Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Holt
I wake up early for a day off, especially after I tossed and turned last night. Seeing Maple this morning still asleep on the floor of the living room only intensifies that guilt. She’s in Anchor Lake because she’s worried about her grandma, and I not only made her sleep on the floor of her own family’s cabin, but then I nearly drowned her last night because of my negligence, then tried to kiss her! What the fuck was I thinking?
Quietly creeping into the kitchen, I hit the button on the coffee pot, hoping some fresh-brewed coffee might help my apology be accepted. The thing is, I frequently mess shit up like last night. When I was a kid, I used to think I was a screwup, and my parents, as great as they were, just reinforced that opinion.
It was my first year of grad school when one of my friends, who was a psych major, informed me that she was shocked I hadn’t been diagnosed with ADHD. It had never occurred to me that might be the reason for being so dang forgetful. Or how my brain was always jumping around from one topic to the next far faster than most people’s. Or how I’d lose track of time frequently. Having that diagnosis changed everything for me and I can honestly say was the catalyst for me doing so well in business for myself.
“Are you allergic to cotton?”
I spin around to see Maple slumping into one of the barstools, her hair a messy halo around her face and tumbling over her sun-pinkened shoulders. She lays her forehead down on the counter like she’s just going to keep snoozing there.
“Only allergic to cacao,” I answer, pouring a cup of coffee. “How do you like your coffee?”
“I like it tea.” Her voice is muffled.
“Oh shit,” I mutter, putting the pot back on the machine and starting to rummage around in my cabinet for a box of tea bags I’m pretty sure were there when I moved in.
“Don’t worry about it. I can do coffee.”
I pull out the box of tea that’s probably as old as this cabin. Maple, her head now upright, wrinkles her nose. “Seriously, the coffee’s fine. And who’s allergic to cacao? Does that mean you can’t have chocolate?”
I pour her coffee, dump in sugar and cream when she gives me a head nod for each, then slide the mug toward her. I sip from my own cup, black, thank you very much.
“Yep. No chocolate for me. I can eat it, I just break out in hives for a couple hours.”
Maple slurps up a sip, her hands cupped around the mug like it isn’t already eighty degrees outside. Then again, she isn’t wearing much. That pajama set might be the death of me. I won’t look down, but if I did, I know I’d see her nipples poking through the thin cotton.
“I feel bad. I keep searching for a room but I can’t find anything,” Maple says after a brief stretch of silence.
“And I feel bad for nearly drowning you last night.”
She just laughs, which is curious. She doesn’t seem mad at all about the canoe nearly capsizing or losing her flip-flops to the lake, or having to walk back in the dark in wet clothes. My ex would have been seething for days.
“Seriously, Maple. Just stay here. It doesn’t bother me. We’re engaged, after all!” I tease her.
She gives me a flat look over the rim of her coffee cup. “I’m still hoping we can come clean about that soon. I’m sure Macy heard Grandma Gracie calling you my fiancé. The gossip will be hot and heavy by tonight.”
I chuckle. “You mean by this morning? My friend Eddy already texted me before I woke up. Hope you don’t mind, but I told him the truth and asked him to keep it quiet so it doesn’t get back to Gracie.”
She nods. “That’s the least I can do when you’re being so nice and letting me stay here. And pretending to be engaged!”
Maple stands up and walks over to the sink. Her breasts, unrestrained in the simple tank top, shimmy and sway as she walks. My eyes literally have no choice but to watch them. They’re hypnotizing. She flips on the water, and I blink out of the trance. Here she is calling me a nice guy and I’m checking out her boobs.
I clear my throat and stare down at my coffee. “I, uh, can clean out the guest room. It would be far more comfortable for you to stay in there.”
Maple whips around and I have to grind my teeth together to keep staring at my coffee. “No! Seriously, I’m fine. I prefer the floor.”
I dip my head in agreement. I need to get the hell out of the kitchen and not see her again until she’s dressed in something more substantial. Pretty soon these workout shorts won’t be able to hide what’s happening below the waist. “Okay.”
“How about we get Grandma Gracie and bring her back here for the day? I mean, you don’t have to stay. I’m sure there’s things in town you want to do, but I was hoping to bake cookies, swim in the lake, just hang out with Grandma like old times.”
My gaze lifts. “That sounds amazing, actually.”
I’m not a big fan of crowds and noise, so spending another day at the festival wasn’t something I was looking forward to doing after all. A quiet day here at the cabin sounds amazing. “If you don’t mind if I stay.”
Maple crosses her arms over her chest. I look away. “Of course not! It’s your cabin. I’ll just go get dressed.”
I nod and watch her walk out of the kitchen. Shit. The back side isn’t any better than the front. Just a hint of the curve of her ass shows below the hem of those shorts. I dump my coffee in the sink and scrub a hand over my face.
“Get your shit together, McGrath,” I mutter under my breath.
