Tanner set down his shake, then stretched his arms behind his head. He could hook the loops of her tiny jean shorts with the tips of his fingers. One tug, two, brought her reluctantly forward, until her belly ran into the top of his head.

“Tell me.”

She leaned over to put her iPad on the table next to his protein shake. Her fingers combed through the sides of his hair. She dredged up a weak imitation of her usual smile. “You like the view.”

He made an exaggerated examination of her face. There was certainly nothing to complain about. Up the long stretch of her smooth stomach, to her breasts, then her beautiful face bent down to smirk at him.

“I do. I certainly do.” But it was obvious she needed more than goofy. So he pulled her around to the side of his chair, then down into his lap.

“Oh, c’mon. It’s over ninety degrees, the sweat’ll glue us together.”

She pushed at his chest, as if she’d get up, but he wrapped his arms around her hips. And she wasn’t protesting that hard, not really. Avalon spent hours in the water, daily. She could put a lot more oomph into wiggling out if she wanted.

Instead she gave another sigh and leaned back against his chest. One long leg dangled over the arm of the chair still, but the other rested across his thigh. Her ponytail trailed across his bare chest in a silky swish.

All in all . . . right. Avalon was exactly where she belonged.

Everything in its place. A warm feeling that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun melted Tanner from the inside out.

He spread one hand flat across her bare stomach. The muscles under there were still slightly tense, as if she couldn’t quite relax. “Now spill it.”

“They said everything was fine.” Her voice was quiet, but this close he couldn’t help but absorb every nuance. He wouldn’t want to miss a thing anyway. “Every picture I sent them was useable and good. The spread in SURFING will be five pages, with at least one double-page included.”

“That all sounds awesome.” But the muscles under his fingers still hadn’t eased. He kneaded lightly, stroking down her skin. She was gorgeous, every inch of her. But she was about as tense as a newly strung guitar.

“It is.”

He slipped his fingers under the line of her jaw and tipped her face up, forcing her to look at him. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”

Her mouth finally started to slip out of the smile. “Oh? What would that be?”

“I’ll have to fuck it out of you.”

She laughed, giving an extra little wiggle of her ass. “In the first place, crude much? And second, I don’t think that’s much of a threat.”

“Why Ms. Knox, are you implying you like the dirty things I do to you?”

Her eyes drifted shut and she made a humming noise in the back of her throat. The slinky move of her arms up over his shoulders rubbed her ass across his lap. “Like? No. Love? Oh hell yeah.”

There had been occasions where the word love had struck fear in Tanner’s stomach. Once or twice it might have even sent him running in the opposite direction. Maybe not the best thing to admit, but he’d always been on the up-and-up with the women he got involved in. Never went in without letting them know he wasn’t looking for anything permanent. Not yet.

Not then.

But with Avalon sitting in his lap, he certainly wasn’t going anywhere, now was he? “You’re not getting up until you tell me. So you might as well give in.”

She sighed. “You’re kinda stubborn under all that laid-back charm, aren’t you?”

He laughed a little bit. “Um, yeah. World Championships don’t come free.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” She kept her face trained carefully toward the view. It almost felt like she was avoiding looking up at him. But it gave him the freedom to drink in her fine features and the roundness of her cheeks and her snubbed nose. “People. You don’t give them up. Your opinion of someone can be hard to shift.”

Under her words was something he couldn’t read. Something he wasn’t getting. “Is that good or bad?”

“Both?” She almost seemed to shake it off. The grin she flashed up at him was entirely cheeky. “Depends what you think of me.”

“I think you need to talk.”

She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t the more I hoped for.”

“The more?”

“The spark was missing. Everything was fine, but no more. No one was totally in love with my pictures.” She sighed. Her fingers fiddled with the hem of his shorts and though her gaze had dropped, she wasn’t really seeing him. “It’s greedy, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“I’ve got everything. What I said I wanted—a spread in a major surf magazine. A huge campaign’s going to be run off my shots. But I still want more.”

