Oh, boy . . .
They had the lake to themselves. Water sprayed up and hit the windshield in front of them. The wind went over the windshield and brushed her face, blew back her hair, and she braced to hate it, but . . . hold up. She didn’t hate it. In fact, it was kind of a thrill. So much so that she found herself grinning from ear to ear.
Cam caught sight of it, and she expected him to grin right back at her. Instead he went quite serious, reaching out to touch her jaw, his thumb rasping over her bottom lip. “Making you smile like that is the highlight of my day. Hell, my year.”
Her stomach clenched. Or maybe that was her heart. “Same,” she said, so softly she was certain he couldn’t have heard it over the roar of the engine or the wind.
But he smiled as if he’d read her lips, and it made her forget herself for a moment. The wind was in his hair too, and he wore mirrored sunglasses that were sexy as hell. So was his stubble, as was the way the gusts had his clothes plastered to him, showing off that leanly muscled physique to mouthwatering perfection.
When he caught her staring, his smile turned a little hot and a whole lot wicked.
A few minutes later, he turned into a deserted cove on the unpopulated north shore and slowed way down.
“I love it here,” she said. “I don’t often walk this far out to see it, though.” She looked at him. “Thanks for doing this, for taking me out of my own head. I had no idea what I needed. How do you always just know?”
He laughed. “I don’t. When it comes to you, I’m always off balance and guessing, hedging my bets.” Coming close, he ducked his head to see right into her eyes. “But I like doing things for you. You always get this sort of surprised expression, like you never expect anyone to go out of their way for you, or make you feel special.”
She’d never let her thoughts go down that path, but that he had was incredibly . . . well, incredible.
By the time he shut the engine down and moored them, she was ready to jump him. When he took her hand, she stepped eagerly into him. Had she said she wasn’t in the mood? She’d been wrong. “Yes.”
He smiled. He knew. “Hold that thought.” He led her to the front of the boat, but instead of jumping down to the beach, he settled them on the top deck, lying back to stare up at a serene blue sky that stretched as far as the eye could see.
“What do you think that cloud looks like?” he asked, with a jut of his chin toward the sky, hands cradling his head, his long legs stretched out, boots crossed. “I think it looks like a pizza.”
When she didn’t answer, he turned his head and looked at her. “You okay? Do you need to get off the boat?”
“No, I’m okay.” A surprise all on its own. “I’m just”—she had to let out a low laugh—“still processing the fact that I was going to make a move on you and you shut me down.”
He came up on his side and curled an arm around her, tugging her into him. “I didn’t shut you down. For the record, I’d never shut you down.”
“Because you’re a guy?”
He smiled. “Because I’m never going to not want you.”
At that declaration, she felt herself still.
“Okay, don’t read too much into that,” he said, his smile fading at whatever he saw on her face. “I just mean that you’ve got to know I’m extremely attracted to you. Emotionally attached as well. So you don’t need to ever wonder if I want you. I do.” He braced himself over her and kissed her. Soft. Sweet. And then not so sweet, before pulling back. “I just didn’t want you to think I was a sex fiend.”
“But you are, right?” she asked hopefully.
He let out a low laugh. “Well, yeah. But I thought we’d . . . talk.”
“Talk.”
“Yes. It’s a thing, you know,” he said, looking adorably uncertain for the first time ever. “Women like to talk, right?”
She laughed. “Yes, unfortunately. Are you telling me you’re the one man on the planet who actually likes to listen?”
“Well, I like to listen to you,” he said.
That flowed through her, making her feel wanted, cherished, and special. Not quite sure what to do with those emotions, she stared up at the sky. “Definitely looks like pizza,” she said. “A pepperoni pizza with peppers on it, because peppers are a veggie and that makes the pizza healthy.”
He laughed, and God, she loved making him laugh.
“I haven’t done it very much lately,” he said, making her realize she’d spoken out loud. “Not until I came here and met you.” He shook his head. “There’s not been a lot to laugh about.”
Her heart rolled over and exposed its tender underbelly. “You miss Rowan.”
“Yeah.”
She set her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
He pressed his jaw to her hair. “We were still pretty new to the sibling thing, since he was always so much younger than me.” He turned his head to hers. “You didn’t like him.”
She stilled. “Winnie tell you that?”
“No. Just a feeling.”
“Actually,” she said, “I liked him a lot. He was kind and sweet, and was good for your dad, kept him on the straight and narrow. He was Winnie’s BFF. After she left for college, he’d go down to see her sometimes. They didn’t tell me much because they knew I didn’t like how hard they partied. But he was a good guy.”
“But . . . ?”
She met his gaze and knew honesty was the only way to go here. “But . . . I felt he had a lot of growing up to do.”
“He wasn’t a good influence on Winnie.”
She gave a slow shake of her head. “No. But for what it’s worth, I think he was changing. I think he was growing up, and I hate that he’ll never have the chance to become whoever he was meant to be.” She swallowed hard at the look of grief on Cam’s face.
He turned to stare up at the sky.
She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back, but other than that, he didn’t move, didn’t talk for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he did so without opening his eyes, voice low and gruff, filled with emotion.
“You know we didn’t spend a lot of time together, that he was too young for me to really connect with given that there was thousands of miles between us. But in the last few years, we got better at it. We called, texted, and there were a few visits here and there.” He paused. “I left my mom’s when I was sixteen, did I ever tell you that? I did the whole ‘angry at the world’ thing for a while.”
“Where did you go?” she asked, because she knew it hadn’t been here, to his dad’s.
“I stayed with friends,” he said. “I could’ve come here, my dad wanted me to, but I was still pissed off at him for abandoning my mom. It wasn’t until later that I realized it wasn’t like that, that he’d legitimately tried, but she was way worse when he came around. I think it was guilt over not being able to raise Rowan. She . . . she wasn’t well. She got a late-in-life diagnosis of being bipolar, and she preferred to self-medicate with alcohol rather than take her meds. She tried rehab a bunch of times, but it never took. Eventually, she went to live in a halfway house, and stayed there until she died.”