Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Sloane was hot.

Really hot.

Her face, her hands, her body. Every part of her radiated. The cool sheets on the bed beneath her did nothing to help.

Brady peered down at her. His hair had dried all messy, but his smirk was on point. He gave another long, leisurely look down her body. Then he shook his head a little and whistled low.

“Hate to say it, sweet cakes, but looks like you should have let me apply the sunscreen this morning.”

Sloane groaned, but she wasn’t accepting total blame for the sunburn that had her burning up.

“For almost five hours today, I talked to you and you alone. Did it not occur to you to give me a heads-up and warn me that I was getting a little red?”

Brady put his hands up in self-defense. “To be fair, you’re red almost all the time,” he said. “That’s, like, your thing.”

“My face is usually red. Not my entire body.”

Brady was smart—he didn’t say anything else. Instead he backed up from her bed and casually looked around the room. It was the second time he’d been in her childhood bedroom, and, once again, she didn’t have the time to be self-conscious about it. That ship had sailed the moment they’d gotten back into his truck and realized her skin was a different shade than it should have been.

At first, Sloane had thought it had to do with their second heavy make-out session at the bay. The same one where she had gone trouser fishing because Brady had made a normal conversation somehow sexy as hell. Sloane had gone from talking about her job to being teased to wanting to rid the man of his clothes on the same beach Carol and Co. were lounging.

It had been a good plan. Definitely something a real couple would do.

Which made the fact that she wanted to do it again a bit of a problem.

Then again, right now, she wasn’t in the mood for anything. Fake relationship or not.

Footsteps in the hall made Sloane turn her grumpiness to the doorway. Callum popped his head in. He also whistled.

“Wow. Someone still sucks at applying sunscreen.”

Brady chuckled. It made Sloane’s grumpiness double down.

“If it wouldn’t hurt, I’d throw a pillow at you,” she ground out.

Callum seemed amused. “Let’s be real. You’re bad at throwing things, too.”

Sloane rolled her eyes.

“What do you want, oh pain in the backside brother of mine? Here to point out that I’m also still really bad at math?”

“I was actually going to see if y’all wanted to eat dinner here tonight. I’m watching Justus, so I thought about turning it into one of our old movie parties. But you are really bad at math, so that still stands, too.”