Sleeping with Her Enemy

by Jenny Holiday

  Anyway, he was probably right. Actually having sex would have made things weird in the office. Being friends was better. She nodded, which was stupid because it wasn’t like she was trying to convince anyone besides herself. Anyway, she had the idea that being friends with Dax was going to be fun. It was possible she had misjudged him all these years. A guy who could pull off that crazy fake proposal stunt—she still grinned like an idiot when she thought about it—was a person with a grand sense of adventure. She’d felt like they were a couple of wild kids getting away with the caper of a lifetime, playing an enormous prank on the grown-ups. Like she was on top of the world. Like they were unstoppable.

  There was also the part where it had just been really, really sweet. Thoughtful. He couldn’t have intended it, but now when she looked at the ring, sitting on her dresser while she tried to decide what to do with it, it wasn’t such a loaded symbol anymore.

  No, she was getting carried away. It had been fun; that was all. She was beginning to realize that she hadn’t had fun—just fun, with no ulterior motive, no grand plan—for a long time.

  And it now it was time for another fun day with a friend. A friend who did not want to have sex with her.

  Okay, enough. It was time to stop her brain from going there.

  After she disembarked the ferry, she retraced the steps they’d taken the night after her wedding. Ward’s Island was just as charming by day—more so, really, since she wasn’t gutted with heartbreak this time. There was a note on Dax’s front door directing her to the backyard of Gary’s house next door, and when she let herself into Gary’s gate, she burst out laughing. Gary sat on a lawn chair sipping a cup of coffee, and Dax’s legs—only his legs—were visible, sticking out from under some kind of giant contraption. It was like he was a mechanic lying underneath a car—if the car looked like a cross between a robotic hot air balloon and a giant vacuum cleaner.

  “Hi, Amy,” he called from beneath his metal prison. “I’ll just be a minute.” Ahh, that voice, so low and gravelly and commanding. It did something to her. It did something that was not a “friend” thing.

  “You’ve got the idea,” she said to Gary as he motioned her over to a chair. “Sit here and relax while he does all the work.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Amy, by the way.”

  “Gary,” he said, shaking. Then he nodded at Dax’s legs. “He’s good at this. It’s that programmer brain, I think.”

  She squinted at the contraption. “So I hear you’re trying to get this to crack an egg?”

  “Nah.” Gary waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Changed my mind. Now I’m working on getting it to turn the pages of a book.” He jumped up and began showing her various aspects of the machine, including a series of gears, the last of which tipped a little teeter-totter up so a marble ran down its length. It was impossible not to catch his enthusiasm as he waved his hands wildly and hopped around.

  The marble was stuck in a cup the teeter-totter had deposited it in. “This is one of the current choke points,” he said, sighing theatrically. “Dax is working on another down there.”

  “Dax is no longer working on a choke point.” He popped up beside them. In his bare feet and bright orange board shorts and…nothing else. It was a warm morning, but Amy shivered anyway.

  “Have fun, you guys,” Gary said, disappearing behind his machine with a screwdriver.

  Dax rolled his eyes and led her out of Gary’s yard, but she was pretty sure he was protesting too much.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, “you love Gary and his mystery machine.” Or he was just being really, really nice to his neighbor. It was kind of annoying how often, in the past week or so, she’d been presented with facts about Dax that didn’t jibe with the image of him she’d carried around for so many years.

  “What do you want to do?” he said, following the question with another before she could answer. “You bring a bathing suit?”

  “It’s under my clothes,” she said. “And I don’t know, what are my choices?”

  He raked his gaze down her body as if he were trying to see through her clothes to the bathing suit underneath. “I have a canoe, paddleboards, and kayaks. Have you ever kayaked before?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve never done anything before. Watching baseball is about as athletic as I get.”

  “Okay, so I recommend we either canoe or paddleboard, and save the kayaking for a time when I can borrow a double one. It can be hard to get the hang of, and it will be better if we go together the first time.”

