Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
CAITLIN
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, dropping my head in my hands and rubbing my tired eyes.
Chugging from the iced latte and eating the last spoonful of ice cream from the pint sitting next to me at the kitchen table of my family’s Western Maryland lake house, I refocus my attention on my laptop screen.
The sky is just starting to lighten on the horizon, and there’s a perfect view out the sliding glass doors of the reflective lake surface and the trees soaring on its bank.
I barely notice.
There will be time for sunrises tomorrow. Or the next day. Definitely at least once before I go home. Probably.
I may technically be on my family’s annual Deep Creek Lake summer vacation, but lawyer life is not glamorous, and clients don’t understand things like vacations and leisure time.
So, while the rest of my family and the various other people who come on this trip with us sleep, I’m redrafting a trust I spent the last six weeks working on, only to find out seven hours before I left for the lake that my client was hiding the existence of a girlfriend and two teenage kids from his wife and five adult children.
While said wife and adult children were all sitting around my conference table with copies of the trust in their hands.
Chaos ensued, and I had to start completely from scratch because my carefully drafted dispositive provisions don’t fucking work when there are two extra kids the client conveniently forgot to tell me about.
It just fucking figures a man is the reason I’m working at dark o’clock in the morning.
Hurl them all into the sun, honestly. We’d be way better off.
With my eyes glued to the screen, my fingers fly over the keyboard as I finally get an idea for how to handle the order of death provisions that have been alluding me for the last hour.
I’m congratulating myself on my brilliant legal prowess when a noise from the other end of the kitchen breaks my concentration again.
I glance over, and my entire body instantly flashes with heat, my heart giving a hard, painful knock against my ribs.
Speaking of hurling men into the sun.
Fucking fuck.
Drew Ellicott’s tall, broad frame fills the kitchen doorway.
His hair is a tousled mess, eyes heavy with sleep.
His jaw is shadowed by a dark scruff like he skipped the razor yesterday, and his white Renegades T-shirt hugs his chest and biceps so perfectly it’s as if the shirt was made just for him.
He flashes me his signature smirk, standing there like he owns the place, and in the shadow of the light from over the stove he looks cozy, hot, and like everything I absolutely do not want to want.
Men who stand me up for a date I didn’t even want to go on in the first place don’t get to be wanted by me.
Especially when they never apologized and never explained.
That last part might be my fault since I blocked his number and refuse to let him talk to me pretty much ever, but those are just details.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s the guilty party.
Lock him up and throw away the damn key.
Drew has yet to speak, his brown eyes that somehow always seem a little sad raking over me in a heated perusal.
I scowl to cover the weird and overwhelming urge I have to run straight into his arms and let all that cozy hotness wrap itself around me.
To try and chase away the sadness in his gaze.
“You’re not supposed to be here until later today,” I say, satisfied my voice hits the perfect accusatory note.
I’ve been at the lake for most of the week already with our usual vacation crew consisting of my parents and my twin brother, my grandparents, and my mom’s three best friends and their families, along with assorted other people, including three of my five best friends.
My grandparents own the property next door, and everyone is spread out between the two houses just like we have been every summer for pretty much my entire life.
The Renegades had a pre-season game yesterday, so my cousin Tyler, the quarterback of the team, along with my other two best friends, Sophie—who is also Tyler’s newly minted fiancée—and Maddy—the team’s in-house psychologist—were planning to come up at some point today with Maddy’s fiancée Cam, who is also a Renegade, while Cam’s kids are on vacation with his mom.
Unfortunately, they were also bringing the team’s star wide receiver, who is now currently standing ten feet away from me and has occupied more of my brain space for the last six months than I’m willing to admit.
I knew Tyler invited Drew to come to the lake with him.
I’ve been mentally preparing for weeks for this exact moment.
Literally preparing, with shopping and lists and everything.
I had my outfit all planned out. I actually had two outfits planned—the one I really wanted to wear and the one I brought in case my period showed up unexpectedly, which it often does like a total freaking bitch.
