The Billionaire's Hired Bride (BWWM Billionaire Romance Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

over excitedly to a crack between the rocks, where green shapes were clustered up, just barely beneath the water level, which still had a little further to drop before the lowest point of the tide.
     
    “Look! These are anemones, aren’t they?” she said, pointing down into the crevice, careful not to actually put her hand down there – she didn’t know how nasty the sting of these might be, if they were what she thought they were.
     
    James, leaning over from a rock behind her, nodded. “They must have closed off to retain water during low tide. I didn’t know that they could be found this close to the water level.”
     
    “It is an unusually low tide,” Minnie pointed out, thinking of the tide chart she’d seen online earlier that morning. “The moon’s almost full, right?”
     
    James nodded. “And that means it’ll come in farther when it does, so if we want to get to our lunch spot before then, we should keep moving.”
     
    Minnie nodded, and slid closer to the cliffs on the rock to let him go past, leading the way towards whatever spot he was talking about. James claimed it was a flat rock and fairly private, high enough to be above most of the tides but not hard to climb to, as long as you were careful. Once they got there, they’d be trapped by the tides throughout most of the afternoon, but Minnie’s impression of the area so far was that, after the climb, she’d be glad for the break.
     
    They worked their way slowly around the cliffs, only stopping once more to examine a crab skittering back into its hole on their way. By that time they were over the water properly, and it was deep enough, with strange currents between the rocks, that being pulled out to sea was a real danger. Minnie knew how to make her way back in theory, if that happened.  She wasn’t particularly eager to try it out, and so she was extra careful as James finally started leading them up.
     
    The rock he stopped on was plenty large enough for the two of them, mostly flat with a slow slope down towards the water. There were a couple cracks across the worn, smooth stone that were full of tiny, clustered barnacles, but other than that there was little to distinguish it from the rest of the cliff. It was close enough to the edge of the cliff that now, with the sun only an hour or so from its peak, most of it was bathed in sunshine. Minnie was surprised to feel how warm the stone was when she put her hands on it to climb up after James, who scooted near to the far edge to give her room up after him. He stayed there even after she was up, leaning against the wall of stone that bordered the back and most of that side of the platform.
     
    “So,” he started, grinning, “What do you think of the view?”
     
    Minnie, still busy catching her breath after the climb, hadn’t even looked yet. When she looked up, out over the ocean, it wound up being that even trying to catch her breath was pointless, as it all escaped her again immediately in a gasp at the sight.
     
    The cliffs stretched far enough out that the waves at the base were tall and white with foam. Beyond that, she could see the line were the blue-green of the water darkened, the seafloor underneath dipping down a hundred, two hundred feet beneath the surface. What really amazed her, though, was what she couldn’t see – there was no shore and no evidence at all of people beyond the cliffs, just a few gulls flapping over the water. From this spot, with the sound of the waves drowning out the sound of the people on the beach below, it was possible to pretend that no other human had seen the sight before.
     
    She glanced back at James, who was still grinning, before leaning back against the rock. “It’s amazing,” she said quietly.
     
    “Worth the climb?”
     
    “Yeah. Definitely.”
     
    James unpacked lunch while Minnie unrolled a towel, took off the shirt over her bikini top, and settled in to get a little bit of a tan on her caramel skin, dark sunglasses