  Amy ignored the little thrill that shot down her spine at the way he was just taking for granted that they would do this again, that there would be a future in which they went kayaking together.

  “So, canoeing or paddleboarding?”

  They both sounded fun. “You pick.”

  There was that look again—the X-ray vision move where he stared at her body in a way that probably should have offended her. “Paddleboarding.” He opened the front door and nodded into the entryway. “You can leave your clothes here.”

  …

  He knew exactly what he was doing. That was the maddening part. Dax had chosen paddleboarding because he wanted to see Amy in her swimsuit. There would have been no cause for undressing if they’d merely gone canoeing.

  So when she stepped out of her shorts and peeled off her T-shirt—another Jays one—and then bent over as she rummaged through her bag to produce a bottle of sunscreen, he deserved everything he got.

  He’d signed up to be tortured, in other words.

  It wasn’t even a particularly skimpy suit. It was a two-piece, but in keeping with her fondness for retro fashion, the black-with-white-polka-dotted bottom was high-waisted, and a matching top covered her small breasts fully, halter straps tied in a big bow behind her neck.

  “So, does a person wear shoes while paddleboarding?”

  He looked down at her feet, which should have provided some relief, but the bright red painted toenails somehow only drove him more crazy. “Keep the flip-flops on for now, and you can leave them on the shore.” He took in the rest of her. “Leave the hat here—you’re likely to lose it to wind, or if you fall in. But the sunglasses should be okay.”

  He led her around back where all his water toys lived. “Gary!” he called over the fence. “We’re gonna borrow your board, okay?”

  “Sure,” came the reply from beneath the machine. “It’s still at your house anyway, right?”

  “Yep.” He hoisted a board under each arm and nodded for her to precede him out of the yard.

  “I can carry my own,” she said.

  “They’re much heavier than they look.”

  “Let me carry it,” she said again, her tone growing annoyed.

  He shrugged and handed her the lighter of the two boards. “You carry it under your arm like this, with your fingers curled around the edge.” He tried not to laugh as she staggered under the unexpected weight—the boards really were heavier than they looked. They made it about half a block when she sighed theatrically and set the board down. She was sweating. It was inexplicably cute.

  “Look,” he said, “Let me carry it. It’s not a commentary on your worth as a human being. It’s heavy, and you’re—”

  “Weak?” she interrupted as if daring him to agree.

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say,” he shot back, annoyed that she still thought so little of him. “I was going to say new at this. Plus, this thing probably weighs almost as much as you—no exaggeration. Here, you carry our paddles.”

  Pursing her lips, she stepped away from the board. She saw this as a defeat somehow, when really it was simply about the laws of physics. She didn’t like situations she couldn’t control, he knew, but she was being unnecessarily obstinate.

  And he was being unnecessarily pissy. But he couldn’t help it. They’d spent so many years at each other’s throats that it was sometimes impossible not to fall back into the old patterns with her. He hoisted a board under each arm and
marched on ahead, knowing it was better not to speak.

  In a few minutes, they’d reached Ward’s Island beach, which was on the north side of the island, so it faced the lake proper and not the harbor.

  “It looks like the ocean,” Amy said, eyes wide.

  “Yeah, it’s a big lake,” he answered, feeling himself thaw a bit as he let the boards drop to the sand.

  She started rubbing sunscreen into her legs. He tried to ignore her, setting up the boards and oars at the edge of the water. By the time he finished, she was working on her arms.

  “Want me to do your back?”

  Where the hell had that come from? In what universe exactly was it a good idea for him to rub lotion onto her back?

  She paused. Caught her lower lip with her teeth. And did she sigh a little? It was hard to tell. If she did, it had been barely audible. “Nope, I got it.” She squirted lotion on the back of her hand and contorted her arm so it slid up her back as she stuck her chest out and squirmed around in order to achieve maximum reach and coverage.

  Yeah. That was so much better than putting the lotion on her himself.

