Sage

I couldn't really feel my feet right about then, which was the least of my concerns at the moment, if you could believe that. I'd finally spit out all the water that was trying to drown my lungs while still maintaining control of my surf board. Okay, saying I had control of it was a little much. It was more like the thing was a floatation device and my ankle was attached to it and somehow both myself and the board had made it to shore at about the same time.

After I'd dragged that thing to dry land, I sat down to catch my breath and assess my body parts. That's when I realized my feet were tingly. Maybe I'd gotten tossed so many times out there, my tingle-meter had moved from my nose to my feet!

I chuckled out loud at my own joke. I got giggly in life threatening situations, what could I say?

The warm sun suddenly went away, causing me to lift my head and see what happened. In all his lifeguard glory stood my nemesis, blocking all warmth and brightness with his very presence.

"You all right?" His calm voice held an edge of sarcasm. I'm sure he could have towed me in far more efficiently and with less side effects to my lungs and feet, but I couldn't let yet another man tell me what to do. Been there, done that, trying to escape it.

I pushed my hair out of my eyes and let a smile light up my face. "I'm glorious. You?"

He let out a quick chuckle before sucking it back in and remembering he hated me. "How about I help you get that board back on your car and I meet you back at The Shack?"

I debated the merits of that suggestion. My first inclination was to tell him to go to hell, but then my arms remembered the weight of that board and I reconsidered my answer. It was a very kind offer, after all.

I tipped my head. "Thank you for offering. I'll take you up on that." Jumping to my feet, I wiped the sand off my butt and tried to get the leash off my ankle. My feet weren't quite back to normal though and I almost went down.

"You got a problem with your legs?" He was looking at me with one eyebrow up, probably remembering the frequency with which I weebled and wobbled around him.

My face flushed, realizing I looked like an idiot, nearly falling three times in one day. "New feet," I deadpanned.

Which earned me another chuckle before he wrangled his face back into a frown. That was exactly the reason his chi was blocked, but I figured I wouldn't bring that up again. He crouched down and grabbed the leash around my ankle. Before he ripped the velcro away, his skin brushed against mine, just for a quick second, but long enough to send more heat to my face.

This guy's touch was doing all sorts of weird things to my insides and I didn't even particularly like him.

He stood back up and wrapped the leash around the end of my board before picking it up and carrying it over his head to the red truck parked just up the sand. I followed behind, not even bothering to drag my eyes away from the muscles in his arms holding up the board, or the way his back tapered down into a trim waist before rounding back out in the shape of two muscular globes in his board shorts.

Under different circumstances, I would have been highly attracted to this man. Too bad I needed to engage in the most important business deal of my life with him. I couldn't keep acting like a bumbling school girl. I needed him to take my offer seriously. My entire future depended on it.

"You comin'?" he asked, breaking into my thoughts. He'd loaded my board onto the back of his truck and was standing by the cab of the truck, tilting his head toward the passenger door where I stood still like a statue.

I grinned and jumped to open the door before sliding in. We were out of the ocean and back on dry land. Time to take back the upper hand here.

He climbed in behind the wheel and the cab suddenly seemed a thousand times smaller. A pair of sky blue eyes looked at me expectantly. At this proximity, I could see scruff on his face that hadn't been there this morning. I had an insane urge to reach up and drag my hand along his jaw line, feeling the scratch of his beard with my fingertips.

"Where to?"

I pulled my gaze away and looked to the parking lot. Maybe not looking at him would help my train of thought. "My Bug is on the street. Metered parking."

In answer, the truck rolled over the mounds of sand, the speed nice and slow to prevent hitting any beach-goers.

"I'll pull up as close as I can. Then we'll walk the board to your car." His voice sounded louder and deeper in the confined space, doing more to cause my shivers than the wet hair and swimsuit clinging to my body.

The rest of the ride was filled with comfortable silence, broken up by the dispatcher on the radio calling out codes and things that made no sense to my ears.

"Have you worked as a lifeguard for awhile?" Might as well get some intel directly from the seller of the property I would soon own. The internet search in my hotel room earlier that day had only told me his name, Jax Stern. His father, Max, had owned The Surf Shack before him. As far as I could see, it was a fairly average rental shop in a beach town. His father didn't have any social media accounts that I could find and Jax only had one, which was private.

"Since high school when I was assigned a tower pretty far north in a quieter area. Over the years, I've completed training to get out on the rescue watercrafts, which I like better than sitting in a tower or breaking up drunken fights on the beach." Jax smiled while he talked about his lifeguarding, cluing me in that he enjoyed what he did.

Jax parked the truck right next to the cement strand running along the shoreline. I followed his lead and exited the truck, coming around the back to get the surf board.

"I got it." I tried to get the board out of Jax's grip but he jerked it back and hefted it over his head before I could put in a good fight. I didn't like men doing things that I could do myself, thank you very much. "Hey!"

He started walking off in the direction of the street, looking behind his shoulder at me with the most annoying smirk on his face. "You forget, this is actually my board and I don't want you to drop it trying to drag it out to your car."

