By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(36)

But today was Saturday, and the morning fog had cleared, so it was bright and warm and sunny. And she somehow felt more at home in this house than before. Like she was welcome here now. So she put on one of her cotton sundresses, grabbed her e-reader, and went outside.

She sat down in a lounge chair with her book, kicked her flats off, and closed her eyes. The sun was gloriously warm, she had a whole day and a half before she had to deal with Marta, she had three whole more weeks before she had to go back to New York, and she had a romance novel on her e-reader that she’d started in the bathtub last night. She should read a manuscript while she was out here, she knew she should. But she’d already read three of them this week, after working all day, then working with Beau in the afternoons, and she needed to read something that didn’t feel like homework.

She checked the weather in New York—twenty-four degrees, cloudy—then texted Priya a picture of her bare feet in the sun with the pool in the background and laughed at Priya’s expletive-laden response. She settled back in the lounge chair and started reading.

She was deep into the book when she heard a splash. And then another. She looked up. And saw Beau, in the pool. Swimming.

He was doing the butterfly, a stroke she’d never learned how to do but had always admired every four years when she watched the Olympics. It always seemed so hard, that big burst of energy as the swimmers almost leaped across the pool. All she could see were his back and shoulders. His incredibly powerful back and shoulders.

He probably hadn’t even noticed her. Should she get up to leave? No, that would be silly. They were…friendly now, after all. After working together all week in the library, and dinner and everything last night. They could coexist, with her in a lounge chair, reading, and him swimming laps in the pool. With those arms. And…shoulders.

She just couldn’t look at him doing it. That’s all. She looked back down at her book.

But that was worse! She couldn’t sit here, with him doing…that…and read a romance novel! This was the wrong book to be reading right now. That’s probably why she was thinking about Beau like that! It was all the book’s fault!

Suddenly, the splashing stopped, and she looked up again. To find Beau, at the shallow end of the pool, looking straight at her.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said.

She could see more of him now, from the chest up. She could hear Priya’s voice in her head. Those big, brawny guys. Yes, that described Beau well. He didn’t look like a weight lifter or a model or anything like that, but he was big, solid. He looked bigger than he had in the old pictures she’d seen of him taken around Hollywood. It suited him.

Why did he look so good? He’d apparently been locked away here for like a year; shouldn’t he be, like, pale and pasty and awkward looking? Of course not. He’d been locked away in a mansion with gardens and a pool—that’s why he was a nice even light brown, with that broad chest and wide shoulders and thank God she couldn’t see anything else. She was very grateful she was wearing sunglasses, so he couldn’t tell she was staring.

“Having a good day?” he asked.

She nodded. “Um, yeah. Just trying to get some…reading done. A manuscript. For work.” She picked up her coffee cup. “And drinking coffee. It’s, um, beautiful weather today.”

He grinned at her. “Not like last Saturday.”

She laughed. Could anyone blame her for being so outraged that it had rained then, when she was used to the weather being like this? “No, not like last Saturday.”

He turned to take a sip out of his water bottle, and then lifted his arms and threw himself back into the water.

She watched him as he swam the whole length of the pool. She couldn’t help herself. He flipped at the deep end and flew back toward the shallow end. She tore her eyes away from him right before he got there and turned back to her book.

Oh, the hell with it. Fine, she’d read a manuscript. Romance novels made you get too many ideas, everyone knew that. Made you think unreasonable, impossible, unlikely, totally implausible things. She needed to stop that, right away.

She read for twenty more minutes. If you could call it reading when she watched Beau swim the length of the pool and back and looked down whenever she thought he might catch her. She didn’t absorb a single word of the manuscript.

Finally, she checked her phone. It was after noon! That meant she should go inside, get lunch. Excellent, great, that’s what she would do. And then she’d go back to her room and watch something very G-rated on her laptop. Peaceful, relaxing, with no attractive men in it that would make her think…things.

She got up to leave just as Beau reached the shallow end of the pool again.

“Going inside?” he asked.

She slid her flats back on. “Yeah. I, um, I think I’m going to get lunch. More of that lasagna, I think. I didn’t really eat breakfast, so I’m starving now.”

He grinned at her. “Leave some for me.”

Damn it, why did he have to smile at her like that? Now she understood why he’d been such a heartthrob as a teenager. And probably in his twenties, too. Even with that scraggly beard, his smile made him seem so alluring.

She turned toward the house.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She looked back at him. He wasn’t smiling like that anymore. Now he almost looked nervous.