it was hard to gauge their pupil size from across the table.
If he thought this was good, did that mean that the effects of his concussion were still lingering, or only that he ate much, much worse on a regular basis?
She didn’t dare bet that it was the latter.
She pushed back her chair and refilled her coffee mug. “I’m going to call in to work and tell Faye I won’t be coming. It’ll only take a minute.”
Grey had called a supervisor the night before to say that he wouldn’t be showing up for his shift, but she had yet to get in touch with her boss.
“What – because of me?” His dark eyes went wide. “You don’t have to do that. You’ve already done enough.”
“Your 24 hours aren’t up yet, so I can’t leave you alone – doctor’s orders.”
She dialed Faye before he could protest and explained the situation.
Faye was understanding. Kerry could count the number of times she’d called in sick to work on one hand, and it was nice to have that count for something.
When she ended the call, there was nothing left to do but actually consider how she’d spend the rest of the day. Alone. With Grey.
She shoveled down the rest of her breakfast while she thought.
“Since what’s done is done,” Grey said, “does that mean we’re hanging out here for the day, or do you want to go somewhere else?”
“Like where?”
“I don’t know. The beach or something?”
Kerry chewed a strip of particularly charred bacon slowly, so as not to chip a tooth. “You’re supposed to be resting your brain. No work, no TV or computers…”
“Last time I checked, the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t a screen. I wouldn’t be, uh, looking at anything too hard while I was there.” His gaze dipped down to her chest for half a second before he snapped it down even lower, to his clean plate.
Heat streaked across Kerry’s cheeks with a velocity she hadn’t realized was possible. She wasn’t exactly hauling that much around in the chest department. Could Grey really not keep his eyes from straying to that area of her body?
Her first instinct was to say no to the beach. But if she did, that would mean staying in her little house alone with him all day, deprived of the distractions that movies or TV might offer. What would they do?
“I guess we can go if you’re sure you feel up to it. I’ll drive though, and you’re not allowed to do anything but lie on the beach and relax.”
He arched a brow at her. “Not allowed? Have you been taking bossiness lessons from Sasha or something?”
“I just don’t want you to get sick. This whole mess is my fault and I’m trying to fix it.”
“Okay. So what are you going to do to me if I don’t listen?”
One corner of his mouth quirked the tiniest bit. He smoothed his lips back out, but his eyes looked suspiciously bright, considering that they were nearly black. “I have this suspicion that Sasha spanks Henry when he misbehaves. What do you think?”
For the second time that morning, she nearly choked. After awkwardly forcing down the last bite of her breakfast, she hid her face behind her coffee mug. “I don’t know. God, Grey! I’m going to let that one slide since you hit your head.”
He just grinned. He was pushing her buttons and he knew it.
Kerry was reminded of Sasha, but not for any reasons that had anything to do with her fiancé, Henry. Sasha loved to push people’s buttons for the fun of it too.
“Let’s get ready for the beach.”
She packed a few towels and some sunblock into a bag, then changed into her navy blue tankini. Apparently, her modest swimsuit didn’t stop Grey from staring – a fact that proved Kerry didn’t need Sasha’s wardrobe advice to attract him.
Afterward she pulled on shorts and a t-shirt over top and found her flip flops. When she emerged into the living room, Grey was there wearing a t-shirt and the same board shorts he’d worn to jiu-jitsu the night before.
“By the way,” she asked as they exited the house, “how does your head feel?”
No sooner had she set foot outside the front door than she nearly tripped.
The edge of her right flip-flop hit something solid and she pitched forward, awkwardly catching herself with a hand on the doorframe.
Grey grabbed her upper arm a second too late.
“I’m fine,” she said, and pulled away, trying to pretend like his touch hadn’t raised her body temperature, leaving her feeling faintly and deliciously fevered.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” She dropped her gaze to the porch floorboards. The object she’d tripped over was a newspaper, tightly rolled and secured wit
h a rubber band.
Grey picked it up before she could.
“You wanna set this inside?”
She took it from him, examined it like it was an artifact from a distant galaxy. “I don’t get the paper.”
Grey shrugged. “Maybe the paperboy threw your neighbor’s copy onto your porch by mistake.”
