Chapter Twelve

Nora

The sand is warm beneath my feet as I turn and walk backward, waiting for Sebastian to make up his mind.

"One quick swim," he decides aloud, pulling off his sunglasses. "Only to cool off, because it's hot outside and I'm sweating."

"Whereas I'm swimming for an Olympic medal. Pride of the States."

"Careful, Nora." He removes his shirt in one smooth move and tosses it on the sand. "Eels love a smart-ass."

A firework detonates dead center in my chest at the way he says my name. It's not nearly as powerful as the one I felt when he put his hat on my head, though. That one lit up my whole body.

My gaze skims the tattoo on his arm.The mountain scene spans his broad shoulder. The ink is bold, the jagged mountain peaks begging to be traced with a gentle finger.

Somebody else's.

Not mine.

His stomach is the tightest I've ever seen. He's so toned I want to poke his muscles to see if there's any give.Or maybe I want to congratulate each of his abs on having their own abs, which are situated off to the side. Obliques. And those arms . Baseball left its mark on Sebastian Rossi.

It's really ridiculous that this guy hit the genetic lottery and then decided to be an upstanding citizen and start nonprofits for his career. I think I'd prefer it if he were a felon. Or a used car salesman.

Maybe then I wouldn't be thinking about wrapping myself around his body like a human-sized dryer sheet.

I spin to face the water. As soon as my feet break the surface, the freezing water clings to my calves, the sensation bleeding up my legs. It's as effective as a cold shower at rerouting my thoughts.

" Whoa, it's frigid." I cross my arms, regretting taking out the padding of this swim top. My nipples ache instantly. "It's annoying-coworker-in-charge-of-the-thermostat cold."

"You have to jump off the dock. All or nothing."

My chin brushes my shoulder as I glance backward. "Wading in is easier, thank you very much."

"Sure, because you're clearly enjoying yourself." He removes his phone from his pocket and kicks off his sneakers, and then peels off his black socks. "Rule number one of swimming: always jump in. You should know that, given you are a professional swim dancer."

I groan. "You're going to make me regret telling you that, aren't you?"

"All signs point to yes."

I roll my eyes. "You do it your way, I'll do it mine, and we'll both cool off."

"Deal." He passes me by and steps onto the floating dock. "Now watch and learn."

He springs into action, tearing down the floating platform, steps thudding as he flies past the tiny boats tied to hitching posts. His big body curls into a ball as he catapults off the edge and does a front flip right into the water.

Show-off.

He breaks the surface seconds later with a bursting exhale. His chocolate hair is waterlogged, and his mouth is wide open. "Holy fuck that's cold!"

"Mm." I cup my hand to my ear. "What was that?"

"You heard me."

"Because it sounds like ‘you were right, Nora.'"

He dips almost entirely underwater as he moves my way. As he hits the part where it's too shallow for him to keep swimming, he rises to his feet.

His smile is suspiciously wide.

I eye him warily. "What are you doing?"

Water sluices down his body. His basketball shorts are so heavy they're struggling to stay high on his hips. I can see the entire waistband of his boxer briefs. "I can't help but notice you're not wading."

"I am!" I take a tiny step deeper and wince.

He moves a foot closer.

My nerve endings misfire, confused between the contrast of the cold water and his heated gaze.

"You made a deal," he says evenly. "I jumped."

"I never specified how deep I had to wade."

"You have to be fully submerged. Equal exposure to the water." His face tilts an inch sideways, appraising me from a slightly different angle as he circles me. "I'll wait."

I splash water at him.

He laughs. He's close enough to reach out and grab me and large enough to toss me over his shoulder like a sack of flour. "If you're scared—"

I lift my chin to meet his eye. "I'm not scared."

"My mistake."

He steps closer, which crowds me one foot deeper into the water.

The soles of my feet slide against the ground. My legs vehemently protest the cold, but I force myself to take another step.

"How's it feeling?" he asks, brows aloft.

"It feels…refreshing." My butt hits the water. Goose bumps ripple across my skin. "This is much easier than jumping off a dock."

"That's great." He reaches down, dips his hand in the water, and splashes my stomach with the smallest bit of water. "All the way, then."

