Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

23. Grand theft boat

23

GRAND THEFT BOAT

HAZEL

Twenty minutes of what I considered to be pretty icy passenger-seat silence later, Cam swung his pickup into the Wawa parking lot just outside Story Lake.

I blinked at the glowing-red convenience store sign. “Seriously?”

His smirk made me want to punch him in his chiseled, stubbly jaw.

I had just begun my shoe-style-to-walking-distance-home calculations when he released his seat belt and shrugged out of his sports coat. The tie came next.

“What are you doing?”

His fingers worked their way down the front of his shirt, unbuttoning buttons. I wanted to look away, but every button revealed some new spectacular view. Chest hair. Muscle. A tattoo. More muscle.

Belatedly, I shielded my eyes. “Oh my God. Do you shop naked at the Wawa?” I screeched.

“It’s just Wawa. There’s no the .”

“Campbell!”

His chuckle was husky.

I dropped my hands and stared at the gloriously shirtless man before me. “Do you do like a thousand push-ups a day?”

Cam balled up his dress shirt and threw it in the back seat. When he leaned over the console, bringing all that muscly chest and heat and manliness even closer, I forgot how to breathe and move. Jim had always been lean. Long limbs, narrow shoulders, slim hips. The only place he’d put on weight was in the belly. But this Adonis before me looked like he was one bottle of coconut oil away from posing for a calendar.

“No. I’ve never set foot in a gym.”

“Seriously? Because that’s metabolically unfair.”

“Jesus, Hazel. Yes, I work out. Stop objectifying me.”

He was right. I totally was. I did the only thing that came to mind and squeezed my eyes shut.

“Relax, Trouble,” he said on a chuckle, way too close to my ear.

I forced one of my eyelids open and found him not ready to plunder me. Instead he was rooting around in the back seat one-handed.

He came up with an ancient-looking T-shirt and dragged it over his head.

My muscles released their vapor lock all at the same time, and I sagged against my seat. Forget a date. I needed to get laid before my body exploded just looking at a half-naked man. What would happen when I had to sit down and write the first sex scene? I might spontaneously combust at my desk.

“Wh-what just happened?” I asked weakly.

This earned me an honest-to-God grin out of the man. “I go in there in a sports coat and tie, and in about two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, everyone and their grandma is gonna know we went out.”

“You could have warned me before you started taking your clothes off!” What if instead of panicking, I’d thought he was inviting me to Pound Town and I’d started taking off my clothes? I immediately filed that away for future book use.

“I didn’t realize you were terrified of shirtless men.”

“I’m not afraid of shirtless men. I was just…surprised.”

“Yeah. Right. Favorite hoagie? Favorite beer?” Cam demanded.

“What?” The man had me so far off center, I was grateful gravity kept me from spinning off into the cosmos.

“Hoagie and beer,” he repeated. “What kind do you like?”

“If by hoagie you mean sub , Italian. And Molson.”

“Stay here. You wouldn’t make it a block in those shoes.”

And with that order, he was gone, clicking the Lock button on his fob as he strolled across the parking lot like I was some precious cargo and he hadn’t just dazzled me with his full chestal nudity.

I pulled out my phone and opened my messages with Zoey.

Me: Cam just took his shirt off without warning and I panicked.

Zoey responded immediately with a Schitt’s Creek GIF of David Rose saying, “I feel like that needs to be celebrated.”

Me: I turtled my head into my neck and closed my eyes.

Zoey: I need more information…and pictures.

Me: I was too busy spontaneously combusting to document the moment.

Zoey: Fine. Then I’ll settle for an explicit play-by-play.

Me: He took me on the worst date ever and acted like an absolute grump all because he didn’t want to go out in the first place.

Zoey: Coward.

Me: I called him out and stormed out of the restaurant. Or tried. He caught me and “apologized” by saying, “I’m an ass.”

Zoey: Stating facts is not an apology!

Me: THANK YOU! Anyway, he insisted on driving me home and manhandled me in a sexy way into his truck.

Zoey: Well, as long as it was in a sexy way.

Me: Then he said he owed me a real date AND PULLED INTO A GAS STATION AND TOOK HIS SHIRT OFF.

Zoey: I can only assume since you’re texting me that you murdered him with the chain strap of your purse.

Me: All my self-defense training went out the window thanks to his half-frontal nudity.

Zoey: I mean, how great can a dude’s torso be?

Me: So great. Like “I cannot stress this enough” extremely great.

Zoey: Where is our shirtless eighth wonder of the world now?

Me: He went into the Wawa after asking me what kind of hoagie I like.

Zoey: Do you need me to call the police?

Me: There are no police here! Remember? But if you don’t hear from me in the next hour, you can call Cam’s mom.

Zoey: Setting a 60-minute timer now.

The driver’s-side door opened, and I fumbled my phone. Cam handed me a plastic bag and then leaned in to place a six-pack of beer at my feet.

His forearm brushed my bare leg from ankle to thigh, and I reacted as if I’d been electrocuted by a hair dryer in a bathtub.

“You okay?” he asked as he settled behind the wheel.

“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Uh-huh. You seem a little tense.”

A little tense ? Ha. Every muscle in my body was in full rigor mortis. “Where are we going?” I demanded.

“You’ll see.”

Five minutes later, he pulled into the lakefront parking lot. We were the only vehicle there.

“Is this where you take all the girls to murder them and throw their bodies in the lake?” I asked.

Cam reached over and retrieved the beer and food. “Only one way to find out.”

