Well, that moment’s gone. Typical Avery Westwood is back in all his uptight, image-obsessed glory.
Before I can answer, he’s pushing the canoe to the dock and climbing up on it. He reaches down and pulls me out of the water like I’m made of cotton candy or something equally airy. I reach for my shoes, which I left on the dock, and when I stand up my brother and his girlfriend, Shayne, are staring at us with amused smiles.
“We had a little bit of a nautical disaster.” I shrug.
“I can see that.” Shayne smiles.
“Avery, you know the whole point to skinny-dipping is that you’re naked, right?” Sebastian jokes, and slaps his captain on his wet shoulder.
“Ha-ha.” Avery rolls his eyes. “You really want to give me tips on skinny-dipping? Withyoursister?”
My brother’s shoulders get rigid and his smile disappears.
I laugh. “Don’t worry, Seb. You know it’s not like that with me and Avery.” I can feel Avery’s eyes on me but I don’t look over. “He was my running buddy and now he’s my canoeing buddy…except he needs a little work on his paddling skills.”
Shayne and Seb laugh at that, but I don’t hear Avery join in. I think I might have hurt his feelings, but I’m sure he’ll get over it. That moment in the canoe was crazy and it needed to end the way it did, because anything else would have been pointless. Okay, maybe incredibly enjoyable, but pointless.
I don’t want to have a one-night stand and Avery doesn’t actually date. And even if he did, I am not an ideal candidate for a guy obsessed with what people think. Yeah, I may have ruined a perfectly good party dress and taken a small chunk out of his ego, but it had to be done.
Chapter 1
Stephanie
Ten weeks later
“You call me a lot.” I smile into the phone. “You need to get a life.”
“I have an amazing life, thank you very much,” my brother counters. “I’m just making sure you do too.”
I put my Kindle down in my lap, stretch out on the porch swing and inhale the cool, salty night air. “Yes, Sebastian, my life is good. Just like it was last week when you called. And the week before that. And the week before that.”
Sebastian and I haven’t always been close, but we were essentially inseparable when I lived in Seattle. When I decided to transfer to San Diego with the lawyer I worked for, he was supportive but concerned. Even though he’s my younger brother, he’s always acted like a protective older one, which is why he calls me so much. I know he’s just worried about me because I haven’t lived away from a support system—from him—since I got out of rehab.
I loved being around Sebastian—he’s a friend as much as a sibling—but Seattle was never really my dream home. I’d fantasized about California since I was a kid, so when my lawyer announced he was transferring and offered me the chance to go with him, I decided I had to take it. It was also a chance to stand on my own two feet without the safety net of my brother being just a ten-minute drive away.
“Did you enroll in the design certificate program you were telling me about?”
“Yeah. I’m jumping in with both feet, taking two classes this semester,” I explain, and I feel a rush of excitement I haven’t felt for any kind of school before.
“You know if you wanted to quit your job and be a full-time student, I would pay your way,” Sebastian says casually, like it’s no big deal for him to support his adult sibling.
But it is. And I can’t let him do it again. He already supported me while I got my GED and my first online degree. “I know, but I like online classes and doing it in my spare time.” Interior design really excites me, and this is something I really want to do for myself.
He seems to accept that answer because he changes the subject. “How’s the roommate situation?”
“Good. Even better than I expected, actually,” I confess, and I feel relief when I say it.
I’ve never had a roommate before, so I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out. Maddie is a legal secretary at the firm where I work. I met her my first day in the San Diego office. We really hit it off at work and even went to drinks and dinner a couple times in the first two weeks I was here. When I told her I still hadn’t found a place to live and that I wanted to be as close to the beach as possible, she mentioned that she lived in a two-bedroom place by the beach on Coronado Island and that her roommate had just moved to San Francisco. She invited me over to check the place out and I fell instantly in love. It was an old semidetached cottage that had somehow escaped being torn down by a developer. She said the owner didn’t want it turned into condos but, unfortunately, he also didn’t want to spend a lot of money maintaining it. It was drafty and out of date but it was only half a mile from the beach, and when it got quiet late at night you could hear the waves. I loved it. “She’s out on a date tonight. With Ty.”
“Really?” Sebastian sounds shocked, which I expected. Ty Parsons is a hockey friend of his who plays for the San Diego Saints.
Last month when I moved, Ty came over to see if I needed anything. Turns out he lives just around the corner—in an oceanfront million-dollar condo. He met Maddie that night, and I could tell he was attracted to her. She was cheerful and sweet, with long ash blond hair, wide brown eyes, sun-kissed freckles and giant boobs. He asked her for her number that night, and now they were on a dinner date.
“Yeah. He better not wreck her,” I mutter, and Sebastian laughs. “What? I like her. I don’t want her hurt, and I don’t want her blaming me because I introduced them.”
“Maybe he’s got noble motives,” Seb counters.
“Didn’t you say he used to be your wingman at the Olympics?” I say, rocking the porch swing as I reach for the blanket I brought out earlier and pull it up over my legs. I swear I could sleep out here, it’s so peaceful.
