Stinger (A Sign of Love Novel)(27)

"Okay, stay safe. Call me tomorrow morning. Seriously."

"Okay, I will. Bye, Abs."

"Bye, Pod Person."

I hung up the phone smiling and headed down to the lobby.

When I stepped off the elevator, Carson was standing with one narrow hip propped against the wall at the corner of the bank of elevators, doing something on his phone again. He pressed a button and stuck it in his pocket, and then looked up and saw me coming toward him. The smile he shot me made my heart pick up a beat. God, that little dimple below his mouth practically put me over the edge each time he smiled. I was a slave to that tiny dimple. I smiled back, shaking my head slightly. "What?" he asked as I met him and we started walking toward the pool.

"Nothing, I was just thinking that right where you were standing, that's where we ran into each other. Who would have ever guessed after that encounter, that less than six hours later, I'd be moving in to your hotel room?" I grinned up at him.

"Not surprised, babe. I predicted that one. Just took you a little while to catch up." He put his arm around me.

I elbowed him in the side. "You probably did, you egomaniac."

He laughed, but then his face went serious as he steered me out another exit from the one we were headed toward. "Sorry, I just saw some people who might recognize me and I didn't want to deal with them."

I frowned. People from his business, here for the expo, I was assuming. My chest felt tight and I pushed the feeling away–nothing good could come from thinking too much about his "co-workers." Did he see a woman he had made a film with? I couldn't bring myself to ask.

Carson looked down at me with regret on his face. "Sorry, Grace, do you mind if we go to one of the pools further away from the entrance?"

I shook my head. "That's probably a better idea for me too," I said quietly.

We walked through the pool area to a less-crowded section closer to the back and put our towels and my bag down on two loungers with a little bit of shade.

"Need me to put some sunblock on for you?" he asked.

I nodded. "If you could get my back…" I said, taking off my cover-up.

He took the bottle I handed him and started lathering up my back. Then he kissed the side of my neck and handed the sunblock back to me. "Thanks." I smiled, applying sunblock to the rest of my body.

I sat down on my lounger, but he turned and walked over to a family sitting a few loungers down and asked them a question. They nodded and pointed to an orange raft lying to the side of them. Carson picked it up and started walking back toward me calling behind him, "Thanks! I'll return it."

Then he took my hand and pulled me up. "Wait! I thought we were going to lay out for a little while before going in the water."

"Who said that? There wasn't a plan. We do what we do when we wanna do it, remember? And right now, I wanna swim with you."

"Okaaay. Well, what if I don't want to swim right now?"

"Then I do this." And then he dropped the raft and picked me up and tossed me right in the water.

I came up sputtering, madder than a hatter. The water was only about as high as my shoulders where he had tossed me and so I stood up, glaring at him as he grinned down at me from the side of the pool. "I cannot believe you just tossed me in the pool!"

"Well, believe it. I did," he said, throwing the raft in the water and then walking his perfect body to the deeper end and executing the most perfect dive I'd ever seen, slicing straight through the water.

Before I could even blink, he had swum underwater to me and was pulling me under by my legs. I opened my eyes under the water, making my most angry face at him as he met my eyes and grinned. God damn him, he was even beautiful underwater with air bubbles coming out of his nose.

He let go of me and I surfaced, smoothing my hair back. He surfaced a second later laughing and running his hand through his hair. "Don't be mad, Buttercup. I just couldn't wait to get slippery again with you."

I glared at him for another second, but I couldn't maintain my anger at him, looking at me with that innocent expression, water droplets sticking to his impossibly long eyelashes.

I shook my head, not able to contain the smile that made its way to my face. "You really are an *. I can't believe you threw me in the pool. No one has ever thrown me in a pool."

He swam up to me, pulling my body to his and swirling us around in the water. "That's a shame. You're so pretty soaking wet." He leaned in and kissed me lightly on my lips, and then kissed each of my eyes and then my nose. Okay, he was forgiven.

"You're a really good swimmer," I noted.

He nodded. "When you grow up in hotels and cheap apartments, all with pools, you tend to spend a lot of time perfecting your swim strokes." He paused. "I didn't have much else to do. Some kids play basketball. I swam."

I studied him. "I guess I was under the impression that because your mom was… famous… that you had money."

"Hard to have anything when you spend everything you have on non-prescribed prescription drugs. And I know I used the word 'famous' before, but I would probably say 'well known' is a better term. But in the business, that doesn't always translate into 'well paid.' It just means she was willing to do things others weren't."