Appreciating Mike for saying so, she smiled. “But I just won’t be on the books as one of her bodyguards.” Kate didn’t need the income from that now that she was part owner in the business. She would earn 50 percent of the net profits from the sales. And Kate already had investments to tide her over. She supposed she needed to talk to either Lexi’s investment advisor or maybe even Derek’s to figure out a new investment strategy.

  “Right. You won’t be hurting financially without the job,” Mike said.

  Kate hadn’t really thought through all the ramifications of all the changes that could occur. “Okay, yeah, sure, I understand.”

  “She worries about you now, and I’m supposed to keep an eye on you while Ryder watches out for Lexi.”

  “No way.”

  Mike smiled. “Yeah way. Or what if you end up hiring a bodyguard and he intrigues you? Then you could have your very own bodyguard to watch you day and night.”

  Kate laughed. “That’s not going to happen.” Yet she could see how she would be put in the same situation as she put Derek when she interviewed for the bodyguard position.

  “Well, I know Derek has his bodyguards, so you’ll be okay. But if you start running into trouble, don’t hesitate to call on me. Ryder will be there for Lexi,” Mike said.

  “All right, thanks, Mike.” Then she ended the call. No way did she want to hire a bodyguard for herself. She was a bodyguard! Though she was happy for Lexi, who had hired Ryder and the two of them fell in love and mated each other. Now they had twins on the way…

  She thought about Lexi’s sporty little car and smiled. Kate suspected Lexi would be getting a van for the family soon. Ohmigod, even though Lexi would be hiring a live-in nanny, Kate would be a nanny wolf too! She couldn’t wait.

  ***

  About a half hour later, sooner than Derek thought Kate would get there, he went outside and greeted her as she parked her vehicle.

  She was all smiles, and he thought he’d made her day by inviting her over for a walk along the beach. Even though Lexi’s home was sitting on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and had a beach, it was small, and they couldn’t really walk anywhere there. “I brought a change of clothes in case I go into the water.”

  “Yeah, sure. You can wash up in one of the guest rooms that has its own bathroom. We can even shower off near the pool and then go swimming in the pool if you feel like it and the storm hasn’t reached us yet,” Derek said.

  “Okay, sure. I’m glad you asked me. I’ve felt I needed to get some exercise, and a beach walk or run is always fun.” She carried her bag into the house, and he directed her to the guest room where she could leave it.

  Then they went out to see the dogs, the two of them running around, chasing each other in the fenced-in yard he had installed for them. As soon as the dogs saw them, they raced across the yard to greet Derek and Kate.

  She petted them and hugged them as they licked her and brushed their noses against her hands to get her to pet them more.

  He knew she would like the dogs. “They love to go for a walk, and when I have more of them before I can find them homes, I always feel like I’m singling them out when I only pick one or two.”

  “Red and Foxy,” she said, reading the tags on the dogs’ collars.

  “All right.” Derek attached their leashes to their collars. “Did you want to walk one of them?”

  “Sure.” She removed her flip-flops and then peeled off her shorts and left them on a chaise longue by the swimming pool. She was wearing her bathing suit and a T-shirt. “Do you ever run as a wolf on the beach?”

  “Sure do.”

  “You don’t ever worry about anyone seeing you?”

  “No. The beach is closed at ten. We’ve never had any trouble running along the beach at night. No shops or restaurants are open. The beach is dark. We can see at night without having to use artificial means like humans would, so no one notices us. It’s just perfect.” Derek left his flip-flops next to the chaise longue and removed his shirt.

  Then Kate took Foxy’s leash and Derek followed with Red, and they descended the stairs to the beach where he unlocked the gate using the keypad. That was definitely useful when he went running as a wolf in the dark and didn’t want to have to worry about hiding keys anywhere. Will followed closely and the gate locked automatically behind them. Cliff would continue to provide security for the estate.

  They walked for some distance, and Derek wasn’t sure if Kate wanted to share the news with him just yet, but he wanted to congratulate her. “I heard the good news about you and Lexi and the partnership. Congratulations. It’s well deserved. You work at the business as if it were your own, and now it is.”

  “Thanks, Derek. I love it, and I love working with Lexi. She’s like the sister I never had.” Kate was just beaming, she appeared so pleased. “It came as a real surprise, and of course, I’m thrilled. Lexi just gave me the exciting news this morning before you called.”

  “So you were busy working?” He wondered then if Lexi had been with her when he called Kate and Lexi had encouraged her to go walk with him instead of it being Kate’s idea.

  “When you called? No. I had already gone home. Ryder and Lexi were having some alone time. Mike’s there, overseeing the house, but unobtrusively. I had just planned on watching a silly movie or starting a new series or something on TV, no real plans. So when you called, it was perfect timing because I really wanted to walk, but I needed the motivation.”

  Relieved Lexi hadn’t needed to convince Kate to walk with him, Derek smiled. He was so glad he had listened to everyone on his staff who told him to call Kate and not to wait.

  “Your dogs are dreams to walk. I had a silky terrier once, and she pulled at me to walk faster all the time, practically choking herself. I envisioned the Irish setters doing that with us too.”