Things are better after a cold shower and a stern talking-to in the mirror as I shave. I refuse to put on my glasses. Seeing Maple’s body any clearer is not going to bode well for me. Blurry, it is.
We get to Sunny Shores before nine and Gracie is excited to come back to the cabin. Maple keeps muttering about feeling guilty for not coming back to Anchor Lake more often to do daily excursions with her grandma. I see that a lot in the retirement homes I own. Families tend to forget about their loved ones, assuming they’re busy with daily activities at the retirement home and don’t need to be visited.
I carry Gracie from my Jeep to the leather recliner in the living room of the cabin. She insists she can walk, but when I call her Queen and tell her she deserves to be treated as one, she giggles and acquiesces. She probably should walk it, but there are pinecones all over outside and squirrels who dig holes to bury their nuts. I shoot off a text to one of our physical therapists to get Gracie out walking at Sunny Shores this week.
“Okay, Grandma,” Maple says, looking excited now that she’s got Gracie back at the cabin. “Oatmeal or chocolate chip?”
Gracie looks a little lost for a second. Then she leans forward and cups Maple’s jaw with her bony hand. “Cowboy, darling.”
Maple claps her hands. “Ah! How could I forget! Cowboy cookies might be my favorite.”
She gets busy in the kitchen pulling out all the ingredients we stopped at the store for before we picked up Gracie. I can just see Maple moving about the kitchen above the countertop and barstools. It takes me a second to realize Gracie is eyeing me while I gawk at her granddaughter.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
Gracie flashes a toothy grin. “She’s something, isn’t she?”
My gaze flickers to Maple, taking in her T-shirt, jean shorts, and the little braids peeking out from behind the rest of her wavy hair. “She is.”
“Tell me about your family, Holt.”
I pause, knowing I’ve told Gracie about my family before. Then again, the concussion seemed to have messed with her memory. Clearly. She still thinks I’m Maple’s fiancé and not her physical therapist.
“Well, I have two parents who live here in Anchor Lake. Stephen and Amy. My sister, Jess, and her husband, just had a baby. Little Posy. She’s got dark hair and light eyes. She mostly just sleeps, eats, and makes messes right now.”
Gracie tips her head to the side. “Oh yes. I remember those days. Nothing like starting a family with someone you love. My Colby would be so happy to see you and Maple together. When are you two getting married?”
Maple’s head pops up and she looks over her shoulder to lock eyes with me. Hers go wide, like she’s not sure how to answer.
“Uh, well, we haven’t picked a date yet.”
Maple dashes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel before sitting on the other end of the couch from me. “Hey, Grandma. Remember when we stuck over a hundred American flags in the ground outside for the Fourth of July boat parade? I was thinking we should do that again this summer.”
Gracie’s eyes light up. “Oh! Yes, I remember! We bought so many that cow, June, got angry at us.”
Maple laughs. “She was so mad. She threatened to pluck them all out of our yard and distribute them to every house on the lake.”
Gracie snorts. “It’s not our fault we had more holiday spirit than she did. Thankfully the threat of having her arrested with trespassing kept her from stealing our flags.”
“Whatever happened to her?” Maple asks.
“Oh dear, she died five years ago. Held out longer than we all thought she would. The ornery ones always do. It’s like their nastiness gives them energy.”
Maple cringes. “Huh. Well, that’s…sad, I guess.”
Gracie rolls her lips inward and tries not to laugh.
I clap my hands and stand, eager not to be in the hot seat any longer when Gracie is intent on asking hard-to-answer questions. “We bought all the supplies for grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Maple tells me that was one of your favorites to make when she was here for the summer.”
“Oh, it was. I’d love some!” Gracie reaches out and holds my hand, patting the back of it with her other hand. “You’re a good boy, Holt. I can see why Maple is in love with you.”
Maple and I both shift awkwardly, refusing to look at each other. Gently extracting my hand, I head to the kitchen to make us all lunch.
“Can you put the cookies in the oven?” Maple calls out.
“Sure thing, my little moonbeam!” I call back.
The responding snort makes me smile as I get everything out and get to work. We end up eating lunch at the kitchen table after Gracie insisted on walking over on her own. Maple hovers the whole time, which is probably a good thing. Gracie still looks a little unstable on her feet, which she blames on the general soreness from falling.
The ladies keep up a steady chatter about their memories here in the cabin. I listen, soaking in the information about Maple. She lights up talking about her summers here. Curiously, she never mentions her parents or her brother. I guess they never came out to Anchor Lake for the summer with her.
“I hate to be a party pooper, but I need a nap,” Gracie exclaims after Maple and I clear our plates from the old scarred table.
Maple walks her back to the living room and gets her settled on the couch with a pillow and blanket. I pull a second batch of cookies out of the oven, mouth watering at the smell of oatmeal and sugar. I stop and frown at the cookies, thinking that cowboy cookies always involve chocolate, if I’m not mistaken.
