Sidecar Crush

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk,” he said. “I’m going crazy out here.”

“I’ve already told you, I’m not staying with your agency, and I’m not doing that show.”

“Right, fine,” he said. “That’s not what we need to talk about. We need to talk about us.”

I rolled my eyes. Now he wanted to talk about us? “I think I’ve been pretty clear about that, too.”

“Leah, I miss you,” he said. “Nothing is the same without you here.”

I took a deep breath and leaned against the counter. “I don’t know what to say about that. I’m sorry if this isn’t what you want, but I already told you it’s over.”

“But why, babe?” he asked. “We were great together.”

“Were we, really?” I asked. “I think we were more convenient together than great.”

“That’s not true.”

“Kelvin, you didn’t love me,” I said. “Maybe you loved things about me, or you loved my career. But you hated my hometown, you talked down to people I care about, and you had no interest in getting to know my family.”

“Babe, you should come home so we can talk about this in person.”

“That’s not my home,” I said. “And stop calling me babe.”

“Leah—”

“I have to go,” I said, and ended the call.

A few seconds later, my phone rang—Kelvin again. I declined the call just as Jameson knocked on my front door. I turned off my phone and left it on the counter. Kelvin could leave as many messages as he wanted. He was not ruining my day with Jameson.

“Hey, darlin’,” Jameson said when I opened the door. Without hesitation, he stepped in and slipped his hands around my waist. Pulled me close and kissed me.

“Hi,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck.

“I think I need to do that again, just to be sure it’s real.” He gently brushed my hair back from my face and rubbed his nose against mine before leaning in to kiss me.

“What are we doing today?” I asked.

“Going to the rusty reef,” he said.

“What’s that?”

He grinned. “You’ll see. Are you wearing your swimsuit?”

“Sure am.” I was wearing my pink and blue bikini under a loose-fitting shirt I’d modified to hang off one shoulder, with a pair of cut-off jeans and pink sandals.

Jameson’s eyes swept up and down, taking me in. The hungry look in his eyes made my tummy tingle.

“I reckon we should go,” he said.

“Do I need anything else?”

“Just your pretty self,” he said. “And maybe a towel. I took care of the rest.”

I grabbed a beach towel and went out to Jameson’s truck. We drove along the lake, away from town, and he pulled over to park on the side of the road. There were a number of other cars and trucks parked nearby. He took a cooler bag out of the back, and I got our towels, then followed him down an old dirt road.

We emerged on a wide beach. The land sloped upward on our left, flattening as it came toward the water. To the right was an expanse of sand bordered along the far side by trees and rocks that went almost to the edge of the lake. It made for a secluded section of lakefront.

People had blankets and towels spread out on the sand and a small fire sent a tendril of smoke into the air. Scarlett and Cassidy were laid out on a blanket, sunning themselves in bikinis. June sat beneath the shade of a wide umbrella, thumbing through a magazine.

Devlin and Bowie sat on a log next to the fire, poking at it with sticks. A few others sat nearby, with lunch or drinks. Heads bobbed in the water out from the shore, and the sound of their voices carried faintly over the water.

Jameson veered to the right and set our stuff down.

“There’s more room over there,” he said, nodding in the opposite direction. “But we don’t want to be in the way.”

“In the way of what?” I asked. There didn’t seem to be anything over there.

The noise of a motor made me turn, and I watched as Gibson came tearing down the dirt road on a four-wheeler. He skidded to a stop just short of the water’s edge. For half a second, I wondered what he was doing, until a shout came from higher up the slope. A rope was tied to the four-wheeler, and it led to a zip line. Someone—it looked like Jonah—was holding onto the handle and sliding toward the water at terrifying speed.