  “I’ve worked with them. I’ve even had Cliff and Will training them so they know how to handle them. How’s the German shepherd wolf dog working out for Lexi? She seemed really good-natured.”

  “She’s the sweetest dog ever, but she’s a wolf too, so she has a mind of her own. The German shepherd part of her makes her a little easier to train. But she’s really friendly, and that’s the main thing.”

  “That’s good.”

  “So sometimes you have a lot more Irish setters?”

  “Yeah. Foxy and Red are mine, but I’ve had as many as ten rescue dogs at the house at one time. When I can find good families for them, I’ll let them go—because their welfare is most important to me. I haven’t had one rehomed who hasn’t loved his or her new family. In fact, the families who took them in send me pictures every Christmas and at other times during the year to show me how well loved the dogs are.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. Hey, do you mind?” She handed Foxy’s leash to him. “I’m going to dash into the water for a second to cool off.”

  Kate pulled off her T-shirt, handed it to him, and then ran into the water, waded out farther, and dove into the deeper water. He smiled at her. She was so cute. He hadn’t really believed she would swim in the ocean. The swimming pool, yes, maybe—but his other dates wouldn’t swim in the ocean because they would get salty and sandy and it wasn’t their thing. He’d asked a couple of them about going to the beach, but it was a no-go.

  Then Will came up and took the dogs’ leashes and Kate’s T-shirt from Derek so he could join her in the water. Derek hurried off to enter the water. Then he was moving deeper into the waves with her but glanced at the clouds building as the storm was slowly moving in from farther out over the ocean. Here near shore where they were, it was still sunny.

  She laughed when he joined her. “It’s hot, and I just had to cool down.”

  “You sure are. I’m so glad you came.”

  “Oh, me too. This is fun.” Then she swam out farther, and he swam out to join her.

  ***

  When Derek joined Kate in the ocean, she was thrilled. He was so hot, muscled, and bronzed. She’d hoped he would be all wolfish and enjoy the surf with her. Small fish bumped into their legs, and she laughed. They tickled her, and she hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t been in the ocean in ages. She loved how uplifting it was to be in the briny sea, the buoyancy of the water making her float. She felt some tidal pull, and as soon as she did, he grabbed her arm and pulled her close to him, being an anchor for her. She loved this. Then he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.

  The kiss he shared with her was sweet, and then he deepened it. Hmm, now this was nice. Really nice. She wrapped her arms around his neck and got into the kiss, tonguing him, enjoying this. He smiled. Okay, she wasn’t supposed to be doing this with him… She was trying not to make this too personal, but she was failing miserably. Maybe he knew her better than she knew herself.

  “I wanted to kiss you good night when I dropped you off at your place last night, but I couldn’t. You ran away too fast. But when you kissed me yesterday at the gala, I didn’t want that to be the last one.”

  She smiled and kissed him again. “I have to admit this is super nice.”

  “I have to agree. I go for a swim in the ocean every once in a while, but this is the first time I’ve ever swam with a woman, other than with some teenage girls when I was younger.”

  “Hmm, well, I’ve swam with guys before, but never a wolf. Did you tackle the teenage girls?” Kate asked with a smile. She could see him doing that.

  “No. You might be surprised to hear this, but I was shy with the girls.”

  She laughed, never expecting him to say that. He always seemed so self-assured around women. Not with Kate as much, but she suspected that had to do with her being a wolf and his being afraid of a permanent entanglement with her.

  She had the greatest urge to play with him. She dove under the shallower water and tackled his legs, expecting to sweep him off his feet. He was solid, his muscular legs just perfect as a runner—sturdy and immovable. Her plan foiled, she wanted to laugh. His legs moved, and suddenly he was diving under the water. She nearly gasped for air, she was so rattled as he went under the water searching for her.

  Then he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her up for air and kissed her. She kissed him back. So much for her being in charge. They broke off the kiss, and she hoped Will wasn’t watching them. She glanced at the beach where Will was standing with the dogs, her T-shirt draped over his shoulder, his back to them to give them privacy. He was the ideal bodyguard.

  “I didn’t expect you to tackle me.” Derek smiled at her.

  “I didn’t expect you to be so immovable.”

  He laughed. “I was trying to keep my feet planted in the sand and make sure we weren’t swept away.”

  “Then you disappeared under the water.”

  “So I could sweep you up in my arms and kiss you.”

  “Well, that was nice. Do you want to, um, play in the sand with me?”

  He raised his brows. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

  “Do you want to build a sandcastle?”

  He gave her a broad smile.

  “You don’t have to do it if you think it’s too silly. It could be messy. You can walk the dogs while I build the sandcastle and you can return with the dogs, and we can resume our walk.”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been wanting to do this forever, but I didn’t think anyone else would be interested. So yeah, we’re doing this.”

  Thinking he was funny, she was glad he was game. Then she and he released each other and headed into shore.

  Suddenly, a rogue wave hit them hard and knocked them off their feet. Kate went under, and when she came up, she saw Derek’s bare ass for a minute and was so startled, she couldn’t believe her eyes. And then he swam into the surf away from the shore.

