“You’re not very good at taking jokes, are you?” she asked. “I’ve never called him that to his face and I never would. I love the man, but he’s not a darling. Even I know that.”
Relief melted some tension out of my shoulders, but I still curled my fingers around the front of my ball cap. “Good, because if you didn’t know it, we’d have had a problem.”
“We have no problem.” She extracted two bottles of icy water from her bag, handing one over to me before lying down on her back. “See? I even brought sustenance. There’s a sleeve of chocolate-chip cookies in there, too. If you’re interested.”
“A sleeve. Does that mean they’re not homemade?” I put my hand to my chest, feigning offense. “I’m not sure I can accept store-bought.”
A soft snort came from her, but she didn’t look at me. I could see her eyes closed behind her dark lenses. “Don’t accept them then. I’ll have them all.”
“No need to be unreasonable,” I joked and lay down beside her, pulling the front of the cap down low. “I’m sure we can work out a compromise.”
“Unless your compromise means you being the one baking the cookies, you’re going to have to live with store-bought.”
I shrugged my shoulders against the heat of the warm towel, feeling my skin connect briefly with hers as I raised them. “I don’t mind baking actually, but I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re not a fan?”
“Oh, no. I love baking. I’m just really bad at it. I can absolutely guarantee that if I ever baked cookies for you, you’d be begging for the store-bought stuff instead. Can you really bake?”
“I can, but I should warn you, I only do it in the nude.” I smirked as I rolled my head toward hers. “If that’s okay with you, I’m down for baking the cookies. If I bake, though, what do I get?”
“You bake in the nude? That seems dangerous.” She frowned, glancing down at my junk. “What do you want if you do the baking?”
“I wear an apron, so it’s not that dangerous. I’m good at it. No injuries to report just yet. As for what I want?” So, so many things I couldn’t think about on a crowded beach with others in the vicinity. “What are my options?”
She propped her hands beneath her head as she got comfortable. “Okay. How about if you bake us something, I’ll cook us a meal sometime?”
“You can cook, but you can’t bake?” I shook my head. “How the hell did that happen?”
“Dad isn’t a fan of the sweet stuff, so I never got much practice. Everyone’s got to eat, though. It was just the two of us growing up. He worked long hours. Eventually, it was just easier for me to start cooking before he got home. Otherwise, we ended up eating too late.”
“It makes sense that he wouldn’t like sweet things. I love sweet stuff. It’ll just be something else we can disagree about.” I didn’t quite know how to respond to the rest of what she’d said, so I kept it simple. “Yeah, I get that.”
Sofia’s brow furrowed in curiosity, and she pulled her sunglasses off and placed them down beside her. Hazel eyes bright and sincere on mine, she rolled onto her side.
“You get it? How? Is that why you know how to bake?”
I shrugged again. “Yep. My mom taught me. For the record, she didn’t teach me to do it naked. That part just kind of happened much later on.”
“That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that just happens.” Amusement sparkled in her eyes. “I feel like there has to be a story behind it.”
“If I said I just got tired of getting flour all over my clothes, would that be enough of a story for you?”
“Nope.” She grinned, burrowing into her hands as she got comfortable. “Out with it, Dobbs. What really happened?”
“I did get tired of getting flour all over my clothes,” I started, smiling as the memory came back to me. “But I might have had too much tequila one night. I was alone and suddenly got a craving for giant muffins. Once I started baking, my clothes got really restrictive.”
“Makes sense.” She tugged her lower lip between her teeth to keep from laughing, but the corners of her mouth gave her away. “I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that. It must have been hilarious.”
“If only that was the end of it.” I shook my head, wondering if I should continue with the story.
Sofia was entirely invested, though. She poked me in the side to prompt me when I’d paused for too long. “Was that the end of it?”
I sighed. “Sadly, no. My playlist was still running on my computer. Some of the guys had played a prank on me just before, and they’d downloaded lots of bubblegum pop songs into all my playlists. I thought I’d cleared it all out.”
“Oh God.” She clamped her hand over her mouth, but muffled giggles escaped. “Please tell me what I’m picturing is what happened.”
“Depends. If what you’re picturing is me jumping around in my kitchen to really girly pop songs while being stark naked, then you’re correct.”
Her eyes widened, and she dissolved into a fit of laughter so genuine that I joined in. Eventually, she rolled onto her back and popped her sunglasses on as her breathing evened out again.
“Were you a SEAL at the time?” she asked. “I need details for the mental picture. It’s not something I’m ever going to forget.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, I was. In fact, the tequila I drank was because I got home in a mood after an argument with your father. I don’t usually drink alone, but I got home, and the bottle was in
