Surprising the Blond Caveman too, by the looks of the what the hell? look he sends her way.
“How do you know what he does?” the caveman asks.
“Ellie told us about it at dinner the other night. Remember?” She smiles at me. “My brother’s a commercial pilot. So thank you.”
“I, ah, work on military jets,” I tell her.
“An airplane’s an airplane in my world, and I like knowing my brother’s safe when he’s in the air.”
“I like being safe in the air too,” Jason announces.
I start to explain that I’m more engineer than pilot, but Ellie jumps in before I can, tugging my arm like the good girlfriend she’s playing today. “Guys, don’t embarrass him. How much you want to bet Monica finds the most pirate gold?”
“I’m gonna find all the pirate gold!” Tucker announces.
“He has a son, Ellie?” Mrs. Dixon says with a nose lift.
“No, that’s a random kid he kidnapped with candy and donuts yesterday, but he’s cute, so we’re making him an official pirate with us.”
Monica coughs. Her fiancé clears his throat and swipes a hand over his grin. The Blond Caveman glowers. Ellie slips her hand lower until our fingers are intertwined, and fuck me, I could do this all day. “Come on. Are we digging for gold or what?”
“Mom, Dad, you go first,” Jason says.
“I can’t believe I’ve lived an hour from here my entire life and never knew I could come here to dig for pirate gold,” the Blond Caveman’s girlfriend says, falling into line.
“Dad, can we get two shovels?” Tucker asks.
“How about you help me?” Ellie says to him.
“Yeah! I’ll dig for you, Miss Captain Ellie. Does your leg hurt today?”
“Not too bad. Thank you for asking.”
“Me and Dad got donuts, but we ate them already.”
“The banana pudding kind?”
Tucker wrinkles his nose. “No, plain. But Dad said he’d get you one of those pudding ones later. Can I get another donut later too?”
“Absolutely,” Ellie says at the same time I say, “One’s enough for the day.”
Ellie bends down. “I’ll sneak you one when he’s not looking,” she whispers.
Tucker giggles.
And I shake my head at both of them.
“Is she bringing him to your wedding, Jason? He’s rather…plebian,” Mrs. Dixon murmurs loudly in front of us.
“So am I, Mom,” Jason replies.
“Honestly, I don’t know why you let Monica have a maid of honor who broke your brother’s heart. Not that he can’t do better, but it’s still rude.”
“So is talking about people behind their backs, Mrs. Dixon,” Ellie says cheerfully.
The Blond Caveman sends Ellie a murderous look.
She smiles back.
“I like you having other enemies besides me,” I tell her softly, and she snorts.
“Speaking of,” she replies, just as soft, “we can’t have sex anymore. It’s too dangerous.”
That’s a challenge if I ever heard one. “We’ll discuss this in bed tonight.”
“We will not,” she whispers.
“Bathtub works too.”
She gives me the old Ellie Ryder you’re pissing me off glare, and I don’t even try to tuck in a grin at how easy it still is to get her.
She huffs as she obviously realizes what I’m doing.
“Or maybe over strip ping-pong?” she murmurs.
Dammit.
There I go, popping a boner in public with my kid with me again.
She doesn’t look down, but she smiles triumphantly like she knows she won this round.
And honestly?
I’ll give it to her.
Because I like that smile.
She works hard. She’s dressed in a monkey costume in eighty-degree weather to make her best friend happy. And when I went snooping on her social media pages last night, I discovered post after post of shared help find this pet a home messages.
The last time she posted a personal picture was before Christmas.
Nothing about her accident.
Nothing about recovery.
The only pictures of her were posted by her parents or her friends.
So seeing her smile?
It’s like watching her come back to life.
Beck might’ve been pulling her leg about me having a problem, but he wasn’t lying about Ellie’s accident affecting her.
Monica’s grinning widely as she hands me a shovel. “Get to work, Wyatt. This gold won’t dig itself up. Show me those muscles.”
The Blond Caveman yanks a shovel out of the pile and stalks off. “C’mon, Sloane, I’ll show you how a real man digs for treasure,” he says.
Monica and Ellie share a look. Tucker looks up at both of them, and says, “C’mon, Miss Captain Ellie. I’m gonna be a real man too,” and even the Blond Caveman’s girlfriend cracks up.
