скачать книгу бесплатно
She let out a sigh of relief when she saw that it was Finn. And then for some reason on the heels of that relief came a surge of tension that rested like a ball in her chest.
She breathed in again, just like she had done outside, but this time, it was for fortification. This time, it was to try and do something to get rid of that tightness in her lungs.
Lane waited until he got out of his truck. Until he walked up the steps and stopped in front of the door. Then she waited until he knocked.
Only then did she open the door.
“Hi,” he said.
She just stood there, staring at him for a moment, her chest feeling tighter. He looked tired. His hat was pushed back on his head, dirt on his face making the lines around his eyes and mouth look more pronounced. His tight white T-shirt was streaked with even more dirt, and she could see on his battered jeans where he had wiped his hands on his thighs all day.
It was typical for Finn to look this filthy after a day on the ranch. But it was the exhaustion that struck her.
“What’s going on?” she asked, stepping back and allowing him entry into the house.
“It’s just a little too crowded at my place. So I thought I would come out here for a while.”
“Of course,” she said, backing into the kitchen, moving behind the counter and for some reason breathing a little easier once she did.
“What do you have there?” he asked, gesturing to the milk jugs.
“Raspberries and blackberries,” she said, picking them up and turning to put them in the fridge. “I’ll deal with them later.”
“I take it this is your version of a day off.”
“Some of us don’t work outside every day. I find a little bit of time in the garden relaxing. I took a walk through the woods, spent some time picking lettuce.”
“Basically, a rabbit’s perfect day.”
She made a face at him. “And a Lane’s perfect day.”
He chuckled. “I was actually wondering if you’d mind if I took a swim in the lake.”
“Of course not,” she said. Suddenly, she felt hot and sticky, and the idea of cooling off at her own piece of Lake Carmichael was more than a little enticing.
“Great. I have all my swim stuff in the truck. I’ll strip down out there so I don’t get any of my dirty clothes on your floor. Do you want to join me?”
For a full second Lane’s brain was hung up on the words strip down and join me. She knew that they were separate. She did. But there was something about him saying them in such close succession that snagged her brain and just sort of hung there. Like the stickers against her dress.
“In the lake,” she said finally.
“Yeah,” he returned slowly.
“Sure. Yeah. I’ll just... I’ll go get ready while you... Strip down.” She cleared her throat and scampered her ass out of the room.
She forced her brain into a blank space while she undressed and pulled her bikini on. The idea of walking out in her bathing suit seemed weird somehow. Even though they were only going to swim together, which they had done a million times. She growled and grabbed her dress, tugging it over the top of her swimsuit. There.
But was he done getting dressed? That was the question.
She hemmed and hawed for a minute before finally exiting her bedroom and making her way cautiously back to the front door. She peeked out the curtain again, and saw him standing there in nothing but a pair of shorts.
Well, he was dressed. Sort of.
He had a towel hung over his arm, and that reminded her she needed to grab one. She detoured back to the bathroom and took one off the shelf, then burst outside, not hesitating this time. “I’m ready,” she said.
He looked at her, a strange light in his eyes. “Okay,” he said.
The gravel was warm beneath her feet, and she kept her eyes down, making sure she didn’t step on anything sharp as they walked down the well-worn path to the lake.
There were houses all around the perimeter of the lake, but mostly on the other side, around a slight curve that kept everything from view. Those were larger houses, more desirable.
Lane’s friend Rebecca had owned one of the more modest houses on that end of the lake, near to Gage West’s extravagant lakeside cabin.
Lane’s house wasn’t exactly lakeside. Neither was it extravagant. But still she owned a little bit of the shoreline. The first year she’d been financially solvent she had had a dock put in, and then she had commissioned Jonathan Bear, Rebecca’s brother, to build her a bench swing that hung from a tree that stretched over the water.
It was her sanctuary.
Finn bent down and picked up a rock, running his fingers over the smooth-looking edges. And she tried not to think about why that made her stomach feel hollow.
