Page 17 of SEAL’S Baby Surprise (Lanes #2)

LEE

It’s a dream. That’s what it is. A dream.

And I never want to wake up.

In the morning, Julia goes to Mother Hubbard’s Homeschool. Mrs. Hubbard runs what is essentially a cottage school. She is a retired elementary school teacher, and she teaches whatever the kids need. The place is licensed and, every once in a while, gets a visit from the licensing agency.

I keep myself busy indoors on those days, while Austin sits in his camp chair and seems to be working on his tablet. I’m pretty sure he is keeping tabs on the entire neighborhood while Authority invades our idyllic world.

I am learning housekeeping — van style. It might seem like there wouldn’t be much. But if your entire home can fit inside a cargo van, keeping up with home chores is essential.

Austin shows me a storage cubby under the passenger seat of the van where I can keep my clothes, wigs, and scarves. My hair has grown out almost to pixie cut length, and Austin keeps it trimmed up for me, so I don’t really need the wigs now. But I sometimes wear them just for fun.

My hair is growing out curly. Who knew? Without the weight of my long hair and the constant coloring and styling, it has sort of developed a mind of its own. When I look in the mirror, it looks as if a blond version of Squeegee has landed on my head.

Dirty people clothes go in a sheltered hamper, just outside the van door. There is a coin-operated wash shack at the end of the residential row. Once or twice a week, we take all our laundry and get it done.

Austin explains to me carefully about separating whites and colors, and about water temperature, bleach, and different fabrics. Most of our stuff is easy-wash, carefree beach wear. But once in a while, we’d go to the Goodwill and would find something fancy.

There is this little push carpet cleaner we use every day in the van, even though the carpeted area is less than three feet wide, and not even five feet long. Austin wipes down the inside of the driving compartment once a week to keep the dust off and shows me how to do the passenger side.

The bathroom gets a daily scrub down with cleaning vinegar, which is different from pickling vinegar.

I learn that pickling vinegar is tested to make sure it is food safe, while cleaning vinegar is not.

On top of that, cleaning vinegar is a lot stronger.

You’d think it would make the van smell like a pickle, but it doesn’t.

The kitchen gets a wipe down with diluted cleaning vinegar, whether we’d used the cooktop and oven or not.

Beds get made up daily. Austin is a real stickler about that. He says nothing makes a space look tackier than an unmade bed. Even Julia, whose bed is in the loft, has to make up her bed every morning. She has two storage boxes — one for her clothes, and one for toys.

I get pretty good at the housekeeping. I don’t really think about whether I like it or not. It gives me something to do while Austin is busy with his work. When he is done, and the van is clean, we go out on his paddle board.

Sometimes, now that I am getting pretty good at paddling, he gives me the inflatable, and he goes out on his rigid board. We almost always wind up over by the little island and have a snack in the shade.

At lunchtime, Julia comes home. We have lunch and then a siesta. Siestas are nice when it is hot outside and the solar panels keep the air conditioner topped up on energy, so it is comfy inside the van.

When things have started to cool off, we take Julia down to the edge of the water. On this particular day, Austin had found a sandcastle kit in the toy bin at the Goodwill, and we are trying it out.

“I want a BIG castle,” Julia says. “It’s gonna have towers, an’ a wall, an’ a moat, an’ a drawbridge.

One of the things Austin had picked up at the Goodwill was a DVD player and a box of used movie disks. We’d watched Princess Bride the previous evening, and we’d found a full set of Gordon Dickson books.

We had been reading The Dragon and the George, which has many castle references. That is, Austin had read it out loud to Julia, and I’d listened, too.

I’d made one or two sandcastles in my growing up years.

Summer camps had been good for stuff like that.

And Austin knows his way around how to pile up wet sand, so we get on with the process pretty well.

We use milk cartons and old ice cream buckets to shore up the inside, so the wet sand doesn’t just crumble right away.

We make pretty good progress on Julia’s castle. It is nearly as tall as she is, when Austin notices that the tide is coming in and nibbling at the outer wall.

Julia is sad to think that all our work will wash away.

“That’s how life is, baby girl,” Austin tells her. “You work hard on something, then it washes away. Best to enjoy it while we have it, then let it go so you can make a clean break.”

