Sink or Swim (Beach Kingdom 3)

Andrew turned her back around and buried his face in her neck, rocking her side to side. “I’m sorry.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’ve just been waiting to be like this, with you, so damn long, sweetheart.”

“No more waiting,” she whispered, swooning down to her toes when he carried her in all his sweaty, shirtless glory to the bed. “Now we just love.”

Andrew lay down beside her, pressing a soft kiss to her mouth. “I’ve got enough love to carry us through a hundred forevers together, Jiya.”

Their smiles were unrestrained and rife with affection. “Then we better get started.”

EPILOGUE

Five years later

Andrew sat on the beach and stared out at the horizon, where the Atlantic kissed the baby blue afternoon sky. He was heavy with contentment. The kind some men searched for their whole lives but never found. It made total sense to him why people did everything they could to stay young. Why characters in movies doggedly searched for the fountain of youth. If they possessed one tenth of his happiness, he understood why they would want to live forever.

Just under five years earlier, he’d married the love of his life, making her Jiya Prince.

The mere memory of that day made him cough into his fist to relieve the tightness in his throat. After making her wait on him so long to get his shit together, he’d wanted to give her the exact wedding she wanted—and that had been a traditional Indian ceremony, Andrew and Jiya exchanging vows beneath a madhap on the beach, his bride painted in intricate henna designs that made her even more beautiful in her pride. The ceremony had been woven into a three-day party that people were still talking about. It should have been a blur, but Andrew could remember every detail about it, down to the lace pattern on her veil to the number of tears she’d shed during their first dance as a married couple.

Handler had become a distant memory, though Andrew had seen him once at the grocery store with a young woman wearing a Tulane sweatshirt. The cop’s gaze had passed right through Andrew as if he was a ghost, but Andrew knew Handler had seen him. That single encounter had only made Andrew more secure in the fact that his past was well and truly buried. With some work on Jamie’s part, the brothers had figured out the identities of Handler’s two victims. Thankfully, neither one of them had children, but one of them had a wife. The other was the son of a single mother. Once a year during the holidays, the brothers sent an anonymous cash gift to those remaining family members. They couldn’t take back the unfounded violence that had occurred, but Rory, Andrew and Jamie hoped it helped in some small way.

It was late September now. Not many people on the beach, but Andrew wasn’t surprised when he heard a deep male voice speaking in baby talk approaching from behind. A moment later, Marcus sat down on the sand with his daughter bundled in a pouch on his chest.

“How long are you going to carry her in that thing?” Andrew asked, reaching over to let Ellie snag his finger. “She’s almost one, man.”

“When she stops running for the freaking hills every time I set her down now.” Marcus made a face at the smiling baby. “You do run, don’t you? You do. You dooooo.”

Andrew laughed. “What language are you speaking in?”

“Jamie calls it my native dialect.” Marcus poked his daughter in the belly, making her giggle. “Daddy Two is funny, isn’t he? Is he funny? Is he?”

“I thought we agreed I’m clearly Daddy One.” Jamie sat down beside Marcus on the sand, still dressed in his teaching clothes—a sweater vest and slacks. He leaned over and kissed Marcus, then did it again, apparently for good measure. The baby clapped her hands, squealing when Jamie blew a raspberry into her neck. “How was the shop today?”

“Booming,” Marcus said, lifting the baby out of her pouch and handing her squirming body over to Jamie. “Our little mascot here isn’t just cute, she’s kind of a goldmine.”

“That’s my girl.”

Last month, Marcus’s juice shop—The Main Squeeze—had been featured on a local news station when word got around that a giant was filling juice orders with a tiny baby strapped to his chest. Business had been steady since opening the shop, but now there was a daily line down the block. Andrew might be biased, but it didn’t surprise him one bit that people traveled from all over Long Island to see his niece. She was undeniably perfect.

“Hey,” Rory said, walking up beside them and taking a seat to Andrew’s right. He dropped an envelope full of cash into his lap and adjusted the collar of his Castle Gate polo shirt. “That’s the take from the lunch shift. Mind dropping it at the bank for me? Olive is meeting me here. I’m taking her out for a celebratory milkshake.”