  She called out, “What’s wrong, Derek?” She considered the notion that he might have lost his board shorts when they’d been pummeled by the wave. She had thought they had only been pulled down so that she was mooned. She hoped he hadn’t lost his swim trunks completely, but she wanted to laugh if that was the case.

  “In all the time I’ve been swimming in the ocean, I’ve never once lost my swimming suit.” He gave her a cocky smile.

  She laughed then. “Better you than me.” She called out to Will. “We have an emergency. I can be Derek’s bodyguard and you can get Derek some other swim trunks, or I’ll go get them and you can stay here and watch over him.”

  “I’ll call Cliff and he’ll come with a pair of trunks.” Will was trying to hide a smile, but he wasn’t very convincing.

  “I could just shift,” Derek said, smiling.

  “Oh, yeah, that would really work. Not. There are way too many people out here.” She could just imagine Derek diving into the water and then shifting into a wolf and coming out of the water as a wet gray wolf this time. People would worry that the man had drowned if they had been watching him go under. They wouldn’t know what to think of the wolf that suddenly took his place.

  “Aren’t you going to join me out here?” Derek had a wicked gleam in his eyes.

  She laughed. “What? To protect you from inquisitive onlookers?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “It’s a good thing you didn’t take some other woman with you today.”

  “I have never been with any woman in the ocean and lost my swim trunks. I’m glad I did this with you and not someone else.”

  Kate laughed again. She couldn’t help it. This had turned out to be a beautiful day already. Then she saw Cliff racing down the beach with a pair of blue board shorts. She smiled. This was just too hilarious.

  Cliff reached Kate and handed the board shorts to her. It was just a good thing that she hadn’t lost her swimsuit in the rogue wave. She carried the board shorts out to Derek and handed them to him. The waves kept hitting him, and he was going to have some time trying to pull them on.

  “Do you need my help?” She would certainly have wanted his assistance if she’d lost her bathing suit. She was glad she was wearing a one-piece.

  “Yeah, try and keep the waves from rolling this way, would you?” Derek had such a boyish look about him, like he’d been caught skinny-dipping when he shouldn’t have been. “I would have opted for shifting.”

  Every time he tried to lift a foot to step into one leg of his board shorts, a wave rolled into him, knocking him over.

  She wrapped her arms around his body from behind him to serve as his legs so that he could climb into his board shorts. She rooted herself to the ocean floor as well as she could as the current tugged at them both but enough that he could finally get his feet into his board shorts, and then he was pulling them up and he was perfectly clothed again.

  He turned around and hugged her. “Hey, thanks so much for saving my dignity out here.”

  “Yeah, it was my pleasure.”

  He kissed her then, and she kissed him back. Yeah, this was really pleasurable too.

  “Hmm.” He didn’t seem to want to let her go, and she had to admit she loved this. “I think it’s time to go in and build sandcastles, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I thought we had already decided on that. Until you lost your shorts.”

  He smiled at her as they swam to shore. Cliff and Will were smiling at Derek.

  “Did you want me to go back up to the house now?” Cliff asked.

  “Sure. I think it’s safe for you to do so. I’m going to work on building a sandcastle with Kate, and I don’t think I’ll need your services down here again,” Derek said.

  “You’re building sandcastles? You should have told me, and I would have brought some gardening tools,” Cliff said.

  “We’re going to just wing it,” Derek said.

  Smiling, Cliff shook his head and walked back to Derek’s estate. Foxy and Red were lying on the sand. Kate wondered if the dogs would have played in the surf if Derek had let them. But then they would be more of a mess than they were now.

  Then Derek and Kate sat on the beach and began building their sandcastle using a seashell Will had found for them. “I’ll go look for another.”

  Will took the dogs with him while he searched for another seashell.

  In the meantime, Derek was mounding the sand up for a base to the castle.

  Kate began building a wall. “This is great. I haven’t done this in so long.”

  “Yeah, I agree. I haven’t either.”

  She glanced back at the ocean. “I wonder if anyone will run into your board shorts at some time or another.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, maybe they’ll wash up on the shore and I’ll get lucky and find them.”

  “Hopefully they won’t be torn to shreds by sharks and give anyone the notion that there had been a shark attack or that searchers should look for a body.”

  Will came jogging back with the dogs, and she figured he must have finally found a seashell.

  “Okay, boss, here’s your sandcastle maker.” Will gave Derek the shell.

  It was much smaller than Kate’s seashell, and she chuckled.

  After a while, they had finished their four towers and walls, and then Will had to take a photo of the sandcastle.

  “Are you ready to finish our walk?” Derek asked Kate.

  “Yeah, I sure am. But I’m all sandy. Do you mind if we take a dip in the water before we walk? Just don’t lose your board shorts again.”

  “I sure don’t intend to. But I’ll feel better knowing you’re there to rescue me again if I need you to.”

  They went for a quick swim and washed off, and then they hurried back to the shore. As soon as they left the water, Derek said, “I wish I had brought towels for us. I didn’t even think of it.”

  “It’s sunny and warm, and we will drip-dry on our way.”