Page 30 of A Line in the Sand
Molly’s gaze dropped to his fingertips as he fumbled with the third button. “And you, um, need to get undressed to do that?”
The look on her face reminded Max of how he felt every time he’d seen her in her clamshell bustier. He bit back a smile. After all, turnabout was fair play.
“We need to keep her as wet as possible en route to the aquarium.” Max shrugged the rest of the way out of his oxford and offered it to Molly. “Can you dunk this in the water and wrap it around her shell after I pick her up?”
“Of course.” Molly dragged her attention away from his bare chest and took the shirt from his hands. Her face was almost as red as the lobster costume Ursula sometimes wore.
After Max carefully hauled the turtle out of the water, she released her hold on Ursula. The puppy yipped and pranced in wet circles around them as Molly doused his shirt and carefully spread it over the sea turtle like a drippy, wet blanket.
Everything that followed—the mad dash across the sand toward Max’s Jeep, loading and unloading the sea turtle until she was safely placed on an exam table at the sea turtle hospital, gathering the necessary instruments to remove the hook—felt like a perfectly choreographed dance. They barely spoke. There was no need—they each knew what to do and fell in step, working together side-by-side, as if they’d done so countless times before.
Max cut the hook in half with wire cutters while Molly held the turtle still. Ursula had come along for the ride, of course, but she remained blessedly quiet. The puppy planted herself at Molly’s feet, watching everything that transpired with her ridiculously huge melted-chocolate eyes. After they moved the sea turtle to her own private tub, Ursula finally left Molly’s side and curled up by the tank and fell asleep, her tiny chest rising and falling in a drowsy rhythm.
Max pulled off his blue surgical gloves and shook his head. “That is one strange dog.”
Molly tucked a pink lock of hair behind her ear. “You mean you consider her a dog now instead of an ecological menace?”
Now that the urgency of the past hour was behind them, Max became acutely aware of just how green Molly’s eyes were, and how looking directly into them made him feel like he was drowning all over again—panicked…lost…but determined to live life to the fullest if he managed to survive. “What if we forget about that for now and agree to a truce?”
“A truce?” She let out a laugh that seemed to reach deep into Max’s gut and warm him from the inside out.
A truce?What was he thinking?
“Just a temporary one, of course,” he said before he could stop himself.
“Of course,” she echoed, and this time when she smiled at him, it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Max wanted to reel those last words back in, but it was too late. He raked a hand through his hair, then continued straightening up the surgical area, moving as slowly as possible to buy some time. The silence grew thick between them, weighed down with the things neither of them would say out loud.
The strap of Molly’s retro cherry-print swimsuit slipped off of her shoulder. Her cheeks blazed pink as she pulled it back in place.
“It was my parents,” she said softly—so softly that Max almost didn’t hear her at first. “On the phone earlier. You asked me if I was going on a date this weekend, remember?”
Oh he remembered, all right. The thought of it had made him want to do something utterly stupid, like sweeping her off her feet and carrying her away as if they were in one of the sailor-meets-mermaid watercolor paintings that were always so popular in the art gallery on the Turtle Beach boardwalk. Or worse, cupping her beautiful face and kissing her, right then and there. She would’ve tasted like sea spray and sunshine, and they would’ve kissed until the waves threatened to drag them out to sea…
Or until Ursula wormed her way between them, whichever came first.
“Ah.” Max nodded. “So they’re coming to the island for SandFest?”
“Indeed they are.” Molly sighed.
Max sensed there was more to the story. She definitely didn’t seem thrilled at the prospect of seeing her family, but he wasn’t ready to switch gears quite yet.
“I’ve heard SandFest is really something.” He took a tentative step closer to Molly and felt his mouth hitch into a grin when she didn’t back away. On the contrary, she seemed to lean slightly toward him, a cherry pie dream with tousled mermaid hair and sun-kissed skin. “I don’t have a date for it either.”
Her gaze flicked to his shirtless torso again, traveling over him like a caress. “That’s too bad.”
The air between them crackled with electricity. Molly licked her lips, and Max suddenly couldn’t look away from her perfect pink mouth.
“Unless…” He reached for her fingertips and wove them loosely through his.
Molly’s breath hitched, and Max could see the boom of her pulse in the lovely dip between her collar bones. She snuck a glance at him through the thick fringe of her eyelashes. “Unless?”
Max squeezed her hand tight.Unless we go together—you and me.He tugged her closer and lowered his head toward hers, until he was whispering against her bow-shaped lips, just a kiss away. “I think we should—”
The door flung open, and suddenly Nate was there, standing between two turtle tubs, gawking at them. “Dude.”
Molly jerked her hand away from Max’s and crossed her arms. “Nate. Hi.”
