Page 50 of Chasing the Sun

“Oh, no! Are you okay? I’m so, so sorry. I got excited, and I just jumped on you without thinking.”

He might have had the breath knocked out of him from the fall, but now his breathing was labored for another reason. She was resting on his pelvis, and his arousal was growing, literally. He should have sat up immediately, but instead, he lay there and let her fawn all over him.

“Did I hurt you? Is anything broken? Did I knock the wind out of you? Can you speak?”

“I’m fine. Just surprised, that’s all.”

Then she stopped talking and blinked a few times in rapid succession.

Great. He’d accidentally nudged her leg with his arousal, and there was no doubt that she’d felt it. Yet, she didn’t budge. She just stayed there with that deer-in-the-headlights look and stared at him.

Now what? Should I apologize? Push her off me? Kiss her?

“Well, this is awkward,” she finally said.

“You think?”

She shook her head as if to break herself out of a trance and moved off him, shaking the grass off her shorts as she stood up. “Do you need a hand?”

He stared at her like she’d gone mad, and then she clamped a hand over her mouth.

He stood up and went to brush the grass off his shorts, but that just brought more attention to the situation. Her eyes flicked down and then back to his face, and to his astonishment, she broke out in a huge grin.

“You think this is funny?” he growled.

“Well, not the part about you falling, but…”

He held up his hand. “Please. Don’t say another word.”

He turned and stalked down the hill to the golf cart to get their putters. Thankfully, there weren’t a lot of people on the short course today, and nobody was waiting for them at the tee box.

Chloe must have sensed he needed a moment to cool off, since she hadn’t followed him to the cart. He took out their putters and glanced back up to where she was standing. She was looking down at the grass, her hair falling forward and partially blocking her face.

His erection was deflating, but he was still reeling from his reaction and hers. Instead of clambering to get away from him, she’d stayed there and looked almost pleased. Pleased might be too mild a word. If he weren’t mistaken, he’d seen desire in her eyes, desire that matched his own.

It was all his fault. Even though she’d caused them to fall, he was the one who’d brought her here. He was the one who’d been finding every excuse to touch her. Playing golf with her felt like a precursor to something else, as evidenced by his untimely erection.

He never should have asked her to go out with him today. He should have gone golfing alone, and none of this would have happened. Yet when he trudged back up the hill and handed her the putter, she smiled, and it reminded him of how much fun he’d been having. Fun was something he could use more of, although it shouldn’t be with her.

“Bryce.”

“Chloe.”

They’d started talking at the same time, and he motioned for her to go ahead.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed about, well, you know.” She motioned to his shorts. “I understand that it didn’t have anything to do with me. Not really.”

He raised one eyebrow, doing his best impression of the Rock, which usually made Molly laugh.

“I mean, it’s just a male’s reaction to a female. It has nothing to do with me specifically.”

He swore he heard a question at the end of that statement. “It’s best if we just forget about it. Let’s sink these balls in the hole and move on.”

Chloe burst out laughing, proving that golf was indeed a sexually loaded sport.

He threw his hands in the air and walked away before he made an even bigger mess of things. The sooner they finished golfing and went home, the better.

He kept his hands to himself for the remaining holes and only gave advice if she asked for it. The easy camaraderie they’d experienced earlier had disappeared, leaving embarrassment and discomfort in its wake.