Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

24. An accidental swim

24

AN ACCIDENTAL SWIM

CAMPBELL

Hazel took another bite of hoagie. “Okay, smarty pants,” she said with her mouth full. “We’re on a date. That means getting-to-know-you small talk. Tell me about your family.”

“Why? You already met them.”

She gestured at me with the Italian. “I’m just curious. Your family is…such a unit. It’s admirable.”

“That happens when you’ve been through a lot together.”

“Your sister is…amazing,” she said.

“She is. But I’ll deny it if you tell her I said so.” I took a pull on my beer.

“What else? That you’re comfortable sharing,” she added hastily.

I sighed. She wasn’t going to let me off easy, and if I wanted the night to end without me feeling like an asshole, I might as well play the game. “Off the record?”

“Sure.”

“We’re adopted. Levi, Gage, and me. We went into foster care after our parents were killed in a car accident. There was a month or two when we were all placed with different foster families.”

“You were separated? That’s awful. How old were you?”

“Eight. I don’t remember much about that time.” I traded beer for hoagie. I did, however, remember the fear, the loneliness. The feelings I didn’t understand.

“Then along came the Bishops,” I continued. “Gage had been placed with them, and they fell for him.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Hazel said.

I glared at her. “Lots of people.”

She smirked at me.

“Anyway, when they found out he had two older brothers, they moved heaven and earth to reunite us.”

“They’re good people,” she said.

“The best. They gave us a home, a family, a sister.” I felt my lips quirk, thinking of Laura, who had declared herself the ruler of the kids despite the fact that I was nearly a year older.

“You love them,” she observed.

I shrugged. “They’re all right.”

But she shook her head. “No. You love them. It’s in your bones.”

“Yeah. I do and it is. Didn’t stop me from leaving them.”

She cocked her head. “How do you mean?”

I couldn’t believe I was actually talking about this to anyone, let alone a woman who had blackmailed me into a fake date. “Still off the record?”

“I’m holding an Italian sub, not a notebook.”

“After college, I stuck around for a few years and worked at Bishop Brothers while Levi did the military thing. But I wanted…something different. So I took a job in Maryland for a real estate developer and worked my way up in the company. Everyone else stayed here.”

“Until?” she prompted.

“Until my dad had a stroke. A bad one.”

“I noticed he has a limp sometimes,” she said.

“Yeah. It wreaked havoc on his right side. I took leave at my job and came home to help out. At the time, we had the construction company, the general store, and my parents’ farm was operational.” I shook my head at the memories.

“That’s a lot to handle,” she mused.

“We filled in everywhere we could during his recovery. Mom never left his side. She calls it supervising. We call it micromanaging. But my God, that woman can do anything. She got Dad back on his feet. Dragged him to doctors’ offices and therapy appointments. Badgered him about his diet and his sleep. The doctors said his recovery was miraculous. Mom wouldn’t have settled for anything less. Meanwhile, the rest of us kept everything running.”

Hazel sighed. “I love your family.”

She sounded wistful.

“Guessing you’re an only child.”

She wiggled her hand. “Pretty much. But we’re talking about you, not me.”

“Not much else to say. Dad got better. I left again.”

She lifted her beer and took a slow sip. I tried not to focus on the way her mouth brushed the curve of the bottle. “You went back to the life you built.”

“And I stayed there until Laura’s accident. Now I’m back.”

“For good?”

“Don’t know. I quit my job. Sold my place. I can’t leave here. Not with things so…up in the air.” How was a man supposed to plan for the future when the present felt like a never-ending limbo?

“But after you fix everything, you might decide you have more to prove,” she guessed.

“I don’t have anything to prove,” I argued.

Her smile was soft. “ I know that, but I don’t think you do.”

“I’d be nothing if it wasn’t for them. I’d have nothing,” I insisted. Yet I’d still left them. I’d still distanced myself from them. And I didn’t know if I would do it again. I shifted on the seat, irritated by the feelings this conversation was bringing up.

Hazel twisted to face me. “Maybe you wanted to prove that you could be something, someone on your own.”

I ignored the twinge I felt in my chest. “More like just plain selfish. I should have been happy to stick around like Gage and Levi.”

“It’s not selfish to want your own life. You wanted them to be proud of you, but maybe you also wanted to know for sure that you could make it on your own.”

“Selfish,” I repeated.

She reached over and laid a hand over mine that was balled on my thigh. “You were a kid from a stable, loving home who wanted to spread his wings to make sure they worked. That’s not selfish. That’s a rite of passage.”