I narrow my eyes and lunge for his arm. As soon as I close my grip, I let myself fall backward. We topple into the water in a clumsy heap. His cool skin slides across mine, his hand grazing my waist as he breaks free.

Danger, danger!

Sucking in a sharp breath, I swim sideways, putting distance between us and the delicious way our limbs slid together. I don't stop kicking until I can no longer conceive of how deep it is, twenty or thirty feet out. The water is clear enough that I can see my body beneath the surface, but not in great detail.

Sebastian swims close by. Eventually, we stop to catch our breath. He runs a hand down his face as he floats closer to me. "Was it really necessary to drag me with you?"

"You were toying with me." My tone is breezy as the part of my brain responsible for temperature regulation works overtime. I kick a steady rhythm beneath the water to hold myself up. "Couldn't let you get away with that."

A relaxed smile settles on his face as he flips on his back, the portrait of ease. "It got you in, didn't it?"

I shoot him a smile. "Got us both in."

My body slowly relaxes into the gentle push and pull of the water. I take a moment to admire the view of the shore from this broad vantage point.

On the other side of the gazebo sits a wooden shack with a tin roof and a huge driftwood sign advertising all the options for rent in colorful, messy scrawl.

PADDLE BOATS,CANOES, PADDLE BOARDS, AND KAYAKS.

And at the bottom of the sign, in a different font:

SNO CONES FOR SALE.

Far down the shore, a weathered building with missing shingles looms over the water. It's surrounded by a huge wooden deck on stilts with outdoor seating. The words on the sign are written inside the outline of a sailboat. The Hideaway. It reminds me of late afternoon lake storms, cable-knit sweaters, and old oil lanterns with threaded wicks.

"This place is grander than I expected," I muse. "The resort itself, the lake, the mountain trails for people who actually enjoy hiking, all the amenities. Color me impressed."

"Don't forget the S-N-O cones. We have to try one and see if we can taste the missing W," he says. "Maybe some other day when we aren't sopping wet."

A lightness buoys my chest. "Deal. What's your favorite flavor?"

"I don't have a favorite."

"How is that possible? What do you order, then?"

"I get something different every time. I'm guessing you have a favorite, though, judging by your sassy tone."

"Mango. That's my flavor. It is superior."

He runs his hands through his hair to smooth it back. "You really get the same one every time? You're not just messing with me?"

"I get the best one every time."

His brown eyes shine like honey in the sun as he looks at me. They toe the line between light and dark. Mood ring eyes. "And if by some tragic occurrence they don't have mango—which is not really a typical flavor, I might add—which one would you get?"

"I probably wouldn't get one."

"That's ridiculous." He drifts close enough that I can see the water clinging to his lashes. "You'd skip out on a snow cone on the off chance you might not enjoy it as much as mango? No one is that committed to a flavor."

I lift my chin, a defiant smile tugging at my lips. "I like what I like."

"What about ice cream?"

The sunlight dapples the water around us. "I like strawberry gelato."

"And nothing else ?"

I force myself not to smile at the naked exasperation in his tone. "You're going to tell me you don't have favorites of everything?"

"Not really, no. I like too many things to pick favorites." He pauses. The water ripples around him as he gently moves his arms underwater. "I may regret asking this, but what are some of your other favorite things?"

"Let's see. Great River is my favorite place—"

"Hold it right there." Confusion wrinkles his forehead. "You've been to Vegas, Key West, and lots of other places. That can't be your answer."

"Yes. I've lived in forty-nine cities and been to countless others, and Great River wins."

"Out of all the places on David Attenborough's planet Earth, that's your pick? Why?"

"Because I love it. And because I chose to live there."

His laugh crests and falls. The deep, unselfconscious sound soothes something visceral inside me. It's like he's pressed a pressure point just enough to release it. "They should really use you in a commercial for the tourism board. You'd be the best advertisement there is."

Sebastian makes talking feel like a game, like we're volleying the pickleball. I get the sense I could tell him I'm a touch-starved Capricorn who hasn't ever been someone's real wedding date as easily as I tell him my mother is a paradoxical mix of hopeless romantic and commitment-phobe who forgets to call me for months at a time when she's in a new relationship, and he'd know what to say to keep the conversation going.

