Page 56 of Love At The Shore
Somehow he didn’t believe her. “Girl after my own heart.”
Her forehead crinkled. “Except cucumbers. People say they don’t taste like anything, but they totally permeate. Even if it just touches a leaf.”
There was the highly opinionated woman he knew…and liked.
A lot, as it turned out.
“If you’re trying to get me to revise my previous statement, it’s not going to work,” he teased.
She smiled. “Then I eat everything.”
Lucas laughed and ordered both items on the specials board. They could share. “How about you give us a whole crab, some of your garlic shrimp, two rolls and a big stack of napkins.”
“Coming up.” Sam’s gaze flitted back and forth between Lucas and Jenna, and a smile tipped his lips.
“Thank you.” Jenna’s voice was infused with warmth, and suddenly their feud and especially their fence seemed a million miles away.
Jenna gave the crab in their basket a few ineffective whacks with the little wooden mallet Sam had given them. A pile of wadded napkins sat to her left and Lucas sat to her right, grinning at her attempts to break into the crab’s shell.
She laughed. “I bet you take all your neighbors here.”
He snorted. “Only the impossible ones.”
“Oooh, I’m flattered,” she teased.
But truthfully, she was. Even though their dinner was a spontaneous jaunt and not a date, it sort of felt like one, especially when Sam had looked at them as if they were a couple.
And now Lucas was looking at her in almost the same way.
It threw a her a little…in a good way. Although it was awfully difficult to crack open a crab when her hands were shaking.
She set down the mallet and watched Lucas’s hands as he deftly peeled their mountain of shrimp. “I’ve gone through like fifty napkins already and you haven’t used one.”
He smiled and reached into the basket. “The trick is, you need to know how to grab the crab. See, first you take off all the legs and you hope to get some meat.”
The shell made a cracking noise and he peered inside. “No dice. Okay, and then…”
The crab suddenly broke in half, spraying Jenna with a stream of melted butter. Lucas’s eyes grew wide, and then they both dissolved into laugher.
“I think I need another napkin,” Jenna managed to say.
He nudged a pile toward her. “You can have the whole stack.”
She dabbed at her damp shirt, while Lucas finished peeling the shrimp without making any mess whatsoever. “When did you suddenly become the neat one?”
“Now you sound like Ally. She just says it like it is.” His eyes lit up. “It’s impressive.”
“She really likes you. They both do.”So do I.
She held her breath while he took in her words, hoping he knew just how much Nick and Ally’s opinion meant to her. They were protective of her, in a way. And they’d certainly never taken to anyone quite the way they both had with Lucas.
But that was her fault, mostly. Since the divorce, they’d been their own little club, like the Three Musketeers. She’d been so willing to put her future on the line when it came to her writing, but her heart was another matter entirely. She’d barely dated at all.
Sitting by the ocean with Lucas made her feel different, though. She almost felt ready to give dating a chance.
“They have impeccable taste,” he said softly.
Heknew. He had to. She could see it in his eyes—he knew how much her kids adored him, and he didn’t mind. In fact, it seemed as if he might adore them too.
