Drive Me Crazy by Erin Downing Read Free Book Online Page B

feels amazing. I’m going in.” Then, with her tiny little shorts and T-shirt still on, she lowered herself down into the pool and dog-paddled around before finally submerging to swim the rest of the width of the pool underwater.
    Sierra was next. She pulled her skirt off (it was from Anthropologie, and probably wouldn’t have fared well in chlorine) and wore just the bike shorts she had on underneath and her tank top. She eased herself into the water and dipped under.
    “You’re all alone out there,” Adam said to Kate, paddling over to her on the edge of the pool. “After all the hard work of busting in, don’t you want to swim?” She did, but she didn’t have bike shorts on like Sierra, and she wasn’t wearing short shorts like Alexis. Ridiculously, she was wearing jeans—which helped explain why she had been so hot all day. If it had been just her girlfriends, she’d have happily gone in the water in just her skivvies, but with him there—not so much.
    “I do, but…” Kate didn’t really want to tell Adam why she hadn’t yet joined them in the pool. He’d already made fun of her for being such a priss, and she didn’t really feel like ruining the evening by fighting with him again. But if he started teasing her, she knew she’d be pissed, and that would be the end of the fight-free period.
    “But what? You don’t want to come in naked, eh?” Adam was smirking again, which started Kate’s blood boiling. “Oh, don’t get feisty. I’m just teasing you. I bet you look great naked.”
    Before Kate could get mad, Adam splashed her, which cooled her off tremendously. Then he grabbed his wet T-shirt off the pool deck and set it next to her on the edge of the pool. “Wear this,” he suggested. “It will be like a dress on you. Then you can come in and play with the rest of us.”
    “Okay,” Kate agreed. She slipped inside one of the cabanas and pulled her hot jeans and tank top off. Adam’s shirt was soaked and chilly, but it felt great against her toasty skin. The T-shirt hung down to Kate’s midthigh—perfect. She ran out of the cabana and jumped straight into the pool. “Ayeee!” The water was colder than she’d thought it would be, and it felt amazing.
    They bobbed around in the pool for a long time. Kate and Sierra easily beat Alexis and Adam at a game of chicken, knocking Alexis off Adam’s shoulders in about five seconds flat. Alexis and Sierra settled into padded lounge chairs on the side of the pool, watching Adam and Kate do flips into the water. Kate had mastered the art of flips during their summers at the lake. Her little sister had taught Kate all her figure skating jumps and spins. Kate couldn’t stay upright on skates to save her life, but she could execute all the moves perfectly when she did them off the dock.
    Just as Adam hit the water with a loud thwack—his triple spin had gone awry and had turned into a basic cannonball—Sierra’s cell phone rang. Sierra shushed them all and flipped her phone open to answer it.
    “Hey, Mom,” she said innocently. “Yeah, we’re having a great time. We just got to our hotel for the night…. No, it’s pretty nice. It has a pool.” She smiled at the others, holding her finger to her lips while her mom talked on the other end of the phone. “No, Mom, don’t do that…. It will get easier…. Please. I’ll be there in a few days.” She paused again, and they all sat silently, listening to Sierra’s end of the conversation. “Can you just try? For Sasha…. Okay, I’ll see you in a couple days…. I love you, too. Say hi to Daddy.”
    She closed the phone, and exhaled a huge sigh. “Everything okay?” Kate asked.
    “Yeah,” Sierra mumbled. “My mom is threatening to go back to Jersey.”
    “Things aren’t going so well with her and your dad?” Alexis guessed.
    Sierra fidgeted with her phone, clearly uncomfortable and on edge. “I think it’s getting better. But my mom isn’t really willing to try. She gets