A Timeless Romance Anthology: Spring Vacation Collection Read Online Free PDF Page A

and enjoying the night. When the checks came, Clint paid for her meal, which was both exciting and a little nerve racking. Mark paid for Brylee’s too, though, and there didn’t seem to be anything romantic between them.
    “Anyone up for a walk on the beach?” Clint said when the meal came to an end. The sun had set during their meal, leaving a few swaths of orange across the evening sky.
    Sarah had been aware the entire time that it wasn’t raining tonight. She’d known this would be coming. Yet nerves and butterflies seemed to combine within her chest, making her dizzy with anticipation. “I’d love to,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too nervous or inexperienced.
    “I wanted to check out the club next door,” Brylee chimed in, taking the napkin from her lap and putting it on the table. Sarah knew that what her friend really wanted to do was leave Clint and Sarah. “Mark, would you like to join me?”
    “Um, sure,” he said, scooping the final bite of his dinner with his fork. He’d completely cleaned his plate. Rose got a star on her chart every time she ate her entire dinner. “I can’t say I’m much of a club kid, but I’m happy to head over there with you.”
    “Maybe I’ll make you into a club kid by the end of the night,” Brylee said with a smile. A pang of jealousy took Sarah off guard, but she didn’t know where it came from. She wasn’t jealous of them going to a club—not by a long shot. Was she jealous that Brylee was spending the rest of the evening with Mark? Sarah mentally shook her head—it was probably nerves again, masking what she really felt.
    The night was breezy but warm when Sarah and Clint left for the beach. The half-moon gave everything a shimmery look as the sun disappeared from the sky. Sarah felt like someone from a postcard as she reached down and took off her shoes so she could feel the sand beneath her feet. It felt different than sandbox-sand—softer and finer. Sarah had been to some of the lakes in Nebraska, and some of them had sand on their shorelines, but this was different than that, too.
    “I’ve never been to a beach before,” she said when they reached the wet sand. She looked behind her at the near perfect indentation of her footprints and smiled. Someday she needed to bring Rose to a beach like this. She would love playing in the sand and watching her footprints fill up with water. She looked over at Clint walking a few feet away. The wind had messed up his hair just enough to take him from handsome to devastatingly so. Will he kiss me tonight? Will I let him this time?
    “You’ve never been to any beach, or a Mexican beach?”
    “Any beach,” Sarah said, facing forward again. She shook her head, letting the breeze catch her hair and lift it off her neck. “Well, if you don’t count the lakes in Nebraska—I’ve been to a few of those, but they aren’t anything like this.”
    “Seriously?”
    His comment pulled her back from the moment she was getting lost in. Normal people with normal lives vacationed on beaches sometimes, didn’t they? The reminder that she wasn’t normal raised her insecurity, but she tried to push them away. “But I’ve been to Mount Rushmore about eighty times. That helps make up for it, right?”
    Clint laughed, and she relaxed a little. “I love the ocean,” he said, waving his hand at the water, which disappeared on the horizon. “I grew up in Santa Barbara and would love to move back one day—I miss early-morning surfing and taking a boat out to Catalina.”
    “No surfing in Washington?”
    He looked at her in surprise. “You’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest either, have you?”
    “Nope,” she said, her insecurity knocking again. “I’d like to one day, though.” Maybe to see you , she added in her mind.
    Waves crashed several feet to her right before stretching within a few feet of where they walked, as though each wave were trying to reach her. She veered a little closer to the water so