But the goddess of broken uteruses was smiling on me this week because my period is nowhere to be found, my stomach is mostly the size it’s supposed to be, and the hottest red bikini of all time is folded in a drawer along with a swimsuit coverup that cost more than the computer I’m currently sitting in front of.
I lawyered the shit out of this preparation. I was ready.
I was going to be cute and everything.
Not cute? Hair currently piled messily on top of my head, my Christmas pajama pants even though it’s August, and the oversized Pittsburgh Lightning T-shirt I stole from Maddy’s brother Oliver, a professional hockey player.
I can’t remember if I brushed my teeth, I’m definitely not wearing a bra, and there’s a nonzero chance I still have drool on my face.
So, fuck my life and all that.
Like he doesn’t have a care in the damn world, Drew saunters to the fridge and opens it, taking out a big bowl with a folded-up towel inside and setting it on the counter before leaning his elbows on the granite and flashing me a grin. “Hey, Catie.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t fucking call me that. What are you even doing here?”
He props his chin on his hand. “Tyler invited me. He said your parents and grandparents have a kind of open-door policy for your lake trips.”
I let out a frustrated huff, steeling myself to speak more words to him than I have since the night at the New Orleans club. “I know Tyler invited you. But you’re not supposed to be here until later this morning.”
He stands and stretches, his shirt lifting just slightly, and holy abs.
Do not look at his abs like a total fucking weirdo, Caitlin. Don’t you fucking do it.
I definitely look.
I’m not proud.
Dropping his arms, Drew rolls his shoulders like he’s trying to loosen his muscles. “Got here late last night. Soph and Maddy wanted to drive here right after the game, and Tyler and Cam want whatever their girls want. I’m just along for the ride. So, why are you up before the sun on vacation?”
Running a hand over my hair, I try to arrange it into something less than a complete disaster and glue my eyes to my laptop screen. “I’m working,” I snap. “Take yourself somewhere else and leave me alone. I’m busy.”
My back is turned but I can practically feel his smirk. “I would, but I kind of need the kitchen to bake my bread, so maybe you wouldn’t mind sharing for a little while?”
“Your what?” I ask, whipping around. My eyes land straight on Drew’s beaming face, as if he knew dropping that little tidbit would get me to look at him.
Gorgeous fucking asshole.
He winks at me, and I curse the little shimmer in my belly.
“Sourdough,” he says, as if that answers my question.
Flipping on the oven, he unwraps the towel and lays a sheet of parchment paper over the bowl.
In what looks like a practiced move, he turns the bowl over, letting a ball of dough settle onto the counter on top of the parchment.
Opening a big bag I didn’t notice, he removes a deep, heavy-looking baking dish situation and a big knife.
He obviously knows his way around a kitchen, and watching the way his big, rough hands handle the knife and make small slashes over the top of the dough is oddly hot.
So hot I forget myself, and I’m talking before my brain realizes I’m making words. “You bake?”
Drew looks up at me, his whiskey-colored eyes flashing with something I can’t quite name in the semi-darkness of dawn.
“Just sourdough,” he says, his voice rough with what I could swear is emotion.
But then he shakes his head as if to clear it before looking down at the dough.
And when his eyes lift to mine again, whatever was there is gone.
“Figured since I usually get up early, I would start a couple loaves for breakfast.” He shrugs, as if making actual bread from scratch is no big deal.
I would rather dig my eyes out with a rusty spoon than tell him I think baking bread is actually ridiculously impressive, considering I can’t even pop popcorn in a microwave without burning the shit out of it.
“This doesn’t look like a spur of the moment thing,” I say without thinking. “This looks like there was a lot of pre-planning involved.”
He shrugs again. “The dough needs to sit in the fridge for a while, so I made it before the game yesterday and then brought it here. And I didn’t know what kind of baking stuff your parents would have, so I brought my Dutch oven.”
“You brought dough from Pittsburgh?” I deadpan, blowing right past the fact that I have no idea what a Dutch oven is.
“You know there are actual stores here, right? And also, between this house and my grandparents’ next door, there’s enough food to feed like six armies.
Making bread at six in the morning is unnecessary. ”