I’d show her inevitable. By the end of the weekend, she’d be begging for me.
In fact, I shouldn’t have walked up to her. I should’ve skirted her and made her find me later at the resort. It was too late to swerve, and there was nowhere to hide on the beach that hadn’t yet filled up with families. Besides, she’d already opened her eyes and spotted me.
Gone was last night’s wicked grin. She looked relaxed in a way I’d never seen her. All the lines smoothed from her face. Was that a…happy smile?
“Good morning,” she said. Her gaze dipped briefly to my sweaty chest, and I stood straighter to show off my pecs. Her eyes shot back to my face, but she didn’t blink, as if a staring contest could make me forget she’d checked me out.
“Good morning.” With my heart still thumping from my run, it wasn’t quite a purr, but there was enough smugness in my tone that her lip curled.
“I was…I’m going for a walk.” She looked in the direction I’d come from.
“I’ll go with you.” The words stampeded out of my mouth, but I managed to keep the wince off my face.What happened to making her beg, genius?Hands on my hips, I looked away, pretending I didn’t care.
She was kind enough to give me an out. “No, thanks. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to walk with you while you’re not wearing a shirt.”
My brain had gone offline. I pulled the T-shirt out from where I’d tucked it in the waistband of my sweat shorts. “We hung out at the pool all day yesterday. I was shirtless then.”
She stared at the dark clouds over the ocean as I tugged on my shirt. “It was inappropriate then too. I’m growing and learning. You should try it sometime.”
“So we’re back to this?” I said lightly as I trudged through the sand. I didn’t have to turn my head to know she walked beside me.
“Back to what?” She stopped, and I doubled back to wait for her to tug off her flip-flops.
When she was barefoot, we proceeded side by side in the soft sand. “The sniping,” I said. “The competition.”
“That’s what we should be doing. We’re competitors. Anything else is off-limits.”
“Now that’s where you’re wrong.” I glanced down at her. “We may be competitors, but that makes us peers. Nothing in the code of conduct forbids a romantic relationship between equals.” She’d goaded me into displaying my neediness, and I hated it. Though not as much as I hated her side-eye.
“A ‘romantic relationship’? Is that what you want? Like, flowers and dates and shit?”
WhatdidI want, aside from permission to touch her skin and kiss her lips the way the breeze did right now? Fuck, I wished I’d spent less time dreaming about what it’d feel like to kiss those berry lips and more time examining my feelings that weren’t lust.
But I was famous for thinking on my feet. “I don’t need flowers, thanks.” I smirked when she laughed. “I’ll buy you flowers, if you want them. But I’m not trying to woo you. All I want to do is give you what you so desperately want.”
“‘Desperately want’? Hardly,” she scoffed.
“I saw you checking out my dick print.”
Her cheeks went scarlet. “Those shorts are highly unsuitable in a work setting.”
“So is that tease of a swimsuit. So thank fuck we’re not at work. It’s a national holiday, and we’re on the goddamn beach, Bridget. In a foreign country. The team went home. This is about you and me. In fact,thisis a date.”
She drifted closer to the hard-packed sand where the waves cascaded in. “What are you talking about? We ran into each other by accident.”
“Does your dating profile say you like walks on the beach?”
She grimaced. “Doesn’t everyone’s?”
I gripped her hand and pulled her to a stop as a line of tiny crabs scuttled in front of us. When they passed, she didn’t shake off my hand. “Because a walk on the beach is the perfect date, especially if the person you’re walking with is an excellent conversationalist like me.”
“Your humility is unparalleled.”
“It’s not the only thing about me that’s unparalleled.”
She ripped her hand out of mine and glared at me. “I can’t believe I almost kissed you the other night.”
“I can’t believe you stopped. We’re going to be amazing together, just like at work.”
