Page 35 of Me and Mr. Just Right

And luckily, he didn’t have to. Because Lia brought her lips to his in a kiss that nearly knocked him off the boat. The dingy rocked from side to side, and he gripped the edges to keep from toppling over. But he’d fall into the icy cold ocean before he pulled away from Lia. This was why he always insisted on all dinghy passengers wearing a life vest.

Well, he’d never been in thisexactsituation for needing a life vest before, but he couldn’t regret that he was now.

The boat rocked again, and Lia lost her balance and fell into him, breaking the contact from their kiss. “Oof,” she said, her face making contact with his chest, right before her elbow drove into his lap.

He groaned and bent over on instinct, folding her into him.

“I’m so sorry!” she said.

“It’s good,” he wheezed out. “I need a second. Then we can pick up where we left off.”

She covered her mouth with a small gasp.

“Are you laughing?” he wheezed out.

“No,” she said through her fingers. “I feel really terrible, and would never laugh at ruining the moment in such a way.”

He snorted, and then they were both laughing, though his was interspersed with groaning. “For the record, laughing does not help.”

“Sorry,” she said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes as she continued to giggle, sounding anything but sorry. “I’ve never done that before during a kiss. Like, how did it even happen?”

Haydn watched her, loving how unguarded and relaxed she looked as she broke into another round of giggles. It was contagious—and yes, it was ridiculous. “Well, if it’s any consolation, that’s never happened to me before while kissing.”

“Good to know I’m an original,” she said. “And I really am sorry. And mortified.”

“You sure sound like it,” he said dryly, doing his best Jules imitation, but then waved his hand in the air. “It’s no big deal. I’m sure one of my brothers will father a child for me on my behalf.”

“Oh, geez. They probably would. I vote Bennett. He’s the nicest one.”

“Yeah, but no one would dare cross Jules.”

“True.” Her giggles finally subsided. Sometime during her laughter, while he’d been recovering, she’d moved to sit beside him on the bench. Her leg, hip, and arm were pressed against his, and she stared up at him in an admiring way that nearly dissolved any self-discipline he had, making him want to pull her into his arms and endanger whatever appendage might be risked by another boat-kiss with her.

“You laugh more than anyone I’ve ever met,” she said to him, like she was just figuring something out.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“The best thing,” she told him.

Warmth filled him as she linked her arm in his and rested her head against his bicep. He stared down at her lime-clad head, wondering if she could feel the way his heart raced, inches from where her cheek pressed against him.

“Look,” she whispered.

He followed where she pointed to see a pod of sea otters swimming together, their little heads poking up from the water to check them out. “I see four of them,” he whispered. His words stirred up the little hairs near her ear, and she shivered.

“Me too,” she breathed without moving.

One otter broke away and swam a little closer, checking them out.

“Hi, buddy,” Haydn said softly.

It cocked its head, then dove under the water and resurfaced back with its pod as if reporting his observations.

Lia sighed against him, and he wrapped his arm around her and tugged her into his side. What was he going to do? Everything about Lia screamed Bad Idea: he didn’t know her job, she had trust issues, she lived in Tennessee and he lived in Alaska … always and forever.

Most importantly, he didn’t want a relationship that would shake up his life and change everything.

Except he very much did … with Lia Hall. He wanted to show her he could be trusted. He wanted to bring her into the Forrester group, the same way the otters welcomed each other back into their pods. He wanted to show her what it was like to have people who would always have your back no matter what.

---