“Okay.”

I stood and helped her to her feet. She pulled the towel closer to her. “I need my cover-up.”

“I may have cut it loose while I was pulling you ashore.”

“Oh. Right.” She sighed and led me to her beach spot, then slipped shorts and a T-shirt over those curves. Shame, really. She grabbed her bag. “Ready.”

We crossed the sand wordlessly, washed our feet at the little shower sprayer on the octagon deck, and headed to the parking lot.

I unlocked the passenger door of my Defender and held it open. Paisley tossed her bag inside, sank her teeth into her lower lip, and then looked at me. “I can’t get in here.”

What? “You’re going to the damned doctor.”

She laughed, and I immediately wanted to hear it again. “No, I mean, I physically can’t get up here unless you have a ladder.”

“No problem.” I put my hands on her waist and lifted her in. Do not think about sex. Don’t do it.

Too late.

I slammed her door home, climbed into my side, and had my GPS find the nearest urgent care. “Let’s go, Lucy.”

“You named your car?”

I turned the key, and she purred. “Absolutely. She’s the most dependable woman in my life.” Lucy had been my mother’s last gift to me and the lift kit a to-me-from-me present, my reward for getting the hell away.

Five minutes and a red light later, we were there. She signed in, and I settled into the uncomfortable plastic waiting-room chair. At least I’d remembered to throw a shirt on, but my trunks dripped water down my legs, forming puddles on the linoleum floor as she took the seat next to me.

“Why would your parents kill you?”

“Oh, I’m sure they’d really be okay.” She picked at the leather of her purse.

“Let’s make a deal. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. We’ve got a few minutes where our lives overlap, so let’s agree not to lie to each other. Don’t worry about what I think, just tell the truth.”

A blush crept up her neck, coloring her skin pink. “They’re just a little overprotective. They don’t like it when they don’t know what I’m up to.”

“They don’t know you’re at the beach?”

She tucked a wet strand of hair behind her ear. It fell beneath her collarbone. “They think I’m unpacking my new townhouse. I have my debit card, so if I pay cash and keep it off my insurance, they won’t know I was here. This is what I get for lying, right?” She sighed. “We start classes next week, so it seemed like good timing to get away. No homework yet, and I have the week off of work, and… Oh, I’m rambling.” She forced a fake smile and examined her knees.

“I like rambling.” Shit. I did when she was the one rambling. “What are you majoring in?”

“You’ll laugh.” She stole a look sideways at me, and those green eyes chewed me up and spat me out.

“I won’t.”

“Guess. Go ahead. Guess the most boring major you can think of. Of course, I find it fascinating.” She blinked at me all too seriously.

“Underwater toenail painting.”

She laughed, and there went that word through my damn head again. Enchanting. “No. Try again.”

“Antigravitational basket weaving?”

“Oh, you’re just about hopeless.”

I may be hopeless, but you’re smiling. “Tell me.”

Her eyes narrowed, like she was judging me, deciding if I was worthy to know her secret. “Okay. Library sciences.”

“A librarian.” I couldn’t stop the images playing in my head: pressing her petite body against the books in the stacks. Shit.

“See, you think it’s lame.”

“‘Lame’ is the word furthest from my mind, trust me.”

Her smile returned, this time genuine, and I struggled to find anything else to say that wouldn’t make me sound like a moron.

She pulled out her phone and sent a text. “Morgan’s going to worry when she gets back and can’t find me.”

“You should call your boyfriend, too. I’m sure he’d want to know what happened.” The image of finding her was burned into my brain. Pale, not breathing, lying limp on the bottom of the ocean floor.

“Oh, no. Will wouldn’t want to know. He’d be furious.”

“Furious that you came to the beach?”

Her fingers flexed across her sternum. “That I came to the beach, that I moved out of my parents’ into my own place, that I’ve had a job now for six months that he doesn’t know about… It’s going to be an interesting conversation, let’s just say that.”

“How long have you two been together?” Why the fuck do you care?

“Almost a year.”

“You in love with him?”

Her head whipped toward mine, her eyes narrowed. “That’s none of your business.”

Ah, there was some fire beneath that honey exterior. “Well, either you are, but you’re a private person, or you aren’t, but you don’t lie well, and I thought we weren’t lying here…so which is it?”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. I was good at that, finding someone’s trigger, setting them off for the hell of it, but that hadn’t been my intention here. Fuck.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”