She moved her phone away from her mouth. “I’m just finishing up. I’ll be right there.”
“Okay.” He ducked back out, the smile he’d had when she left the kitchen had vanished. She had to wonder if Rachel had pulled something while she was out of the room that caused it.
“Look, Rafe, I have to run. Put Marla’s number on my desk and I’ll make sure to call her the minute I’m home.”
“You got it, Boss.”
She hung up her phone and headed for Trevor and their kayaking fate.
Trevor took a deep breath to ease the tension in his shoulders and the churning in his gut. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but he heard part of Piper’s conversation, and there she was on the deck, talking freely with someone about her work, and it wasn’t school teacher talk.
It wasn’t a slip, per se, since she thought she had privacy, but anyone could have snuck up on her and overheard what she was talking about, and Rachel, although a witch, was highly intelligent. She might have put the pieces together and outed Trevor and Piper before he even had a decent shot at the partnership.
Piper came around the corner, a distracted smile on her face. “Hey, you okay?” she asked.
She had smoothed her hair back into a high ponytail and not a bit of makeup covered her fresh face. She looked like those women from those facial moisturizer commercials.
Absolutely perfect.
But taking risks.
“You can’t make calls like that here.” The words came out far more abrasive than he intended them, but necessary.
“It’s not like I did it in front of everyone,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.
“Anyone could have overheard you,” he ground out, leaning into her space. She had a hell of a lot of nerve getting her back up at him. He wasn’t the one putting their plan at risk.
“Only people snooping, which most decent people don’t do.” Her eyebrows snapped down low over her eyes.
“Rachel would snoop.”
“Apparently, so would you. Maybe you guys are cut from the same cloth.”
He reared back, a low growl making its way up his throat. “Nice, Piper. After how careful I was with you, that’s what you think of me?”
Her gaze slid away and she rocked on her heels. “No,” she mumbled.
“It must be to some degree, because you said it.”
“Look, I have a business, sometimes things need my attention. I was trying to be discreet.”
He shoved a hand through his hair and scratched the back of his head. “Look, do me a favor and if you need to make any more calls like that, do it in our bedroom…just in case. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Can we kiss and make up?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her in.
She gave him a smile, but still leaned her upper body away a bit. “Is that why you jumped up my ass, so we can make up?”
He grabbed her ponytail and tipped her head, giving himself access to her neck. He needed a taste, just one damn taste. He kissed that secret spot where the back of her ear met her neck and dragged his lips lower, gently biting her flesh.
“I welcome any opportunity to interact with your ass in any way possible.”
She let out a throaty laugh, patted his chest, and pushed him away. “I’m sure, and that’s a whole other conversation we’re not having at the moment. Now come on, we have kayaking to do.”
They joined the group on the deck and followed Davidson down the stairs, along the path, and out onto the dock where six two-person kayaks bobbed in the water, tied along the edge of the wood railing.
“These are kayaks?” Christina asked.
“Sure are, young lady.”
“I’ve never seen any that look like this. The ones I’ve seen looked so…confining,” Deanne added.
“The wife was worried about kayaking accidents when the family comes up to visit, so she bought this kind. You sit on top of them. This way, if you tip one over, you fall right out of it, like a canoe.”
“That’s a relief. I’ve been kayaking once and we had to go through training on how to roll it back over. All I can remember is something about wrist placement,” Christina said.
“You won’t need any of that training with these. You just need good balance.” Davidson pulled out several scraps of black fabric. “And with these on, you’ll need good team work skills.”
“What are those?” Steve asked.
“Blindfolds,” Davidson said with a laugh. “We’re going to do this a little different. The men are going to wear the blindfolds and sit in the back. They’ll be the rowers. The ladies will direct them from the front seat. We’re racing to the sandy beach down there.” He pointed to the far end of the lake where a small swash of beach lay situated between the Cypress trees.
“And if we go faster than you, how will you know who wins?” Trevor asked.
“I already thought about that. That’s why I took out my trolling motor. I’ll be one step ahead of you the whole time.”
“Clever,” Piper said.
“Thank you. Grab a life vest, boaters, and load up,” Davidson instructed.
Piper picked the purple vest, slid it on, and tightened the straps. “You ever kayak before, Trevor?”
“Nope, you?” He grabbed the navy-blue vest, snapped it on, and checked the straps.
“No, but I’ve canoed a few times.”
“Think we’ve got a shot?”
She nodded. “Sure. Between your football years and my dance years, we both have great balance. That will keep us in the water. And you’re strong. You should have this rowing thing, no problem.”
Each couple lined up their kayak at the ladder to load. The men climbed in first and held the boat still by holding the dock while the women climbed in. They bobbled their way about twenty feet out into the water and lined up. If you could call it that. Their boats kept drifting and pointing in all different directions.
Piper looked down the line of them. “Why don’t we all link arms to keep steady?”
“Good idea,” Deanne said with a nervous laugh. “I probably should have said something before, but I don’t swim well.”
Piper leaned over and patted her hand with a sure smile after they linked arms. “It’s okay, you’ve got the preserver if you go in. Just don’t panic if you hit the water, you’ll be fine just bobbling on the surface.”
Trevor smiled. Damn, she was awesome. Competitive, but not at the expense of kindness. Would anyone be able to say that about him? He caught Rachel shooting him a glare.
Yeah, he probably hadn’t always been the most honorable, but at least he hadn’t turned into her.
“Thanks, Piper,” Deanne said, reaching out to link arms with Christina.
Christina then extended her arm Rachel who glanced down at Christina’s palm as though Christina had just spit in it.
“I’ll pass,” Rachel said with her chin jutting out.
“Excuse me,” Christina muttered and roll of her eyes.
He’d always found Rachel attractive with her onyx hair and silver eyes. She walked through the office like a model walking the catwalk, one foot winding its way in front of the other the way exotic women did to capitalize on swaying all of their assets. Rachel knew how to command attention with her body, with her face, but as a person, beneath that thin layer of beauty was the stench of something rotten to the core.