“Dad, I’m going to beat you,” Tucker adds.
“Oh, you think so?”
“He’s totally going to beat you,” Ellie says.
He grins at me behind his glasses, and fuck, how am I going to survive having to give him back to Lydia at the end of the summer?
I shove away the panic, because that’s a problem for another day.
For now, I have pirate treasure to dig.
With my fake girlfriend.
Who just might be turning out to be more than I ever thought she could be.
Yep. Saving that problem for another day too.
Sixteen
Ellie
My brain is broken.
It’s like the How we feel about Wyatt switch got flipped overnight, and now, instead of annoying as a gnat, he’s at hot as fuck.
Or possibly I’m overheating in this monkey costume.
But watching him shovel dirt in the town square is making me horny in ways I can’t ever remember being horny.
He hasn’t even taken his shirt off, and he’s still smokin’ hot.
“No, Miss Ellie, let me do that for you,” Tucker says.
He’s skin and bones, but he’s putting his all into thrusting the short shovel into the soft earth, shrieking with glee every time he finds a plastic pirate coin.
I should really talk to Pop about getting some biodegradable pirate coins.
Yes.
That.
I should concentrate on how I can help make the Pirate Festival more earth-friendly.
Not on the way Wyatt just wiped his face with his T-shirt, exposing half of his six-pack and making ten women around us drop their shovels, including a pirate wench who just murmured, “I’d tap that.”
“He’s taken,” Monica tells her.
“Lucky woman.”
My cheeks burn, but I don’t disagree. “I can dig a few shovels,” I tell Tucker. “I’m not helpless.”
“I’m being shrivelpuss,” he informs me.
“Chivalrous,” Wyatt corrects with a grin.
“That means helping people because I’m a gentleman,” Tucker explains.
“And you’re doing a fantastic job,” Wyatt agrees. “But if Miss Ellie wants to dig some, you can let her have fun too.”
“But she’ll get her monkey fur all dirty.”
Such a sweet kid. “You’re the most chivalrous pirate I’ve ever met,” I tell him.
“Oh! Look! I found a pearl necklace!” Sloane exclaims.
All of the Dixons whip their heads around to look as she pulls a string of Mardi Gras beads from the ground.
“Those are fake,” Mrs. Dixon sniffs.
Sloane drapes them over her neck. She’s not sweating at all in her dog costume, nor does she seem at all the least bit offended that she had to play the dog. “They’re a fabulous addition to my collar, aren’t they, Patrick?”
He rolls his eyes. “Sure.”
“Are we nearly done?” Mrs. Dixon asks Jason.
“No way,” he replies. “We could dig for days and not find all the treasure they hid here.”
His mother goes pale. She takes a step and her heels twist in the dirt. “This is a safety hazard.”
“That’s why there are signs everywhere to wear boots,” Jason tells her.
“Big eyesore the rest of the year, isn’t it?” Mr. Dixon says.
“They’ll plant flowers in half of it and sod the rest when the week’s over,” Wyatt tells him.
I shoot him a look.
“I read the festival website,” he says. “You hot? Want a break?”
“Oh my god, Ellie, you’re so red you’re purple. Go sit down,” Monica orders.
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
It is really fucking hot in this costume.
“Wyatt, do you know the most important thing about a wedding?” Monica asks.
“The bride’s always right?”
“Correct. Now go make sure Ellie sits down and has something to drink.”
Tucker looks wide-eyed between all the adults.
“You can stay with me, because you’re a good pirate treasure digger,” Monica tells him.
I squint my eyes at her, because is she trying to get me to strip for Wyatt?
She doesn’t bat a lash of acknowledgment.
“Can I, Dad? Please?”
“We’ll be right here,” Monica tells him. “And Jason knows CPR, and he always carries a first aid kit.”
That’s such baloney, and judging by the way Wyatt’s lips twist and his eyes narrow, he knows it.
“If she dies of heat stroke, it’s on you,” Monica tells him. “Are you a good boyfriend or not?”
“All right, all right. C’mon, Ellie. Let’s go get you out of this costume and into some air conditioning.”
“She loves the banana pudding at Crusty Nut,” Monica offers.
“I know,” he tells her.
Of course he does.
He fought me over which one of us got to put the bedspread covered in last night’s banana pudding into the washing machine this morning.