Chapter Four
H ailey Greenwood had experienced many humiliations in her career.
She had once tripped over a media cable in front of three network cameras and turned it into a discussion about workplace safety.
She had accidentally sent a sharply worded internal email to the client it was written about and somehow walked it back before lunch.
She had once been photographed leaving a crisis meeting with a smear of mascara under one eye and had spent the rest of the day being described online as “haunted but stylish.”
But nothing—not one professional disaster, not one social misstep, not one cursed moment in the long and exhausting history of being a human woman in public—could compare to touching Tyler Von’s abs with a café napkin.
Hailey paced the small living room of the bungalow with her muffin in one hand and her replacement iced latte in the other.
“I touched his abs,” she said aloud.
The bungalow, mercifully, did not answer.
She took a bite of muffin, chewed angrily, then pointed what remained of it toward the ocean-facing windows. “I was trying to help.”
Outside, the Pacific rolled and glittered beneath the late-morning sun, indifferent to her shame.
Hailey stopped pacing and stared at the beach.
This was exactly why she did not do vacation flings. This was why she did not flirt with athletes. This was why she kept her life neat, controlled, professional, and firmly contained within the boundaries of acceptable conduct.
Because give her one morning away from her inbox, and she was apparently one spilled latte away from patting down a half-naked volleyball player in front of strangers.
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table.
Amanda: How is beautiful, restful, emotionally restorative Santa Monica?
Hailey stared at the message.
Then she looked down at herself. Sundress slightly wrinkled. Hair wind-tangled. Pride somewhere beneath the floorboards.
Hailey: I assaulted the same man again.
Amanda: Again?
Hailey: Accidentally.
Amanda: Is he hot?
Hailey closed her eyes.
Amanda: I’ll take your silence as yes.
Hailey: I dumped iced coffee on him.
Amanda: Was he wearing a shirt?
Hailey: Technically.
Amanda: I’m proud of you.
Hailey: That is not the appropriate response.
Amanda: It is my honest response.
Hailey tossed the phone onto the sofa before Amanda could make it worse.
She was not thinking about Tyler.
She was not thinking about his grin, or the way his stomach had tightened beneath her hand, or the wicked little curve of his mouth when he told her being large was not usually a complaint.
She was especially not thinking about the way he had asked how her head felt, softer than she expected, as if beneath all the teasing there was actual concern.
No.
She had come here for herself.
Rest. Sun. Solitude. Emotional recalibration. Maybe a tropical cocktail. Maybe two.
Not Tyler Von.
Not his volleyball.
Not his chest.
Not whatever irritating gravitational pull seemed to exist between them.
Hailey finished the muffin with unnecessary force, then marched into the bedroom and changed into her red bikini.
If she stayed inside, she would think about him. If she went to the beach, she would not think about him, because she would be reading. She would be calm. She would be composed. She would be an elegant woman on vacation, enjoying literature and hydration.
Twenty minutes later, she packed her beach bag like she was preparing for war.
Sunscreen.
Towel.
Snacks.
Sunglasses.
Her Stanley filled with ice water.
Forget Me Not, which deserved her full attention after being repeatedly interrupted by masculine nonsense.
She added a second bottle of sunscreen, then frowned and removed it because overpacking sunscreen felt like fear, and Hailey Greenwood was not afraid of the sun.
She was not afraid of anything.
Except maybe her own poor judgment around men with steel-blue eyes.
By the time she reached the sand, the day had turned bright and warm, the kind of California afternoon that seemed engineered to make people forget consequences.
Families clustered near umbrellas. Kids shrieked near the surf.
A couple walked hand in hand along the shoreline.
Music drifted from somewhere down the beach, low and summery beneath the steady crash of waves.
Hailey walked past the volleyball courts with her chin high.
She did not look.
She absolutely did not look.
She kept walking until she found a spot that was safely farther from the court than yesterday. Not too far, because the angle of the sun was better here. And because the sand was smoother. And because the breeze was less aggressive.
All practical reasons.
None of them related to Tyler.
She spread out her towel, applied sunscreen, adjusted her sunglasses, and settled onto her stomach with her book open in front of her.
The beach warmed her skin. The ocean sighed. A gull cried overhead.
For almost ten full minutes, peace held.
Then she heard the first sharp smack of a volleyball.
Her eyes stayed on the page.