It was a good thing I was hungry enough to gnaw off my own arm because I doubted anything else would have gotten me out of the truck. Muttering every creative obscenity I could think of under my breath, I shoved my door open.

“Come on,” he said, leading the way toward the marina.

I followed him onto the wooden planks of the dock, reminding myself of all the reasons this had been the stupidest idea I’d had in a long time. Each piling was capped with an LED light that cast a soft, golden glow. Water lapped rhythmically against the rocky shore and the hulls of the half dozen boats moored to the pier.

Cam came to a stop in front of a small boat-shaped tarp in the water. “Wait here.”

“Can I at least start on my sub?” I called after him as he walked down the skinny wooden gangway between the boat parking spaces. Slips, I reminded myself. One of my heroes had captained a sailboat around the islands of the St. Lawrence River, which had required extensive boat research.

“It’ll taste better on the water,” he promised as he worked the tarp free to reveal a gleaming wooden bow.

I was tired, hungry, and pissed off. The last thing I wanted to do was trap myself on a boat surrounded by water with Cactus Cam.

“You know, I think I’m just going to call it a night,” I said.

“Hand me those,” he called from the back of the boat.

I debated just whacking him in the face with his sub and then running off with mine. But I still had the footwear problem, and I’d already used up a significant amount of mileage on the walk from the parking lot. So I gathered everything up and shuffled carefully along the gangway between the slips.

He stowed it all on the cream-colored leather seat and then turned back to me. “Come here.” His voice was low and about as smooth as a splintered two-by-four.

“I think I’m good here,” I insisted.

Then those big capable hands were gripping my hips and lifting me off my feet. I let out a squeak and grabbed his shoulders in a death grip. “If you drop me in this water, I will murder you in fiction and real life!”

“Relax, Trouble.” He sounded amused.

I opened one eye at a time and realized I was standing in the bottom of the boat, still clinging to Cam. I released him and tried to back away, but he was still gripping my hips. “Stop squirming or you will end up overboard.”

I froze in place and tried not to think how long it had been since I’d had a man’s hands on me like this. But it was hard to think about anything when I was plastered against hot, hard man.

“You good?” he asked gruffly.

“Super great,” I squeaked.

“Then I’m gonna let go.”

“Are you still touching me? I hadn’t noticed.”

In the dim light of the pilings, I could have sworn his lips quirked.

He released me. “Have a seat. I’ll cast off.”

I could think of a thousand reasons I shouldn’t have a seat. Starting and ending with the fact that I didn’t trust this sexy-on-the-outside, passive-aggressive-on-the-inside jerk to not make the evening even worse. Unfortunately for me, my curiosity was piqued, and I tended to make my stupidest decisions in this state. Like that time an almost stepfather had warned me not to put chewing gum in my hair, which of course I did just in time to have a spectacular bald spot for my third-grade class photo.

I didn’t think I was in danger of a bald spot in this particular situation. But I was also pretty sure the only “research” I was getting tonight was how bad a date could be.

I sat on the cushioned bench seat and cursed myself.

He cast off the lines and settled next to me behind the wheel. He reached under the seat and produced a key.

“You leave your boat key in your boat?” I asked. The Manhattanite in me was appalled.

“Not my boat,” he said, before firing up the engine.

“You’re stealing a boat?” I yelped.

His response was to throw the engine in reverse and guide the boat away from the dock into open water.

“Campbell Bishop! Did we just steal a boat?”

“Not if we don’t get caught,” he said over the engine noise.

We didn’t go far. While I was debating whether I would be able to write books in prison for grand theft boat, Cam steered us to the center of the lake and cut the engine.

“Pretty sure this constitutes theft and abduction,” I said, crossing my arms in indignation.

Cam responded by dropping an Italian sub into my lap. “Eat. Maybe you’ll feel less grumpy.”

“I’m not grumpy. You’re grumpy. I’m clearly the sunshine on this farce of a date.”

“You’re the one whining while we sit in the middle of a lake under the stars.” He opened a beer and handed it to me. “I’d have thought a romance novelist would be better at noticing romance.”

I opened my mouth and then promptly shut it.

Because we were bobbing gently on the dark lake’s surface as the entire sky of stars unfurled above us. Tree frogs and crickets sang a summer duet that an entire infantry of fireflies danced to. An owl hooted from the far shore, echoed by another behind us. The air was warm, and so was Cam’s body at my side.

I took a sip of ice-cold beer. “Okay, fine. This isn’t terrible.”

He shot me a wolfish look as he unwrapped his turkey sub. “It’s fucking romantic as hell, and you know it.”

“But did you have to steal a boat?”

“You’re such a good girl, Trouble.”

“The men in my books say that differently,” I said, working the wrapper open on my own sub.

“I noticed.”

“Just how far did you get?” I demanded with my mouth full.

“No shop talk. Not while you’re in the middle of the Cam Special.”

“Your dates have names?” I dropped my dinner and started hunting for my notebook.

His hand landed on my knee. “Can’t you just relax for five seconds?”

“Why?”

“How am I supposed to bring my A game when you keep whipping out a microscope to dissect what I’m doing?”

I picked up the sub again. “Fair point. For the sake of the research, I will try to experience the Cam Special live and in person.”

“Good girl,” he all but purred.

Oh, hell. Everything below my waist reacted like a volcano, a rainforest, and an earthquake fell in love, had sex, and made a baby. The heat rose all the way to my face, and I became intensely grateful for the low lighting of the crescent moon.

“You did that on purpose.”

“Yep.”