Page 22 of Marriage is a Shore Thing (Wilks Beach #2)

twenty-one

Van

The second Geneva steps beside me, I lift her, setting her atop the waist-high storage shelving. “I couldn’t wait until we got home.”

Then I take her lips in a bruising kiss.

Relief courses through me when Geneva’s startled sound shifts into a muted groan. Her nails instantly slip into my hair then scratch down my back, pressing us closer.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day.” My words are hoarse over her mouth before I deepen the kiss.

Just like last night, Geneva matches me touch for touch, just as ravenous as I am. My mind shouts words of gratitude into the universe when her fingers slide over my jaw before she pours herself into the kiss.

“And this…” My fingers tease over the inch of skin left bare between her tank and her leggings. “This sliver darn near made me lose my mind.”

Geneva doesn’t shiver as much as she flinches at my touch.

The smile brightening my face feels like pure sunshine. “Are you ticklish?”

“No,” she says, tone serious. Her hands brace my shoulders as if she’s ready to push me away if I try again.

I set my grinning lips at the crook of her neck, pleased when she becomes as pliant as a piece of seagrass. “You are. Interesting.”

Geneva tilts her head away, giving me access as I work my way up to the sweet spot beneath her ear.

“What other secrets are you hiding?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Her tone is defiant, but her lashes fan on her cheeks, her jaw relaxed.

Seeing Geneva like this sends little crackles of electricity teeming through my bloodstream. It’s a rush, having someone who’s always perfectly poised near boneless in my arms. I want to help her be this relaxed all the time, not when it’s just the two of us.

“I would, actually. I want to know everything about you.” Before Geneva can argue, I slip my hand beneath her ponytail and bring her mouth to mine.

We spend a long, long while kissing in the darkness of her closed gym before I finally lean back.

“Have you eaten?” I ask between ragged breaths.

“Yes.”

“Something other than Greek yogurt?”

Geneva glares at me, but her narrowing eyes only make my lips twitch upward.

“I’m all for healthy eating.” I lift my sweat-sodden shirt, gratuitously flashing my abs. “But it’s okay to vary your diet every once in a while. Let me make you a stir fry when we get home.”

This is where Geneva should snap at me, but her gaze is trained on my stomach, the corner of her lip tucked between her teeth. On second thought, who needs a summer vegetable stir fry when I can devour Geneva’s lips for the rest of the night.

“Okay.” It’s the flicker of uncertainty in Geneva’s voice that has me dropping my shirt to brush a tender kiss over her forehead.

I’m going to take such good care of you.

My fingers give her legs a light squeeze. “Let’s go home.”

The rest of the evening is essentially a dream sequence.

Geneva teases with me while I cook us dinner.

We eat beneath the stars, the fireflies dancing in the distance.

After we each shower, Geneva knocks on the door to the guest room, asking if I’d like to watch ‘our show.’ She only insults me six times while I make myself a hot chocolate to enjoy on the couch.

Then when I tuck her beneath my arm, Geneva tilts her chin up and kisses my chocolatey lips.

“Hmm,” she murmurs, her gaze making an unhurried sweep of my face.

“Not bad?” I ask, setting aside my mug.

Her nose wrinkles, but it’s playful, not a Geneva-caliber sneer. “Still too sweet.”

“Give it time, darlin’.” My fingers frame her jaw, my heartbeat a slow, thick pulse in my chest. “You’ll come around.”

We don’t pay much attention to the rest of the show.

“Get in, Tex. You’re needed,” Carol Cook says the following Saturday as I’m patting down a layer of topsoil over the freshly planted baby boxwoods.

I glance over my shoulder toward where she’s idling in her white Pontiac and can’t help but smile.

Carol is wearing a bright-red blouse with sunglasses the size of ski goggles, the sea breeze sneaking through the passenger window blowing wisps of white hair away from her face.

If it weren’t a gorgeous eighty-degree day, I’d swear Carol was trying her hand at Mrs. Claus cosplay.

I stand, dusting my hands off on my shorts. “Needed for what?”

“Doctor stuff.”

The corner of my mouth twitches. “That’s specific.”

I assume she’s death-glaring me through her glasses, but all I can see is her pinched red-lipsticked mouth. After a few seconds of silence, I put my hands up in surrender. “Let me just wash up.”

After grabbing my keys to get my medical bag out of my truck, I slide into Carol’s tidy car.

The powerful scent of wintergreen mints tickles my nose as I put on my seatbelt.

Then I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from chuckling when she performs a crawling seventeen-point turn at the beach access dead end.

A walker loops the end of the neighborhood street and is back on Sand Bend Road before we are.

“Care to tell me what’s going on?” I ask once she turns left toward the condo tower.

She mumbles something about overgrown idiots, her hands squeezing at ten and two. “I’d rather hear about your marriage. You haven’t been out much. Too busy trying for kids?”

I nearly choke on my spit at Carol’s frankness but set a small grin on my lips. “I’m not one to kiss and tell.”

Carol blows a raspberry in response.

“We were at music trivia on Tuesday,” I tell her, hoping to distract Carol from digging further. She seems like the kind of person to demand to know a woman’s ovulation schedule.

Though Geneva usually stays at home after teaching her evening classes, I convinced her to head out with me on Tuesday.

She’d admitted, after winning a twenty-dollar Bayside Table gift card, that spending the late-evening hours listening to seventies rock and chatting beneath the stars had been “agreeable.” I’d teased her about that particular adjective until I’d been able to press her against the side of the house in hopes of changing her opinion.

Begrudgingly—and breathlessly—she did.

Since Geneva going to karaoke is about as likely as finding ice cream in a hot oven, I didn’t even offer.

Though, honestly, it’d been nice to have her to myself the rest of the week.

Even though we’re supposed to be blissfully in love, she’s skittish about me even holding her hand in public.

