Sun-kissed (The Au Pairs 3)

She sputtered up some salt water that had gone into her nose and managed a weak smile. Her swimsuit was giving her a painful wedgie. She should have worn a wet suit like Ryan had suggested, but with the image of Tinker in her minuscule bikini in mind, Mara had opted for sexy instead of sensible. Alas, when she'd arrived at the beach, she'd found Tinker looking trim and athletic in a full-body wet suit. Several times, the force of the waves had almost pulled off Mara's bikini top.

Another large wave crashed into them, and Ryan dove into it, emerging from the crest, a tall, graceful figure on his surfboard. All around him, his friends were similarly positioned, including Tinker, who was a demon on the water (she rose elegantly from her board as if pulled by strings), but Mara couldn't even get her

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body on her surfboard, let alone try to stand on it. Every time the waves rolled, she was buffeted by the crash, and she was pulled farther and farther back toward the shore.

It wasn't enough that she had woken up at daybreak to do this. It wasn't enough that her eyes hurt, her joints hurt, and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't even see, since one of her contacts had floated away, and her arms were red from scraping on the sand. To add insult to injury, Tinker had had the audacity to actually make fun of her surfboard.

"Oh, that's so cute! You have a foamy!" Tinker cooed when she saw Mara's board as she and Ryan arrived at the beach.

"No need for that," Ryan said good-naturedly. "It's Mara's first time."

"What's a foamy?" Mara asked when Tinker was out of earshot. She was using one of Ryan's old boards, one he'd picked himself for Mara to use, so she didn't understand the mockery.

"It's a beginner board. Most surfers use fiberglass, like mine," he said, motioning to his sleek Ferrari Challenge Stradale, a limited-edition five-thousand-dollar surfboard with the distinctive stallion logo.

"Hey, who's the baby with the foamy?" another one of Ryan's surfer friends called, hooting at the sight of Mara's yellow surfboard.

"Knock it off," Ryan called back. "Ignore them, they're just a bunch of Barneys," he told Mara.

Ryan spent the better part of the morning trying to teach her

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the fundamentals of surfing. Either he was a really bad teacher or Mara was just an awful student. The closest she had gotten to her surfboard was when it hit her on the head when the waves rolled in.

She'd told Ryan to let her practice alone. She didn't mind, since it looked like he really wanted to hit the big waves that were breaking down the beach.

"You sure?" he'd asked. "I can stay. I'm just glad you're here." He was sitting on top of his surfboard as naturally as if he were sitting on the couch, while Mara was barely clinging to the side of hers, frantically dog-paddling with her feet underneath the water.

So much for her fantasy of re-creating that Justin-Cameron smooch--the two of them on their surfboards locking lips on the water. Not going to happen.

Especially if she was half drowning.

"No, go ahead--I'll get the hang of it sooner or later. I don't want to keep you," she urged him, feeling guilty.

"Okay," Ryan said reluctantly. "I really don't mind. I want to stay."

But Mara thought she'd rather he didn't see her fall flat on her face again while the surfboard whacked her on the head, especially since that bitch Tinker was cruising on her board doing her best imitation of Kate Bosworth in Blue Crush.

"No, really. Go. I want you to go," she said.

So he'd left her, and Mara had spent the rest of the morning

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bobbing up and down beside her surfboard, trying not to choke on the ocean water.

As she floated away from the rest of the surfers, she caught sight of Ryan on his board again, a striking, slim figure crouched in the peak position to get maximum speed, getting up on the plane above the waves. She loved him so much. ... If only she could share this with him . . .

After a few minutes, Mara swam back to shore. She waved to Ryan from the beach and then walked away. She had to be at work in an hour.

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jacqui springs a parent trap

IN THE MOVIE, LINDSAY LOHAN WAS STILL A CUTE NINE-YEAR-