Claire
Shit!
I hadn’t meant to say that. It’d just slipped out.
“Soccer star, hey?”
“Ah…yeah.”
“You hadn’t planned on that little snippet slipping out, had you?”
The smug smirk on his face gave away the truth. He was enjoying my slip up. “Fine. No.”
“How’d you figure out who I was?” Seth asked not looking pissed.
“Honestly?”
“Always.”
“After I ran into you yesterday morning…”
“You mean after you saved me yesterday.”
“Well, yeah. After that, I was having breakfast in the coffee shop and saw the new rookie’s face on the back page. Funny thing was, I’d seen that face before.”
I‘d assumed he would’ve puffed up his chest and started showboating that he’d been recognised, but if anything, he looked more than a bit embarrassed. At least that made two of us. Needing to get out of here, I challenged him to a race to the end of the beach. Seth was exactly the competitor I had him pegged as. Forgetting the fact he was still puffing and panting, he bounced to his feet and asked what he got when he won.
“What do you want?” I asked, slightly nervous.
“Dinner,” Seth replied quickly, sounding sure of himself.
“Dinner?” I questioned, hating how dumb I sounded.
“Yep. When I win, I’m taking you out for dinner,” he told me, lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead, giving me a sneak peek of those abs I saw every time I closed my eyes.
“And when I win?” I managed to get out through my very scratchy throat.
“Anything.”
“Anything?”
“Yep.”
Seth didn’t know me well enough to be giving me free rein. Something he definitely shouldn’t be doing. He was playing with fire, and as much as I wanted to singe his fingers, I’d leave that until next time. If there was a next time. Geez, I hoped there’d be a next time.
“A date. My choice. I plan it, and you do whatever I want,” I threw out there, expecting him to shoot me down.
“Done. Now, are we running or am I heading home? I’ve gotta get to training.”
“You’re training after this?”
“Yeah. This was just a warm-up.”
Guy was crazy. He’d just spent half an hour trudging up and down the sand dunes, trying to hold his footing in the soft sand and this was like a pre-training warm-up. Usually, if I felt restless, I’d run up the dunes once, maybe twice just to feel the burn, but I’d never spend any amount of time doing it. I didn’t have the energy or the stamina. Today though, I felt like I had to keep going. I refused to look like a wuss, especially after I’d given him so much shit so I kept pushing, even if my thigh muscles felt like they were going to explode.
Needing to keep moving, I challenged, “Ready. Set. Go,” before taking off across the sand as fast as my tired muscles would carry me.
Somehow, I’d never know how I reached the end of the beach first and collapsed onto the sand, rolling onto my back breathing heavily. Seth flopped down beside me, panting just as heavy.