“Maybe. I’ll take it over later, when we get back from the beach.”
She tossed it into the house without a second thought, unable to explain why every square inch of her skin prickled as she closed and locked the front door.
CHAPTER 7
Grey was going to have to write a thank you note to the guy who’d shoved his gross, sweaty foot into his face at jiu-jitsu. Sitting on the beach with Kerry, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a good day, even if his head did ache a little, now that he was out in the hot sun.
She was wearing her swimsuit – the blue one she always wore, with the top that tied behind her neck and went all the way to her hips, and the little shorts-style bottom. The fabric was dry so it wasn’t mind-blowingly clingy like it had been a couple days ago, but it was still hard to keep his eyes off her.
Her legs were slim and toned. Even when she was resting, he could see the carefully-shaped little swells of her biceps and triceps. After yesterday evening, he understood why she worked to be strong – jiu-jitsu was hard. Grey had had no training but had still had a weight advantage over the guy he’d been rolling with. He’d been new too, but still. Someone as tiny as Kerry would need every advantage she could give herself, both with technique and strength.
“You said you’ve been training jiu-jitsu for a year, right?”
“Yeah.” She pulled her gaze from the shoreline and looked at him instead.
“How long does it take to get good at it?”
She shrugged. “Years. Forever, maybe. Why, are you planning to come back?”
“I might.”
She raised her brows. “I was just teasing.”
“What – you don’t want me around?”
“I just didn’t think you’d be interested in coming back, after what happened.”
He snorted. “Well, now I know what you really think of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think I’m too scared to come back just because I got a face full of someone’s nasty foot? I face danger daily, you know. In fact, I’m what some might call a badass.”
It worked – she smiled. A little, for about a split second. He’d take what he could get.
“You do those things because you have to. Jiu-jitsu is strictly voluntary – for fun. I didn’t know if eating someone’s foot and winding up with a concussion was your idea of a good time.”
“Hey, this is a small town – you have to take fun where you can find it, sometimes.”
Her smile flickered to life again, and she shifted, stretching out on her towel. Every tight little muscle in her body rippled, holding him spellbound.
“Wanna get in the water?”
Her eyebrows plunged down below the lenses of her big sunglasses. “You’re supposed to be relaxing, remember? No strenuous activities.”
“Come on. It’s roasting out here. Because I’m a badass, I didn’t want to complain, but the heat is making my head ache. We’ll just wade in and cool down, nice and easy.”
“If your head hurts, I should take you back to the hospital.”
A minute later, he’d convinced her to wade into the water with him. The waves weren’t very rough unless you were too close to shore. So he went past the breakers, stopping in calmer, waist-deep water.
“Wading, huh?” She shot him a challenging look.
He looked right back, letting his gaze linger where her swimsuit top was molded to her breasts, thoroughly soaked. Normally he wouldn’t have been so obnoxious, but it wasn’t like she’d be able to see that he was looking – sunglasses were possibly mankind’s greatest invention, for that very reason.
God, he wanted to touch her. The fact that that wasn’t even remotely within the realm of possibility yet wasn’t lost on him, but he still longed for the day when it would be. Like the rest of her, her breasts were small and shapely, tight-looking and almost unbearably appealing. After just a few seconds of staring, it was certain: no way would he be able to get out of the water anytime soon.
As she plunged in a little deeper and swam for a few yards, he adjusted his swim shorts. He’d be aching for days after this, and he had no one to blame but himself. He wasn’t a masochist – not really – he just couldn’t get enough of her. He craved her presence like a drug, and the fact that they were finally spending time alone together seemed like a breakthrough.
Over the summer, he’d watched Liam and Henry fall almost instantly for Kerry’s friends, and vice-versa. He’d hoped for something similar with him and Kerry – it had been an instant attraction, at least on his part – but he knew deep down that she was different.
She wasn’t impulsive, didn’t seem to warm up to people easily. So the fact that he’d gotten to the point where they did things like go out to breakfast and the beach together was kind of a big deal.
“Hey Grey.” Water dripped from her fingers as she motioned out to sea.
“What?”
“Look. A dolphin.”