“Why didn’t my brothers need to spread their wings?”

“What makes you think they aren’t in their own ways?” she countered. “Gage went to law school, and Levi…”

I waited for her to finish the sentence. My brother was an enigma to everyone, probably including himself.

“Levi, I’m sure, has his own interests,” she said, course correcting. “Family is the foundation. What you build on that foundation is your choice.”

“What foundation did you build on?”

She laughed. “You don’t want to hear my story.”

“Oh, no. You don’t get to just sit there and observe. You’re an active participant in this date,” I insisted.

“I’m not sure how my history is relevant,” she hedged.

“Listen, Trouble, I don’t know what kind of dates you’re used to. But around here, you spend the whole date talking about yourself, you’re not gonna get a second one.”

“Oh, like you’re just dying for a second date.”

“Spill it. Or I’ll lose the keys and you’ll have to swim home.”

She let out a snort. “I don’t know what kind of dates you’re used to, but where I’m from, threatening your partner will get you a tour of the inside of a holding cell.”

“You wanted a date. This is the date. Spill it or else.” I removed the keys from the ignition and let them dangle in the moonlight.

“Fine. You asked for it. My mom has been married six times. Soon-to-be lucky number seven.”

“That’s a lot of bridesmaid dresses,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I stopped participating somewhere after wedding three.”

“So you and your mom are really close,” I drawled.

She laughed despite herself. “We are nothing alike, except I look like her. But anything beneath the surface? I don’t even think we’re the same species.”

“That many marriages—she sounds like a romantic,” I pointed out.

“That’s one take on it. Or maybe she’s terrified of being alone and will do anything to feel young and desired.” Hazel winced. “Sorry. It sounds like I’m being a jerk, and I totally am. But I wasted so many years of my life trying to understand her and trying to fit into her life when she just didn’t have room for me.”

“What about your dad?” I asked.

“They were high school sweethearts. He died when I was a toddler. I don’t have any memories of him. And Mom moved so much, we don’t even have any pictures. I don’t remember much about my first stepdad, just that he was a lot older and had some money. She left him and married up. My second stepdad was wonderful. I was with him from ages seven to twelve. Mom divorced him for a guy with a record label and a boat. Then there was Anatoli the oligarch. She met and married him in Vegas. After Anatoli was some oil tycoon out of Texas, and then she left him for his brother, who was president of the company.”

“So your mom spent her life searching for ‘the one’ and you write about it. Maybe you have more in common than you think.”

From the expression on her pretty face, Hazel Hart liked to be the one doing the analyzing, not the other way around.

“You haven’t met my mother, so you don’t know what a gigantic insult that is. Besides, that’s the point. ‘The one.’ You get one . Not seven.”

“Was your husband the one?” I pressed.

She opened her mouth, then picked up her beer.

“You’re stalling.”

“I’m drinking,” she insisted. “He was the one I picked. Happy?”

“How long were you together?”

“Uh, we dated for three years and were married for seven. Then we got a divorce, and now I’m here.” She gestured at the moon with her beer.

“That’s it? I gotta say, I hope you write a better story than you tell,” I said finally.

She poked me in the ribs. “Excuse me. Are insults always part of the Cam Special?”

“Only when my date is obviously lying to herself and me. What was he like?”

“Smart. Cultured. Charming. A great dresser.”

“Did he make you pay on the first date?” I prompted.

She glanced down at her lap before looking back up at the sky. “I asked him out, and he let me pay.”

I cleared my throat pointedly as I balled up my wrapper and threw it in the bag.

“In his defense and as you already know, I am very persuasive.”

“You’re not that persuasive, Trouble.”

She shifted her gaze to me. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am.” I slid my arm around the back of the seat so it rested just above her shoulders.

She stiffened, and those big brown eyes focused in on me, two pools of emotion that put me out of my depth. Acting on autopilot, my fingers slipped under her curtain of hair and tucked it behind her ear.

“Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re playing Date Night Cam. Nice,” she said. She didn’t draw back, but she did bat her lashes at me.

I didn’t know if I was playing or just going with the moment. “Zoey said he screwed you over.”

She wet her lips. “Listen. You know how you opened up about feeling like you abandoned your family when really it’s clear that you’re willing to give up everything for them at the drop of a hat? So your haunting confession just kind of cements what a good guy you are underneath that prickly exterior?”

I stared quietly at her.

“What I’m trying to say is my story isn’t as…heroic.”

“You try to hold the pillow over his face until he stopped snoring?”

Hazel blinked at me and then snort-laughed. “No!”

