“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Grey smiled as she looped an arm around Lauren’s shoulders and brushed a wet kiss over her cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll still be able to go down later.”
“You better,” Lauren sassed. “Injured or not, I expect you to pay up. I won that race fair and square.”
Grey laughed and gave Lauren’s shoulders a squeeze. “You sure did. I was surprised, to be honest.”
“That I won?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, before you almost cut your thumb off the other day, you were telling me how you fell down all the time playing basketball…”
“It was because I was still growing into my legs,” Lauren grumbled. “Once I stopped growing, I stopped falling down so much.”
Grey pulled away and gave Lauren’s legs a thorough ogling. “You definitely grew into them, all right.”
“Horndog.”
“Says the woman telling me that Ihaveto go down on her later this evening,” Grey retorted. “Pot, meet kettle.”
“Oh my god!” Lauren laughed. “Grey!”
Grey smirked. “What?”
Lauren wanted to pretend to be annoyed, but she could not help but smile at the mischievous twinkle in Grey’s eyes. Really, she had walked right into that one, and she knew it. “Nothing. You win.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you’ll be winning later.”
“Damn right I will be,” Lauren muttered, chuckling under her breath as she side-eyed Grey. She tipped her head at the Muellers, who were just up ahead. “Now, behave. Time to put your captain’s hat back on and pick your mind up out of the gutter.”
Grey looked at their guests and grinned. “Hate to break it to you, but my mind is pretty much always in the gutter.”
“For some reason, that doesn’t really surprise me,” Lauren said as she waved at the boys, who were now sprinting toward them.
The boys slowed when they saw the blood on Grey’s leg. “You okay?” Max asked.
“Nothing a band-aid won’t fix,” Grey assured him. “So, how was kayaking?”
“Awesome!” the boys chorused as they began leading the way back to their parents, each of them trying to talk over the other as they relived everything that had happened, including Will capsizing his kayak, spilling both him and Reid into the water, and then swimming over to dump Kim into the water for laughing at him.
“I bet that didn’t go over well,” Lauren chuckled as they stopped beside Will and Kim’s loungers.
“It didn’t,” Kim confirmed with a smile and a pointed look at her husband.
“Totally worth it, though,” Will added with a smirk as he high fived Peyton.
“Lauren?” Reid piped up.
Lauren looked down at the youngest boy and smiled. “What’s up, buddy?”
“Can we have a picnic on the beach?”
Lauren glanced at Kim to make sure that she was okay with the idea, and then nodded. “Absolutely. What do you want to eat?”
“Sandwiches are fine,” Kim answered for him. “The boys just want to play on the beach a little longer, and then Pey and Max are going to try parasailing this afternoon with Will.”
“I’m not old enough,” Reid pouted.
“What if,” Lauren said, squatting down in front of the boy to catch his eye, “you help me make cookies when they’re doing that?”
