“Thank you,” I breathe out. “I can take you by your house later today and help you pack if you want. We can bring your car back here so you’re ready to go.”

She nods again, and my heart feels like it’s been hit with a defibrillator. We don’t have forever. But the time we do have left will be spent together.

“Okay, lovebirds,” Fielding quips as Maddie yelps and jumps out of my arms.

Now that she’s not so close, the world around us comes back into focus, and I notice my brother’s got a towel twisted up and Maddie’s rubbing her butt where he must have snapped her.

“We’re going to be eating burned bacon if you don’t let my sous chef get back to work.”

In seconds, Maddie’s grabbing a towel of her own from the drawer next to the sink, spinning it into a twist, and taking off after my brother. “I’m going to get you for that!” she yells as she tears around the island and Fielding skids out of her reach.

“Hey, hey, hey!” I scold them both. “No running around the stove!”

It’s officially the weekend, but putting names to the days doesn’t matter anymore. Jake’s keeping me off the schedule at The Oak until I tell him otherwise, and Fielding quit his valet job. It’s one of the hottest days of summer yet, but we’ve made our own version of paradise in our backyard.

I’ve been assigned the role of timekeeper, so I’m in charge of the stopwatch for the water slide competition. Every time Maddie goes down, I clock it perfectly, calling out her time with pride. When it’s my brother’s turn, I don’t bother starting the timer, instead adding a few tenths of a second to Maddie’s score so he just barely loses again and again.

He’s catching on to me. But I think he likes letting her win, too.

She’s filling up her cup at the Coke Freestyle machine now, and I can’t help but watch her pert little ass in her red one-piece. She looks like a freaking Baywatch model, and I get hard every time she gets out of the water.

We learned yesterday that Fielding is a literal child and can’t resist untying her bathing suit strings underwater, which resulted in her getting pissed off and him getting a beating, hence the reason she’s not wearing a bikini like she usually does. That one-piece may have been chosen to discourage salacious behavior, but it’s inspiring all sorts of dirty thoughts in my mind.

When her drink is topped off, she shakes her hips and peeks at me over her shoulder, smirking when she catches me watching, then she crosses the pool deck and heads my way.

I get her for eight more days.