Free Officer in Pursuit by Ranae Rose

my head ache. We’ll just wade in and cool down, nice and
easy.”
    “If your head hurts, I should take you
back to the hospital.”
    A minute later, he’d convinced her to
wade into the water with him. The waves weren’t very rough unless
you were too close to shore. So he went past the breakers, stopping
in calmer, waist-deep water.
    “Wading, huh?” She shot him a
challenging look.
    He looked right back, letting his gaze
linger where her swimsuit top was molded to her breasts, thoroughly
soaked. Normally he wouldn’t have been so obnoxious, but it wasn’t
like she’d be able to see that he was looking – sunglasses were
possibly mankind’s greatest invention, for that very
reason.
    God, he wanted to touch her. The fact
that that wasn’t even remotely within the realm of possibility yet
wasn’t lost on him, but he still longed for the day when it would
be. Like the rest of her, her breasts were small and shapely,
tight-looking and almost unbearably appealing. After just a few
seconds of staring, it was certain: no way would he be able to get
out of the water anytime soon.
    As she plunged in a little deeper and
swam for a few yards, he adjusted his swim shorts. He’d be aching
for days after this, and he had no one to blame but himself. He
wasn’t a masochist – not really – he just couldn’t get enough of
her. He craved her presence like a drug, and the fact that they
were finally spending time alone together seemed like a
breakthrough.
    Over the summer, he’d watched Liam and
Henry fall almost instantly for Kerry’s friends, and vice-versa.
He’d hoped for something similar with him and Kerry – it had been
an instant attraction, at least on his part – but he knew deep down
that she was different.
    She wasn’t impulsive, didn’t seem to
warm up to people easily. So the fact that he’d gotten to the point
where they did things like go out to breakfast and the beach
together was kind of a big deal.
    “Hey Grey.” Water dripped from her
fingers as she motioned out to sea.
    “What?”
    “Look. A dolphin.”
    He had to squint to see it, but sure
enough, she was right. “Two of them. No, three – four.”
    A small pod was leaping in and out of
the water, their grey bodies like shadows cast on distant
waves.
    She was smiling – a big, brilliant
smile unlike any he’d ever seen on her face before.
    “I remember the first time I ever saw
dolphins, after I first moved here. It felt magical.”
    Grey had been raised on the southern
NC coast and could remember riding the ferry to Southport as a
little kid, watching dolphins swim alongside the boat. “Where’d you
move from?”
    It struck him, suddenly, that he had
no clue about her life before Riley County. She never talked about
herself.
    “Kentucky.”
    “I’ve never been.”
    For a second she said nothing, and
then she shrugged, treading water as she did so. “You’re not
missing much. It’s a lot prettier here.”
    “You don’t miss it?”
    “No.”
    “So is that why you moved here –
because you liked the area so much?”
    “Actually, I’d never seen the ocean
before I moved here. I just needed a change, and this is where I
ended up. It was sort of an accidentally good decision.”
    As a wave rolled over him and left a
strand of seaweed plastered to his side, he tried to imagine never
having seen the sea. It was a weird thing to think
about.
    “So Kentucky – that’s race horse
country, right?” When he thought of the state, one thing came to
mind: the Kentucky Derby. Other than that, he drew a
blank.
    “Not where I lived, which was in a
little coal mining town in the eastern part of the
state.”
    He had a sudden vision of hard hats
and lights in darkness, rough hands and black dirt against skin.
They were visions from movies, which was where his virtually
non-existent knowledge about coal mining came from.
    Kerry was swimming away from him,
farther out to sea.
    She went out way past where she could
touch, apparently