Free Beach Bar Baby by Heidi Rice Page B

without heat, used to Josie’s teasing.
    ‘She’s very pretty. But kind of shy. Not your usual type.’
    ‘Where is she?’ he asked again, not happy at the news that Josie had met her. Somehow he didn’t think someone with Ella’s insta-blush tendencies would appreciate being caught in his bed by a smartass like Josie. ‘Please tell me you didn’t say anything to make her bolt.’
    Josie sucked on the pineapple, shaking her head. ‘Uh-uh. She bolted all on her own. Seemed kind of spooked that you’d disappeared.’
    He ran his fingers through his hair. Damn it, he’d only been gone a half-hour and Ella had looked totally done in. After the workout they’d both had last night he would have bet she’d be comatose for hours yet. The thought had him eyeing his uninvited guest. ‘You woke her up, didn’t you, you little...?’
    He made a swipe for Josie, but she leapt off the stool and danced out of his reach, laughing. ‘What’s the big deal? You don’t date the tourists, remember? In case they get ideas.’
    Not Ella.
    The thought popped into his head, and had him stopping dead in front of Josie—the quest for retribution dying a quick death.
    What was with that? Sure Ella had been sweet, and eager and inventive in bed, but how had she got under his guard so easily? Knowing what he did about tourists who liked to slum it in neighbourhood bars, how come he had never thought of Ella as one of them? And why had he crept out of bed and harassed Inez into making her breakfast? He didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. Not since... He stared at the ruined toast, the creeping sense of humiliation coming back in an unpleasant rush of memory.
    Not since the evening of the junior prom in Garysville, Indiana, when he’d stood like a dummy on Amy Metcalfe’s porch, his neck burning under the collar of the borrowed suit, and a corsage clutched in his sweating palm that had cost him ten of his hard-earned dollars, while Amy’s old man yelled at him to get lost, and his prom date sent him a pitying smile from the passenger seat of his half-brother Jack Jnr’s Beemer convertible.
    ‘Don’t you want to know why I’m here?’ Josie stared at him, her usual mischief replaced with excitement. ‘I’ve got news.’
    Shaking off the unpleasant memory, he clamped down hard on the dumb urge to head out after Ella. ‘Sure? What news?’ He tossed a piece of papaya into his mouth, impressed with his own nonchalance.
    The smile on Josie’s face reached ear-to-ear proportions. ‘Taylor popped the question last night and I said yes.’
    ‘What question?’ he said, trying to process the information while his mind was still snagged on Ella and why the hell she’d run out on him. Wasn’t Taylor that pimply kid Josie’d been dating for a while?
    Josie’s eyes rounded. ‘Damn, Coop, even you can’t be that dumb. The “Will you marry me?” question. Duh.’
    Coop choked on the mango chunk he’d just slung in his mouth. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ His eyes watered as his aggravation over Ella’s sudden departure was surpassed by horror. ‘You’re way too young to be getting married.’ Plus marriage was for chumps—and Josie was a smart kid—what was she thinking?
    Josie whacked him hard on the back, dislodging the chunk and nearly dislocating his shoulder. ‘I’m twenty,’ she said, indignantly. ‘Taylor and I have been dating for four years.’ She propped her hands on her hips, striking the Wonder Woman pose he knew meant she was about to start lecturing him. ‘And we love each other. Marriage is the obvious next step. So we can think about babies.’
    ‘Babies!’ he yelped, as a blood vessel popped out on his forehead and began to throb. ‘You cannot be serious?’
    ‘Just because you’re dead set on being the Oldest Player in Town,’ she countered, ‘doesn’t mean everyone’s that cynical and immature.’
    ‘I’m immature?’ he snapped. Seeing her flinch, he struggled to lower his