“Hey,” Maple whispers from behind me.
I turn, pointing at the cookies, trying to keep my voice low so Gracie can snooze. “Aren’t these supposed to have chocolate chips?”
Maple shrugs, picking up one of the ones that had been cooling while we ate. She takes a huge bite. Her eyes nearly roll back in her head. I swallow hard, watching her thoroughly enjoy the cookie.
“I wanted you to be able to eat them,” she finally answers, licking her fingers.
Trying to ignore the action of her tongue for the moment, I pull her into a rough hug. She barks out a laugh and then tries to muffle it in my chest. Her simple kindness touches me. Macy didn’t give a fuck that I couldn’t eat chocolate. In fact, I think her comment was always, “more for me!”
I let Maple go and snatch up a cookie to have something else to do with my hands. My own eyes roll back in my head as the flavors hit my tongue. These cookies are orgasm-worthy.
“Oh, fuck,” I whisper.
Maple giggles. “Come on. Let’s get our suits on and go swimming. Purposely, this time.”
I lunge like I’m about to chase her for that comment, but she turns and runs out of the kitchen with a muffled shriek, her steps light and almost silent. I sneak out too—but only after I shove another cookie in my mouth—and head for my room, slipping into a pair of swim trunks and then sitting on my bed, giving Maple enough time to get on a swimsuit in the guest bathroom before I come charging out. Even so, I’m the first one outside. I drape two towels over the Adirondack chairs that face out to offer a stunning view of the lake.
Maple sneaks up behind me as I’m waving to three kids cruising by on inner tubes. They’re splashing each other more than they’re actually paddling, but that’s the kind of fun kids have here in Anchor Lake. A memory of splashing my sister in this very lake is what’s on my mind as I feel two hands shove me in the back. I do a quick step to slow my forward motion into the lake, but the mossy rocks under foot bungle my attempt. I go flying into the water, arms and legs flailing, the sound of Maple’s laughter echoing in my ears before the water blots out everything.
My head surfaces only long enough for me to glare at the woman cackling with her bare feet in the dirt. She’s got on a tie-dye swimsuit, the kind where the top is two dinky triangles and strings are supposed to hold everything together. Spoiler alert: mere strings have no hope of containing Maple’s ample breasts. I dip down under the water again to touch the bottom of the lake just to get my shit together.
She splashes her way into the lake. Just as I come up to suck in a lungful of air, she dives under the water, and I get a flash of her ass. If I thought the triangles over her breasts were small, I clearly didn’t contemplate the back side of women’s swimsuits these days. Calling it a triangle of material is being generous. Thank God the water is just murky enough to hide the erection that tries to float out of my swim trunks.
Maple breaks the surface of the water, head back, hair slicked like a swimsuit model emerging from the ocean. Fuck my life, she’s prettier than any women I’ve ever seen. And I have a condo in Miami that has a killer view of the beach and all the women that have had the best plastic surgeons in the world work on them.
She spins, finding me gaping at her. She lifts her hands and sends a wave of water in my direction. I sputter, belatedly remembering to close my goddamn mouth. Instincts from summers spent on the lake with friends and my sister hit full force and I return the splash. Tenfold. Maple screams and blinks the water out of her eyes. Instead of calling a truce, she ducks under the water. I try to see her below the surface, but it’s no use. That is, until she resurfaces right in front of me and nearly drowns me with a splash right to the face.
I grab her shoulders and dunk her under the water. She retaliates by snaking her long legs around my waist and trying to climb me like a tree. I go under too, but fuck, she’s wrapped around me like a koala on her favorite tree. I don’t mind one bit if this is the way I end up leaving this life. We both break the surface of the water, gasping for breath and trying to clear water out of our eyes. Her legs are still around my waist and her breasts are pressed against my chest, spilling between us.
We both freeze. Me, because her lips are just inches from me and I want nothing more than to reenact our first kiss. She probably freezes because there’s no way in hell she can’t feel my erection with her pressed so tightly to me. Except going still in deep water is dangerous, and we both sink under the surface. We break apart, kicking our feet and remembering to tread water.
“I’ll race you to the buoy,” I manage to rasp.
She glances at the buoy thirty feet from us and takes off.
“Hey!” I shout after her, but it’s no use.
She’s already started. I duck my head and immediately start swimming. She drapes herself over the buoy two body lengths before me, declaring herself the winner. I declare her a cheat. I don’t press the matter because seeing her in a swimsuit with a large hot-pink lotus flower tattoo across her back is about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
We head back toward the cabin where I hand her a towel as we climb out of the lake and we both dry off. It is not my imagination when we both catch each other staring at the other person. It’s when she’s drying off her chest that I hear an insistent dinging coming from the cabin.
“Oh shit! The cookies!”
I take off running to try to save the last batch of cookies, Maple’s laughter ringing in the pine trees.