"What specifically makes it the best?" he presses. "I think I'm too close to it to see it clearly, having grown up there."

"Best and favorite are not always the same thing. But it's my favorite because it has a fantastic walking path along the Connetquot River, an idyllic downtown, and friendly people. I can picture raising my future kids there. And I've got my places in town now. Took me a while, but I've got a lobster bisque place, a grocery place, a Thai place, a coffee place—you get the idea."

"Wow." He looks both impressed and baffled, his pouty lips twisted as he thinks this over. "That's a lot of places."

"I grew up watching reruns of really old shows. Cheers was my favorite. Not sure if you've seen it, but it's about a bar ‘where everybody knows your name.' I wanted that more than anything. To walk into my favorite place and feel instantly comfortable and recognized."That admission should have nudged me into oversharing territory. But strangely I don't feel the hot flush of embarrassment that usually follows sharing something intensely personal.

His gaze meets mine. The water hugs me like a blanket, but it's his nearness that feels like it's pressing in.

"I like that," he finally says. "The only place where people know my name is the Home Depot near Nella's house. I buy paint there at least once a week for my side gig painting houses. Really, it's been more of my whole gig, since I'm between contracts. Anyway, the guy Seamus always greets me."

"It's nice, isn't it? Getting that hey Sebastian when you walk in the door?"

"It'd be nicer if they served bisque. Tomato, that is. Or any of the other superior bisques."

"Don't knock my favorite soup. It's delicious and you know it." I give him a playful shove. My hands slide off his chest slower than they should. His foot brushes my leg under the water. A jolt of visceral awareness moves through me.

"I'll have to take your word for it," he murmurs. His gaze flickers between my eyes like he's reading them, then moves lower, grazing my nose, my mouth, my neck.Heat funnels from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes, and my gaze shifts lower, too. "Nora…"

"Mmm?" My eyes drift back up. I want to catch the water dripping down his cheek with my thumb.My lips.

It's so quiet as the water stills around us that I can hear the breath leave his mouth. I've forgotten to kick my feet, but I'm still floating.

His voice is so quiet it's loud. "We should go."

The sun slips behind a cloud as he lifts his arms and backstrokes toward shore.

I'm already out of breath as I start paddling after him.

He's first out of the water, shaking off as he jogs toward our pile of stuff.My limbs are heavy as I trudge out of the water and maneuver into my shirt and shorts, soaking them both. Since the idea of putting sneakers on wet feet sounds terrible, I scoop those up to carry.

A long exhale leaves his mouth as he examines his phone. " Shit . Three missed calls from Alessia."

My cheeks flush hot. I stole him away to swim in the lake when he has better things to do. "You better call her back. Happy wife, happy life."

He puts on his shirt before lifting his phone to his ear. "Hey, hello, how's it hanging?" After he's effectively robbed Merriam-Webster of every synonym for "hi," he blinks toward the lake. "Wait, what?"

I try to shape his side of the conversation into something logical. They're talking about cheese, wrists, and trucks. That's all I've got.

"Okay. I'll be right there. Give me ten minutes." He ends the call and nods toward the resort. "I've got to run. There's a catering crisis. Apparently, the refrigerator in the prep kitchen in Hickory Hall—sorry, the event hall that we're using all week for dinners and stuff—is full of food from The Malted Moose restaurant, because The Malted Moose is waiting for their own refrigerator to get fixed. So now the caterer's truck is filled with food for the week that they aren't sure they're going to be able to fit."

"Oh no! What are they going to do?"

"I'm going to help them play Tetris with a shit ton of food and try to fit it high up in the walk-in. They can't lift hotel pans full of prepared sauces that high on their own, and Alessia hurt her wrist trying to lift an eighty-pound block of Parmigiano-Reggiano."

"You know, I thought the most Italian thing about this wedding was the hundreds of Umbrian soldiers waiting for their chance to battle for their namesakes. But I was wrong. It's an eighty-pound block of Parmigiano-Reggiano. What happens if you can't fit it all?"

He grimaces. "Here's hoping we don't have to find out."