“Sienna!” She’s running toward us, quite ungracefully through the sand, her flip-flops getting stuck and nearly causing her to trip. Luke looks at me. “Your assistant?”
I nod. “Yeah, and my best friend. Prepare yourself—she bites.” He laughs under his breath.
Then he stands taller, interlocking his hands on his backside, puffing out his chest a little and raising his chin. He looks like he’s preparing to meet my dad, and it’s adorable. Completely fake, but adorable—the smile gives him away.
Paige stops in front of us and, while catching her breath, she eyes me as if to say, Daaaaamn, Sienna.
She looks right at him, all joking aside, her pretty blue eyes narrowed with severity, her thin arms crossed loosely over her chest.
“What’s your full name?” she asks him.
“Luke Michael Everett.”
“Where were you born?”
“Sacramento.”
I’m trying not to laugh—they look so serious!
She twists her bottom lip between her teeth in contemplation.
“You work at the surf school in the hotel?”
He nods. “I sure do. Part-time. And the other part-time I work at Big Wave Surf Shop.”
“And someone in the surf school can verify this?”
He nods again. “Yep. Ask for Allan. I work there three days out of the week and I give surfing lessons here whenever he has them to give and I have the free time to take them.”
Paige’s eyes narrow even more, her head turning a slight angle. Luke’s lips continue to gradually turn up with that smile of his.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” he answers right away.
Paige looks at me, then back at him. He beams at her with white, straight teeth. She’s about to crack up now, I can tell, but she manages to hold it in a little longer.
I stand here with my lips pressed together, unable to contain the humor in my expression.
She looks down at his feet.
“What size shoe do you wear?”
My eyes bug out of my head and I look at her with a big, hard gaze that says, You didn’t just ask him that!
Oh, yes, I absolutely did, her grinning gaze says in return.
“Paige,” I cut in, “meet Luke. Luke, this is my best friend and former assistant, Paige.”
She smiles with teeth this time.
“Former assistant?” Luke asks, looking between both of us.
She nods. “Yeah, I quit today.” She hits me lightly on the arm. “This girl is a tyrant to work with; I just couldn’t do it anymore.” She shakes her blond head, but her grin never fades.
I laugh lightly. “It’s a long, boring story, but I’m not a tyrant.”
Luke’s lips smash together, suppressing laughter.
“OK, look,” Paige says to Luke. “I love this girl”—she shakes her finger at him—“and if anything happens to her, just know that I will hunt you down; you got me?”
Luke’s eyes fall on me from the side without moving his head.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says with a nod and an almost frightened kind of smile. “I’ll take good care of her.”
After a moment, once Paige is satisfied, she drops the serious act and grabs me by the elbow, pulling me off to the side.
“We’ll be right back,” she says, holding up a finger to Luke.
“Take your time,” he says and waves us on.
“I want to stay so bad,” she says in a harsh whisper, her fingers digging into my arm. “He is gorgeous! Does he have any friends?”
My eyes catch Luke’s, and he’s grinning—he definitely heard what she said.
“Well, then, why don’t you stay?” I tell her.
She sighs and the smile slips right off her face. “I wish I could. I missed the last family reunion. I can’t miss it this time, or worse than my mom killing me, my dad might cut me off.”
I laugh lightly. “Then you’d have to work with me longer.”
Her little nose wrinkles around the edges and her hand falls away from my elbow.
“Seriously, though,” she says, “just be careful and call me every now and then to let me know what’s going on.”
“I’m only staying three hours,” I say with laughter in my voice.
“I know, but still.”
“All right,” I give in. “I’ll text you at least. Have a safe flight back.” I lean in and hug her tight.
“Well, I better go,” she says, her fingers slipping away from mine. “See you when you get home.”
As she’s walking away, she raises her index and middle fingers on one hand, pointing them at her hard, narrowed eyes and then at Luke, back and forth a few times as if to say I’m watching you. Luke laughs under his breath and raises his hands up at his sides in surrender. Paige gives him—and then me—a big smile just before she turns her back to us and starts to walk away. Covertly she looks at me from the side, spaces her hands many inches apart, glances downward as if at his feet, and mouths something like his feet are huuuuge, and I choke trying to hold my laughter inside.
“Some best friend you’ve got there,” Luke says as she walks away, clamping his lips together. “I like her.”
With my lips pressed in a hard line and my face fiery red, I say, “Yeah, we look after each other.”
“I take it she’s the mean one?”
My laughter fades into a grin.
“Actually, we’re just alike in that aspect.”
“Oh really?” He seems a little nervous. Smiling, but nervous.