  When she was ready, he gave her a quick rundown of stance and technique, half expecting her to object to being lectured to, but she listened intently and mimicked his movements.

  “It’s hard to paddle with your arm straight,” she said when he reached out to straighten her lower arm as she practiced a stroke.

  “Yeah, the impulse is to want it to be like a canoe, but keeping the bottom arm straight and strong means you’re using your body weight and not just your arms to propel you. It will make it much easier once you’re in the water,” he said, watching her refine the movements she was making. “You’re getting it now. Ready to try the real thing?”

  She grinned. “Yes!”

  For some reason, he’d thought she’d be more tentative. It was hard to imagine the woman who’d had her whole life planned out by the time she was twenty-two just hopping onto a hunk of fiberglass and floating out into a lake where she was likely to fall over, get a sunburn, or run into any number of situations she couldn’t control. Hell, it was hard to imagine Miss Frostypants voluntarily getting wet.

  “Hey, what’s so funny?”

  He’d been grinning when his old name for her popped into his head. He hadn’t thought of her as Miss Frostypants for a while. He could see now that although she could still be prickly and irritating, “frosty” wasn’t the right word to describe her at all.

  She also wasn’t wearing pants.

  He cleared his throat. “Okay, walk your board out a ways and then just hop on.” He demonstrated. “It’s easier to start kneeling. We’ll paddle like that for a while, and then when you’re feeling steady, we can stand.”

  She laughed as she clambered onto the board. For a few minutes, the only sounds were their oars slicing through the water, the cawing of seagulls, and the occasional “whoa!” from Amy as she got used to balancing on the board. She was a quick study, though. After only a few minutes, he talked her up onto her feet, and they began paddling in a straight line parallel to the shore—he didn’t want to get too far out on her inaugural trip.

  They went for ten minutes or so, then he slowed down—he’d gotten too far ahead of her. He turned around and watched her approach. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in some kind of updo, and that, combined with her vintage swimsuit and her bright red sunglasses, made her look like an Esther Williams-style pinup girl from another era.

  “Ahh!” she laughingly shrieked as she pulled up beside him and tried to slow to a stop. But she had too much momentum going.

  “Fall away from the board!” he yelled, just before she hit the water. She had assured him she could swim and had eschewed the life jacket he offered.

  Clearly, she should have worn one. Adrenaline spiked through him, and he hit the water, too. With Kat—the only other person he ever paddleboarded with—he knew she could swim because he’d suffered through years of lessons with her.

  “Amy!” he shouted when she didn’t surface right away, panic clawing at him.

  “That was awesome!”

  Okay, so he’d overreacted. She’d just swum a few lengths underwater, and there she was bobbing in the lake, grinning. He assessed her stroke as she swam back to him and the boards. Yep, she was a capable swimmer. Good to know for next time.

  Next time. Was he assuming they would do this again? He filed that question away and steadied her board as she threw her arms over it. He did the same with his, and they bobbed in the water for a few moments.

  “That was maybe more fun than the actual paddleboarding!” She closed her eyes and tilted her head up to the sky. “I can’t believe I’ve never been in this lake before!” Before he could answer, she pressed her hand against her forehead. “Hey! I lost my sunglasses!”

  “Oh, crap,” he said, looking around, though he knew it was fruitless. “I’ll replace them.”

  “Oh, it’s no big deal,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “They were ugly anyway.”

  “They weren’t ugly.”

  She cocked her head at him. “Mason hated them.”

  “Well, it’s a well-established fact by now that Mason is an idiot, is it not?”

  She grinned. “I have a thing for crazy sunglasses. The weirder, the better. Mason said it was juvenile.”

  An image of her wearing her strawberry perfume and those red glasses—and, let’s be honest, not much else—popped into his head unbidden. “A giant, fucking idiot,” he said, half expecting her object or at least to roll her eyes at him.