It’s such a stark contrast to when we’re alone, because the second she gets home from class, Geneva kisses me to within an inch of my life.

Carol hums. Or at least I think it’s a hum. Maybe more of a harrumph.

“When are you going to get a real job?”

My eyebrows shoot to my hairline. “Excuse me?”

Most people consider being a physician a reputable profession.

I don’t miss the delighted quirk at the edge of her lips as she turns into the parking garage at the base of the condo tower.

“You’re volunteering, not working. You need to apply for a position at the hospital on the mainland.

Unless you’re going to throw your degree away and repair fishing nets for a living. ”

There is so much to unpack there. “Working in the fishing industry isn’t—”

“Yes. Fine. All jobs are valid and necessary. Blah. Blah. Blah.” She pulls her car across three tenant-only parking spots. “Answer the question.”

Acid bubbles in my throat, because I’m going to have to lie again.

With Geneva and I acting like a real couple, the little white lies about the status of our relationship have been easier to tolerate.

I could tell people about the repairs we’ve been doing or the new recipe we tried from a bodybuilder’s website without it being false.

No one needs to know that I’m sleeping in Geneva’s guest room or that our marriage has an expiration date.

“Oh, good. You’re here.”

I’m saved from answering by a local I’ve yet to meet outside the passenger side window. Based on his rushed demeanor and furrowed, sweaty brow, this isn’t the casual house call I’d assumed it’d be based on Carol’s lackadaisical driving. I bolt from the car, taking my bag with me.

“What’s happening?”

“It’s just a little cut,” Carol calls from the car. “I only asked you to help because Dr. Prescott is on the mainland.”

“Isn’t Dr. Prescott an orthodontist?” I ask the man jogging next to me.

I remember meeting the barrel-chested man at our wedding party. He and his wife, Lidia, had even asked where we’d been registered. I’d had to lie through my teeth, saying that since we were consolidating two existing households, we didn’t need a new air fryer or blender.

“Yeah,” he says as we weave through the garage and a series of doors that lead into the interior courtyard of the complex. “But he’s always done this kind of stuff before.”

“What kind of—”

My words cut off when I find a man in a blood-stained blue camo tank top and green camo shorts holding a kitchen towel to his forearm.

Another person rushes over with a handful of Band-Aids while a blonde woman hovers nearby, nervously chewing the side of her glittery thumbnail.

Broken ceramic pots, soil, and dislodged petunias litter the patio around him.

Another woman arrives with an array of colorful beach towels as I steer the bleeding man to sit in a nearby patio chair beyond the spray of magenta petals.

“I’m Van. I’m a doctor. Carol brought me,” I tell him while pulling a pair of gloves on. “Can I take a look at your arm?”

When he uncovers an impressive gash, the blonde woman wails. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, baby. You just make me so mad sometimes. Why you gotta do that?”

“I’m sorry, honey angel. I know I’m not the easiest to love.”

Before I can let him know that he’s lucky this isn’t deeper, because I don’t have dissolvable sutures in my bag, the woman hops on his lap, her platform sandals nearly kicking me. I shift to the side as the two of them kiss like he’s just come home from space and narrowly escaped death.

“Um…” Applying pressure to his forearm, I glance at the encircling crowd.

Carol pushes her way through the throng of people, using her cane against shins as necessary.

“Karen. Todd. Knock it off. Let the doctor work before you make even more of a mess.” Her gaze flicks to the soil spewed over the stamped concrete patio with a disapproving sniff before she turns on the people behind her. “Why are you all just standing there? Pick this up. Many hands. Light work.”

Karen finally agrees to move off Todd’s lap but hugs his face to her stomach the entire time I work, which—considering that I don’t carry anesthetics—is probably a decent distraction.

Under Carol’s direction, the rest of the looky-loos pick up the patio before the complex’s maintenance manager hoses down the concrete.

It’s a nice common area with mounted propane grills in one corner, tables and chairs throughout, and a pergola with gauzy curtains and plush couches at the far end.

The potted plants that edge the space are far too large to be thrown, so Karen must have chucked the petunias from one of the balconies opening into the courtyard.

The way everyone works together, and how the other residents offer me water or food on behalf of the troublesome couple, who apparently have a tendency to “do things like this,” makes something warm settle in my stomach.

It’s like being given a freshly baked cookie while hearing your favorite song on the radio.

There’s a comfort to Wilks Beach that I could happily settle into—if I were lucky enough to be asked to stay.

By the time I’ve given wound care instructions and packed everything up, the sun is bending around the building, casting the common area in a cool shadow.

I wipe sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.

If I head home now, I’ll just catch Geneva before she leaves for her girls’ night at Vivian and Brynn’s.

She’s been surly about the event all week, but it’s easy to see her crankiness for what it is—nerves. I want to be able to reassure her one last time, and…who am I kidding? I want to kiss her too.

I haven’t gotten the opportunity today. Geneva slept in this morning, and while I’d been surfing with Nick, she’d taught her mid-day classes and then left from the gym.

I wanted to text and ask where she was, when she’d be home, but I busied myself with leftover house chores instead, trying not to get distracted.

I completely underestimated how much I’d crave the soft touch of her lips on mine after kissing her.

A part of my mind cautions against how swept up in Geneva I already am, but another part can’t seem to focus on anything but the memory of the way she murmurs sweet sounds when I thread my fingers through her hair.

Grabbing my bag, I walk toward the exit. Carol disappeared long ago, so I don’t expect her white Pontiac will be waiting for me in the garage. I can’t even let Geneva know where I am, because my phone is sitting on the coffee table.

I’m two steps from exiting the complex when I hear broken English behind me. One word is crystal clear, though—doctor. Turning to find a man holding a flushed toddler, I nod and change directions.