“Watch it, Sophie.”
“Watch what, Shep?” I swim a little closer until there’s maybe three feet between us. “Are you feeling defeated? Are you going to tell your mom that your new friend outplayed you and splashed water in your face? Will she call my mom and ask my mom to tell me to be nice to you?”
“Are you bullying me?” He tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “I didn’t take you for a bully, but I’m feeling a little bullied.”
I stick out my lower lip. “Sorry. Am I too much for you to handle?”
Something crosses his face, and it’s chilling—thrilling. A drug I don’t need, but I think I might like it a little too much if I take even the tiniest hit.
“You have no idea how much I can handle.” He stands, sauntering to the grill. “The question is … are you ready to be handled?”
“I’m ready for dinner.” I cave because I’m only fifty percent confident that I’m not in over my head with Shep. Those aren’t good odds for a woman with my history.
As he flips the meat, I climb out of the pool and wrap up in a towel.
“Dinner’s not quite ready.” He closes the lid and turns. His gait in my direction turns into a slow prowl, or at least that’s how it feels to me. “Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Beer? My parents keep the bar well stocked. I can make you anything you want?”
I take a step back before he steals all the oxygen. “Water is fine.”
He eyes me for a few breaths. “Are you okay with me drinking?”
I nod. “I’m not an alcoholic. I’m just taking a break from alcohol for a while.”
“A cleanse?”
With a tight smile, I shrug a shoulder. “Sure. A cleanse.”
“But you’re still eating red meat?” His lips twist as he studies me.
I shiver, even though it’s still nearly one hundred degrees. “Baby steps.”
Baby, minus the steps.
“Water it is.” He heads into the house to get our drinks.
I drape my towel over the back of a chair and pull on a coverup that doesn’t cover up all that much.
“Here you go.” Shep sets a glass of ice water on the table under the pergola and nods for me to take a seat. Then he disappears inside again, only to return a minute later with that charcuterie tray from earlier and two boxes of crackers pinned between his arm and torso.
“I love that you speak my language.” I pluck an olive from the tray.
“Appetizers are your language?” He glances at me with a playful grin claiming those sexy lips.
“Yes. And this …” I lean back, closing my eyes for a few seconds. “Sunshine. Time away from home. Golf. Dinner poolside with…” I smirk to let him know I’m about to feed his ego and I know it “…with my new friend whom I find to be really good company.”
He takes a pull of beer, smiling the whole time. Cersei plops down in the shade under the table, and I rub her belly with my foot.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he says.
Sometimes you meet someone, and everything just clicks. I clicked with Jules from a very early age. It’s as if you’re recognizing something from another life—a familiarity you can’t see or remember—but you feel it. People say it all the time to make sense of feeling such an instant connection with another human. My problem? The feelings I have for Shep are a little jumbled. I need to sort through them and ditch the highly inappropriate ones.
“When did you start playing golf?” I ask.
“High school. I dated a girl whose dad was a caddy.”
“No joke?”
Shep shrugs. “No joke.”
“And your love of dogs?”
“Man’s best friend. It’s in my DNA.”
I laugh. “That’s fair.” This is hard. I want to dive into his past, his marriage, his divorce, but that will open the door for him to quiz me. If Jimmy doesn’t exist in Shep World, then maybe Millie doesn’t belong here either. “So, did you go to college?”
Shep sips his beer. “Nope. You?” He smirks.
I chuckle. “Nah. I just did the online optometry degree. You know, the one you can get with a weekend course for four hundred and ninety-nine dollars?”
“Is that so?” Shep tries to suppress his grin, playing along with me. “They let anyone be a doctor these days.”
“They really do. So … what did you do right after high school if you didn’t go to college?”
He shrugs a shoulder, looking so cool it’s having a very heated effect on me. “This and that.”
Do I want him to be serious? Do we have to be serious if this isn’t our real life?
With feigned deep concentration, I nod. “I’ve done a lot of that but not much this.”
“Finally…” Shep stands and heads to the grill “…a woman who just … gets me.”