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  They snapped their heads back in place.

  Ida Belle chuckled. “Imagine how they’d have reacted if they knew it was the truth.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I’m retired from that line of work now. Now, I am a professional busybody and servant to a cat.”

  “So you’re not swimming?” Gertie asked again.

  “Oh hell, woman,” Ida Belle said. “You’re not swimming either. You’re going to wade out into that surf, get knocked down and dragged around on the sand for a bit, then you’re going to wind up right back here with us. We’re just being efficient about it.”

  I looked out at the water and nodded. “She’s right. None of us are interested in actual swimming, and those waves are high enough to make standing around and chatting difficult.”

  “Not to mention that we’d spill our drinks,” Ida Belle said.

  “Fine,” Gertie said. “Then you two can sit here and bake, but I’m getting in the water to cool off and do some mingling. I see several targets. Get me a margarita on the rocks. I’ll be back before it melts.”

  She pulled off her cover-up and headed toward the water, lumbering in the sand as if she were wearing cement boots. And even though I hadn’t thought it possible, the red bikini covered even less in the back than in the front.

  “Those sequins are going to give her a rash on her butt,” Ida Belle said before leaning back in her chair.

  I nodded. “Add that to the total body exfoliation she’s about to get in that surf and there might not be enough lotion in the pharmacy to handle it.”

  A cute blond guy with a dark tan and bright green eyes popped up next to us. “Can I get you ladies anything?”

  “Piña colada for me,” I said. “I want something with a slice of pineapple and an umbrella.”

  “Straight scotch,” Ida Belle. “The good stuff. Nothing cheap. And a margarita on the rocks for the crazy one who went swimming.”

  He beamed a giant smile of white teeth at us and winked. “I’ll be right back with those.”

  Ida Belle watched as he walked away. “That is one good-looking young man. Gertie should have stayed on shore.”

  I grinned, slightly surprised to hear Ida Belle talking about good-looking men. But then, we were on vacation.

  “One toss about in those waves and Gertie will landlock herself until we get a green flag,” I said. “Yellow-flag surf is just too rough to relax in.”

  “Got that right. And I certainly didn’t come here to exercise. We get enough of that back home.”

  “If we stopped going to the Swamp Bar, we could probably cut the exercise portion of our residency in half.”

  “Or if we left Gertie in Florida.” Ida Belle looked out at the water. “There she goes. Any bets?”

  “No point. We’d both be betting on the same thing.”

  “I’m just hoping her dunking doesn’t involve any disrobing. That bikini is the worst thing she could be wearing.”

  I nodded, and we watched as Gertie took a couple of hesitant steps into the water. Standing in six inches of surf must have bolstered her confidence, because she threw her shoulders back and pushed ahead.

  Ida Belle shook her head. “Here we go.”

  Chapter Two

  I rose from my chair and pulled off my cover-up. A couple chairs down from us, a group of college-aged guys whistled.

  Ida Belle looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. “You’re going swimming?”

  “Not by choice, but someone might have to pull her out.”

  “That’s what the lifeguard is for.”

  “If things go as expected with that bikini, I’m afraid he’ll hesitate on the extraction.”

  “Good point.” Ida Belle jumped up and pulled off her pants and shirt, exposing a pair of black board shorts and a solid black tank. I paused for a second, trying to remember if this was the first time I’d seen that much of her legs, but decided my musings would have to wait.

  We started across the sand toward the water, but realized quickly, we’d waited too long to make our move. With her newfound confidence, Gertie had lunged headfirst into water above her waist. Literally headfirst. One second, the sun was glinting off her white hair. The next second, it was glinting off her white butt. I broke into a run—as fast as one can run in sand—thankful that I’d caught a flash of red when Gertie upended. At least the bottom of that ridiculous bikini was still in place.

  For the moment.

  Gertie’s head bobbed up for a second and she let out a strangled cry, waving her hands in the air. One hand was clutching something red.

  “Oh good God,” I mumbled as I reached the water.

  A crowd had gathered at the edge of the ocean to watch and film Gertie’s potential death, and I had to shove my way through them to get to the water. I dodged two kids on floats and one drunk who was toasting Gertie with his beer and dived below an oncoming wave. I swam underwater until I spotted a swath of red around white legs and then I popped up.

  Gertie was a couple feet away and upright, but a huge wave was barreling toward us and I was afraid when it hit, that bikini bottom was going to head out to sea with the undertow. I yelled at her to duck and she frowned, but unfortunately, my warning didn’t register soon enough. She turned around just in time for the wave to slam her right in the face. Then her head went under and she disappeared.

  I ducked and dived in time to miss the wave and as soon as I surfaced, I scanned the surf, looking for her. About twenty feet away, I spotted something red floating and took off swimming that way. I saw Ida Belle coming from the other direction, the lifeguard in tow. I reached the red floating object and snagged it from the water. It was Gertie’s bikini top.

  Panicked, I ducked under the water and looked, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I surfaced and yelled at Ida Belle and the lifeguard.

  “She went under somewhere around here!” I said. “I can’t see her. Fan out.”