“Then I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“I think it’s better if we just keep this focused on you since this is your favor to me,” she said quickly.

“You don’t have to open up if you don’t want to. It’s just this conversation thing is a two-way street, and I feel like you’re just putting up traffic cones and detour signs. Which guarantees your date isn’t going to open up.”

“Damn. You’re really good.”

“No one lays a better guilt trip than Pep Bishop. I learned from the best.”

“You’re not even interested in this,” she said, waving her hand between us.

“Listen, Trouble. You’re the one who asked for the date experience. You don’t get to pick and choose what parts you experience. I shared. Now it’s your turn. And for the record, I’m very much interested in your story.”

That took the breath right out of her lungs for a beat.

“Ugh. Fine. I spent most of our marriage being so impressed with him that by the time I realized he was nothing but a classy dirtbag, I was too embarrassed to put up a fight. I let him walk all over me, even in the end. And then I was so ashamed of not being able to hold my own happily ever after together, I basically hid the divorce from everyone.”

“What kind of a classy dirtbag?”

“I don’t want to get into the details because it just makes me feel like an idiot all over again. Jim was a literary agent, like Zoey. They worked for the same agency. That’s how we met. He represented literary fiction. You know, the serious stuff.”

“Is that what he called it?”

“He used bigger words, but yes.”

“So he was dismissive of your books,” I said, nudging her along.

“Not exactly dismissive,” she started, then shook her head. “Okay. Yes. Exactly that. He made me feel like what I wrote wasn’t nearly as important or interesting or brave as his authors.”

Men who made themselves feel bigger by making their partners feel smaller were a special brand of dirtbag. “That’s shitty.”

“Can we please change the subject?” She looked down at her unfinished hoagie.

I reached out and nudged her chin up. Her cheeks flushed pink in the moonlight.

“I just don’t like talking about it. It makes me feel bad, and when I’m writing, I like to feel…the opposite of bad. I need to focus on heroines at the beginning of their HEAs, not me at the end of mine.”

“HEAs?”

“Happily ever afters,” she explained.

“Understood. Are you happy you’re here?” I didn’t know where the question came from or what answer I wanted out of her.

“I am. I mean, I’d be happier if we weren’t in a stolen boat.”

Our faces were close in the moonlight. I was hyperaware of every breath she took. Every direction her eyes moved as the boat rocked gently.

“It’s Levi’s,” I said, taking pity on her. “He bought it off an estate when we were teenagers and restored it.”

“Your brother did this?” She ran a hand over the glossy teak.

“Yeah. He’s annoyingly talented. But as long as he’s not pissed at me for something, he probably won’t press charges.”

“He didn’t look very happy about you guys nominating him for chief of police,” she reminded me.

“Forgot about that.” He was most definitely still pissed about that.

We continued to stare at each other in the moonlight. After a few decades of practice, I knew when a woman was open for a kiss. The way Hazel’s gaze kept flicking to my mouth made it hard to think about anything else. Hell, I’d been thinking about it since she opened her door to me barefoot and out of breath.

It wasn’t the smart move.

Nothing good would come of me kissing this woman. There wouldn’t be anything easy or simple about it. There wasn’t anything easy or simple about her. For some idiotic, male reason, I liked that. But I wasn’t here to start things with a new, complicated client. I was here to get my family back on track. I didn’t need any distractions.

“We should get back,” I said abruptly and dragged my gaze away from her. I regretted it instantly, viscerally.

“You’re right. It’s getting late. And I have some writing to do.”

“Tonight?” I glanced back at her, but she was looking toward the dark horizon.

“When the muse strikes.”

I almost asked her if the muse was inspiring her to write a good date or a bad date but decided I really didn’t want the answer. Instead, I steered us back to the dock in silence, trying not to think about all the things we’d be doing if this were a real date.

“Mind taking the wheel so I can get the fenders?” I asked as we approached the dock.

She shot me a bland look. “You’ve seen me drive a car.”

“Good point. Can you toss a couple of those fenders over the side and get ready to throw that line around a post?”

“If by ‘fenders’ you mean these inflatable bumper things and by ‘line’ you mean this wet rope, sure,” she said, climbing into the runabout’s back seat.

Long legs, dark hair, and that mysteriously female perfume all cast their spells on me in the moonlight, making me almost forget to cut the engine as I nosed into the slip.

Hazel tossed the fenders over the side, and the boat bumped neatly against the dock.

“What do I do now?” she asked, holding up the line.

“Wrap it around the piling and hold it,” I said, clambering over the seat to join her.

