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“I don’t need to cool off.”

“You don’t? You seem a little bit heated.”

“Heated? No. I’m just irritated that you are being a stubborn, ridiculous, hardheaded...”

And that just did it. He wasn’t listening anymore. And he still had her phone. So everything that was about to get wet would dry just fine.

He picked her up off the ground with one arm and draped her over his shoulder. His bare shoulder. And he had a feeling she was getting a good look at his bare back while she dangled there.

Then he walked her over to the edge of the pond and flipped her down into it.

The unholy shriek that she made before she hit the water, and then submerged, almost made him laugh. Almost.

“You bastard!” she screamed as she sputtered up to the surface of the water.

“You can swim, right?”

“Lucky for you.”

“It would be a real waste if you had all that fancy college learning and didn’t know how to swim. That’s pretty basic.”

“But you didn’t know,” she said.

“I could fish you out easily enough.”

“You...you...”

“You’ll dry just fine, little carrot. We’ll put you in a bag of rice.”

“I don’t need to be put in a bag of rice!”

“Then what are you complaining about? You probably just need a little bit more sunshine.”

She sloshed over to the shore. “I am in overalls.”

“You could strip down to your panties,” he said, making direct eye contact with her. “I wouldn’t mind. Would be fair, after all, all things considered.” He gestured to his bare chest.

“Bastard,” she spit as she got out of the water. And then she was racing toward him. And she planted both hands on his bare chest and shoved him backward. “I got into a fistfight with Trevor Morton in the ninth grade, and I will fist-fight you, too.”

“Calm down. You don’t want to be fist-fighting me.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, shoving him again. “Because you’re infuriating.”

“Your fists are the size of tiny little pebbles, sweetie. They aren’t going to do anything.”

He’d be lying if he didn’t say he found her fury interesting.

It was so potent. He could taste it. It was heavier than anything he’d ever experienced.

It was strange to think that his experience of women was so limited. He didn’t often think of it that way.

He had hookups in bars. Women who were done up to the nines, because they’d gone out for the same reason that he had. Everybody on their best behavior, in their best clothes, with their best underwear. It was a fine, civilized way to get sex.

But that meant he didn’t see things like this. Meant he didn’t often see a woman looking bedraggled and somehow still sexy. Meant he didn’t get in fights with women. Fights that produced the kind of palpable sexual tension that could grab a man by the throat and strangle him.

It meant he hadn’t ever looked at a woman all waterlogged and wrecked and thought that he probably wanted her more than he had when she was wearing little white socks and shoes.

Well. Maybe not more. But it was definitely still want. A particular kind.