“It was hot. I didn’t know you were here.”
He pointed at his clothes piled up on a chair. “You missed that?”
She followed his glance and squinted. “I thought it was a pillow.” Her eyes bugged out. “Are you wearing any clothes? At all?”
“I am not,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster. “Since I thought I would be alone. Are you?”
Nadine dropped farther under the water. “You need to get out of the pool.”
He couldn’t help but notice she didn’t answer the question, leaving him with no doubts. The polite thing would be to leave her to enjoy the water in solitude. Then Wes felt the night breeze on his face and thought about tossing and turning until dawn.
“No,” he said.
“That’s not fair,” she objected. “You’ve had time to swim alone. I should get the same.”
“You snooze, you lose.”
“I wasn’t snoozing at all,” she said, sounding tired. “Not in that steam bath of a house. That’s my point.”
“Well, you can share this lovely, cool, refreshing grotto, or you can go back inside.” He leaned back to look at the sky. “Up to you.”
“Then I guess we share.” She sounded a bit breathless, which was strange since the pool was shallow enough that they didn’t have to tread water.
“If you promise not to peek when I get them, you can have one of the beers I brought,” offered Wes, generous in victory.
Nadine laughed. “I brought some as well but we can start with yours.” She made a fuss of covering her eyes with her hands before turning around and standing up.
Wes tried not to look, but he wasn’t a saint. The water cascaded over her shoulders to where the pool reached her midback. A shadowed line ran down where her spine dipped in, and he couldn’t help glancing lower to see if she had those little dimples at the base. He loved those.
Then she shifted enough for him to glimpse… No. He almost threw himself toward the edge of the pool so he could avoid being an asshole. He’d told Nadine not to peek, and it was incumbent on him to show her the same respect. He tried to block his mind from busily filling in the curve that he had been so tantalizingly close to seeing.
He grabbed both cans and left one close to her before retreating to the other side. “Okay,” he said.
Nadine looked over her shoulder to see where he was, and Wes did his best not to stare at the shadow of her eyes and line of her cheek. She swam by, and when her body broke the surface of the water, Wes nearly choked on his beer. Nadine turned at the sound of his violent coughing.
“Are you okay?” she asked with concern.
“Fine,” he gasped. “Sorry.”
She cracked the can open and sat hunched over on the steps so she could stay covered by the water. “I don’t know how Dot handled this heat. Either she had ice water in her veins or air-con in her bedroom.”
Wes pictured Dot lying happily in a California king with arctic air swirling around her as the rest of the house boiled. “I bet her bedroom is Scandinavian minimalist.”
“All light oak and white walls?” Nadine shook her head. “No way. Crimson walls and black satin sheets.”
“Paint is for peasants,” Wes reminded her. “Dot would have flocked wallpaper.”
Nadine laughed. “What wallpaper?”
“The kind that looks like patterned velvet.”
“I thought that was so fancy when I was a kid. Yeah, that’s Dot for sure.”
They drank in the quiet night, Nadine dancing her palm on the water’s surface while Wes watched the edges of her wet hair curl on her shoulders.
“I’m going to claim my next question,” said Wes to break the silence.
“Choose wisely.” Nadine made her voice low and spooky, then bobbed up slightly in the water.
