Page 23 of Give Me More
“I’m meeting with Tobias this afternoon,” she’d told him when he asked what she was doing for the duration of the day. “Then I’ll probably write for the rest of the evening. I have a lot I want to get done.”
“Cool, then I guess we’ll figure out another time to check in.” He hadn’t bothered to try to hide the disappointment in his tone.
Watching her run back and forth during the game, hearing her laughter, seeing the genuine fun she was having, had touched something in him. To be honest, it enhanced the same something he’d felt when he was inside her last night. The feeling of incompletion that he knew was only assuaged when they were together.
“Sure, ah, breakfast tomorrow?” she suggested.
Tomorrow seemed like a decade away, and he didn’t want to wait another decade to see her. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
He wasn’t desperate and he wasn’t going to allow her to think he was. They were on this island together for just under two weeks—certainly he’d see her again. In the meantime, he needed to get himself together. Acting like a lovesick puppy wasn’t his thing. It felt odd and demoralizing and he didn’t like it. Still, when Grace walked away, he stared at her until she was out of sight, missing her the second she was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“OKAY,WE’VEGOTTAbuild a better sandcastle than them, or I’m never gonna live this down,” RJ said. Three days later, they were on their knees on the beach for another family activity.
They’d been divided up as couples this time, so Grace was on his team. He’d convinced himself that it did make sense for Grace to participate in Riley’s itinerary, as had been pointed out the other night at dinner. As a result, he’d seen her every day for the past few days. Often that was due to their story status updates, but on other occasions Riley and his mother had invited her to join in whatever they were doing. And he was okay with all of that. He could be around her and not want what they used to have. Or at least he was trying his best not to.
She wore a coral one-piece bathing suit today, as evidenced by her low-riding denim shorts. Her sandals had been dropped into that mammoth bag she always carried, and she was now barefoot as she unhooked the stack of buckets they’d been given.
“Let’s get started,” she said. “What type of design do you want to make?”
He frowned. “It’s a sandcastle. We’re making it look like a sandcastle.”
She glared at him then with her lips turned up. “Are you serious? That’s not gonna work. We have to have a game plan. Are we going for a real royal castle, or something brooding and creepy?”
Each team was spaced about ten feet apart down the beach and the others were already packing sand and getting started with their structure. “We’re doing whatever’s going to win,” he replied. He wasn’t prepared when she scooped up a handful of sand and threw it at him.
Stunned for a few seconds, he contemplated what his next move should be. Yet his teammate had just done the unspeakable so really there was only one option. He tossed a handful of sand back. She frowned and then brushed the sand off the front of her. Bits of it had fallen between the lovely cleavage she was sporting today.
“Need me to help you get that?” he asked with a sexy grin.
The way her eyes cut over at him after that question was a cross between hilarious and deadly, so he held his hands up in defeat just in case.
“What I need is for you to get out of my way. I can do this,” she said after brushing away the rest of the sand and picking up a bucket.
“Wait, we’re a team. We’re both supposed to be doing this.”
“Then you need to get yourself together and stop fooling around,” she said sternly.
He nodded. “Okay, well, for the record, you started it.”
She cut another raised-brow look at him and turned over the bucket she’d just filled with sand. He’d better get started doing the same—so he did. In no time they had a semblance of a castle under way. When Grace leaned over to use a tool that looked like a spatula to carve into one of the mounds they’d created, he couldn’t help but follow her movements.
Her shorts weren’t just low riding, they were also very short. After seeing her these past few days, he wondered if she had any shorts that came below her upper thigh. Probably not, and for that he should definitely thank every deity there was. But the way she was leaning over today he could see a bit more of her cheeks than he suspected anybody else could. More like, he hoped nobody else could. The thought of another man looking at her and thinking the things he was thinking right now didn’t sit well with him.
“Taking another break?” she asked without moving from her spot.
“Nah, just enjoying the view.” It was the truth.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I think the correct word is horny.”
With that Grace turned to look over her shoulder at him. He winked at her and grinned. They hadn’t been physical since the night of the pool party. Considering how awkwardly that had ended, they seemed to have made a conscious effort not to touch each other since then. Not that he didn’t want Grace—he did, there was no doubt about that. He just wasn’t sure what sleeping with her now would mean once this island trip was over.
“I’m really confused,” she said, and continued her work on what he now saw was going to be a fin. “You want to win this competition. You want to win every competition, actually, yet you haven’t been working very hard over here.”
He reluctantly grabbed another bucket. “Something’s distracting me,” he told her as he stuffed more sand into it. He really didn’t like this activity and planned to share those thoughts with Riley when it was done. She wouldn’t care—she’d just laugh at him as she’d been doing a lot these days.
