“Listen, it’s not the end of the world,” he tried. “They’ll probably have fancy beer and snacks and want to leave after an hour because they don’t want their precious skin to burn. Before then? Why don’t we use the time to see if we can’t get the scoop on what they’re doing for the parade and pageant. See how over-the-top they’re planning on going so we can figure out how to beat them. Then you and I can talk strategy. What do you say?”

Sloane would have been nervous to go out with Marcus by herself. Add in Carol and her lackey Ruby, Felicity, and then Brady? Sloane definitely wasn’t inclined to say yes.

Brady must have seen that. He smirked. “Think about it this way, sweet cakes. Now it’s time for you to see me shirtless some more.”

Sloane didn’t say it then, but she decided that that definitely was a selling point.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

“I lost my virginity on a boat.”

Brady put the truck in park and turned his head with a Scooby-Doo huh? sound. The fact that he was dressed like an undercover cop from the early nineties in L.A. only made the move even more comical. Sloane had barely kept a straight face when Brady had come back out of his apartment sporting a pair of swimming trunks striped neon orange, green, and purple and a short-sleeved button-up left unbuttoned. Still, she’d absolutely failed at keeping her mouth from watering at the sight of his visible toned chest and that doggone happy trail.

He might as well have had a tattoo on his stomach with an arrow pointing downward with text that said “Ride at Your Own Risk.”

Sloane had barely suppressed her thirst in the distance between his apartment and Live Oak Launch. It was only after she reminded herself that Brady had spent several hours alone with her and hadn’t tried to recreate their kiss or more—which was good considering that wasn’t the plan—that Sloane thought about the future.

Which, if Carol was around, probably would include an embarrassing story about Sloane’s past.

“I lost my virginity to this guy on his family’s boat when we were seventeen,” she kept on, not bothering to hold back. “We were your average horny teens and thought that we would just die if we didn’t do the deed. His family had this little speedboat and a dock where it was tied off at, and we decided that was where we could do it without being caught. So we waited until it was night, and I snuck out to meet him there.”

Brady did a little grin, clearly intrigued. If he was looking for a salacious story, she was about to disappoint him.