Page 25 of Beach Cottage Kisses

Not that she told him so. While she and Sage had been amused, he had not been. Instead, she left him on his phone at the table and headed into the galley cooking area, happy to have had him over.

And to have dinner done, too.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” she called from around the corner. “We should probably do it then. You’ll be in trial all week, and I have a wedding to shoot next Saturday.” She was backing up from bending over in the refrigerator, to drop meat in the temperature-controlled drawer where she stored it, as she spoke.

And shoved her butt right into a hard male thigh.

Jerking, she moved quickly, turning, intending to step farther into the kitchen to let Scott pass, and he’d done so as well. Both of them moving forward in tandem, as they turned.

The hardness that touched her hip that time was not a thigh.

It was an unmistakable body part.

And not at all in a platonic state.

* * *

“I was just coming in to throw the napkins away,” Scott blurted, holding up their used paper products. And then, backing out of the galley, he shoved them in his pants pocket saying, “I’m going to head out so I can set this up for electronic signature and get it sent to Sage tonight. Thanks for dinner, it was great. Morgan, let’s go, girl.”

He was still talking as he shooed the girl out her back door. Giving her no chance to make anything out of what must have been a purely instinctive bodily reaction due to a part of the body being touched.

She hadn’t been going to. No need.

Guys got hard randomly.

Without conscious thought involved.

A common bodily function. Like breathing.

No way she was going to embarrass Scott, or make a problem where they didn’t need one, over something completely innocuous.

She gave him time to get home, and then texted him.

what time tomorrow later in the day works for me

And breathed her first good slug of air when he texted right back.

Four?

They’d faced another, brief, potential friendship-threatening storm. But they’d done what they’d said they were going to do. They’d kept their hands off each other.

All was fine.

She slept well.

And was fully on track when she presented herself at Sage’s door just before four o’clock the next afternoon. Scott had been on textile duty, packing clothes into suitcases, towels, linens and blankets in boxes, and would be taking them all down to Sage’s new home, rather than putting them into storage.

Armed with the professional moving boxes Iris had picked up, along with a ream of packing paper lodged under her arm, tape over her wrist and a black marker in her jeans pocket,she called out, “I’m here!” and started in the kitchen, wrapping glasses.

Sage had taken her everyday dishes with her, but there was a set of Christmas china with matching crystal, wineglasses and various other random pieces in the back of the first cupboard she tackled.

Gray had owned a huge, lovely home, including a kitchen with state-of-the-art everything, and a lot of what they were using had come from there.

The rest was going into storage until they got all their permits and were able to build on to the cottage at the end of the beach.

Another couple, also married since Iris and Sage and Scott had moved to Ocean Breeze, Cassie and Dennis, a pediatrician and a college professor, lived in the cottage at the other end of the beach, over a mile away from Gray’s. They were planning on a major addition as well. They’d already been through paperwork and had told Sage and Gray just before their wedding that they were certain the Bartholomews’ cottage renovations would be approved.

Iris was just diving into the second cupboard, a half-empty one, holding a plethora of pink depression glass, and turned to see Scott standing there, watching her.