“Bend and snap is used to get men’s attention,” she explained, cheeks burning. “You drop something like a pen or pencil, bend over to grab it, and then snap back up.” Carol looked like she couldn’t care less. Sloane cleared her throat. “It’s my favorite scene from Legally Blonde.”

Brady squeezed her shoulder. “Well, look at that. More proof we’re made for each other.”

Sloane knew he was just playing into their lie, but she felt the butterflies detach in her stomach all the same. After all this was over, she was going to have to have a serious talk with her body about the appropriate responses when it came to the man.

One second, she was wondering about the end of his happy trail; the next, she was getting those schoolgirl-crush jitters.

Carol’s glossy lips curled up into a sharp smile. “How cute.”

Sunshine, tan lines, and Brady quietly grumbling about the lack of Bellinis started the group’s, in total, four-hour tour. It was nice in the beginning, and the tension in Sloane started to lessen the farther away from Live Oak Launch they got.

It turned out that the pontoon boat didn’t belong to the Robertson family as a unit but was Marcus’s instead. Brady had asked several questions about its make, model, and price, and Marcus had been more than enthused to answer each. Sloane glazed over the first details but found it heartening that Marcus had worked hard to purchase the boat two years beforehand and had rebuilt and repaired several parts on it. Ruby had voiced her belief that the Robertson parents had higher-end boats that they probably would have given Marcus had he asked. Carol agreed.

Marcus? That hadn’t been for him.

“There’s a feeling of pride when you fix the thing you spent the day before cussing at,” he’d said. “I can’t get that with the new, shiny things.”

Brady had said he loved that sentiment and agreed with it wholeheartedly. He didn’t have a boat, but his uncle did. It was a junker, and that topic alone carried the two men for twenty minutes, talking like they weren’t sitting in the middle of a boat filled with women who had more exposed skin than covered.

Sloane had liked that time, pressed up against Brady on one of the cushioned benches and feeling the rumble of his words vibrate against her side. He’d made the close proximity move for looks, no doubt, but Sloane hadn’t bothered to shift an inch since. Instead she’d sipped on a Coke, listened to the boys, and let the sun and the water distract her from time to time. Even Carol and Ruby stayed in their own bubble, while Felicity more or less did the same as Sloane, listening to Brady and Marcus and seeming to daydream in the sun when her attention strayed.

It had been nice.