The Wrong Mr. Right (The Queen's Cove Series #2)(29)

“What was your mom like?”

A smile grew on her face. “She loved books.”

“Runs in the family.”

Her smile lifted all the way up to her eyes. “She had a degree in English lit, like me. She loved it when people found a book they couldn’t put down and came back to tell her about it. She was always recommending books to people.” Hannah stretched one leg out down the board and wiggled her toes. “People came to the bookstore for her, to chat with her or to say hi. Her enthusiasm was contagious.”

I listened, not wanting to interrupt or give her a reason to stop talking, like at the bar when she told me about how she’d change the store if she could.

“What’s your role in the store?”

“My dad still owns it and there’s kind of an unspoken understanding that I’ll inherit it one day. We don’t talk about that stuff.”

She was running the business single-handedly and it would probably be hers one day, but she had no say. That didn’t sit right with me, but I pressed my mouth tight and kept it to myself.

“That’s another thing I want to do before I turn thirty.” She rolled her lips. “I want to make the business profitable again.” She winced at me. “We haven’t been doing great lately.”

I frowned. Queen’s Cove housed about two thousand residents but saw over a million tourists each summer. The summer months were when locals made money. If the store wasn’t doing well in July, it didn’t stand a chance through the winter.

But I thought about Hannah on her surfboard, bailing over and over again but not giving up. A smile lifted on my mouth. “You can turn it around.”

She shot me a shy smile. “I hope so.” She relaxed down onto her board again and closed her eyes. “Where’s the first place you’d go if you got a sponsorship?”

I laid down on my own board and stared up at the sky. “Australia. There’s a big surf competition there in January.” I turned my head to face her. “You’d like it there. They have books and champagne.”

I didn’t know why I said that.

She smiled and opened her eyes, shooting me a skeptical expression. “They have sharks, too.”

“We have sharks.”

She snorted. “Shut up, please. I was doing a good job of not thinking about what’s under the surface today.”

A thought struck me. “Bookworm, when was the last vacation you took?”

She frowned, playing with the end of her ponytail, inspecting the ends of her hair. “I took a few days off at Christmas.”

“And before that?”

She made a thinking noise. “The Christmas before that.”

I blew a breath out. “Bookworm.”

Her head snapped up and she looked like she was about to say something but instead, she reached over, grabbed my ankle, and flipped me into the water. In her attempt, she slipped off her own board. A surprised laugh burst out of me the second before my head submerged under water.

When I resurfaced, she wore a small, mischievous smile, treading water a few feet away. “My feet are cold. Let’s get breakfast.”

Alright, so we were dropping the conversation about her taking a break from the shop. I suspected it wasn’t just her dad who didn’t want to change things in the store, but I’d leave it for today. I undid the leash, fastened it around her ankle, and ignored how smooth her skin was under mine. How delicate her ankle was. My fingers fit all the way around it.

“Thanks,” she murmured, and I nodded at her before we paddled in.

When we approached the shop, we set our boards down and I unzipped her wetsuit, turning before I could see her peel it off.

“Say goodbye to this board.” I listened to the sound of her pulling her wetsuit off and studied the siding on the shop.

“Why?”

“You’ve leveled up.”

I turned to see her proud smile and I matched it. My gaze dropped to her swimsuit. The swell of her tits. The smooth skin of her stomach, and the flare of her hips. I pictured running my tongue up her stomach. My cock twitched again, and I blinked, turning away.

The door opened. “I’m going to change inside, be right back.”

“Yep.” My voice was tight.

What was happening?

Oh. It was because I hadn’t hooked up with anyone recently. I usually surfed in the mornings but because I spent most mornings with Hannah, I surfed a bit later now, then spent the day at the shop, and then surfed until sunset to prepare for Pacific Rim. I didn’t have time to see people these days.

I hadn’t been thinking about it much, either. A few women had reached out, but I wasn’t into it anymore.

It wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t her type and she was probably a virgin.

Shit. Was bookworm a virgin? The whole virginity thing was bullshit and it didn’t matter, but I was still curious. Hannah was cute. Our date yesterday was her first.

Her date. Not our date. That wasn’t a date.

Panic streaked through me.

If she didn’t have any sexual experience, then she didn’t have any standards.

The thought of someone messing it up with Hannah made my skin too tight. A rock formed in my throat and I swallowed. Carter was off the table. There was no way Hannah would let him anywhere near her naked.