looked brand-new. It had never been at a school outing! Was she tormenting him, deliberately, with his choice to just be friends?
Surely not! There was nothing conniving about Miss Maple, was there?
Ha. She knew exactly the effect all those scantily covered curves would have on his resolve. Nobody was that innocent!
Proving her own boldness was making her at least as uncomfortable as it was him and that she had no experience with the fact that the kind of swimwear she was wearing was not actually designed for swimming, Beth dove headlong into the water. And came up with one arm crossed firmly across her chest, and the other tugging away at something he couldn’t see—but could clearly imagine—below the water.
“Problems?” he purred.
Nope, those little scraps of fabric were definitely not attire designed to get wet. At least her hair made her look like a drowned rat instead of a femme fatale making a play for his soul.
“No,” she snapped, but made some tightening adjustments to the little threads holding everything together.
Now satisfied everything was going to stay on, she soon forgot to be self-conscious about her attire. After a few minutes of waiting, hopefully, for things to fall apart, he began to realize the bathing suit proved to be not nearly as revealing as her absolute joy and freedom in the water.
Her enthusiasm was contagious, and soon she had Kyle in the water and doing what she called a “motorboat,” blowing bubbles with his mouth to get him over his fear of getting his face wet.
Never once did she make it seem like a swim lesson. Kyle’s first time in the pool was all about fun. She never asked him to get out of the three foot end of the pool.
The three of them splashed and played tag. She got out a volleyball for them to throw around. An hour passed in the blink of an eye.
The whole experience made Ben want to get her alone, to swim with her in the Pacific on one of those nights when the sky and the water became one. Was that something someone wanted to do with their friend?
They had no sooner gotten out of the pool than the moment Ben dreaded, meeting her parents, arrived. Her mom provided them all with thick white robes that matched the one Beth had come out on the pool deck in. She got sodas out of the fridge as they all plopped down on the comfy furniture in the poolside lounging area.
Ben didn’t miss the way Beth’s mother’s eyes popped at her daughter’s bathing suit before Beth managed to get herself covered up.
So, Miss Maple did have a conniving side! He’d bet his business that her bathing suit was brand-new and carefully chosen to fluster. Though at the moment, trying to tug an uncooperative robe over her wet skin, Ben was pleased to see she seemed to be the flustered one.
After a few minutes her father joined them.
Ben was good at meeting people, and because of his line of work he was not intimidated by wealthy people. Despite his reluctance to meet parents, he realized he didn’t have to act like a high school kid picking up his prom date, because he and Beth were not dating.
Her parents were easy people to be with, but Ben became aware he had avoided this kind of gathering since the death of his parents. Mr. And Mrs. Maple were obviously devoted to their youngest child and each other. It soon became evident that family was everything to them, their lives were centered on their children and their grandchildren. It was the main reason they had a pool.
Family.
That thing he had turned his back on so long ago, because it filled him with such an intense sense of yearning for what he could never have back.
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