Chapter Two
Skye
Iwatched Aaron stomp away, water dripping from his jeans and laughed to myself.
He was one of those people.
Uptight to the point it was going to kill him one day. And the fact that I was exactly the opposite drove him nuts.
I was a travel blogger slash influencer slash ‘person who lived out of their van’. That my job didn’t come with a retirement fund was something that gave my brother hives and Aaron probably felt the same.
I had been enjoying the quiet up here, just me and Kyle, but as he walked away, I couldn’t fight the urge to follow.
He was incredibly fun to tease, and having him here had given me an idea.
I shoved my feet into my sandy shoes, grabbed Kyle under my arm and ran after him, catching up as he was getting to the front door of his cabin.
“So what do you plan on doing while you’re up here?”
“Relaxing and avoiding you,” he said over his shoulder.
He fumbled to pull a set of keys from his wet jeans pocket, then took half a dozen tries to get the key in the lock.
“Damn, you really are uptight,” I said. watching him struggle.
Struggling didn’t suit him.
He was someone who was capable in most things he did. He could change a tire the right way, find someone lost in the woods. He knew all those fancy survival tricks. He told me I should know them too since I traveled alone.
I had actually taken his advice, not that he knew that. He seemed to think I lived up to my name, all over the place and constantly changing.
But now he was struggling with just getting this door open and I kind of liked the idea that it was me who had him all riled up.
Finally, he got the door open and pushed into the cabin. I followed behind him, dragging sand in with me. I set Kyle down on the wooden table in the middle of the room and started taking off his life jacket.
Aaron had gone right back out to his truck to grab something and returned a moment later with a cooler in his arms. His biceps strained as he held it, and I mentally mapped their sheer size.
Before Aaron started working for search and rescue with my brother, Cliff, he had dabbled in amateur MMA fighting as well as bodybuilding.
He still looked the part.
Not only did he have huge muscles, but the cauliflower ears and scars that showed he’d taken hits and walked away to tell the tale.
He set the cooler on the table next to Kyle, glared at the cat, and then at me.
“Why are you in my cabin?”
I hung Kyle’s dripping life jacket over the back of one of the chairs and turned to face him. “Well, we know each other. We’re friends. You’re in Cabin One, I’m in Cabin Two. Don’t you think we should spend some time together? Honestly, I’m a little insulted, Aaron.”
He ignored me and started putting groceries into the fridge.
“You’re not really going to turn down Kyle and I’s company, are you?”
The fridge slammed shut hard enough to rattle the freezer shelf. “Why the hell did you name a cat Kyle?”
I shrugged. “What was I supposed to name him?”
The vein in the side of his neck gave an angry throb. “I don’t know, Fluffy? Fucking Mr. Whiskers? Something normal? Kyle sounds like a frat guy, not a cat.”
I laughed. “Funny you say that. I found him during my travels, and the first thing he did when I brought him inside was knock over my energy drink. Besides, he just looks like a Kyle.”
He rubbed his temples. “Looks like a Kyle, for fuck’s sake.
” He took a deep breath. “Fine, Kyle, whatever. It doesn’t matter since you and I,” he punctuated his words by gesturing between the two of us, “are not going to be spending time together on this trip. I’m here to relax and you two are spiking my blood pressure. ”
I threw my hands up. “How exactly am I raising your blood pressure?”
He raised a brow. “Are you kidding me? I’ve already had to save you and your cat from the lake.”
I rolled my eyes. “We’ve already covered that. There was no saving involved. If you’d saved my camera—”
“—nowhere in my search and rescue training did it say ‘save a camera, then a cat, then the human last’.”
His rage level was a little too high for me to ask him for a favor, but I did need one.
“And are you going to get dressed or what?” he asked, rounding on me.
I looked down at my bathing suit. “What’s wrong with this?”
Color crept into his cheeks.
Interesting.
He and Cliff had met when he’d joined Strawberry Hill Search and Rescue. They’d only known each other a few years, but they were close. Which meant the way he was looking at me was probably against some dumbass code of bro ethics.
Which meant I was going to push my luck. I shouldn’t, but how could I help myself? It was so easy to get a rise out of him.
I stepped a little closer with a teasing smile on my face.
“What’s wrong, Aaron? You got a problem seeing a pretty lady in a bikini?”
He scoffed. “I just don’t want you to get a sunburn or whatever. I brought a first-aid kit and knowing you, you’ll have used up all my supplies in the first twelve hours.”
“Yeah, the first-aid supplies. I’m sure that’s the concern.”
He glared again…or still.
“Fine. I’m going back to my cabin. I’ll see if I can fix my camera. While I’m there, Kyle and I will get dried off and dressed. Just to keep our stuffy neighbor happy.”
“I’m not stuffy,” he called after me as I grabbed my cat and looped my camera around my neck.
“You are actually the Emperor of Stuffy,” I called over my shoulder.
He either ignored it or grumbled his reply so low that I didn’t hear it.