  Ida Belle and the lifeguard immediately went in the opposite direction, scanning the water for any sign of Gertie. A couple seconds later, I heard coughing and a man shouted.

  “Over here!”

  I spun around and caught a full face of saltwater wave, but I got a glimpse of a man with a float. I started that direction, wiping the salt water from my eyes, and was relieved to see a partially clad Gertie coughing on top of a blue floatie. Even more fortunately, she was lying on her stomach. The man with the float had thinning silver-and-black hair and was struggling to keep the float from tipping in the surf.

  Sixtysomething. Five foot ten. One eighty-five. Too tan. Too flabby. Why is he wearing a T-shirt in the water? No threat until Gertie is conscious enough to spot her hero.

  I made my way over and grabbed one end of the float.

  “Let’s get her in before the next set comes,” I said.

  He gave me a grateful nod and moved to the other end.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Gertie as we pushed through the waves.

  She coughed and gave me a thumbs-up. That was good enough. At least she was breathing and recognized a question.

  We were almost to the shore when the next big set of waves moved in. The first one swept under the float and pitched it up, tearing it from our grasp. I heard Ida Belle yell just before the wave sent me crashing into the ocean floor. The strength of the wave and the undertow rolled me a couple of times before I could get my feet planted on the bottom and launch up again. Gertie’s rescuer was struggling to stand next to me, and I grabbed his shoulder and yanked him upright.

  Gertie was still on the float, riding the top of the wave toward the beach. But now, she was completely conscious and her lungs were working just fine. She clutched the sides of the float, head lifted, and let out an excited hoot as the wave tossed her straight at the lifeguard. I heard her laughing as she pitched off the float and flattened the lifeguard on the beach.

  Ida Belle ran as the horrified lifeguard launched out from under the semi-naked woman who’d landed on him.

  �
�What?” Gertie asked. “No mouth-to-mouth?”

  “Good God, woman!” Ida Belle said. “Cover those things up.”

  “I lost my top,” Gertie said.

  “You’ve got hands!” Ida Belle looked around frantically, then grabbed two plastic pails from children standing nearby and plopped them on her chest. “Show’s over, people. She’s alive and no one else needs to see what’s under those buckets.”

  Gertie clutched the buckets and laughed hysterically as her rescuer and I made our way over. The lifeguard just stood there, no idea how to handle the situation. I was going to hazard a guess that his training hadn’t covered anything like half-naked seniors, even though it seemed it should have.

  Gertie looked over at me as I walked up. “Did you save my top?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I lost it in one of the fifty times I got rolled.” I motioned to the lifeguard. “Let’s get her up.”

  He gave me a look like a five-year-old who wanted to protest having to eat his vegetables but must have decided it was easier to comply.

  “Shoulder and elbow,” I said. “I don’t want those buckets slipping.”

  We each grabbed a shoulder and elbow and hauled her to her feet.

  “Are you all right?” the rescuer asked Gertie. “I’m sorry if I touched anything inappropriate getting you onto the float.”

  Gertie perked up. “What do you think you touched?”

  “I’m not really sure,” he said.

  I didn’t even want to think about all the things that simple sentence covered.

  “Well, thank you for saving me,” Gertie said. “I don’t really care what you touched to do it.”

  The man looked pleased. “As long as you’re all right.”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” Gertie said. “This isn’t even the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in the past month.”

  “I like a woman of adventure,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d let me take you to dinner tonight?”

  “Of course. Maybe we can revisit that touching thing,” Gertie said and winked.

  Ida Belle closed her eyes and shook her head, then turned around and headed up the beach toward our chairs. I trailed behind her. I was looking forward to the seafood buffet tonight and didn’t want Gertie’s romantic talk ruining my dinner.

  The drinks had arrived while we were gone and mine was already melted, but it didn’t matter. Ida Belle downed her entire glass, then whistled for the bartender and pointed to the glasses, signaling the need for another round. Then she picked up Gertie’s margarita and downed it as well. I took a big swig of my fruity drink. It wasn’t as good as it would have been frozen, but at that point, alcohol in the system was the goal. I really needed to take things down a notch. Or ten.

  I heard giggling and we looked up to find Gertie plodding through the sand toward us, still clutching the plastic pails over her chest. A bit behind her, a man of about thirty years of age stomped up the beach, glaring at her back.

  “You took toys from my children?” he yelled as he approached.

  Gertie turned around and the man locked in on the toys and the reason for their acquisition.

  “Sorry,” Gertie said. “You can have them back.”

  “No!” The man’s expression instantly shifted from angry to horrified, and he put his hands up in front of him and took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I’ll buy new ones.”

  He spun around as quickly as one can in the sand and hurried back down the beach, probably trying to work up a good way to explain to his kids why they were never, ever getting those buckets back.

  “If you’re not going to go back to the room, put on my shirt, for God’s sake,” Ida Belle said as she tossed her shirt over Gertie’s head. “You’re scaring the vacationers and spoiling my buzz.”

  “Your shirt doesn’t match,” Gertie said, her voice slightly muffled since the shirt was covering her head.

  “Shirt. Now.” Ida Belle waved a hand in dismissal. I didn’t want to point out that it really didn’t help, as one, Gertie couldn’t see her wave, and two, she also couldn’t see to walk. I climbed out of my chair and yanked the shirt off her head.