He had to squint to see it, but sure enough, she was right. “Two of them. No, three – four.”
A small pod was leaping in and out of the water, their grey bodies like shadows cast on distant waves.
She was smiling – a big, brilliant smile unlike any he’d ever seen on her face before.
“I remember the first time I ever saw dolphins, after I first moved here. It felt magical.”
Grey had been raised on the southern NC coast and could remember riding the ferry to Southport as a little kid, watching dolphins swim alongside the boat. “Where’d you move from?”
It struck him, suddenly, that he had no clue about her life before Riley County. She never talked about herself.
“Kentucky.”
“I’ve never been.”
For a second she said nothing, and then she shrugged, treading water as she did so. “You’re not missing much. It’s a lot prettier here.”
“You don’t miss it?”
“No.”
“So is that why you moved here – because you liked the area so much?”
“Actually, I’d never seen the ocean before I moved here. I just needed a change, and this is where I ended up. It was sort of an accidentally good decision.”
As a wave rolled over him and left a strand of seaweed plastered to his side, he tried to imagine never having seen the sea. It was a weird thing to think about.
“So Kentucky – that’s race horse country, right?” When he thought of the state, one thing came to mind: the Kentucky Derby. Other than that, he drew a blank.
“Not where I lived, which was in a little coal mining town in the eastern part of the state.”
He had a sudden vision of hard hats and lights in darkness, rough hands and black dirt against skin. They were visions from movies, which was where his virtually non-existent knowledge about coal mining came from.
Kerry was swimming away from him, farther out to sea.
She went out way past where she could touch, apparently fearless. For someone who’d never seen the ocean until a few years ago, she was a great swimmer.
Watching her, Grey thought about riptides and jellyfish and all the things he normally didn’t waste time worrying about. He wasn’t sure why those dangers seemed so real now, in a way they never had before. Maybe because Kerry looked so small and alone out at sea.
He swam to her.
When he reached her side, she seemed surprised. “You shouldn’t be swimming,” she said, and turned back without another word.
She didn’t reprimand him any further, but he still felt like a jackass as they headed toward shore. When she started to wade back in, he did too. He might as well head in: he’d ma
naged to cool down, and obviously being in the water with her today lacked the magic it’d been so full of last time.
When they got back to their towels, she pulled a couple of bottled waters out of a soft cooler and handed one to him.
For the longest time, they were both silent. Silent and virtually alone. There was an old man with a metal detector inching his way across the beach, and a woman jogging with a golden retriever on a leash. But they were far away and it was like he and Kerry were in their own quiet little bubble.
“I’m sorry if I seem bitchy,” Kerry eventually said. “It’s just that I feel guilty.”
He frowned. “Hey, stop beating yourself up. It’s just a little concussion. I’m fine, and it’s not your fault anyway.”
“It’s not just that.” She turned to look at him, and he could feel her making eye contact, even through her glasses’ enormous lenses. “There’s something else I should tell you. I’ve been holding back, and I can’t take the guilt anymore.”
* * * * *
Kerry’s stomach balled up into something that felt like a mass of barbed wire and broken glass. She was infinitely grateful for her sunglasses. Should she feel guilty over that too?
She dropped her gaze as she wracked her mind for a way to say what she had to without sounding fantastically egotistical.
“I really like spending time with you,” she finally said, “even if I’m not good at showing it. But the truth is that I don’t have any business flirting with you or anyone else, and I feel like maybe I’ve been … well, leading you on.”
For a split second, Grey looked like he’d been sucker-punched. He recovered quickly, though – so quickly that Kerry wondered whether she’d imagined his reaction just to boost her own ego.
“I thought…” He unscrewed the cap to his water bottle, held it open but didn’t take a drink. “I thought we went on a date the other day, at the café. Figured maybe if I could lay on the charm thick enough, you’d eventually fall for me the way your friends did for Liam and Henry.”
He flashed her a grin that was gone as soon as it’d appeared.
Inside, she was cringing all the way to the moon and back. A part of her wanted to scream that yes, it had been a date, and that they should go on another one. But she knew what she had to do, and this would ultimately be less awkward and painful if she got it over with quickly. “I’m sorry.”