Another hit. Harder this time.
A cheer rose from a group nearby.
Hailey turned the page without reading a single word.
A man laughed.
Not Tyler’s laugh.
She knew that because Tyler’s laugh was lower. More dangerous. It had a rough edge to it, the kind that seemed to drag over her nerves in the most inconvenient way.
Not that she had catalogued his laugh.
That would be absurd.
She lifted her book a little higher.
Another ball snapped over the net.
Someone dove into the sand.
Hailey’s gaze betrayed her.
Tyler had arrived.
He stood near the court with Jack, shirtless and sun-bronzed, wearing the same navy swim briefs that had already done criminal things to her concentration the day before.
His sun-streaked brown hair was tousled from the wind, and his skin gleamed faintly with sweat as he stretched one arm across his chest.
Hailey swallowed.
“Read the book,” she whispered to herself.
The heroine on the page had just discovered an old letter from her first love. Hailey should have cared. She usually loved old letters. Old letters were romantic. Old letters were safe. Old letters did not have abs or a mouth that made her forget basic manners.
She tried again.
One sentence.
Two.
Then Tyler jumped.
The motion was clean, powerful, and unfairly beautiful. He rose from the sand like gravity had given him special permission, arm swinging through the ball with controlled violence. The volleyball cracked across the net and landed hard inside the line.
A small group nearby cheered.
Hailey lowered her book half an inch.
Tyler landed, turned, and looked directly at her.
Even from a distance, she could see his grin.
Damn it.
She snapped the book back up.
***
On the court, Tyler Von felt like an idiot.
A grinning, sweaty, fully grown idiot who had just spiked a ball harder than necessary because a woman in a tiny red bikini had looked in his direction.
Jack noticed immediately, because Jack Wright had the instincts of both an elite athlete and an annoying older brother, despite being only six months older.
“You are embarrassing,” Jack said, catching the next ball against his hip.
Tyler rolled his shoulders. “I made the point.”
“You made a point. You also looked over at her like a golden retriever waiting for applause.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
Tyler glanced toward Hailey’s towel.
Her book was raised again, but not high enough to hide the fact that she was looking over the top of it.
Something pleased and reckless opened in his chest.
“She came back,” Tyler said.
Jack looked at him.
Tyler realized too late he had said that out loud.
Jack’s grin turned immediate and terrible. “Oh, she came back.”
“Don’t.”
“She came back to the scene of the crime.”
“She came back to the beach.”
“The beach is enormous.”
“She likes this spot.”
“She likes you.”
Tyler took the ball from him. “You know, silence could be a powerful choice for you.”
“Never been my style.”
“No kidding.”
Jack leaned closer, lowering his voice as if Hailey could hear them from several yards away. “Go talk to her.”
“I’m practicing.”
“You’re peacocking.”
“I am not peacocking.”
Jack glanced at Tyler’s bare chest, then at the court, then toward Hailey. “You just dove for a ball you could have reached by walking.”
“It was a drill.”
“It was theater.”
Tyler hated that he was not entirely wrong.
He had been aware of her from the second she stepped onto the sand. More than aware. His focus had sharpened around her presence, every movement on the court charged with the strange need to prove something.
What, exactly, he had no idea.
That he was good?
That he was worth watching?
That he was not only the man who had hit her with a volleyball and then been doused in vanilla latte?
All of the above, probably.
It should have irritated him. He had a championship coming up. He needed to focus. This was the year that mattered, the year that would either make everything he had sacrificed feel worth it or prove that almost was as far as he could go.
And yet Hailey Greenwood was sitting on a towel near his court, pretending to read, and suddenly focus felt like a flexible concept.
Jack tossed the ball up. “Run the cross-court drill.”
Tyler nodded.
They worked through the next fifteen minutes at full intensity.
Tyler moved fast, hitting hard, diving when necessary and occasionally when not.
His body responded to the rhythm of the game with familiar obedience.
Sand kicked up around his feet. Sweat slid down his spine.
The sun burned hot across his shoulders.
Still, every few plays, his gaze cut to Hailey.
She was watching.
Not constantly. Not openly. But enough.
Her book would lower. Her head would tilt. Her mouth would part a fraction when he jumped.
It was becoming a serious problem for his ego.
And possibly his sanity.
During a water break, Jack came to stand beside him.
“She’s still watching,” Jack said.