Free Going Deep (Coastal Heat #1) by Maggie Wells

the dock. His directions specified slip twenty-two, but old suspicions died hard. Brian hadn’t wanted to grant her an interview. In fairness, he didn’t want to give interviews to anyone at all. She understood and played her hand accordingly. Given their skirmishes in the past, and the dick swinging at the restaurant, and the fact that she’d been outright avoiding him before giving in to his text assault, she wouldn’t put it past him to drag her all the way out to Dauphin Island just to lead her on a wild goose chase.
    The thought made her sad. She’d had fun with Brian. More fun than she ever imagined. He was easy to talk to and was surprisingly supportive when she’d talked about her dream of going freelance. She hoped it had been sincere. Back in the days when their birthday parties were arranged by mothers armed with a class list and enough invitations to be sure no child was left behind, they’d been friends. Or friendly. Brian had simply always been around. Like the given at the beginning of every geometry proof.
    Her early memories of him were sketchy at best. As the two brightest kids in the class, they shared a love of reading and learning that predated jealousy and competition. They’d been assigned seats next to each other in third grade, but all she could remember was he was very neat. He never colored outside the lines and his multiplication table was laminated. One day he broke the lead on his yellow number two and she loaned him one of her pink Barbie pencils, but otherwise she had dim recollections of shaggy hair and serious brown eyes.
    She tottered when the dock shifted and rocked on the gentle wake. Gripping the rail, she let the memories wash over her as she caught her balance. She could see teenage Brian perfectly. A tall, reedy adolescent weighted down under armloads of textbooks or stooping over to peer into a microscope. The derisive teenager who dismissed her as easily as the rest of their classmates snubbed him.
    It wasn’t until her internal playback reached the moment when he lowered his lips to hers that she recalled he rarely smiled in high school. In that heartbeat, fueled by passion and impulse, his mouth had been stretched into a thin line of determination. Oddly enough, it seemed all she did was smile in those days. She’d curve her lips and her friends wouldn’t notice she’d checked out of their inane conversations. A flash of teeth and they’d vote her Homecoming Queen. She’d managed to smile through Brian’s triumphant Valedictory speech despite her desire to kick him. Hard. And after he’d left her on the commencement stage, shaken and stirred, she smiled so no one would guess how much his hard, humbling kiss had affected her.
    Now, standing on the swaying dock, she realized she’d seen Brian smile more in the brief time they’d spent together than in all the years she’d known him. He’d grinned that wicked grin when he kissed her behind Putnam House. He’d smiled with eager anticipation when she’d slid into the booth across from him at The Pit, and with confidence as he let Jack know he was no longer the big man on campus. The warmth of his attentions made her feel all warm and melty. The memory of his hot, hungry kisses and those unexpected smiles were what made it so hard to resist his advances.
    But there were other memories and another kiss. If she were smart, she’d hang tight to those. It would certainly be easier to relive old hurts than to leave herself open to new ones.
    Brian wasn’t smiling the night Principal Hollings pinned the blue ribbon from the St. Paul’s Academy Eighth Grade Science Fair to her uniform jacket instead of his, that was for sure. Brian hadn’t been at all pleased with honorable mention and Brooke didn’t blame him.
    But she did blame him for letting one blue ribbon ruin the connection she had with the one person with whom she didn’t have to fake it to impress. A silly science fair project spawned a fierce competition