She was standing on the seat, leaning precariously over the edge.

“Christ, don’t go overboard,” I said, reaching around her, and pulled her back against me with a hand at her belly. My body became instantly and painfully aware of every soft curve when our bodies collided.

Yes. This. Finally.

It was like my blood was whispering to me, to her, to the night itself as we froze like that in the moonlight. How long had it been since I’d had a woman in my arms? My mind raced through memories and timelines. I’d been casually seeing someone before Laura’s accident. I’d just as casually broken it off when I moved back. Had that really been the last time for me?

Time had marched on, and now I was standing here with a hard-on worthy of Mount Rushmore, praying the romance novelist inspiring it hadn’t noticed.

“Sooo what do I do now?” she asked tentatively, waving the end of the line.

“Right,” I said through gritted teeth. I took the line from her, wordlessly tying it off around the cleat with what little blood I had left in my brain.

The boat rolled beneath us, and Hazel overcompensated, shifting her balance. It was instinct that had me tightening my hold on her. And that instinct brought her shapely ass in direct contact with my erection. My thumb rested under her breasts as the rest of my palm splayed across her stomach, holding her in place.

She froze against me. I felt her sharp intake of breath, heard it over the lap of the water. Her heart beat rabbit-fast under my thumb. The gentlemanly thing would be to let her go, but I was worried she’d pitch right over the edge. And there was another not-so-gentlemanly part of me that just wanted to stand here like this for the rest of the night.

The breeze stirred her hair, kicking up the sexy scent of her shampoo that did absolutely nothing to calm my out-of-control libido.

It took every ounce of maturity and self-control in me to move my hands to her hips and put some space between our bodies. “Stay here,” I said gruffly before releasing her. I gathered up our trash and her shoes and purse and piled them all on the dock. I climbed out of the boat—not an easy feat with a throbbing erection—and offered Hazel my hand.

“Just step one foot on the edge and one foot on the dock,” I said as her fingers closed around mine.

She leaped nimbly onto the wooden planks next to me. I led her onto the wider part of the dock for safety’s sake. I should have let go of her hand. I should have stepped back to give her space. But there we were, face-to-face in the night air. Those dark whiskey eyes watching me through heavy lids.

This didn’t feel pretend. The need to kiss her, to touch her, was real. It was all I could think about as my head lowered toward hers on its own.

“I never had ‘everywhere but the bed’ sex,” she blurted out suddenly.

I drew back, gathering my wits. “I don’t think I know what that means.”

“You know, like you’re in a new relationship and everything is hot and sexy and you just want to be naked all the time, so you end up having sex everywhere but the bed?”

“Uh. Yeah, I guess so.” I had a few fond memories of “everywhere but the bed,” mostly from my younger years, but was having trouble thinking about anything other than the way Hazel’s mouth moved when she said sex .

“I don’t know why I just said that,” she said, looking appalled. “I thought you were bad at dating, but clearly it’s me.”

“You’re not bad at dating. You’re…” How was I supposed to finish that sentence. Irresistible ? Compelling ? So attractive my body was reacting like a teenage boy’s ?

“Hey, asshole!” someone barked in the night.

A definitive oink sounded just as angry footsteps shook the dock.

Hazel’s eyes went round. I turned, positioning myself between her and the incoming threats. I blamed the lack of blood flow to my brain. And the pig in the green harness. In trying to avoid three hundred pounds of free-range swine trotting at me, I turned a little too close to Hazel, and instead of shoving her behind my body, I shoved her right off the dock.

“Goddammit, Rump Roast.”

“You idiot,” Levi called after me as I hit the water feetfirst, fear taking care of the hard-on problem. I found one of Hazel’s limbs and dragged us both upward.

“Oh my God,” she sputtered when our heads broke the surface.

“You okay?” I demanded, holding her above the water.

“Fine. I think. Definitely wet. Was that a pig ?”

“You talking about my brother or Rump Roast? Both just kinda go wherever they want.”

She spit out a mouthful of lake water. “This town is ridiculous .”

A hand appeared from above, and I pushed Hazel toward it.

Levi hauled her back onto the dock and then took his sweet time reaching down for me.

I flopped onto the wooden planks like an overweight catfish and stared up at the starry night sky. Rump Roast nudged me with his snout and then tromped off toward the parking lot.

“Never figured you for boat theft,” Levi said to Hazel as she wrung the water out of her hair.

“I swear it wasn’t my idea,” she said.

“How’d you know I took her out?” I asked.

