I squint at the horizon. “Okay,” I say, stepping back from the water to pull off my sweater. Amber kneels up in the surf, hooting and applauding.
“Here’s the deal,” I say, taking off my pants. “If I do this, you have to be naked for the rest of the day.”
I wade towards her and almost turn back. It’s freezing and my windswept dick has shriveled to a sad little nugget.
She stands up. “What if I’m cooking bacon?” We’d figured out earlier that bacon is not a thing you want to be frying in the nude.
“You get to wear an apron.”
She holds out her hand to me. “Done.”
A wave laps up my thighs. Oh goddamn. I’m up to my waist and she swears it’s fine, even though her nipples are hard as rock and I’m sure her lips are beginning to turn blue.
“Okay, now lie back,” she says.
“And sink?”
Amber laughs and holds out her arms. “You won’t sink. I’ll hold you up.”
I shiver. The water looks uninviting. “You owe me big,” I say. “You’re going to master that tango step if it kills me.”
“You can teach me later,” she says.
“While you’re naked?”
“While I’m naked.”
Oh boy. There’s an incentive. Amber – warm and dry in my arms, naked except for a pair of heels. I wonder how many steps I can teach her before we get distracted.
She holds out her arms again. “I’m naked right now, in case you didn’t notice.”
I wrap my arms around her and we shiver together, waist deep. “Yeah,” I say, against her wet hair. “And in case you didn’t notice, I’m unlikely to pop a boner in this condition.”
“All the more reason to get moving,” she says. “Now, how’d it go? Right foot forward, two side...?”
I laugh and take hold of her. “A naked tango lesson in the ocean?”
“Why not? You were complaining that I kept staring at my feet – now I can’t even see them.”
“Much longer and you won’t be able to feel them. Aren’t your toes numb already?”
“Quit bellyaching. You can’t say I’m not an enthusiastic pupil.”
We’re off balance in all kinds of ways as the waves tug us in different directions, but she’s right – it does feel warmer when you’re moving. And there’s something to be said for her not being able to look at her feet. She seems to be treading on my toes less, or maybe it’s just because I don’t feel her doing it.
Then she goes for a full-on, dramatic rose-between-the-teeth cross and a wave catches us off balance, tipping us both into the water.
For a moment I’m fully under – a moment of airless gray-green, all ice and salt. Then my head breaks the surface and I flail for an instant, before I feel her arms under me.
“Relax,” she says. “I’ve got you.”
It’s like magic. One moment my limbs are these hopeless, thrashy things that cut through the water and drag me down, and the next they’re happy to hang there just under the surface. I can feel her hands – one between my shoulders and the other on the small of my back – and somehow feeling her there makes all the difference. I’m floating, held in her hands. Holy shit.
“Told you,” she said. “All you had to do was forget to sink.”
When she kisses me her lips taste of salt and her skin is icy and wet to the touch. I want to be indoors, warm and dry, rolling around in the big bed with her. She tugs her clothes on while she's still wet and grimaces at the scratch of sand. We start up the path and I slap her lightly on the butt. "Move," I say. "I want to collect on this deal as soon as possible."
I'm still smiling as I approach the door, but the smile freezes the second I see movement behind the glass - a shadow. A person. Amber yanks open the glass door and says, "What the hell are you doing here?"
John Gillespie is standing in the middle of the room. There's a woman with him - I've never seen her before - short hair, nice legs. She looks middle aged in a well-kept, un-Hollywood kind of way. Amber looks so pissed that I'm surprised her wet hair doesn't start to sizzle.
"I might ask you the same question," says her father.
"This is my house!" she hisses. "I can come here if I want to. What gives you the right to barge in on me like this? Everything was fine - I told you everything was fine, didn't I?"
"Yeah. After the paps chased you for I don't know how many miles," says John Gillespie. "You don't think I was slightly worried?"
I open my mouth to speak, but I get half a word out before the look in his eyes tells me to stop. "And you didn't think to persuade her to turn around?" he says.