Just this year, his company had finally started to take off in a big way and he needed, wanted, to dedicate his time to it.
Which was why he was here. He too needed to talk to his dad. He’d tried a bunch of times over the past few years, but his dad, brilliant and stubborn, had managed to evade any real decision. James suspected he knew what his son wanted to talk to him about—leaving the family business for his own. So it was with no other choice that he’d come here, away from work, to get his dad’s full attention. What better way than being stuck on a boat together for three to four days with no other distractions?
But he hadn’t expected the biggest distraction of them all—Hannah.
“You two take the dinghy,” Harry said. “Sally and I will be right behind you on the inflatable. Set up for the day while you’re at it, huh? What?” he asked at Hannah’s dry look. “Gotta earn your keep, Smalls. This is a no-dough-earned trip for me. I let Hugo and Mateo have the week off. But even with that, my baby costs big bucks to keep running. There’s no such thing as a free ride. Or a free anything.”
“Which is why you should’ve turned around when I asked,” Hannah said.
“Maybe I wanted to give you a Christmas gift too.”
While Hannah looked to be trying to find a comeback for that, James tugged her to the dinghy, hoping to avoid having a fight.
“Are you serious?” she asked him when they were alone.
“Would you rather stay on board all day and scrub the decks?”
He figured the point was made when she dropped into the dinghy and waited for him to jump in before untying them and starting to row.
And that was the thing about Hannah. She was no shrinking violet. She’d never been content to sit back and let someone take over for her. If there was something that had to be done, she did it. Especially if that something happened to be an adventure. He’d loved that about her. Heck, he’d loved her.
But in the end, he’d been alone in that.
They didn’t speak. The only sounds were the sliding of the oars into the water and the slap of the swells against the hull of the dinghy.
“I’m surprised you came,” she finally said.
“She speaks.” And because she was sounding breathless, he reached for the oars to take over, but she shook her head and kept rowing.
“I’m surprised,” she went on. “Because I imagine you’re just as busy as I am, what with the two jobs.”
His brows went up. “You’ve either been asking around about me or stalking me.”
She actually blushed. It was fascinating. She was fascinating, damn her.
“Fine. I’ve kept up with you through my mom,” she admitted. “She talks to your mom all the time.”
He was surprised at the mixed feelings this stirred up in him. Yes, he very much enjoyed the idea of her keeping track of him. But it also pissed him off. “You could have texted, emailed, called . . . anything. I’d have told you whatever you wanted to know.”
She stared at him, then looked away.
“Right.” He nodded. “You didn’t want to talk to me. Message received, believe me.”
“That’s not what the message was.”
She didn’t say anything else, and hell if he would ask.
Halfway to shore, she slowed, puffing for air. “I’ve spent . . . way too much time . . . behind a desk lately,” she gasped out.
This time when he reached for the oars, she let him take them. “Do you love what you do?” he asked, genuinely curious. He wasn’t sure what there could be to enjoy, being in an office all day long pushing papers.
She hesitated at the question, further piquing his interest. “I believe in what I do,” she finally said.
He didn’t want to, but he felt a pang for her regardless. For him too, and the loss of what once had been. She didn’t seem . . . happy. “Hannah.”
She grimaced. “Look, things change, okay? Childhood dreams change. We grow up. I grew up. Exploring the planet, chasing adventures—that was a girl’s dream. What I do now works for me.”
“Okay,” he said.
She shook her head, stood up in the dinghy, tugged off her adorably sexy little sundress—leaving her in a heart-stopping white bikini—and dove into the water. A perfect dive, by the way, leaving almost no splash at all.
When he pulled the dinghy up onto the sand, she was standing, hands on hips, dripping water as she stared down at a fancy spread of food and wine on a blanket in the shade between two palm trees. “Thought he told us to set up.”
James shrugged. He’d given up trying to figure out Harry a long time ago. Most of the time he was a good guy with a short attention span when it came to anything other than the boat. But then every once in a while he did something that showed he was paying attention to the world around him beyond his own personal-space bubble.
“I think the captain fancies he’s on the Love Boat,” Hannah said grimly.
James opened the picnic basket, snatched an apple, and took a big bite. “At least he left us food.”
She stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “Don’t eat that! Don’t eat anything! You’ll only encourage him!” With that, she whipped around to stare at The Therapist and gasped.
It was moving.
Away from them.
“Be back at sunset,” came Harry’s voice from the loudspeaker that carried over the water.
Hannah lifted her hands in a “what the hell?” gesture at the boat.
Nothing.
She changed to a double middle finger salute.
“Saw that,” Harry said from even farther away now.
James took the moment to enjoy Hannah in the bikini from the back, a sight that most likely was going to kill him. She was angry, irritated to the max, and . . . gorgeous. She bent to her sundress on the blanket, where James had set it for her, having brought it from the dinghy—nearly giving him heart failure, but it would have been a helluva way to go. Pulling her phone from the pocket, she straightened and hit a number, putting it on speaker for James to hear.
“WTF?” she said when her dad answered with a cheery “Yo!”
Harry paused. “What does WTF mean?” he asked. “No, wait, let me guess. It means . . . thank you, Father.”
She glanced at him across the water. “It means what the freak are you up to?”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah, you, Dad. Dumping us here. This fancy spread . . . What’ve you been doing, taking decorating tips from The Bachelor marathons?”
“Hey, that was our secret,” Harry said. “Look, it just seemed like you needed a little fun. Take the day, enjoy it—though that might be hard to do, since you stole your phone back—but hopefully you’ll try.”
“Dad.”
“Work can keep, Smalls. Life can’t.”
Hannah rubbed the crease between her eyes, looking like she was ready to blow a gasket. “You always do this to me. You put fun ahead of real life . . . Hello? Hello?” She looked at the screen. “Damn it. He disconnected me. Can you believe him?”
James turned and started walking along the beach.
“Where are you going?”
Instead of answering, he headed to the base of the bluffs that he knew like the back of his hand. He could hear her following him, swearing beneath her breath about the crazy people in her life and the need for a change.