“AirTag,” Levi said, holding up his phone. “Put it on there after Gage stole it to impress that redhead from Long Island last summer.”

Hazel whipped around, sending water droplets everywhere. “You stole your date idea from your brother?”

“He stole it from me,” I insisted. “I took Dad’s boat out in high school to impress a girl.”

“Nina?” she asked.

“How do you know Nina?”

Levi looked back and forth between us. “You two dating?”

“God, no!” Hazel said hastily, like it was the worst thing in the world to be accused of. “I mean, not dating dating. It was for research. Although Nina thinks we’re dating. Did Laura tell you that?” she asked me.

“What—how—why?” I sputtered.

“So about you stealing my boat,” Levi said.

“The boat’s fine. You can yell at me later,” I told him before turning to Hazel. “I’ll take you home.”

“Sure you don’t want me to take you home? He just pushed you in the lake,” my asshole brother pointed out.

“Fuck off, Livvy,” I muttered as I dragged Hazel toward the parking lot.

Back in the truck, I grabbed my dress shirt from the back seat and tossed it to her. “Here. It’s dry.”

If I’d expected shyness, I was sorely mistaken. Hazel took the shirt and immediately wriggled out of her dress-romper thing. Leaving her in nothing but a black lace bra and underwear.

Fuck.

And then she was putting my shirt on over top and trying to button it with cold fingers. I didn’t know what was sexier, Hazel in her underwear or Hazel in my shirt. I tried to focus on my search for dry clothes, but it took me ten times longer than it should have to find a pair of shorts and towel in my gym bag.

I stripped down to my underwear and yanked on the shorts before she could notice the new hard-on. “For your hair,” I said, handing her the towel. “It came from my gym bag. It’s probably used.”

“Half-drowned beggars can’t be choosers,” she said, abandoning her button attempts and wrapping the towel around her hair.

I busied myself adjusting her vents and turning on her seat warmer.

“I didn’t mean to…you know,” I began.

“Throw me in the lake?” she supplied.

“Yeah. That.”

“Are you kidding? Talk about a gold mine of inspiration. I mean, my fingers might be too frozen from the lake water to type. But when they thaw out, I’ve got a hell of a scene to write.”

I drove our soggy asses to her house and left the truck running at the curb.

“Well, thanks for…everything,” she said, slipping her high heels on.

“I’m walking you to your door,” I insisted.

“Cam, I think it’s safe to say this fake date is over. I can find my way.”

But I was already stubbornly getting out of the truck. I pulled my sport coat on over my bare chest in case any neighbors were glued to their windows and stuffed my feet into my gym shoes before rounding the truck to open her door.

She slid to the ground, my shirt riding up her thighs, giving me another glimpse of black lace. I looked up at the moon and tried to remember the feel of water closing over my head, but nothing could distract from the carnal need.

I took her wet things and held them in front of my crotch as I followed her through the gate to her front door.

Hazel turned to face me. Her eye makeup had run in all directions, giving her a goth rocker look. Her hair was a damp tornado. Her wet underthings had already created fascinating damp spots on the fabric of my shirt. The problem was, she didn’t look nearly as affected by our nearly naked state as I was.

“Thank you for the research,” she said, holding out a hand all businesslike. “I appreciate it. And I promise not to make you do it again.”

I looked at the offered hand, then back at her mouth. I was definitely gonna do something really stupid. “That’s not how I end a date,” I told her.

“This wasn’t a date. This was a business transaction,” she said, dropping her hand.

“Transaction’s not over yet.”

I made my move. I dropped her stuff to the floorboards and cupped her face in my hands. Backing her into the door, I lowered my mouth and kissed the ever-living hell out of her. Her face was cold and smooth, her lips hot and firm. When she opened for me, I tasted that heady combination of beer, lake water, and desire.

Her icy hands planted themselves on my bare chest and just when I thought they were going to push me away, they slipped under my jacket, pulling me tighter to her.

Our tongues met and tangled. Her breathy little moan against my mouth took me from aroused to stone. I finally felt it from her then, the desperation, the need, all wound up tight and trembling against me. Before I could think better of it, I thrust my hips against her, pinning her to the door. Her nails bit into my back as blood thundered in my ears. The woman could and would kiss the life out of me. And I was two seconds away from stripping us both naked here on her front porch.

I drew back from her mouth, ending the kiss without warning. She sagged against the door, head thumping against the wood. We were both panting for breath, and in that moment, with my erection notched against her and her hands on me, we stared into each other’s souls.

“Now it’s over,” I said.