“You’re sure it’s okay that I take this?” Katie asked as she twitched the sleeve of her white cover up.

“You think we have an entire pool house stuffed with swimsuits because we don’t want people to use them?” Tristan asked as he led the way to the boat shed.

It had taken a bit of cajoling to get Katie onboard with Operation Jet Ski. She’d tried to stay behind, citing the lack of a swimsuit and her not wanting to intrude on his creative solitude.

Thanks to Tante Audrey’s excellent planning, he had an entire closet full of solutions to the swimsuit problem. And he’d redirected her worry about intruding by telling her all about the time he and Dominic had raced the jet skis so far out to sea they’d run out of gas and had to be rescued by a pair of local fishermen.

Katie had changed her tune immediately.

Keeping an eye on him had apparently trumped her professional qualms.

They turned a corner, the grass became patchy and sandy underfoot, and the boat shed came into view.

Katie stopped in her tracks. “You call that a boat ‘shed’?”

Built from white wood with two sets of rolling doors, the shed echoed the style of the big house and was about the size of a five car garage.

Tristan shrugged. “It’s the place where we store all our beach toys. What else would we call it?”

“That’s a lot of toys.”

“There are a lot of us.”

“I—” She blinked at him and seemed to think it over. “Fair enough.”      

They made their way up to the shed. Tristan entered the code on door lock and with a couple of happy beeps it unlatched.

Inside the walls were lined with racks containing  assorted kayaks, paddle boards, and surfboards. The floor was taken up by the two offshore speed boats they used for waterskiing, several bins worth of life vests, and an entire fleet of jet skis.

Katie made a small choking sound. “Are you running some kind of rental company?”

“In summer this place plays host to me, my six brothers, my sister, my happily estranged parents, my stepfather and an assorted mix of my nine stepmothers. Not to mention my brothers’s growing collection of significant others.” Tristan glanced around. “We may have to expand.”

“What about taking turns?”

He blinked at her. “Why? It’s more fun when we’re together.”

Katie laughed.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s just…” She shook her head. “That’s both really sweet and the absolute height of privilege.”

“That’s probably a fair descriptor of my family as a whole. Now pick out your jet ski.”

In deference to Katie’s still sometimes tender ankle, Tristan loaded both jet skis on to a pair of motorized dollies and wheeled them down to the beach. She carried the life vests.

Despite the warmth of the day, the water was long-winter cold. But they only needed to get knee deep to mount the jet skis.

“Alright.” Tristan unhooked Katie’s ski from its dolly and slid it into the water. “Are you ready to—”

He caught sight of her, thought and speech ground to a halt.

She’d shrugged off the cover up and left with the beach towels on the sand. The navy one piece shouldn’t have had that much sex appeal. But the back dipped low and the legs cut high and there was a whole lot of gorgeous skin on display—

“Tristan.”

His attention snapped to her face and he found her smirking at him.

“You were saying something?” She put her hands on her hips. The wind lifted her hair making she looked like Wonder Woman, the swimsuit suit edition.

“Are you ready to climb aboard?” he asked, pretending like he hadn’t just been cold-cocked by lust.

She nodded.

He braced the ski for her as best he could. “Put your hand on my shoulder. Left foot on the base and swing your right leg over.”

“Just like mounting a horse.” She stepped into his space and set her hand landed on his shoulder. It felt like her fingers were leaving scorch marks. “In three, two—”

She gasped and her eyes flew wide as a wave they’d both been too distracted to notice broke against the back of her legs.

The jet ski jerked sharply against Tristan’s grip. He twisted out from under her hand, bracing the ski to keep it from knocking into her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “How’s the ankle?”

“Fine. That wave just surprised me.”

“Surprised me too.” The gasp she’d made still echoed in his head. “Ready to try again?”

Her eyes flashed like he’d just issued a challenge. “Of course.”

Tristan couldn’t help but smile. His new editor was not a quitter. “Whenever you’re ready then.”

Katie set her hand on his shoulder and nodded. “In three, two, one.”

This time she swung up onto the ski.

Tristan got his own ski into the water and they were off. It didn’t take Katie long to get a handle on the controls. A jet ski was about as difficult to drive as a Go Kart. And getting out past the waves was easy when they were this small. A few bumps and they were past them.

Tristan took her down the coastline. He kept it slow at first. But as soon as Katie got a handle on the throttle, they were zooming across the water, launching off swells, and racing against each other at the full limit of the skis speed.

A particularly aggressive cut off sprayed water in Tristan’s face. His sunglasses kept the worst of it out of his eyes but his mouth flooded with salt and he spluttered. “You did that on purpose.”

“You shouldn’t drive with your mouth open,” Katie replied around giggles.

Tristan’s heart tugged painfully like he’d just been caught by fish hook.

He’d thought Katie was beautiful as soon as they met. But seeing her like this, with half her hair plastered against her head by sea water, face flushed by sun and excitement, and her laughter ringing in the air, she was more than beautiful.

She was devastating.

I don’t just want her to stay her for a month, Tristan realized. I want her to stay forever.