My mouth falls open. “You jackass.”
The smirk spreads. “So that’s a yes?”
“A yes to showing you whereBridgetdid it,” I say.
“After you,” he says, and gestures toward the truck several feet away.
As we resume walking, I’m so tempted to reach for his hand. Maybe he senses it. Or maybe this is just part of the perks of having a secret romance with a bodyguard, but when he puts his palm on the small of my back, he presses harder, spreads his fingers wider, runs his fingertips across my shirt.
It’s like a private gesture in public, and I don’t mind at all showing him the site of the Saran Wrapping.
We drive to the beach nearby, the scene of the so-called crime. We hop out of the truck, and I take him to the edge of the dunes, where Scott parked his vehicle one fine day.
“Tomorrow, can you show me where you removed the door from the science lab?”
I roll my eyes. “Chloe did it.”
“Right, right.” He sketches air quotes. “Where Chloe removed it.”
“Maybe I will.”
But we both know I’m showing him my high school.
Clearly, I’ll have to revise my earlier statement that hardly anyone gets up earlier than a farmer to include bodyguards. Mine is killing it in the up-at-the-crack-of-dawn department. The next morning as the sun peeks above the horizon, I wake to a walked and fed dog, and a fresh vase of flowers on the table. Melissa, of course. My heart clatters happily.
But there’s no bodyguard. “Where did Banks go?” I ask Hudson.
My boy just tilts his snout in question. If a dog could shrug, this guy does. “But you know all his secrets,” I say, trying to goad the pup.
He settles his snout back onto the rug with a sigh. I scratch his head. “Fine, fine. You are my favorite person.”
He leans into the petting, and as I give him all the scratches and love he deserves, my gaze strays to the deck, then beyond. Is Banks jumping rope?
I stand and head to the glass. He’s outside, on the path, working out. He has earbuds in, and after a few minutes of jumping, he drops down to a plank then executes more push-ups than I can count.
When he comes back into the cottage—a fine sheen of sweat on his brow, his arms, his chest—I postpone the start of my farm chores and show him just how much I appreciate his workout.
After, we’re both sweaty and tangled together in bed. “Thanks for walking my dog,” I say.
“You’re welcome.”
“And for feeding him.”
“Well, he is your favorite person.”
“He is. And for the fresh-cut flowers,” I add.
“That was easy, seeing as we’re on a flower farm.”
I swat his chest. “Don’t make a gift seem like it was nothing. It’s perfect for me.”
He turns to me, runs a finger gently down my nose. “You like your dog, and you like lavender.”
That wasn’t hard to figure out, but no one else has done a thing about those two very obvious facts.
Until him.
As the crew shoots at the hardware store that day, between my deliveries, we steal away on our bikes to Sunflower Ridge High School, home of the Wildcats of Darling Springs. We cruise past a colorful array of bungalows with red, purple, and peach front doors till we reach the school at the end of a winding street. We rest our bikes against the bike rack, then wander around the grounds. It’s summer and the morning sessions must be finished, because we’re the only ones here.