Had that been what he had done with his wife? We’d never talked about her. I’d known she wasn’t part of Julia’s life, and that Austin had sole custody. We’d talked about it when one of her little friends from Mother Hubbard’s had gone to stay with her dad for a couple of weeks.

So, Austin eases the buckets and cartons out of the structure, and bags them up so they won’t be garbage in the sea. Then we watch the tide come in and wash all our fun away. I take pictures with Austin’s tablet so Julia will have something to remember, and so will Austin.

Then we go back to the van. Betty and Bobby come over and ask if Julia can come have supper and sleep over. Mr. Turner is out on the road again, and Mrs. Turner wants the company. So, we give Julia first dibs on the shower.

By the time she is done, the water tank is pretty low. So, Austin says, “Let’s shower together!”

Julia had run off with the twins as soon as she was clean, so why not? I should have thought…

The van shower is tiny. In fact, it is a cubicle or maybe better described as a “tubicle” that contains the dry-flush toilet, a protected compartment for the toilet paper, and a sprayer that could be handheld or attached to the ceiling.

We brush off most of the sand outside because the gray water drain gets stopped up if you put too many particles down it. Then, we stop in the tiny walkway and shimmy out of our sandy swimwear.

“Let me get in first,” Austin says. “I’ll flatten out and make room for you.”

I slide in beside him and realize that this shower is so not made for two! I sit down on the closed toilet seat and discover that puts me face-to-face with . . . oh, yeah, you guessed it, first try . . . and it is starting to show signs of interest.

I have to admit, I am kind of interested, too.

We’d spent the morning in and out of the ocean, so Austin smells like saltwater, seaweed, suntan lotion, and himself.

Which are not bad scents at all — ocean, and clean-from-swimming favorite guy.

In fact, it is a heady combination that is making me feel kind of melty down below.

We don’t even make out when Julia is at home, so it has been a day or two since we’d indulged in what was becoming my favorite exercise.

“Little close in here,” Austin says. “How about if I wash your hair and get you soaped up, and then we trade?”

“All right,” I say.

Austin pours a little of the Ocean Breeze scented shampoo that we all share into his palm and lathers up my head, neck, shoulders and back. Then he teases me by rubbing soap over my front. I arch against his hand like a cat; it feels so good, and I want him to do it more.

He doesn’t do anything rude with his penis, but I can feel it bobbing against me. My body gets all kinds of ideas about what he can do with it, and where it should be. Preferably right now, if not sooner!

But Austin ignores my signals, plus those of his own body, and uses the sprayer to rinse me off. “My turn,” he says.

I manage to stand up, straddling the seat. Austin squinches around toward his left, I move toward his right, and we make a kind of pretzel move that gets him sitting on the seat and me standing up.

I soap his hair and the short scruff of beard he has recently started growing. I make sure to give his back a good scrub, because there’s nothing worse than sand stuck somewhere you can’t reach.

It’s while I’m scrubbing his back, that I realize Austin is breathing faster and harder than usual.

He’s trying to be good, I realize. He’s trying to keep this rated PG, to keep this as a shower.

Only, I’m not at all sure I want him to be that good!

I start rubbing slower and lower. Yep, I’ve got his attention, and he has mine.

This is exciting.

He’d not tried anything while he was standing up, but now that I’m the one on my feet, he catches some soap suds off him, reaches around me, and starts massaging my backside with his slick hands.

It feels good, so I move closer, so that I’m straddling his knees. I’m short, and he’s tall, so he has to bend his neck to blow softly through my pubic curls, setting off a riot of sensations. I raise up on my tiptoes, trying to get important things closer to his mouth.

Now, my blood is racing, and my respiratory rate is trying to match his. He pulls me to him, so that I am sitting on his thighs and my most delicate parts are rubbing against his hard, mouthwateringly beautiful parts.

My stomach is getting all sudsy-slippery against his belly, and our chests are mashing together. My nipples are turning into hard little bumps, and I know where I want that lovely penis he had been trying not to wave in my face just a few minutes ago.

I want it inside me.

I glance up at Austin, my eyes wide and my smile wider.

“More?”