He swallowed hard. “So Rachel’s getting here at one o’clock on Monday.”

“We know,” Noah said irritably. “You haven’t shut up about it since Mom said she could come down for a few days.”

“That’s because he’s in love,” I said teasingly, bumping my shoulder into Lee’s and grinning at him.

“Have you kids got anything planned for tomorrow, then?” Matthew asked us, and I got the feeling he was trying to change the subject.

“Beach,” Lee said.

“Sunbathing,” I said. Then I added, “And Noah’s going to stomp around destroying kids’ sand castles again….”

“What?” June exclaimed, like she wasn’t sure whether to be shocked or to laugh.

“That,” Noah said, poking me in the ribs, “was an accident.”

I gave him a skeptical look, trying to keep my face straight. “Sure.”

“I did not do it on purpose,” he said, enunciating every word. “Besides, he shouldn’t have been building a sand castle with a giant moat round it anyway.”

“He fell in the moat,” Lee told his parents, snickering at the memory of Noah face-planting into the poor kid’s sand castle and completely wrecking all his hard work.

“But when you were gonna help him build it back up?” I said, a grin slipping onto my face. “That was cute. Really cute.”

I had a flashback of Noah trying to mash handfuls of damp sand together to pacify the little kid whose castle he’d just flattened. The boy had thrown a tantrum and run off to get his mommy. Noah ran in the opposite direction, back to us, while we howled with laughter at the sight of Noah Flynn, school badass, running scared. Lee had pointed out that six-year-olds with angry moms in tow are pretty damn scary, which I didn’t argue with.

But still. It was cute that he’d tried to fix the sand castle.

“I’m sorry,” Noah said. “What was it?”

“Absolutely, insanely cute.”

“Right, that’s it!”

Next thing I knew, Noah had shot out of his seat, grabbed me round the waist, and tossed me over his shoulder. I shouted, but I was laughing too hard to wriggle out of his grip. He started marching away from the table.

I suddenly got a sinking feeling in my gut. He couldn’t be walking toward the pool, right? He’d walk round it. He wouldn’t—

My body hit the water with a sharp slap. I shot to the surface and bobbed there, my clothes billowing out around me. My teeth immediately started chattering a little. I never knew the water was so cold at night!

I could hear everyone laughing from the table outside the kitchen. Noah was silhouetted against the house with his arms folded, and I could just about make out the giant smirk on his face.