“No, no, no!” Chris admonished. “You have to make eye contact, you idiot.”
“What?” Blake asked.
Chris shook her head in exasperation and turned to Jamie. “Don’t these people know anything?”
Jamie shrugged. “Maybe that’s why the bloke’s cursed.”
“Ouch,” Chris said.
“Yeah, man,” Blake added. “Ouch.”
“What are you talking about?” Julia looked from one to the other.
“Do you Yanks not do this when you say cheers? Your whole country’s going to fall down the tubes.”
“Chris has this thing,” Jamie started to explain.
“You have to make eye contact when you take the first sip. Otherwise…” She paused and put her glass down for dramatic effect.
Chris raised an eyebrow to Blake, and he leaned over to Julia. “Otherwise it’s seven years of bad sex,” he whispered loudly.
He was rewarded by the pink fluttering in her cheeks, her hand nervously touching her hair.
“Well I’d better try it to be certain,” she said with a flush.
“Pretend you haven’t had a sip yet,” Chris instructed, topping off their glasses again. When she finished pouring Blake’s, she winked.
Blake wanted to protest that he did not need help being set up. But Julia was standing between him and Lukas, and when Chris turned to Jamie, he felt a surge of—was it pride or adrenaline?—when Julia turned to him.
“Ready?” Chris asked.
“I don’t have anyone to look at,” Lukas complained.
“The curse of the odd numbers,” Chris said. “I’ve got enough years of luck backlisted with Jamie, but from the looks of it, your skinny photographer ass could probably use a good streak.” And so although she first clinked glasses with Jamie, it was Lukas’s gaze she held as she drank.
Jamie didn’t seem to care about the ritual, and Blake knew it was nonsense, but he felt a sudden stab for his friend.
Not for long, though. Julia was holding his gaze, open and unblinking, and he couldn’t look away. Her eyes were deep brown, flecked with lighter bits that sparked in the sun. There was something unreadable in her, something hidden below the surface that he couldn’t see. Like her blush, it made him want to find out more.
It was the writer in him, the one who made his living figuring out people and their situations. Looking at Julia, he wanted to dive right in.
“To good sex,” he said.
“To good sex,” she echoed, and lifted the glass to her lips.
Julia took a sip, and then she put the glass down slowly and pressed her lips together. The move wasn’t so pronounced as to be obvious, but enough to make Blake wonder if she was intentionally playing with him. She smiled with her eyes, even as her mouth barely curved.
Definitely a tease, he decided. How could they be eyeing each other, talking about good sex when they’d only just met?
He really did need a jump in the pool.
But Julia had settled back in her chair, still nursing her beer, and Blake couldn’t pull himself away even after Chris, Jamie, and Lukas returned to the water. He was just being nice to the newcomer. Just making friendly conversation. Not at all glad that the two of them had been left alone again under the shady palm trees.
“So what brings you here for seven whole days, Ms. Julia?” he asked.
“Ugh, don’t call me that.” She made a face. “That’s what my students call me.”
“You’re a teacher?” Definitely not what he would have guessed. “I thought teachers usually got a last name.”
“They try to be progressive.”
“I bet your students love you.”
“Nope,” she said cheerfully. The laugh escaped him before he could stop himself. “I’m strict. You have to be.”
“Well, I’m sure they’re lucky nonetheless.” He grinned. God, to have had a teacher like her… He would have paid a lot more attention in class.
Maybe.
“High school,” she went on, ignoring his attempts to compliment her. “Math, all levels. They’re hellions, but I love them.” She paused. “Most of the time.”
“Oh my God—calculus?”
She nodded like it was no big deal. Blake whistled. He wanted to admit that he was terrible at math and was sure to embarrass himself in front of her trying to figure out a bill or something. But that might open him up to questions about what he did for a living, and that was something he didn’t want to talk about—at least not yet.
Not to mention that it implied some future meeting during which he might be paying said bill, and that wasn’t going to happen because even if he got lucky enough to do more than chat by the pool, he was leaving first thing in the morning. He swallowed his comment and tried a different approach.
“So a week is what you get for, what, Christmas holiday?”
She nodded. “I can’t even remember the last time I took a real vacation. It’s a new school, and I’ve been there since it opened. I adore the teaching part, but I do way too much of the administrative work because most everyone else is still learning the ropes. I’m supposed to be leading a training this week over the break, but at the last minute I just said fuck it, I can’t.”
The sudden curse surprised him coming from her delicate mouth but he liked the contrast. Put that down on the list of more things he wanted to elicit from her. Preferably followed by the sound of her crying out his name.
“So what made you say fuck it?” he asked, not trying to hide his smile as he took the opportunity to test whether she liked the word on his lips as much as he liked it on hers.
She looked up at the sun beginning to dip toward the trees as though it held the answer, and that was when he saw it again, that hint of something else beneath the exterior she wore for the world. Now that he knew what she did for a living he could see the distinction between the self she put on as a teacher, keeping all those kids in line, and the other woman struggling to break through.
“I guess I’d had enough,” she said softly, and suddenly it wasn’t the voice of flirty, easy confidence. Suddenly, she was telling him something real.
He leaned forward and listened. “Enough of what?” he prodded as a shriek from the pool rose over a volley of splashes.
“I had a birthday,” she admitted.
“These things have a way of occurring.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“It can’t have been that high of a number,” he said.
“Turning thirty when your whole life revolves around your job and a bunch of hormone-soaked teens is sort of depressing.” She sighed into her glass.
“Well, I can tell you from the other side that life does go on, and the view from the ripe old age of thirty-one isn’t so bad.” He smiled warmly. That he’d spent his thirty-first birthday trashed out of his skull, depressed as hell over Kelley, didn’t need to be shared. The fact that Julia was so distressed about the big three-zero was pretty adorable.
All the more reason for him to show her how good her birthday could be.
He drained the last of his cup. “How about a birthday swim?”
“Too late for that—it was yesterday.”
“A belated birthday swim, then.” He stood and extended his hand.
She hesitated for a moment, fingers resting on the knot of that thing around her waist. Drops of water from Chris and Lukas’s splashing stained her bathing suit and trickled down her stomach. He had to stop himself from trailing his finger along that same path.
And then she seemed to decide something and let the cloth fall. Blake barely had time to appreciate the sway of her hips before she’d jumped in. He laughed to himself at how she’d already left him behind.
Blake dove in and popped up alongside her. “Not bad,” he grinned, shaking water from his hair. The temperature was just right, cool enough to be refreshing but still warm enough to stay in for what felt like forever.