Something within Tanner stilled and coiled. Leashed energy waiting for the word go or a wave before cresting. He’d been bulling his way through life, but all of a sudden, he pulled up short. Ready to wait if needed. The hand he stroked over Avalon’s hair trembled the tiniest bit. No one would ever know, not even her, but he noticed. He felt it. “What is it you want?”

The moment hovered. Three waves crashed into shore in the meantime. Finally, she sighed. “Everything. But I’ve got no freaking clue how to explain it.”

“Try.”

“I want to make people care about my photos. Not because they’re contracted and perfectly decent and show a killer sweep through a barrel. Though they do.” She patted his thigh and looked up. “You look awesome.”

“Not the concern right now, but I’m glad to hear that,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.”

“I think I do.” He kept stroking over her hair as he gathered a few thoughts. There was a track to grab somewhere along there, not the one he’d almost got lost down. “It’s the difference between technical proficiency that gains me a couple more points in a heat . . . and finding the perfect ride. The perfect moment where wave and board go together.”

She nodded. “Exactly the way they were meant to. I want that. I need it. There’s a technically good picture, and I think I do that just fine, but there ought to be emotion and feeling behind it. I didn’t hit that. I can tell by their voices on the phone. All fine, but . . . no one fell in love. The pictures are ‘appropriate’ and ‘sufficient.’ Exactly what I hate.” Her sigh almost drifted away on the ocean breeze.

“Did you send them everything?”

“Not exactly.” Her cheeks hollowed as if she were suddenly holding back a smile.

Suspicion narrowed his eyes and had him bending his head to look at her features. “What does that mean?”

“I didn’t give them certain ones.” The held-back smile burst into a full-fledged grin that was as bright as the sun. She wiggled over and grabbed the iPad. A couple flicks opened the photo-viewing program. “Like, oh I dunno. You drinking coffee in this very chair the morning after we slept together. Or this one. You have a fine ass.”

The picture showed Tanner in bed, completely racked out. He was naked except for the pale gray sheet covering his ass. She’d focused on the small of his back, and though his face was in the picture, turned to the side on the pillow, he was fuzzy and gently out of focus. He groaned, pressing his eyes to the warmth of her hair. “Thank God for small favors, I suppose?”

“More like more of me being greedy.” She wiggled a hand under his hips, fingertips grazing the ass in question. “I want to keep it all to myself.”

“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” What he really wanted to ask was if they were more than that, but he also wanted to be able to look other men in the face now and then. Asking such a chick question would leave him terminally embarrassed.

She craned up to look at him, one eye slightly squinted. “Maybe? I don’t want . . . us wrapped up in my career any more than we already are. It’s one thing if I can still take a brilliantly awesome picture of you catching air. It’s another if I make my mark with something pretty damn intimate.”

He curved his hand over the back of her neck. “That’s us. You and me. We don’t need anyone else looking in on it.”

He slicked his fingertips across the iPad, moving to the next picture. In this one, he sat on the beach. His knees were up and his wrists drooped between. He’d been grinning at Avalon, teasing her about what they’d do later that evening, and looking at the photo, he realized every single thought was in his eyes. He blazed with dirty intent. He swallowed. “Thanks for not sending these ones in. They’re . . . Christ, they’re too much.”

She nodded, her head tucked under his. “Yeah. I . . . These are more snapshots than anything else.” She tilted her head back enough that she could flash him one of those naughty smiles. “For my own personal consumption.”

Part of what he loved about Avalon was how complicated she was. Serious depths one moment, cheeky and dirty the next.

That quiet part of him shuddered to a stop again. The wave that had gathered earlier broke open. Wild. Uncontrolled, like a freak swell from some far-off storm that couldn’t even be seen over the horizon.

Did he love Avalon?

More than that, if he did, where did that leave them? If anything, his career was ridiculously in flux. The next two days would leave him either a reigning champion or the sad sack who’d given up something epic to a fluke missed wave. Anything was possible.

A ten-year span of history waited to be marked down in the rule books. And here Tanner was, more worried about the woman in his lap.

The special, amazing woman who shared his sense of focus but took it up a notch with a life-affirming energy that lit him up.