  “Come with me,” I said. “The bathroom is right behind us. You can change there. Trust me, the shirt will clash less than the plastic buckets.”

  “I’ll borrow the shirt,” Gertie said, “but only long enough to get back upstairs and change. I can’t be seen looking like a hobo, especially not now.”

  “Why the heck does it matter now?” Ida Belle said. “You just flashed half of Florida. Calls to therapists’ offices and drug dealers probably went up fifty percent in the last ten minutes.”

  “So I’m stimulating the economy,” Gertie said.

  “Don’t ever use the word ‘stimulating’ when talking about yourself,” Ida Belle said. “You owe me that much.”

  Gertie gave her the finger and stalked off toward the resort Our waiter arrived about five seconds later.

  “I missed your friend again,” he said. “I heard she had a mishap.”

  “If by mishap you mean losing half of her clothes and almost drowning, then yes, she had one,” Ida Belle said.

  He shrugged. “Happens several times a week. Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine,” Ida Belle said. “Everyone who got a good look might not be.”

  He nodded. “Drink orders have gone up in the last couple minutes. I have to run.”

  He hurried off and I grabbed my frozen fruity drink and took a sip. “Well, we’ve been here an hour and Gertie has almost died and flashed at least a hundred people.”

  “So…just like being back home,” Ida Belle said.

  “Except I see your knees. I never see them in Sinful.”

  Ida Belle grinned. “I don’t want to give people the wrong impression.”

  Chapter Three

  I was awakened the next morning by bright sunlight shining directly in my eyes. I groaned and turned over, pulling the pillow over my head, but it was as if the entire room was glowing. I cursed myself for forgetting to close the blinds but figured it probably had something to do with all the whiskey shots Ida Belle and I had knocked back the night before. With Gertie out on her “hot date,” Ida Belle and I had decided to do our favorite thing—stay in.

  So instead of a night filled with strangers, resort music, and watered-down drinks at the seafood buffet, we picked up a good quality whiskey and a pizza and spent the rest of our conscious night playing an HGTV drinking game. It had sounded simple enough when Ida Belle explained it—every time someone complained about the paint color, lack of granite countertops, or desire for real hardwood flooring, you took a shot.

  We were drunk before a single episode finished.

  The amount of complaining that people were willing to do on television amazed me. They all looked like spoiled babies. But on the plus side, the pizza was good, the whiskey was excellent, and since we’d both gotten a ton of sun, we’d headed to bed at a fairly early hour. Gertie was still out and unless we heard from her or the police, we had decided to assume that everything was still within legal limits.

  It was a wide-reaching assumption, but one that didn’t require getting off the couch or putting on pants. We’d headed to bed around midnight. Gertie was still out on the town, but we’d gotten a text earlier telling us not to wait up, so we’d followed her advice. About an hour later, I’d heard her open the front door, giggling like an idiot and whispering too loudly—I assumed to her date. I was just happy to hear a single set of footsteps going to her bedroom.

  It was useless to close the blinds and try to sleep more as I was already too awake, just not necessarily energetic. So I flung back the covers and headed into the kitchen. Ida Belle joined me as the coffee was just finishing up. She looked as alert as I felt.

  “I’m surprised to see you up this early,” I said. Ida Belle’s window faced west, so blind positioning wouldn’t make a difference for her.

  “Old habits,” s
he said and slid onto a barstool at the kitchen counter. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Forgot to close my blinds. Did you hear Gertie come in last night?”

  “Yes. I thought the giggling would go on forever. We’re going to have to listen to her recount that date all day long, aren’t we?”

  “Probably,” I said as I poured us both coffee. “But I draw the line when it gets to any states of undress.”

  “My line is when she walked out of the room to meet him.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to pull that one off.”

  “Well, at least I want to get in a cup of coffee, or maybe ten, before she wakes up. A bottle of aspirin wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”

  I nodded and pulled the bottle out of my shorts pocket. “Got you covered.”

  “That’s what I like best about military trained individuals. The preparation.”

  “Well, enjoy the aspirin, because I’ve got nothing for everything else that’s coming our way.”

  “More whiskey?”

  I groaned. “Maybe I’ll just go for cotton balls in my ears. Or running. As soon as our hangovers are gone, we can outrun her.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Maybe we could sneak out before she wakes up. We could have breakfast in peace, anyway.”

  Then we heard what sounded like yodeling coming from the master bedroom.

  Ida Belle sighed. “Too late.”

  A minute later, Gertie emerged, looking like someone had given her an energy drink. Her hair stood on end, her face was flushed, and she practically bounced into the kitchen, beaming at us like a cheerleader. All she lacked was a set of pompoms. And about fifty years off her knees.

  “I had the best night ever!” she exclaimed as she sat on a stool next to Ida Belle.

  “I’m sure,” Ida Belle said. “Fortune and I figured you could tell us all about it while we’re at the beach.”

  Gertie laughed. “I’m not hanging out with you two today. I have a beach date planned with Otis. We’re going to oil each other up and work on our tans.”