Except for the baby her sister was carrying. The baby she didn’t yet know about, no matter how much he bugged Winnie to tell her. And while he’d promised not to give away the secret, he wouldn’t, couldn’t lie outright to Piper. She didn’t deserve that. And as always when his mind went down that path, he deeply regretted giving Winnie his word. Holding back from Piper didn’t feel good, but when he factored in how attracted to her he was, how much he wanted her, it felt even more wrong.

Piper apparently took his silence as the need for a subject change, so she turned to the window and her brows went up as they exited the highway at Pismo Beach.

“Why do I feel nervous?” she asked, when he pulled into a parking lot.

He got out of the truck and came around for her, taking her hand. “Maybe it’s me. Maybe I give you butterflies.”

“You don’t,” she said, so quickly that he grinned, because now he knew that he totally did. “Whatever,” she muttered. “It’s not like you don’t know that you melt bones when you kiss.”

And now he kept grinning, because he was incredibly flattered that he could melt her bones. But it was more than that. When he touched her, kissed her, he got flashes of the real Piper, the one she liked to hide from the world. The real Piper was softer, sweeter, and reached him in a way no one else ever had. “You’re good for my ego.”

“Like you needed help in that arena.”

He laughed as they walked to the beach. Hills made of sand spanned in either direction, making this a beach people tended to come to for four-wheeling rather than sunbathing.

“What are we doing here?” she asked, eyeing the choppy deep-blue water and heavy surf. “Don’t tell me we’re going swimming.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m”—she appeared to fight herself for a moment—“not super comfortable around the water, which I know is ridiculous, since I live on a lake.”

“For the record, I’d never say that. But what are we talking about here, a general light fear of the water, or full-blown phobia?”

“Just a light fear,” she said, her breathing a little fast from just talking about it.

Okay, then. Phobia it was. He thought back and realized he’d never seen her on the docks at the marina. Earlier, she’d remained on shore, not taking a single step onto the dock at all. “We’re not going in the water,” he promised, leading her down the stairs to the beach and then about a hundred feet to a small shack with a huge sign that read:

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE!

“Oh, boy,” Piper whispered. “Um—”

“Are you . . . uncomfortable with sand?” he asked.

“No.”

“Are you uncomfortable with wind in your hair?”