“I will,” Grey assured him. She looked at Lauren and sighed as she allowed herself to reach out and give her hand a gentle squeeze. She wanted more, but the touch was enough to tide her over for the time being. “You okay if I start getting ready to head out?”
Lauren nodded, her eyes dropping to the way Grey’s fingers curled around her own. “Of course. You want me to throw the lines?”
“I can do it.” Grey shook her head and brushed her thumb over the back of Lauren’s hand one last time before letting go. “Sit. Eat. It’s fine.”
“You’re sure…?”
Grey nodded. “Yeah. Totally.”
Kim chuckled softly and shook her head.
“What’s so funny?” Will asked as he walked into the salon with Reid.
“You owe me a hundred bucks,” Kim answered her husband.
Lauren’s jaw dropped as she looked at Kim. “Seriously?”
Will’s gaze slipped from his wife, who was looking far too pleased with herself, to Lauren and Grey, who looked mortally embarrassed, and he sighed. “Fuck.”
“Dollar!” all three boys yelled happily.
Grey looked at Lauren, and shook her head as she chuckled softly under her breath. She loved the unpredictability of her job, but this morning definitely took the cake. Granted, all things considered, it went better than it could have, but still. “I think I’m gonna throw those lines and head up to the bridge.”
“Can I help?” Reid asked.
“Us too!” Max and Peyton called out, turning off their tablets and tossing them onto the couch cushions as they bolted to their feet.
“I’ll help supervise,” Will said as he followed his sons out onto the deck.
“Have fun,” Kim told her husband as she picked up her coffee cup and took a languorous sip. She laughed at the way Will shook his head and flipped her off over his shoulder, and sighed as she leaned back in her chair. “Peace at last.”
Lauren slid her coffee cup and plate to an empty seat at the bar and nodded. “Yeah…”
After a few minutes of companionable silence, Kim said, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you guys. Sometimes the filter on my ‘thinking bubble’—” she surrounded the phrase with little air finger quotes, “—as the kids call it, doesn’t work too well.”
“No. It’s fine. Really,” Lauren said. After a beat, she added, “It’s just…complicated.”
“Everything worth having is,” Kim said softly. She smiled at Lauren and sighed as she slipped out of her chair. “I should probably go help with the boys before they decide to use Reid as shark bait or something.”
“I’ll take care of the dishes,” Lauren said, tipping her head at Kim’s mug. “Don’t worry about that.”
“You’re sure?” Kim asked. “It’s not hard to put it in the dishwasher.”
“I’m sure. And, thanks.”
Kim nodded. “No problem,” she replied lightly as she spun on her heel and walked out the open doors to the deck beyond.
CHAPTER THIRTY
GREY SLIPPED THE backpack she was wearing from her shoulders and pulled a small wooden treasure chest from the largest compartment. She smiled at Lauren as she handed her the bag, and tipped her head at the skull-shaped rock in front of them that looked like it was right out of the moviePeter Pan. “I’m just going to hide this where I told Will and Kim it would be, and then we can go back to The Baths, if you’d like. Or, we can keep going down the trail to Devil’s Bay and have a look around there. Whichever you’d prefer.”
“No. That’s fine. We can head back to The Baths,” Lauren said. They had hustled through caves so quickly to hurry and hide the “pirate treasure” for the boys that she had only gotten a quick glimpse at the stunning natural grottoes that overlooked the sea, and she was looking forward to spending some time really exploring them.
“All right.” Grey winked at Lauren as she left the backpack in the dirt and scampered off to the side of Skull Rock to hide the treasure chest full of replica doubloons in the lush foliage that surrounded the rock. She brushed her hands off on the back of her shorts as she made her way back onto the trail, and smiled. “Done.”
“Will anyone else pick it up?” Lauren wondered aloud as she watched Grey zip the backpack shut and hoist it back onto her shoulders. While the national park was not overrun with tourists, they were certainly not the only ones there, and she was worried about how the boys would take coming back empty-handed after Grey had gotten them so hyped to find ‘real pirate treasure’.
Grey shook her head. “Nah. You’d have to know it’s there to find it. And—” she checked her watch, “—they should be on their way up here soon. They were just going to hang back for twenty minutes or so to explore the caves and give us time to do this, and then they were going to make their way down to the bay so the boys can snorkel and stuff.”