He drew his arms back, then flung the rock toward the lake. It skipped three times across the surface before sinking to the bottom. “Want to make a wish?” he asked. “I’ve got three.”
This had been their game for a long time. Skipping rocks and earning wishes. Mostly because she couldn’t do it. So he always got to portion out the wishes he earned with his superior skills.
“I will get my own,” she said, bending to choose her own rock.
“It’s not flat enough,” he said.
“It’s fine,” she countered, moving to the edge of the lake.
She repeated the same motion he’d just done, running her fingers over the cool surface of the stone, ignoring that hers wasn’t perfectly smooth.
Then she cocked her arm back and flung the rock forward.
It hit the surface of the water and crashed on through, a splash like a fountain rising up in its wake.
“One wish,” she said, holding up her finger. “I get one.”
“No,” he explained. “It has to skip.”
“You got three! If the first one doesn’t count you should only get two.”
“The first one counts if it’s a skip and not sinking,” he said.
“You’re mean. And I think this game is rigged.”
“Do you want a wish or not?”
“I wish you would jump in a lake,” she snipped.
He turned and smiled at her, that crooked grin of his making something inside her feel off balance too. “Your wish is my command.”
He took two long strides to the dock and then another long one off, diving headfirst into the still, serene water, leaving nothing but a circular ripple behind as he disappeared beneath the surface.
He reappeared a second later, whipping his head back, a stream of water flying from his dark hair. He rubbed his hand over his face, pushing water drops from his skin while he kept himself afloat.
“Come on.” He gestured broadly, slapping the surface of the lake.
She rolled her eyes and reach down, grabbing the hem of her dress and shimmying slightly as she pulled it over her head. She could feel him watching her, and for some reason it felt incredibly awkward.
Apparently stripping her dress off in front of him was more awkward than just walking out in her bikini would have been. Even though she knew she had a swimsuit on underneath, she felt somehow strange and insecure. Like maybe she was wrong, and she had forgotten something crucial and she might be getting naked in front of him without realizing it.
She flung the dress to the side, letting it land in a patch of grass. And then she checked quickly to see that she was—in fact—wearing her suit.
She wrapped her arms around herself, clinging to her own midsection as she shuffled across the dock. The wood was warm beneath her feet, but she knew the water was going to be cold.
“How is it, Donnelly?”
“Like a hot tub,” he said, smiling in a way that let her know he was lying. And not even very well.
“Somehow, I’m skeptical of that.”
“You think I would lie to you?” He swam nearer to the dock.
“Yes,” she said.
He gripped the end of the dock, looking up at her, his brows lifted, his forehead slightly wrinkled. He was the picture of boyish innocence. Except for his muscles. For some reason, she found herself drawn to the way the water droplets slid down the ridges of his shoulders, over his chest.
She blinked.
“I’m shocked,” he said, doing a very good impression of someone who might be wounded. “How could you not trust me? One of your very oldest friends?”
“That’s exactly why, Finn,” she said, leaning down slightly. “Because I’ve known you for far too long. And I think that you want me to jump in and freeze myself. Because you’ll think it’s funny. You’re a child. And I know you well enough to know that.”
“Really?”
She bent down lower, hands on her knees. “Really.”
And that was the last thing she said before Finn reached up, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up against him, bringing her down beneath the surface of the water with him. He brought her right back up again, still holding on to her.
She sputtered, a hank of dark hair drooping in her face, lake water streaming down into her mouth. “You brat!” She shrieked, pushing her hair up out of her face, feeling it resting there on top of her head in an inglorious mat. She reached out, holding on to the dock while kicking her legs, the cool lake water swirling around her.
“You were going to get in anyway. I saved us both a bunch of time and shrieking.”
“I’m still shrieking!”
“But not as much as you would have if you’d worked your way in slowly.”
“Oh,” she said, “okay, you saved shrieking. But who’s going to save you?”
She turned, launching herself away from the dock and at Finn, pressing down on his shoulders and pushing his head beneath the water. He went easily. Easily enough that she knew he hadn’t bothered with any real fight. In fact, he had allowed the dunking. It was a pity dunk.
