green vegetation clinging to the top half of the enormous rock while their continuous squawks mingled with the crash of waves.
“John!” Lexie called out in a raised voice. “Where are you?”
Georgeanne opened the sliding door and let in a breeze heavy with the scents of salt water and seaweed and the sounds of the sea. She stepped out onto the deck, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Maybe spending the week in such a beautiful house on such a wonderful piece of real estate wasn’t going to be such a hardship after all. If she didn’t let John charm her into moving him up further on her likable scale, and if he kept his lips to himself, then perhaps this trip wouldn’t turn into a big mistake.
Beneath her feet, Georgeanne felt a heavy thud, thud, thud through the soles of her espadrilles. She heard the steady thumping of footsteps pounding up the stairs, and her insides got a little mushy. Then John emerged one slice at a time. A pair of yellow headphones was strapped across his sweat-dampened hair, and the lower half of his face was covered with a dark shadow of a beard. Next came his wide shoulders and powerful chest. He wore a loose-fitting mesh tank top that looked like he’d hacked off the bottom with a pair of hedge trimmers. Georgeanne wondered why he’d even bothered to wear it. His stomach was flat and bare except for short, dark hair swirling around his navel, then disappearing like the shaft of an arrow into his navy running shorts. He had thighs thick with muscle, and his legs were long and tanned.
“You’re early,” she heard him say as he tried to catch his breath. She looked up as he pushed his headphones to circle his neck. He glanced at his sports watch turned backward on his wrist. “If I’d known, I would have been here.”
“Sorry,” she said, refusing to blush at the sight of him. She was an adult. She could handle a hot, sweaty, half- naked man. She could certainly handle John Kowalsky-no problem. She just had to think of him as one big bad hair day. Uncooperative, annoying, and real messy. “My foot got a little heavy on the gas petal,” she explained.
“How long have you been here?” He reached for a white towel hanging on the rail. He dried his face and hair as if he’d just gotten out of the shower, then his whole head disappeared beneath the thick cotton.
“Just a few minutes.”
“Umm, we thought you fell down and hurt yourself,” Lexie informed him, distracted by the sight of his stomach. Up to this point in her life, she’d never been close to a half-dressed man. She stared at all that skin and hair and took a step forward to get a better look. “I thought maybe you broke your leg or got a cut,” she said.
His head poked out from beneath the towel. He looked a Lexie and smiled. “Did you get a Band-Aid ready just in case?” he asked as he slid the towel around his neck, holding on to the ends with both hands.
She shook her head. “You gots a hairy tummy, John. Really hairy!” she said, then turned to the railing, her short attention drawn to the activity on the beach below.
He looked down and placed a big hand on his hard abdomen. “I don’t think I’m that bad,” he said as he rubbed his palm across his stomach. “I know guys who are a lot worse. At least I don’t have hair on my back.”
Georgeanne watched his hand slide lower on his abdomen, his long fingers slipping through short hair, and memories shimmering in her head like a mirage. She remembered a night a long time ago when she’d touched him, when she’d felt him warm and virile beneath her hands.
“What are you looking at, Georgeanne?”
She raised her gaze up his chest to his eyes. She’d been caught. She could act mortified and guilty or lie. “I was checking out your shoes.”
He chuckled silently. “You were checking out my package.”
Or she could admit it. “It was a long drive.” She shrugged. “I’ll go get our things out of the car.”
John stepped in front of her. “I’ll get your stuff.”
“Thank you.”
He slid the door open. “You’re welcome,” he said though an arrogant smile, and walked across the living room.
“Hey, John!” Lexie hollered, and ran past her mother, leaving Georgeanne to follow behind them both. “I brung my roller skates. And guess what.”
“What?”
“My mom bought me new Barbie knee pads.”
“Barbie?”
“Yeah.”
He opened the front door. “Cool.”
“And guess what else.”
“What?”
“I gots new sunglasses.” She took the blue frames from the bridge of her nose and held them up in the air. “See?”
John turned toward her. “Hey, those are real nice.” He stopped and stared into her face. “Are you going to wear all that purple stuff while you’re here?” he asked, referring to her liberal application of eye shadow.
She nodded. “I get to wear it on Saturdays and Sundays.”
He walked to the back of the Hyundai and said, “Maybe, since you’re on vacation, you could take a break from wearing all that makeup.”
“No way. I like it. It’s my most favorite thing.”
“I thought dogs and cats were your most favorite.”
“Well, makeup is my most favorite thing that I can
His sigh was heavy with resignation as he took two suitcases and a duffel bag of toys from the backseat of the car. “Is this all?” he asked.
Georgeanne smiled and unlocked the trunk.
“Jesus,” John swore as he stared at three more suitcases, two yellow rain slickers, one big umbrella, and a Barbie Beauty Parlor. “Did you pack your whole house?”
“This has been condensed several times since the original load,” she told him, and reached for the jackets and umbrella. “Please don’t swear in front of Lexie.”
“Did I swear?” John asked, looking innocent.
Georgeanne nodded.
Lexie giggled and grabbed her Barbie Beauty Parlor.
Georgeanne and Lexie followed him back into the house and downstairs. He showed them to a guest room decorated in shades of beige and green, then he left to retrieve their luggage. When he’d carried in all their things, he gave a quick tour of the lower floor. A room filled with free weights and exercise equipment separated the guest room from the master bedroom.
“I need to take a shower,” John told them as they headed into the hall after Lexie’s inspection of all three bathrooms. “When I get out, we can go look in tide pools if you want.”
“Why don’t you meet us down there,” Georgeanne suggested, wanting to take advantage of the sunbreak while it lasted, before the skies clouded and became overcast.
“Sounds good. Do you need beach towels?”
Georgeanne had never been a Girl Scout but was usually prepared for anything and everything. She’d brought her own. After John left them, Lexie and Georgeanne changed. Lexie slipped into her pink and purple plaid two-piece swimsuit, then pulled her Don’t Mess With Texas T-shirt over her head. Georgeanne changed into a pair of orange and yellow tie-dyed drawstring shorts, a matching halter that left her abdomen bare, and because she felt a bit too exposed, she slipped her arms into a light cotton blouse. The yellow fabric fell past her behind and she left it unbuttoned. Both she and Lexie shoved their feet into Teva sandals, grabbed beach towels and sunscreen, then headed outside.
By the time John joined them on the beach, Lexie had found a broken sand dollar, half a shell, and a little crab claw. She put them in her pink pail and crouched down beside Georgeanne to inspect a sea anemone stuck to one of many small rocks exposed by the low tide.
“Touch it,” Georgeanne told her. “It’s sticky.”
Lexie shook her head. “I know it’s sticky, but I don’t like to touch ‘em.”
“It won’t bite you,” John told her, casting a shadow over the two of them.
Georgeanne glanced up and slowly stood. John had shaved and changed into beige cargo shorts and an olive T-shirt. He looked clean and casual, but too rough and too sensuous to ever look completely respectable. “I think
