stares down at my hand like it might catch on fire. “What did you say your name was?”
“Jake,” I repeat.
Her face freezes briefly, and then she breaks out into full-blown cackles.
Okaaay. This is one of the weirdest mornings of my life.
Holley
The guy who was drowning—more like, the guy you thought was drowning, even tried to save from drowning, but who, in all actuality, saved you from drowning—is him, Jake flipping Brent.
The exact man I came here to find.
“Of course you are,” I blurt out through another round of laughter.
Of all the people on the planet—of all the people on this beach this morning!—and I had to make a fool of myself with the actual guy I’m supposed to meet. There’s no running. There’s no hiding. There’s no Don’t worry about it, Holley, you’ll never see this guy again. This is Grade A, prime choice embarrassment, and it’s going to give me horrible indigestion for the next several weeks.
Oh my God! I cannot believe myself.
“What? Is Jake a bad name?” he asks through a raspy chuckle, completely behind the curve of our fate. “I can go by something else if that’ll make you feel better.”
Oh, so he’s incredibly handsome and charming? Sounds about right at this point.
My eyes don’t miss—can’t miss—the way his fingers move the zipper of his wet suit down, down, down, from his neck to just slightly below his belly button. With the kind of ease I do not possess, he slips his arms out of the sleeves and lets the material hang loose at his waist. His nearly full sleeve of tattoos on one arm is unbelievably vibrant against his tanned skin. And the rest of him?
Biceps and pecs and a six-pack, oh my!
This guy is forty? Good grief, his body looks twenty-five, tops…
Get it together, you little floozy! Stop staring at your assignment like he’s lunch!
I shake myself out of my beefy-muscles-induced trance and clear my throat. “No, no,” I backtrack, trying to figure out how to save face when I’m pretty sure it melted off in the ocean. Or, at the very least, when his fingers played tug-of-war with his freaking wet suit. “Jake is a fine name. It’s just…well… I’m Holley,” I reveal. “Holley Fields.”
I giggle to try to soften the awkward news, but he doesn’t react at all how I expect. Instead, his eyebrows draw together. A smile still highlights his perfect cheekbones and insanely blue eyes, and my God, why does he have to be so attractive?
“Holley,” he says then, acknowledging that he did, in fact, hear me say my name correctly, but taking it no further.
“Right,” I confirm. “Holley Fields.”
He shrugs and settles his hands on his hips, calling my attention to the line of muscle that scoops down on both sides and points to the glorious world under his bathing suit.
“I work for the SoCal Tribune,” I say, elucidating even further.
He nods as if it’s all the same to him. “And I have a construction company.”
I start to open my mouth when it finally fucking dawns on me. He has no freaking clue about me. He doesn’t know that he’s meeting me here or that he’s been selected for Bachelor Anonymous or anything. He probably never paid attention to my name on the submissions, and his daughter obviously didn’t relay the message. She wrote it down on some notepad and moved on with her life. I know how teenage girls work—I was one once.
Oh, hell’s bells, he must think I’m insane.
“Uh, I’m just now realizing that maybe we’re miscommunicating a little bit. I spoke with your daughter last night—Chloe. About your Bachelor Anonymous submission. You were selected, and she assured me she’d let you know and that I should meet you here this morning, but I’m guessing you didn’t get the message…?”
“What?” he says, his tone unmistakable. It’s the tone every dad in the natural world invokes when they’ve just found out their kids have done something like taken their autographed sports memorabilia and flushed it down the toilet. I suddenly feel very protective of the unknown Chloe. I don’t want to be the reason she gets in trouble.
“Honestly, we probably got our wires crossed. Or maybe she didn’t get a chance to get the message to you. It’s no big deal—”
“Sorry, Holley, but it is a big deal,” he insists. “For you and me. Because I don’t have a single clue what Bachelor Anonymous is, and I can assure you, if I did, I’d never sign myself up for