Truly Madly Yours by Rachel Gibson

time Andrea had lost her bikini top waterskiing across the lake.
    Something warm and unexpected settled near Delaney’s soul. Talking to Andrea felt like finding something she hadn’t even known she’d missed, like old worn slippers long ago discarded for a newer flashier pair.
    After Andrea, Lisa introduced Delaney to several single men who worked for Louie, and Delaney found herself on the receiving end of some very flattering male attention. Most of the single construction workers were younger than Delaney. Several were deeply tanned, had buns of steel, and looked like they’d jumped out of a Diet Coke commercial. Delaney was glad she hadn’t settled for that box of Franzia. Especially when a backhoe operator named Steve handed her a bottle of Bud and looked at her through clear baby blues. His hair was like sun-bleached butterscotch, and there was a scruffiness about him Delaney might have found enormously appealing if it hadn’t been so contrived. His hair was strategically tousled and too gelled to be natural. Steve knew he was gorgeous.
    “I’m going to check on Louie.” Lisa grinned, then gave Delaney a cheesy thumbs-up sign behind Steve’s back as if they were still back in high school and had to approve each other’s dates.
    “I’ve seen you around,” Steve said as soon as it was just the two of them.
    “Really?” She raised the beer to her lips and took a drink. “Where?”
    “In your little yellow car.” His smile showed his very white, slightly crooked teeth. “You’re hard to miss.”
    “I guess my car draws attention.”
    “Not your car. You. You’re hard to miss.”
    She’d felt so invisible in the plain T-shirts and shorts she’d worn lately that she pointed to herself and asked, “Me?”
    “Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who likes to pretend they don’t know they’re beautiful?”
    Beautiful ? No, Delaney knew she wasn’t beautiful. She was attractive and could make herself look damn good when she tried. But if Steve wanted to tell her she was beautiful, she would let him. Because, contrived or not, he wasn’t a dog— figuratively or literally. She spent so much time with Duke and Dolores that if she let herself, she could melt beneath such attention.
    “How old are you?” she asked him.
    “Twenty-two.”
    Seven years. At twenty-two Delaney had been experimenting with life. She’d been like a convict on a prison break—a five-year prison break. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four, she’d lived a life of reckless abandon and absolute freedom. She’d had a great time, but was glad she was older and wiser.
    She turned her gaze to the teenage girls on the beach below waving their arms and running to the edge of the water. She wasn’t that much older than Steve, and it wasn’t like she was looking for a commitment. Delaney raised the bottle to her lips again and took a drink. Maybe she could just use him for the summer. Use him, then dump him. Men had certainly used and dumped her. Why couldn’t she treat men the same way men treated her? What was the difference?
    “Uncle Nick’s back,” Sophie called up to Louie, who stood in a knot of people.
    Everything inside Delaney stilled. Her gaze flew to the boat slowly cruising toward the end of the dock, to the man standing behind the wheel of the Bayliner, his feet wide apart, his dark hair blowing about his shoulders. Shade from the towering pine fell across the surface of the water and bathed him and his three female passengers in shadows. Sophie shot down the dock with her friends trailing behind her, their excited chatter rising above the noise of the outboard engine. Nick’s responding laughter reached Delaney on the breeze. She set her beer on the rail and turned to find Lisa several feet away, looking very guilty.
    “Excuse me, Steve,” she said and moved to her friend.
    “Don’t kill me,” Lisa whispered.
    “You should have told me.”
    “Would you have come?”
    “No.”
    “Then