liked to debate. He enjoyed philosophizing. He was good with words, good at verbal sparring. And who could know? Maybe if he talked to P.J. for long enough, he’d end up saying something that would start breaking through her defenses. Maybe he’d begin the process that would magically change that no to a yes.
“It was the summer you first—”
“It was the summer my family moved to our house in Hingham,” Harvard interrupted. “My mother decided that if we were going to live a block away from the ocean, we all had to learn to swim.”
P.J. was silent. “Was that the same house your parents are moving out of today?” she finally asked.
He froze. “Where did you hear about that?”
She glanced at him. “Joe Cat told me.”
P.J. had been talking to Joe Cat about him. Harvard didn’t know whether to feel happy or annoyed. He’d be happy to know she’d been asking questions about him. But he’d be annoyed as hell if he found out that Joe had been attempting to play matchmaker.
“What, the captain just came over to you and said, guess what? Hot news flash—Harvard’s mom and pop are moving today?”
“No,” she said evenly. “He told me because I asked him if he knew what had caused the great big bug to crawl up your pants.”
She pushed herself forward to catch a wave before it broke and bodysurfed to shore like a professional—as if she’d been doing it all of her life.
She’d asked Joe. Harvard followed her out of the water feeling foolishly pleased. “It’s no big deal—the fact that they’re moving, I mean. I’m just being a baby about it.”
P.J. sat in the sand, leaned back against her elbows and stretched her legs out in front of her. “Your parents lived in the same house for, what? Thirty years?”
“Just about.” Harvard sat next to her. He stared at the ocean in an attempt to keep from staring at her legs. Damn, she had nice legs. It was impossible not to look, but he told himself that was okay, because he was making damn sure he didn’t touch. Still, he wanted to.
“You’re not being a baby. It is a big deal,” she told him. “You’re allowed to have it be a big deal, you know.”
He met her eyes, and she nodded. “You are allowed,” she said again.
She was so serious. She looked as if she were prepared to go into mortal combat over the fact that he had the right to feel confused and upset over his parents’ move. He felt his mouth start to curve into a smile, and she smiled, too. The connection between them sparked and jumped into high gear. Damn. When they had sex, it was going to be great. It was going to be beyond great.
But it wasn’t going to be today. If he were smart he’d rein in those wayward thoughts, keep himself from getting too overheated.
“It’s just so stupid,” he admitted. “But I’ve started having these dreams where suddenly I’m ten years old again, and I’m walking home from school and I get home and the front door’s locked. So I ring the bell and this strange lady comes to the screen. She tells me my family has moved, but she doesn’t know where. And she won’t let me in, and I just feel so lost, as if everything I’ve ever counted on is gone and… It’s stupid,” he said again. “I haven’t actually lived in that house for years. And I know where my parents are going. I have the address. I already have their new phone number. I don’t know why this whole thing should freak me out this way.”
He lay back in the sand, staring at the hazy sky.
“This opportunity is going to be so good for my father,” he continued. “I just wish I could have taken the time to go up there, help them out with the logistics.”
“Where exactly are they moving?” P.J. asked.
“Phoenix, Arizona.”
“No ocean view there.”
He turned to face her, propping his head on one hand. “That shouldn’t matter. I’m the one who liked the ocean view, and I don’t live with them anymore.”
“Where do you live?” she asked.
Harvard couldn’t answer that without consideration. “I have a furnished apartment here in Virginia.”
“That’s just temporary housing. Where do you keep your stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“Your bed. Your kitchen table. Your stamp collection. I don’t know, your stuff.”
He lay down, shaking his head. “I don’t have a bed or a kitchen table. And I used the last stamp I bought to send a letter to my little sister at Boston University.”
“How about your books?” P.J. ventured. “Where do you keep your books?”
“In a climate-controlled self-storage unit in Coronado, California.” He laughed and closed his eyes. “Damn, I’m pathetic, aren’t I? Maybe I should get a sign for the door saying Home Sweet Home.”
“Are you sure you ever really moved out of your parents’ house?” she asked.
“Maybe not,” he admitted, his eyes still closed. “But if that’s the case, I guess I’m moving out today, huh?”
P.J. hugged her legs to her chest as she sat on the beach next to the Alpha Squad’s Senior Chief.
“Maybe that’s why I feel so bad,” he mused. “It’s a symbolic end to my childhood.” He glanced at her, amusement lighting his eyes. “Which I suppose had to happen sooner or later, considering that in four years I’ll be forty.”
Harvard Becker was an incredibly beautiful-looking man. His body couldn’t have been more perfect if some artisan had taken a chisel to stone and sculpted it. But it was his eyes that continued to keep P.J. up at night. So much was hidden in their liquid brown depths.
It had been a bold move on her part to suggest they go off alone to walk. With anyone else, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But with everyone else, the boundaries of friendship weren’t so hard to define.
When it came to this man, P.J. was tempted to break her own rules. And that was a brand-new feeling for her. A dangerous feeling. She hugged her knees a little tighter.
“There was a lot wrong with that house in Hingham,” Harvard told her. “The roof leaked in the kitchen. No matter how many times we tried to fix it, as soon as it stormed, we’d need to get out that old bucket and put it under that drip. The pipes rattled, and the windows were drafty, and my sisters were always tying up the telephone. My mother’s solution to any problem was to serve up a hearty meal, and my old man was so immersed in Shakespeare most of the time he didn’t know which century it was.”
He was trying to make jokes, trying to bring himself out of the funk he’d been in, trying to pretend it didn’t matter.
“I couldn’t wait to move out, you know, to go away to school,” he said.
He was trying to make it hurt less by belittling his memories. And there was no way she was going