I hustled after him and defended myself. "I wouldn't drop it! I got it out to the beach just fine." Ha! Had him there.

He just laughed and kept walking. "That was before you wiped out, repeatedly, in my ocean. It's okay to admit you have noodle arms."

"If I had noodle arms, I'd admit it, but I'm just fine." I finally caught up to him, just as we reached my Bug. I could have made further comment about his supposed ownership of the whole damn ocean, but I kept it to myself. One argument at a time.

Jax lowered the board to his side and heaved it into my startled hands. "Okay, you load it up then."

Of course, I wasn't expecting him to do that, so I almost dropped the board, but not because I had noodle arms. Before it hit the ground, along with my shattered pride, I managed to heft the board up. Jamming the edge of the board on my hip, I shuffled the remaining two feet to my car and wrestled the thing up high enough to rest on the side of the rack on the roof of my car. Thank God I rented a VW Bug, not a big, tall SUV.

"Give me that." Jax intervened and lifted the whole board onto the rack, placing it perfectly in the center with ease.

I glared at him, even though I was quite happy to not deal with that board any longer than I had to.

"Okay, I got it from here. Thank you." I nodded my head at him and proceeded to pull out the flat ropes I would snake through my car windows and loop around the board to keep it in place while I drove it back to the rental shop.

Another swallowed chuckle sounded from behind me, but when I spun around, Jax was looking at my car with no expression whatsoever.

"I gotta do a few things at headquarters. I'll meet you back at The Shack." And then he spun around and took off, leaving me to finish securing the board to my car.

After watching his fine ass retreat (my motto was Never Waste a Good Opportunity), I got to my task. Based on his comment, I guessed we were going to chat again. Maybe this time I could get him to sell that damn shop already.

I was starving after my near-death experience in the Pacific, so I stopped by a little burger joint further north on PCH. I ate my burger in my car, gazing out at the sparkling water, letting the gentle breeze dry my long hair. I briefly wondered why I bitched so much about doing this deal for my father. This was heaven.

When the dried salt on my skin got to be too itchy, I packed up the trash from lunch, tossed it, and headed back out to The Shack to return the surf board. I pulled into that tiny parking lot again and left the board on top of the car while I went inside. I was hoping the guy from before, Jonny I believe from what Jax said, would do me a solid and get the board off for me. The adrenaline high from surfing was leaving me wiped. I'd have to admit to Jax I had noodle arms.

Nah, just kidding, I would admit nothing.

I was standing in the shop, waiting for Jonny to help another customer, when Jax walked in. He gestured me over to him and held open the door.

"Come on, let's get that board."

I followed him out and tried to rub some of the salt off my arms and legs while I stood there watching his muscles flex as he grabbed my board. He walked it over to the side of the shop where we'd had our argument earlier today. A spray of water burst out of a shower head nozzle up high that I hadn't seen before. Jax cleaned off the huge board like he'd done it a thousand times before. When it was thoroughly rinsed, he leaned it up against the building and ducked under the water himself.

My mouth went dry and all the business conversation openers I'd planned left my brain as I took in the sight in front of me. He tipped his head back and used his hands to run through his thick, wavy hair before they wiped off his face too, the sound of his stubble scraping reminding my fingers they never got a feel.

Those hands dipped lower to the hem of his t-shirt and all my prayers, had I known to pray for such deliciousness, were answered. Inch by inch, more tanned skin was revealed as he pulled the shirt up over his head and tossed it to the ground. I'd already figured out he was strong, but I didn't really understand the extent of it until I saw the six pack, the bulging pecs, the bumps running along his hip bones, the way each muscle flowed into the next, like a perfectly tuned machine.

But this was no machine in front of me. This was all man, flesh and bone, covered by tan skin and a scattering of hair that begged for touching and tasting.

And I would volunteer as tribute.

A throat clearing brought my attention back to the world happening around me while I lusted after a man who didn't seem to like me that much. He was looking at me like he expected an answer.

"Wha--"

Oh, that was great. I was supposed to be showing him that I was a tough business person and he could take my offer seriously, and now I was drooling over him like a love-starved prepubescent. At least I wasn't falling over any longer. There was that.

He repeated himself, speaking a little slower, you know, to match my intellect. "Did you want to rinse off?"

Stepping forward into the spray, I turned my back to him and gave myself a quick moment to collect my words and remember why I was there and exactly what hung in the balance.

I finger brushed my hair, letting the fresh water rinse away the stiffness that came with the dried salt water. Next came the rash guard, also rented. I pulled it off, struggling to get out of the long sleeved shirt that clung to my skin. Audience forgotten, I almost laughed out loud that I'd showered in five star resorts around the world and yet nothing felt as luxurious as this shower on the side of a shack after getting my body tossed around by a force far more powerful than I'd given it credit.

I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with my life when this deal for my father was complete, but I was getting a feeling that any future of mine would have to include some warm weather and ocean water. I'd never felt so alive, and I was sure it had nothing to do with the sexy-as-sin man next to me.