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“Okay,” Maddie agreed. “You’ve convinced me. Let me go punch my time card and I’ll meet you back here, and then we can go.”

CHAPTER 4

MADDIE

Maddie had to wonder, as she rinsed off in the guard showers and pulled her track pants on over her suit, if she was losing her mind. Going out with a strange man? That wasn’t the kind of thing she would ordinarily have agreed to — what had come over her?

Maybe it was just the fact that the little boy — Charlie — had seemed so eager to spend time with her. She had to admit, she’d found him charming, and she was excited to spend a little more time with him as well. She had been worried when she’d first found him wandering alone on the beach, wondering why he didn’t have an adult with him, but after meeting Eli, she’d relaxed a bit. She’d been doing this job long enough to tell the difference between a negligent parent and one who had just looked away for a moment, and it was obvious that Eli was the latter sort. There was no excuse for taking your eyes off your kid at the beach, of course, but maybe this would be a learning experience for him and he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

It was also possible that Maddie had agreed to go out for ice cream because of everything that had been going on with herself and Tess. The fact that she had to move out of her house and find somewhere else to live — and more importantly, the fact that Tess was making such progress in her life while Maddie felt stagnant — had her wanting to try new things. She wanted to come home tonight with a story to tell her friend about something wild and exciting that had happened today, even if it was nothing more significant than ice cream with a cute guy she’d met on the beach.

He really was cute, with his dark hair and dark eyes, with his shorts that showed off the lean muscles of his thighs. She had wondered for a moment, upon first seeing him, whether he was a movie star, but she couldn’t think of any movie stars named Eli, so she had to concede that he probably wasn’t. Still, he was handsome enough that she would have believed it if someone had told her he was in movies. She would definitely be including that in the story she told Tess when she got home tonight.

She toweled off, hating the fact that she never got fully dry after work. She knew she ought to start packing a change of clothes — but she so rarely went out after work without coming home first that it had never seemed necessary, and she didn’t like changing in the staff room. Now she wished she had brought something along so she could have worn a cute sundress instead of her track pants and guard suit.

It couldn’t be helped, though. She went back out and found them waiting for her beside her lifeguard chair. Charlie was hopping around in the sand, still clutching his sand dollar.

Eli smiled when he saw her coming, and Maddie felt slightly weak. He was even better looking when he smiled. She hadn’t had the wind knocked out of her by a guy in a very long time.

“Ready to go?” he asked her.

“Ready,” she said.

“Ready!” Charlie chimed in.

They started up the beach toward the boardwalk that would lead them to the ice cream shop.

“Listen,” Eli said as they walked.

Maddie looked at him.

“You must think I’m a terrible father,” he said.

“I wasn’t thinking that. I don’t even know you.”

“I just want you to know — I wouldn’t usually take my eyes off of him at the beach.”

“I’d hope not.” She had no problem giving him this warning, even though they didn’t know one another. “Charlie seems like a bright kid, but you never know what might happen to kids on the beach. It’s a dangerous place. It’s not a good idea to take risks.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to. I… well, I had an important email from work.” His cheeks colored slightly. “I know that’s not an excuse.”

“If you can’t give Charlie your full attention, maybe you shouldn’t bring him to the beach.” She said it as gently as she could.

“Yeah, maybe not. He really wanted to come. Ordinarily his nanny would be the one to take him so that I could focus on work.”

“It’s her day off or something?”

“No, she quit on us unexpectedly.” His jaw tightened. “She left yesterday with no warning. Moved all her stuff out.”

“She was live-in?”

“Yeah. Which means I have a huge gap to fill for Charlie, obviously. I can’t stop working, but I don’t want his whole life to be derailed either. He’s used to getting to do fun things like having beach days. I was trying to give him everything, and I overestimated my ability to do that.”

Maddie felt a little more sympathetic, hearing their story, than she had at first. “That does sound hard,” she said.

They’d reached the ice cream shop, and they went inside. Charlie began to puzzle over which flavor he might like.

“You should taste them,” Maddie advised him.