When he came back up, he shook his head and doused her with water. Then he grinned, water rolling down his face, the look in his eye mischievous and maybe even a little bit predatory.
She became very aware, suddenly, of the warmth of his skin beneath her palms, in stark contrast to the chilly water. She kicked her feet, and her legs tangled with his for a moment. She gasped, moving away from him and ducking beneath the water, swimming as hard and fast as she could. Away from him.
When she resurfaced, he was still back by the dock and she had gone out quite a way. She continued to tread water there for a while, keeping an eye on him. As far as she could tell he was just looking at her. Looking at her and doing nothing. For what reason? She had no idea. But she wasn’t about to ponder it too deeply.
She shook her head and went face forward into the water again, swimming in a straight but aimless line. When she looked back at the dock, she saw that he was lying out on the wood, his arms thrown up over his head, water pooling around him.
Submerging again, Lane swam back toward where he was, gripping the edge of the dock and levering herself up beside him. She was breathing hard, the exertion of her impromptu lap swim leaving her limbs feeling wrung out and vaguely like spaghetti.
Wind whipped across the surface of the lake, rippling the dark water, and then skimming over her skin, leaving goose bumps behind. The wood was warm, so she lay down too, next to Finn but with a healthy amount of distance between them.
They had done this a thousand times—swimming, dunking each other, relaxing in the sun afterward. And never before had there been this strange undercurrent. It was her. It had to be. The non-thing with Rebecca and Finn nearly hooking up was only part of it. Normally, she would have just brushed that off. But the intensity of how unsettled she’d been recently, the almost-manic energy and drive she had felt to do something—anything—with her business so that she would be as accomplished as she needed to be—it was making her tense even around her oldest friend.
She felt like a fragile, knit creation that had gone through the past ten years with a loose thread hanging free somewhere. Unnoticed. Undisturbed.
Until the past few weeks when Cord McCaffrey had gone national with his whole handsome, charismatic politician shtick.
Now the thread had been pulled. She had been pulled. That loose string yanked and yanked until she felt threadbare and dangerously close to unraveling completely.
This edginess was just a symptom of that unraveling. All of those patchy, unprotected places suddenly more vulnerable to...whatever this was.
What she had to do was get their friendship back on typical footing. She should ask him how things were going with his brothers. Why he was so tired. If there was anything she could do.
She rolled over onto her side, and her breath caught in her throat. Anything she’d been about to say died.
Her eyes were held captive by him. By that sharp, angular curve of his jaw that was dusted with a couple days’ worth of stubble.
From there, she looked at the strong column of his throat, which was notable somehow. Maybe because it was yet another thing that signified his maleness. And then there was his chest. She had been swimming with him about a million times, give or take. She had seen him without a shirt the moment she had looked out her living room window today. They had walked down to the lake together. But still, she had somehow managed to avoid really seeing.
For years, she had managed to avoid seeing.
Now all she could do was see.
That broad expanse of chest covered with dark hair. The ridges of muscle that shifted each time he breathed, running down his abdomen like a perfect, living washboard. Down to the hard cut of muscle at his waist that pointed downward, framing the flat space of his stomach just below that final ridge of ab and drawing her eye down to the waistband of his shorts.
She refused to ponder any farther down.
He sucked in a deep breath, every well-defined line moving as he did, then again as he released the breath on a masculine sigh.
Finn Donnelly was a man. Like, a MAN. In all capital letters. With muscles and chest hair and everything beneath the waistband of his shorts.
She knew that. Of course she did. But she had spent a very long time pretending she didn’t. Pushing it to the back of her mind. What did it matter if Finn was a man? Why would she ever think of him that way specifically? He was her friend first. Above all else. Her rock, her comfort and her stalwart in times of need.
The fact that he was a man had only ever been secondary in their relationship. An incidental.
But it was full frontal now. Big and glaring and impossible to ignore.
