And to her credit, she does exactly what I tell her to. Not one second later she lands in my arms, her breath escaping her in awhooshon impact…

And then escaping her again when I promptly spill her out of my arms and onto the ground.

“Beckett!” she says, looking up at me in shock. “You—you dropped me!”

“I put you down,” I correct.

Her eyes narrow, and against my will, I find myself fighting a smile. It’s just that she’s so covered in mud at this point; there’s more brown visible than skin tone. She looks like a little piglet that’s been rolling in the dirt.

It’s weirdly, bizarrely…cute.She’scuteglaring up at me, covered in mud.

“Beckett,” she fumes. She holds her hand out to me, and it takes a second to realize she’s asking for help standing up.

Except based on her expression, she’s lessaskingand moredemanding.

I take her hand and give her a pull, and she jolts up toward me, wobbling a little before steadying herself.

“You shouldn’t have said you could carry me if you were just going to drop me,” she says, her eyes fixed somewhere over my right shoulder. “That’s kind of super embarrassing.”

“I’m not embarrassed at all,” I retort, raising one eyebrow at her.

“Not for you,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Me. It’s embarrassing for me.”

I blink at her, feeling my forehead wrinkle as I frown. “How—”

“Because it makes me feel like I was so heavy that you couldn’t hold my weight,” she cuts me off, throwing her hands up in the air. “And normally I’m pretty confident about all this”—she gestures to her body—“but it’syou, and it’s been a weird day, and—I’m tired,” she sighs.

It’s then that I notice how red her cheeks are, and how her body has curled in on itself as she slouches. And even though my only motivation in dropping her was to put space between us, I suddenly feel like a jerk.

“It’s not that at all,” I say quietly.

And I must be mental. I must be absolutely nuts. Because the last thing I should be doing is scooping this woman up into my arms—and yet that’s exactly what I do. One arm behind her knees, the other around her shoulders, straighten up until I’m holding her like a groom with his bride.

His very startled bride, who’s covered in mud and staring dumbfounded at him.

“See?” I say, lifting her slightly. “This is nothing. So don’t—” I break off, swallowing as I purposefully hold her away from my body a bit. My voice is gruff as I finish, “Don’t be self-conscious, all right?”

“Yeah,” she said faintly, still staring at me with that same thunderstruck look on her face.

“I’m gonna put you down, okay?”

“Yeah,” she repeats.

I don’t let her fall this time; I settle her gently on her feet, steadying her with one hand.

“Now,” I say with a sigh, flexing my hands subtly to rid them of the memory of her skin. “Let me finish the last bits of the roof. You try…” I wrinkle my nose as I trail off, looking her over. “Try to wash off a little. You’re filthy.”

She frowns at me—no doubt telling me that it’s my fault she’s covered in mud—but nods and begins rubbing her arms and legs, holding them out at an angle to get more rain on them. I turn away, focusing on the task at hand.

It takes me about fifteen more minutes to finish up the roof. I give Molly her privacy during that time, purposefully not looking at her, because earlier I saw her pulling her shirt over her head from the corner of my eye. I can only assume she’s trying to get her clothes clean.

Not sure what she’s going to put on over her swimsuit in the meantime, but I’m trying not to think about it. I’m also trying not to think about our sleeping arrangements for tonight, or the fact that we’re most likely going to have to get up close and personal to warm up after getting so waterlogged.

Nope. I don’t think about any of that. I just focus on the roof…

Until I have no choice but to face my immediate future.

“That’s as good as it’s going to get for now,” I call over my shoulder as I climb down from the roof, using a rickety ladder I found inside. “Let’s go in.”