Page 69 of The Paradise Plan

She and Spence came into view in the next couple of seconds, and they walked along like they were old pals.He paused to watch them, and he shouldn’t have been surprised.Cass was personable and kind.Spence was good with strangers.She’d never expressed any anxiety over meeting his brother or his mother.

All of that came from within Harrison.Even now, his first instinct was to jog toward them and make sure Spence didn’t say anything foolish.A flash of irritation shot to the top of his head that Cass had walked over here and met him by herself.Harrison didn’t want that.

“Hey,” he called, lifting one arm as if waving in a greeting.He tamped down the frustration that this meeting hadn’t gone the way he planned.As he neared the pair of them, he asked, “What are you doing over here?”

Cass wore a pair of sunglasses, but as he got closer, he could see her eyes.“I saw him looking for us when I came outside,” she said.She grinned at Spence, who honestly looked a little star-struck.“He said he gets lost easily.”

Gets lost?Harrison shook his head.“I said to go out to the beach and you’d see us,” he said to his brother.

“I did,” Spence said.

“You’re up in the grasses.”Harrison brushed some as he walked by.“This isn’t the beach.”

“We found him,” Cass said, which he also didn’t appreciate.

He suppressed his sigh and said, “Lauren went back to your place to see what you needed.”

Cass looked that way, obviously able to take a hint.“I’ll text her,” she said.“I got everything.I just ran into Spencer here.”She met Harrison’s eyes again.“I introduced myself.”

“I can see that.”He turned back to the swatch of sand he and Lauren and Conrad had claimed.“Did you introduce yourself to her, Spencer?”

“Sort of,” his brother said.“She already knew who I was.”

Harrison worked hard not to roll his eyes.“Okay.”He walked a little too fast, and he got ahead of Cass and Spence before he forced himself to slow down.No one said anything, his mood having poisoned the laughter and easy conversation they’d been engaged in previously.

He didn’t care.He hadn’t wanted them to meet that way, and the situation was annoying.They reached the blankets, and Cass sighed as she sank into her chair.“Can you put up the umbrella, baby?”she asked her son.

“Conrad,” Harrison said, and the young man looked at him.“This is my brother, Spencer.Spencer, this is Conrad, Cass’s son.”

“Hey, man.”Conrad got to his feet, his smile wide.He shook hands with Spencer, who said, “Hey,” back.“Do you work at Royce Tours?”

Conrad started setting up the umbrella for his mother.“Sure do.It’s great.”

“We’ve done some publicity for them,” Spencer said.

Harrison said nothing as the conversation continued around him.Instead, he pulled out the can of sunscreen.He sprayed down his neck, ears, and arms, and pulled his bucket hat on to further ward off the sun.

“Conrad’s always loved the outdoors,” Cass said, now fully shaded.“Thank you, baby.This is great.”

Lauren returned, but she didn’t take the third chair.While Spencer and Conrad started throwing a football, Cass nodded to the chair beside her.

“This is for me?”he asked.

“That’s right,” she said.“I told you I can’t get up and down off the ground.”

He grinned as he took the seat.She put her hand in his, and he wasn’t going to complain about that either.He nodded over to Lauren.“She’s on the ground.”

“She’s younger than me,” Cass said.

“And my tailbone already hurts,” Lauren said, getting up.She took the other chair on Cass’s other side.With the umbrella and cooler between them, there was a five-foot buffer.

“I’m sorry I ran into your brother,” Cass murmured.

Harrison waved her apology away.He didn’t say it was fine, because he couldn’t change it.What was the point of being upset about it?

“Harrison.”

“What?”