  Instead she just shot him another grin. “Okay, if you fall off the proverbial horse…” Nodding, he held her board while she climbed back up. With the sun glinting off her wet skin, she looked like a sea goddess. It was getting harder—in more ways than one—to be around her. Maybe they should give the casual fling one more try.

  “You know,” she said, as she tested her balance and stuck her oar into the water. “This is the most fun I’ve had since…forever.” She shot him a beatific smile. “You were right. I didn’t even realize how badly I needed friends that had nothing to do with couplehood.”

  “Mmm.” Well, he’d made that particular bed, hadn’t he? Suppressing a groan, he hoisted himself back up on his board. “What do you say we turn back and get some lunch?”

  “Yes! I’m starving.” She licked her lips.

  He was well and truly fucked.

  “That was way harder than it looks,” Amy said as they set out for home after burgers at the Island Café.

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of core work required to keep yourself upright in the water,” he answered, handing her one of the mini blueberry tarts he’d snagged to go.

  “I can see how it would be almost…meditative once you got good at it. If you went by yourself, I mean.” She shot him a glance. “Not that the company today wasn’t top-notch.”

  “Come by anytime and borrow my board. I’ll stay out of your hair.”

  She did a funny fist-pump as they turned onto his street. “I love it! A little more than a week ago, I only knew about your”—she whipped out the air quotes—“‘public-facing house.’ Now I’ve totally penetrated the inner sanctum!” She took a bite of the tart. “Oh my God, this is so good.”

  Two things happened then. First, Amy moaned. They were good tarts, but Jesus. He wanted to tell her to do whatever was the audio equivalent of keeping it in her pants, but he feared that would puncture the pleasant détente they seemed to have achieved.

  Anyway, that his train of thought was derailed by the second thing that happened, which was that Kat moaned.

  Kat, who was standing on his porch, gripping the railing with all her might, doubled over in what looked—and sure as hell sounded—like pain.

  He dropped both boards and covered the rest of the block at a sprint. “Kat! What’s the matter?”

  Her head shot up, and she glared at him like when they were kids and she’d caught him going th
rough her diary. “I’m having this fucking baby three weeks early, that’s what’s the matter. Three weeks early and on your porch.”

  His worst fear had come to life. This was exactly what he’d been on her case about the last month or so when she’d insisted on coming to the island despite his objections. “Goddammit! I told you a thousand times to stay on the mainland this last month.”

  “Yeah, well, I told this baby a thousand times to stay inside until she’s due because the nursery isn’t even remotely ready and— Ahhhh!”

  That wail. It made its way inside him and sank barbed-wire claws into his soul. His sister was going to die on his porch. His vision started to get blurry. There were a bunch of things he needed to tell her, but he couldn’t make his mouth form the necessary words.

  “Okay,” Amy said, jogging up the path. He was still standing in the yard, but she slipped past him and made her way up to the porch. “First labors usually take a long time, right? I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere.” She spoke soothingly and laid her hand on Kat’s forearm. “So I’m sure you have plenty of time.” She turned to him. “Call 911.” Her voice was still calm. He nodded.

  “Plenty of time, my ass!” Kat shouted. “This baby is— Ahh!” Another ungodly wail.

  “Dax!” Amy hissed, startling him out of his fear-induced haze. “Call 911 now.” He pulled out his phone. She made a shooing motion with her fingers. “Don’t let Kat hear you panic. So if you can’t be calm about it, go around back to make the call. Then ask Gary to meet the paramedics.”

  He pulled out his phone and, with shaking hands, performed the necessary steps to answer the dispatcher’s questions and summon and instruct Gary.

  Calm. Kat needed him to be calm. Kat’s baby needed him to be calm. It was just that he loved his goddamned sister so fucking much, that…

  “Okay, sweetie,” he could hear Amy cooing to Kat as he came back around to the porch. “Everything is going to be fine.” She was talking to Kat, but her voice was like an anchor to him, too, giving him something to focus on. “You’re not having a heart attack. You’re having a baby. People do it all the time. Let’s get you inside where you’ll be more comfortable.”