Katie took another sip of the wine and swallowed an oyster while the tartness remained on her tongue. She smiled and shook her head. Everything felt good.
George brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “I told you. Pure Bliss. It happens in the Hamptons.”
Chapter Fifteen
Happy Campers
Monday, June 19
“Holy shit,” said Luke the next Monday morning at camp. “That woman. Is here. ”
“Which woman?” asked Kona.
Luke didn’t want to point out that that woman with the yellow shorts whom he’d been stalking predator-style inside the surf store three weeks before was walking up to him. She may have been a married housewife for all he knew. But the way her smooth and toned thighs glistened in the morning sunlight in shorter shorts than she had on that night made him extremely hot for her.
“I said, ‘which woman’,” asked Kona again. He whistled with two fingers to no avail. “Hello? Wake up, shithead. What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I don’t . . . know,” replied Luke. “I just thought I saw someone from last summer. And I don’t think it’s her after all.”
The woman took her son’s hand and marched up the lot with a striped overflowing tote bag. She stuck out from the other women only in her effortlessness. She had on white cutoffs and a simple navy tank that hugged her slim frame. She wore beige rubber flip-flops on her feet and black hair up in a ponytail. She walked up to the four guys, and hesitated a little, looked down, and then, as if she’d just decided, what the hell, life is short, walked to Luke and Luke alone.
“Hi,” she said, pulling her hair out of her ponytail and back into another one, her clear green eyes astonished that this was the same guy from the shop. “I heard about Tide Runners from a poster in town.”
“Well, had I known you were looking, I would have suggested by the shark teeth in the store.” What an idiot he could be. Of course he should have suggested water sports camp for her son that night in the shop. Kona would have had her kid in camp and this clear-eyed beauty horizontal in the sea grass by 9:00 a.m. the morning after they’d met.
“My son isn’t liking his soccer camp. No one answered your main number all day yesterday. I didn’t know if it was okay for him to attend?” Katie couldn’t look him straight on; she’d thought she had fully worked the electric bolt from that Memorial Day night in the shop out of her system.
“Of course it’s okay. We just take people who show up, and I’m sorry, my partner Kona is supposed to check messages more than once a week . . . oh, never mind, does your son have a wetsuit?” He stared at her hard. “We rent them.” He smiled. She smiled back. “It’s cold in the water for an hour or more and he’ll need one.”
“I got Huck one,” she said, thinking that just as she was feeling settled, something like this had to come along to uproot her. Ashley was going to have a field day with this one. “We bought one yesterday because the ocean was so cold.” She turned to Huck. “Let’s get your cool new wetsuit out.” Katie grabbed it out of the bag and struggled to bite off the plastic tag with her teeth. She remained crouched down, not wanting to face Luke’s sexy stare, which she could feel over her head.
She closed her eyes and thought about how George’s hair was damn good in the sun: blond, a little flowy, thick. And his muscled body was crazy attractive naked. Okay, he didn’t text or call all the time. Even so, he was also polite, fun, game, and not clingy. He was exactly what she needed now. Don’t fuck that up; don’t let the thrill of this high drag you in.
“Hey, Huck,” Luke said. He checked and didn’t see a ring on her finger. “You’re not too young to water-ski, are you?” Huck hid behind his mother, yanking the tank top so much that it exposed the right side of her pink gingham bikini top.
Huck nodded “yes,” clearly not liking the idea. His shoulders slumped now. His face remained in his hands. He was pretty sure he didn’t like anything about this new camp already.
“Well,” said Luke, “then you must like tubing. We have a big blow-up tube with kind of a couch built into it. It has handles and I’ll sit with you so we can ride together. I’ll hold you tight. You’re not too young for tubing, are you?”
Huck pulled his hands down and looked at Luke’s face on the other side of his mother’s hip. “I’m not too young.”
That worked with the little shy boys every time. Luke had never met one who didn’t love to be dragged behind a boat on the tube, flying between the wakes and bouncing to and fro like a rag doll.