With This Heart(31)

I glanced over to him quickly, hoping my mishap hadn’t ruined the moment completely. His smile froze and then his features slid into a shocked gape.

“ Oh yeah,” he nodded into the phone, never looking away from me. “That recipe is good, but my grandmother makes one with pineapple in it as well.”

Silence filled the air as the person on the other end picked up the conversation. Why was he giving someone recipe advice? What guy even knew a recipe by heart? His eyes drifted down my body in a lazy manner, taking in my neck and chest, then drifting down the towel to the few inches of my creamy thighs exposed at the very bottom.

“ No, not the whole can. I’ll have her send you the recipe. She’s right here actually; do you want to talk to her?”

Why would he ask that? Why would I want to talk to whoever was on the other end of the phone?

“ Oh, okay. I’ll tell her. Bye. Nice talking to you, too,” he said before hanging up.

That’s when I realized that the phone in his hand wasn’t his. It was mine. God damn technology companies. Did we all need to have the same rectangular black phone? What happened to being unique individuals?

I stepped closer to him without even considering the fact that I was practically naked. “Who was that?” I demanded.

“ Your mom,” he answered casually before standing up. His height towered over mine and I clutched the towel tighter.

“ What?! Why were you talking to my mom?” I reached around him and grabbed my phone.

He didn’t move away. There was barely an inch between our bodies and I could feel his warm breath on my bare shoulder.

“ She called back twice while you were in the shower. I didn’t want her to worry, so I answered.” I know it didn’t seem like a big deal to him, but it was. My parents were already suspicious of me.

“ Beck! I’ve never introduced them to a guy before OR even mentioned a guy to them for that matter!”

I hated that there was amusement flashing across his heavenly features. Why wasn’t he taking this as seriously as I was?

“ You should give your mom more credit. I explained that I was your friend and that you were in the bathroom. She was confused at first, but then I introduced myself and we started chatting. I think she likes me.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I wiped a hand down my face and stared up at him. If anyone could charm my mom, it was Beck.

“ Were you giving her a recipe at the end?”

His lips unfolded into a confident grin. “It was for my Grammy’s banana bread. Your mom wants you to send it to her.”

I couldn’t help but smile then. He took me by surprise at every turn. There was no limit to Beck Prescott; he couldn’t be pushed into a mold. Of course he would talk to my mom about banana bread, because why the hell not?





[page]CHAPTER TWELVE





“ So how did you meet this girl?” I asked as we made out our way out of the hotel lobby toward the beach. The sun had set an hour ago so the bonfire was most likely in full swing. I’d thrown on a cotton striped dress that hugged my meager chest and waist before loosening out into a mini-skirt. On any other girl, it would’ve look sexy and short, but on me it just looked like a sweet dress a toddler could pull off.

“ She bumped into me on the way out of the hotel earlier, after my run,” he answered, scanning his eyes down my outfit. I instinctively reached up to run a hand through my hair. It was falling in loose waves down my back. There was no point in trying to do anything else with it while we were standing out in the salty night air.


“ Physically bumped into you?” I asked, trying to clarify the encounter.

He laughed and narrowed his eyes on me playfully. “Yes, she was walking next to me and tripped or something.”

I stopped walking and gawked up at him. “Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

He paused and stared back at me. It wasn’t the safest place for us to stop, considering we were walking across the street that separated the beach from the hotel, but there weren’t any cars in sight.

“ What?” he asked, scanning for traffic. “Do you have to stand in the road right now?”

“ She did it on purpose! She was flirting with you.” The thought annoyed me because he told me he liked me, he yelled it in fact, so the universe should have listened and turned all the other pretty girls away. I couldn’t compete with them.

“ So what if she was? Girls have flirted with me before,” he answered with a strange tone.

I grunted and walked past him. If only I could have said, guys have flirted with me before as well. ALL THE TIME IN FACT. But since that would have been a big ol’ lie, I walked past him and headed toward the giant fire now burning a few yards away on the beach. I couldn’t hear his footsteps in the sand behind me, but I assumed he was following me. If not, he’d stayed out on the road and had probably been run over by now. I told myself I didn’t care either way.

The bonfire was blazing and crackling through the dark night. It was the centerpiece of the party with groups mingling all around it. Off to the side there was a grill and a few coolers lined up. As I stepped closer, I tried to inspect the scene quickly and decide which area looked the least intimidating. There were more people there than I had expected, at least twenty or thirty. They all looked around my age or a little older.