After he had seen that special side of her, he was unable to forget it and, while it took some convincing, soon the plan had made perfect sense.
The first phase of the plan started with simply observing her. As summer arrived, she began appearing in the same place at the same time every day to sunbathe. He found that spot one afternoon when he went for his daily run in an out of the way stand of woods just outside of town. There he found an old, abandoned parking lot next to a large lake. The parking lot was cracked and tall weeds grew through the cracks giving the place a kind of old west look. He didn't think much of it except that it was a convenient place to do his wind sprints without interruption. Just as he finished his final sprint and was panting for air, he saw something moving out of the corner of his eye. He had turned and saw her walk into view.
She was wearing a deep red sarong type cover up that paired nicely with her black, curly hair which was partially covered by a large straw sun hat. A pair of sunglasses hid her eyes and her black flip flop sandals slapped the pavements as she walked. The sarong covered her snuggly from shoulders to ankles and a small piece in the back dragged behind her as she strolled along, one foot in front of the other like a runway model. She noticed him and sent him a beaming smiled and a cheerful wave of her right hand as she carried a canvas beach bag in the crook of her left arm. Then she proceeded across the parking lot towards the lake where she disappeared behind a large boulder. Yet she hadn't disappeared before he noticed the accented sway of her hips and how the sarong hugged her breasts together into deep cleavage. It was a look he found intriguing.
So intriguing that the following day he was back running wind sprints in the parking lot on the off chance he'd see her again. Again, just as he finished sprinting, she strolled into view this time wearing a blue and gray crochet cover up that had more holes than material. Through the holes he saw a white French cut bikini and bronzed skin. Her hair was pulled back in a low, loose pony tail, but she still wore the hat, sunglasses and flip flops. He got another beaming smile and cheerful right-handed wave before she strolled behind the boulder, pausing to kick off her flip flops as she reached the grass area just after the parking lot ended. This day, due to the crochet cover up, her vibe was Hippy Beach Chick rather than Exotic Beach Vamp, but it intrigued him even more.
Which lead him to run his wind sprints in that parking lot for the third day in a row. Once again just as he finished, she flip-flopped into view, this time wearing a short white cotton sun dress cover up held together by two buttons in the front and hanging off one tanned shoulder. He could see her red bikini flash from beneath the white cover up with each stride and today she was not wearing her sunglasses. This time when she saw him, she stopped to regard him for a moment with her liquid chocolate eyes and he returned her gaze. She seemed to hesitate and then gave him a more subtle, lower wave and a little, more discrete smile. He panted for breath from his running but he waved to her, and the smile tugged up the right corner of her mouth a bit more and she tilted her head slightly to peek more directly at him over her bare shoulder. Was it a trick of the light or did she eye him up and down and bite her lip a bit before she turned and disappeared behind the boulder?
Yet this encounter not only left him intrigued, but a little flustered. Was she looking at him and flirting or was she concerned about his presence? In the end he decided not to take a chance that might discourage her from coming to that place. Instead, he decided on a different tact.
The next day instead of sprinting he hid himself on the lakeshore where he could observe the spot behind the boulder. He built himself a bit of a hunting blind by weaving branches of nearby bushes together and sat down with his binoculars to wait. Before long she strolled around the boulder and began to set up what he eventually started calling her camp.
That camp behind the boulder was always the same. It consisted of a large multi-colored blanket which she would spread out where she wasn't shaded from the sun by the boulder, yet the boulder still hid her from view unless you were on or across the lake. Then she would put out her sky-blue water bottle, her snack, her small radio and either a magazine or a book. After she had set up her camp, she would look all around her, spinning in place, presumably to make sure she was alone. Once satisfied she was alone, she would remove her coverall, it was always either the sarong, the crochet or the sun dress in a three-day rotation, and then arrange herself on blanket to tan.
Her choice in bathing suits showed she had a keen sense of style and was a real treat of the watching part of the plan. She wore only bikinis that were on the revealing side, but never thongs. She favored French cut bottoms that rode high on her hips so that her long legs look even longer and she seemed to have one in every color. Mostly she stuck to lighter colors and pastels to contrast with her black hair and darker skin, but his favorite was the blood red one. They all fit her exactly in the right places and she seemed to know how to subtlety arrange them on her body to come breathlessly close to exposing herself without anything slipping into view. All the better to tan herself, he figured.
He watched her sunbathing behind the rock alone for three weeks, carefully noting her arrival and departure times and her routines during her sunbathing time. She arrived in the lonely parking lot at 4:00 PM sharp every day and by 4:10 PM she had spread out her camp behind her rock. She packed up and left precisely at 6:30 PM every evening. Sometimes he heard her humming to herself along with the radio and sometimes, very rarely, she sang, but she wasn't a particularly good singer. Her voice was a touch flat and she didn't know her own range, so she made her untrained voice even worse by trying to sing the songs in exactly the same key as the singer on the radio. She drank something, water he suspected, with delicate little sips from a sky-blue water bottle which she kept zealously close to her side with a practiced caution of someone who knew not to let her drink out of her sight. Her preferred snack was grapes which she carried in a plastic bowl and she always nibbled at them, eating each grape in turn with three small bites of her polished front teeth.
She read Danielle Steele and other beach novel fare by the bushel and absolutely tore through crossword puzzles. If she heard a song on the radio that she liked she would wriggle around on the blanket or, if she wasn't reading or doing crossword puzzles, she might get up and dance. She kept time with the music fairly well, but she was only a serviceable dancer, mainly wiggling her body in a tight circle on the balls of her feet while clapping or snapping in time. Perhaps she knew she wasn't really a dancer so she stuck to moves that were cute and controlled rather than more complex steps.
Sometimes she seemed to pose on the blanket, carefully placing her legs, arms and body into a portrait of a woman vamping for a picture on the beach. Other times she would sprawl carelessly on the blanket with her limbs out at wild angles. And sometimes she would roll onto her stomach and waive her feet in the air behind her like a teen ager while hugging her boobs together with her left arm, which gave her the same deep cleavage as the sarong.
She steered clear of the water and never went in or even dipped her toes. It seemed all she wanted from the spot was sunshine and privacy. While she never took her top off, she was always undoing the straps of her tops or moving them so as not to get tan lines on her shoulders and back.