“Are you alright there Caroline?” Stevo asked. I groaned, then nodded. My head was throbbing, so much so that I couldn’t even care that Mark had just seen me cough up seawater onto my bathing suit. Oh God, why did I choose the one piece?
“What happened?” I finally managed to mumble, my throat feeling raspy and sore.
“You were right by the sand, it looked like you lost your footing,” Mark replied. “You fell off the board, and hit your head. The water was less than a foot deep where you went in. I was the closest person to you, when you didn’t get up right away I came and got you, and Steve did first aid.”
“Thank... thank you, both of you,” I replied, thoughts swirling in my head. Everything was slowly starting to make sense again, and the more I realized exactly what had happened, the more embarrassed I got.
Here I was, lying on the beach because I fell off a surfboard and hit my head in a foot of water. I couldn’t believe it. I had made a complete and total idiot of myself. I had to get out of here. I had to go back to the hotel, forget this had happened at all, forget Mark existed, and go on with my life again.
I tried to get up, Stevo and Mark giving me a hand. The world spun and I took a few tentative steps.
“Are you alright, Caroline? I can call you an ambulance, if you want to go to the hospital. I suspect you’ve got a concussion,” Stevo told me, but I shook my head. The only thing that could possibly be more embarrassing than what had already happened was having to go to the hospital on top of it.
Besides, with every passing second I was feeling better and better.
“No, thanks, I think it was just a bit of a shock, I’m feeling fine now,” I replied, hoping my voice sounded confident.
“Let me at least take you back to the hotel. You can’t say it’s not on my way,” Mark told me, flashing me that gorgeous smile that, even in the state I was in, couldn’t help but send a heat rushing through me. Shit, he does recognize me I thought. There was really no way to get around this. It wasn’t like I could say I didn’t want him to go out of his road.
“Thank you. That sounds nice,” I told him. “If you’re busy though, I’ll be fine. I’m feeling better already,” I replied, flashing a smile of my own and hoping against all hope that he did have something else to do.
“Oh no, I’m on vacation, I don’t have anything planned for the rest of the day.” Crap. There goes that. I guess I’m going to have to actually do this, I’m going to have to walk back to the resort with the sexiest guy I’ve ever spoken to.
My heart was pounding as I handed back my stuff to Stevo, he wished me luck and told me not to worry if I had to go to the hospital, then Mark and I headed back to the resort.
“So you’re here on holidays?” he asked as we headed slowly back down the street. My headache was pretty much gone, and the more normal I felt, the more my embarrassment meter went into overdrive.
“Yeah. Our branch won a contest run by the company, everyone in the branch won a week’s vacation in Hawaii. Listen, thanks for getting me out of the water. It’s pretty embarrassing, I can’t believe I did that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Everyone falls, some people just have worse luck when it comes to where they fell. It could have happened to anyone.”
“I guess so. Didn’t happen to you though.”
“That’s because I’m a sporting legend.”
I looked up at him, surprised. “Seriously?”
Mark laughed, not in a mean spirited way, just the way people do when they’re having a joke.
“Nah. I wish. Well, I used to wish, anyway. I wanted to be a professional football player when I was little. Of course, the fact that I was incapable of catching a ball got in the way of that dream.”
I thought it was going to be the most awkward thing, walking back with Mark. I mean, I had never been a conversationalist for conversation’s sake. I always thought of myself as awkward with strangers. On top of that, I didn’t know if I could hide the fact that every fibre, every cell in my body was on fire, electricity passing through me, desperate for Mark to touch me. I wanted his hands all over me. I wanted his tongue all over me. I wanted to give him free reign over my body, wanted him to bring me to new heights of pleasure I couldn’t have fathomed in my wildest dreams, but under no circumstances could I let him know that. Absolutely not a chance.
It wasn’t as awkward as I thought it would be though. Mark was one of those people who can have a conversation with literally anybody. The more we spoke, the more at ease I felt, even though I couldn’t help but feel the pulsating desires in my body every time he looked at me.
“So where are you from?” he asked.
“Minneapolis. I’m a financial analyst.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a financial analyst that surfs.”
“I wouldn’t describe what I was doing out there as ‘surfing’,” I joked, and Mark threw his head back, laughing.
“You were fine. Honestly, I was impressed. You stayed on the board a lot better than most people.”