Sink or Swim (Beach Kingdom 3)

“Aw, Jiya.” Andrew’s hands found her arm, tilting up her elbow for inspection. Before she could guess his intention, he’d leaned down and kissed the red spot. “Poor sweetheart.”

She ripped her arm away. It was pure reflex. Because she never wanted him to stop touching her. After learning his touch and having it taken away, she now missed him with a bone-deep yearning that was so much more than friendship. He’d made it clear they couldn’t be together, so that yearning was as dangerous as a moat full of sharks.

Andrew’s hands remained suspended in mid-air, his face stricken. “Christ. I’m so sorry I yelled at you yesterday.”

“That’s not why I don’t want you to…touch me…I just—”

“Oh. No, I understand. That’s fine. You don’t have to give me a reason.” He took off his hat, shoved his fingers through his hair and replaced it. An achingly endearing move she’d seen him make a hundred times but now it turned her knees to jelly. His jaw flexed its way through their awkward pause. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“I was just about to ask you the same.”

“I didn’t put myself on a chair today. Too many deliveries coming to the bar.”

“But you work tonight?”

“Yeah.” His eyes crinkled briefly at the corners. “Can’t give myself a full day off.”

“No, that’s a direct violation of the Andrew Prince handbook.”

He laughed softly. “So? You headed back to Spice or…” He stopped. “Flying lesson day. That’s today, right?”

“Well…”

“Well?”

If she told him, he’d help and she wasn’t sure if that constituted taking advantage. “It’s nothing.” She pushed his shoulder lightly, but he didn’t move an inch. “Go ahead. I was just getting ready to leave. Like, any second now.”

“Jiya Dalal.”

“Andrew.”

“Your car won’t start, will it?”

Her head fell forward a few degrees and met his chest. “No.”

She felt his hand ghost over her hair, not exactly touching it, but catching a stray strand or two and giving him away. “What time is the lesson?”

“In twenty minutes. And it’s half an hour away.”

“Come on. We’re getting you there.”

Andrew crossed to the open driver’s side door and took out her satchel purse, dropping it over his head. And that’s when she finally admitted to herself that she loved him. Was in love with him. Had loved him all along. Through head colds and bad haircuts and sunburns and sad movies.

He was willing to wear her purse.

“I can get an Uber,” she blurted, heart racing.

His offense was the furthest thing from mild. “Fuck that. I’m parked two blocks over.” He took her hand and pulled her into a jog. “Try and keep up, sweetheart.”

The sound that bubbled up from her throat was relief, but it was also sadness over loving a man she couldn’t have, and when Andrew heard it, he looked over at her curiously. Whatever he saw written in her expression caused him to face forward quickly, features stoic, and all Jiya could do was keep running.

CHAPTER NINE

Andrew got them to Bethpage in record time, though he never drove unsafely. The oldest Prince drove like he did everything else, with casual focus—and she noticed way too many details about him in the twenty-four minutes it took to reach their destination. She noticed the tricep that popped in his right arm when he changed lanes. Noticed he’d neglected to shave that morning and most importantly, how he glanced over at her every other minute. His eyes were the window to his ever-changing moods. Hot, cold, worried, apologetic.

Thankfully there wasn’t an abundance of traffic on a weekday afternoon. Another few minutes with Andrew in the car and she would have asked him about the cop. And she refused to pester him about whatever was going on. They were good enough friends that he should confide in her without having to be needled to death.

Her moods must be ever-changing, too, because right on the heels of her annoyance, she battled the impulse to smooth the hair peeking out from beneath his ball cap. To lean over and smell the combination of Andrew and sunshine that emanated from his white T-shirt.

They didn’t speak once during the entire ride and it hurt to have the ease between them missing, replaced by tension. It was sexual in nature, yes. She didn’t miss the way he watched her thighs, her breasts. But it was so much more than that. The future unknowns sat between them like a silent but active volcano.

By the time they reached the airfield, Jiya all but threw herself out of the car, lifting her ponytail up to fan her neck. She skirted around the bumper of Andrew’s car, catching him in the act of adjusting himself, that hand locking around the bulge behind his zipper and shifting it to the right with a wince. He cursed when he saw her watching, both of them simply existing inside those beats of awareness, before he cleared his throat and approached Jiya, taking her hand. “Come on. We’re not that late.”