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Her pink tongue delicately swiped a dab of frosting off her lower lip, and fire licked up his spine. “I have an ex-Navy construction foreman dad and three older brothers who grew up to become Navy SEALS. Take a guess.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I suppose it was either swim against the current or drown.”
“I prefer to surf right over the waves.” As she rose, her mischievous grin notched up the heat another ten degrees. “I’ll be back in a few minutes with those eggs.”
After breakfast, she challenged him to a game of gin rummy, which turned into a spirited tournament at the outdoor table with the ocean humming and gulls calling in the background.
She was damned good, but he ended up winning by one game. Barely, though, because he was too distracted by the inspiring view across the table—and he didn’t mean the ocean.
He insisted on helping her make the sub sandwiches for lunch, over which they continued their conversation about the current state of world affairs, movies, hobbies, books, and music. Their shared passion for protecting and saving the environment delighted him. But discovering she also loved baseball damned near made him delirious, and inspired a lively debate over whose team was better, his Rangers or her L.A. Angels. Jillian possessed smarts and humor, and her vibrant, engaging outlook defied his more pessimistic bent.
Dammit, resisting her was becoming harder—painfully so—by the second.
Casey arrived home in the afternoon, bubbling with enthusiasm about his various activities and the “awesome” chocolate chip cookies served with lunch at the center.
Jillian suggested a barefoot walk along the beach. At Zane’s blatantly transparent excuse of needing to go rest from his bout of flu with his e-reader, the woman and the child’s equally dejected expressions coerced him into reluctant agreement.
The trio strolled along the damp sand in the warm, briny breeze toward a huge rock formation that looked like a tower. Casey darted in a hundred different directions to collect shells in his blue plastic bucket.
“Zane,” he called excitedly, pointing at a tide pool at the rocky tower’s base. “Look! I found a wholeherdof starfish!”
“I see. Red, and pink, and purple, and orange. They’re pretty, and interesting with all those spines, aren’t they?”
“Yep. But you can’t pick ‘em up and take ‘em like the empty shells, cause those spiny outsides are theirhouses,and they woulddie.So don’t pick ‘em up, ‘kay?”
“Right, I’ll keep that in mind.”
The kid raced off again, and Jillian swished her feet in the shallows beside Zane, her toenails—now painted pink and decorated with whimsical yellow flowers—winking at him from beneath the translucent seawater.
He clenched his jaw. He wasway far gonewhen he got turned-on by a woman’stoes.
“Casey likes you.”
A steel band squeezed his ribs. “He barely knows me.”
“It’s a start, and he’ll get to know you even better, won’t he?”
Don’t bank on it.“He seems remarkably well-adjusted considering it’s only been seven months since he lost Deb.”
“He does have rocky moments sometimes and melts down, but less and less frequently. Overall he’s handling it fairly well. He’s been in counseling since it happened, which we’re now able to space farther apart. I’ll never take Deb’s place, nor do I want to. But my being with him since he took his first breath helps both of us a lot.”
“You’re doing one hell of a terrific job, Jillian. You’re a natural-born mom. Not everyone is.”
“Nobody is born knowing how to parent. I had to learn by trial and error, just like everyone else.”
He watched the happy-go-lucky child scamper in and out of the surf. Had he ever been that carefree? He swallowed. “It’s the errors that concern me.”
She moved closer, linking her arm with his. “You’ve got good instincts, Zane. You’ll do great.”
He tensed. “You don’t know me either.”
“How much have you delved into your Native American heritage?”
“My mother talked about it sometimes. Not much, though, and I never knew my maternal grandparents. They died in a car accident when my mother was nineteen.”
“I’ve researched quite a bit since Casey was born. There’s so much wisdom, so many wonderful stories and traditions. Can I tell you something?”
“Something wise and wonderful?”
