Page 95 of Love Me Tomorrow

Here’s the thing: the waters where we’re paddleboarding don’t even reach my waist.

Which means that when Savannah topples off the side of her board with all the grace of a gazelle caught in an ice storm, I do the ungentlemanly thing—I laugh.

I laugh so hard that, when she bobs to the surface with moss stuck to her hair and her face dripping wet with a look of abject misery, it’s all I can do to keep me and Pablo from meeting the same fate.

The fact that I have a cat strapped to my back in an astronaut-themed pet carrier has made this day unique all on its own, but watching Savannah Rose—Miss Heiress, Miss America’s Sweetheart, Miss Prim and Proper Debutante—find herself submerged in the shallow bayou, has tipped the scales of my good mood to OVERLOAD.

“Please stop laughing,” she growls as she grasps her paddle from where it’s floating away. “Forget about me owing you after this—sir, you will owemefor life.”

I’m counting on it.

Paddle gripped in hand, I rearrange my weight on the board so I can head in her direction. “Would you look at that,” I drawl, a real fake Southern accent kicking in, “she’s wet already.”

Her usually warm eyes narrow to slits as she hurls herself onto the board like a beached whale. “Wearing all white,” she mutters glumly, “was a mistake.”

Damn.

Sometimes, white is a tricky color for me. In certain light, I see it clearly—or, at least, as everyone else sees it, I’d assume. And, hell, it’s definitely the easiest to pinpoint when I’m looking at my trifold color chart, if I even need it then. But once in a while, depending on the exact hue and the surrounding environment, white can be a deceiving bastard too. Like right now, with a slight gray cast to her tank top and bikini, the subtext beneath Savannah’s words doesn’t carry the same weight for me as it would for the next guy.

That’s fine.

I’ll just strip them both off her later. Naked is better than clothed any day of the week, in my book.

Finally close to her, I tap my paddle against the side of her board. “Climb on up, sweetheart. You can do it.”

“I like when you call me that.”

Mouth curling in a small grin, I ask, “Sweetheart?”

“Yes.” She curls her legs beneath her, so that she’s on all fours. Her tank top is plastered to her upper body, clinging to her shoulders and trim waist and leaving her bikini bottoms exposed to my gaze. “Honestly, I should hate it, since every tabloid under the sun has taken to calling me that. It’s sweetheart this and sweetheart that, and it feels patronizing coming from them, but you . . .” The board leans to the left as she plants a shaky foot down andslowwwwlystands up. “You make it sound intimate, like anytime it slips from your mouth, it’s all I need to know that you’ve got my back.”

In a low voice, I say, “I do, Savannah. I’m here, always.”

She’s hunched over her feet, knees bent and legs splayed like she’s surfing a massive twenty-foot swell instead of the nearly still current of Bayou St. John. All around us, people are in kayaks and paddleboats. A few send covert glances our way, but for the most part, they keep their distance and don’t make a scene.

The difference between the Quarter, which is a tourist haven, and the rest of the city is insanely obvious: locals don’t care who we are, if they even recognize us at all.

It soothes my ruffled feathers in a way that nothing else has in a week, and minute by minute I feel my guard dropping as Savannah and I take to the waterways.

Ducking our heads, we pass under a stone bridge that arches gracefully over the canal. Soon after, we spot ducks frolicking in the water, near the gently sloped grassy banks.

Sometime around the thirty-minute mark, Savannah starts to look more comfortable. She stops staring at her feet every two seconds, as though worried the board might disappear out from beneath her, and points at a group of kids playing ultimate frisbee and another group lighting up a grill while the sounds of Louis Armstrong linger on the humid breeze.

“Did you miss this when you were gone?” I ask, out of the blue. At her confused glance, I wave my free arm to the cypress tree roots popping out of the water like knobby knees and a stray brown pelican, the Louisiana state bird, swimming some ten feet away from us. “I realized this morning that I haven’t asked about how you were when you were gone.”

Her cheeks hollow with a shocked “Oh.” Then, after she’s visibly neutralized her surprise, she shrugs her shoulders—only to seemingly remember that she’s on top of a paddleboard. Gripping the paddle like it’s a life raft, as her knees lock straight, she says, “You know, you’re the first person to ask me that. No one . . . Well, not that people don’t care, because I’m sure they do, but it’s like the minute I stepped back into N’Orleans, it was business as usual.”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut.

Does she ever strip the pressure off her back? Does she ever do something just forher?

I think of the wistful way she talked about seeing the Northern Lights. In all reality, she could probably afford to buy a ticket tonight and head out tomorrow. But she hasn’t—because she’s stuck it out and kept her priorities skewed to the Rose legacy.

“How was it traveling with Amelie?”

For the first time, talking about her sister doesn’t seem to come with a heavy wave of remorse. Instead, Savannah paddles herself along, her stance wide with burgeoning confidence. “Good. Hilarious. But also . . .” She shakes her head, the damp strands of her hair sticking to her shoulder. “We found out some news before filming started.”

At the frustrated note in her voice, I ask, “Want to talk about it?”

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