your eyes checked, baby.”
Clearly, he was the one who needed an optometrist, but she liked his smile so much that she didn’t point that out.
And anyway, she knew something of what it was like to look in the mirror and judge oneself. That was part of being a normal human with insecurities, and just because she thought he was beautiful didn’t mean that he saw the same in himself. Hell, she’d argue that the dent in confidence was something most people—including her—had.
Funnily enough, that unstuck her enough to cup his cheeks, to step closer.
Too close for hardly knowing him.
Not nearly close enough after the intimacy of last night.
“Thank you for getting me my car.”
His eyes flared, one hand covered hers. “You’re welcome.”
Thud-thud went her heart.
“Dinner?” she asked.
He hesitated, just for the barest moment before he nodded.
Her heart did a happy dance.
“Unless you’d rather come to the beach with us first?”
Another nod, the corners of his mouth turning up.
Not a happy dance this time. No, her heart was cracked open, laid bare, exposed and vulnerable . . . and she fell for him, just a little bit, right then and there.
“You do this every Saturday?” Ben asked, his hands in his pockets, his bare feet mixing with the sand below.
They’d both left their shoes and socks in the car—or in her case, her flip-flops—because she’d gotten one of the primo spots right near the steps that led down to the beach and had backed in.
Fred hadn’t even needed the leash she’d now clipped around her shoulders.
She’d just opened the back door, undid his seat belt, and he’d hit the waves.
Even as she’d winced, knowing how cold the ocean was in this part of California.
Not the warm waves of SoCal.
But the biting surf of the Bay Area. Good for swimming only on the rare days it was above ninety here on the coast, when the cold was actually a relief from the blazing heat that reflected off the sand.
She nodded, shifted carefully over a piece of seaweed and felt her ankle clench. “Every Saturday,” she agreed. “If only for a short walk. Fred loves the ocean.”
Ben turned to stare down at her. “You love it, too.”
Stef found her lips curving when Fred turned and barked at a wave that had dared sneak up on him, dousing his tail. “I like to see him like this.” She nodded in his direction. “But yes, I like it here, too. Even if it isn’t a warm Caribbean beach with clear blue waters, even if there are Great Whites prowling just off the coast, I do love to watch the sun set over waves.”
He turned, and she followed his gaze.
The sun was a while away from setting.
“Usually, we go later in the day,” she told him, just as Fred came back with a stick and dropped it at her feet. She launched it out into the surf, and he took off for it as she grinned up at Ben. “Otherwise my arm gives out.”
Laughter in his eyes as they both watched Fred retrieve the stick and then return it.
She threw.
He ran.
They repeated the pattern until he got distracted by a seagull and dropped it at Ben’s feet.
“Oh, you don’t have—”
Ben launched the stick much more effortlessly than she had.
And further.
“Is that too far?” he asked, shooting a concerned look in her direction.
She shook her head. “He’d swim forever,” she said. “But I usually just make sure to not throw it much farther than the first break.”
A quiet gaze studying the surf.
Then he nodded.
“Do you want to sit?”
His eyes came to hers. “Do you?”
She nodded, shifted her weight, and his stare flicked down, that careful, quiet studying now coming to her, to her ankle.
“What happened?” he asked, sitting down.
Following suit, she arranged her legs in front of her, knowing the scar from the surgery was easily spotted, bright pink against the white of her skin. “You didn’t notice it last night.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Her eyes darted to his.
“I . . . was more focused on other things.”
A bolt of heat slid through her. Indeed, he had been. “Surgery,” she offered when that now intense stare, probably remembering what she did—the heat, the pleasure, the fun—met hers. They were at a beach with her dog, and she wanted to strip him naked. That, too, was probably obviously displayed in her eyes. “Fred is a good boy”—he dropped the stick; Ben threw it again—“but his fatal flaw is squirrels. The turkey is obsessed with them, and it’s the only