Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
~SHAWN~
“ D id we just do that?”
She stares at me in excitement, the light in those gorgeous blue eyes dancing.
“I believe so,” I reply. “The rough draft of this screenplay is officially complete.”
She jumps up and does a little dance, then throws her arms around my neck and hugs me tightly.
“We did it, without killing each other,” she says.
“So far. We still have to read through it and make a few adjustments.”
“Let’s focus on the here and now,” she suggests and pulls away to stretch her arms above her head. “We’d better get ready to go to the pub. We’re on kitchen duty tonight.”
I love that Lexi enjoys helping out at the pub. She’s not going because she feels obligated, or because she’s bored and has nothing else to do. She likes being there, and she’s a huge help, so I won’t turn down her offer.
“It feels good to have that part done,” she says as we walk down the hallway to my bedroom. “Now, let’s go feed some hungry people.”
The ease with which she shifts gears is admirable. Some days, I go into the pub still completely full of brain fog and have to concentrate so I don’t mess up anyone’s order.
It doesn’t take us long to change clothes and head off to the pub for the evening. It’s not too busy yet for a Friday night, although most of our regular customers aren’t quite off work for the evening.
“Lexi, I’d like to see you for a moment,” Keegan says, motioning for her to join him at the bar.
“Did someone complain? Am I in trouble?”
“No, lass, you’re not in trouble. I have something for you.” He passes her an envelope. Lexi opens it and then frowns at him, then at me.
“Why are you giving me a check?”
“Because I pay the people who work in my pub,” my brother replies. “You earned every penny of that.”
Her blue eyes turn to me, but I shake my head. “I have nothing to do with this, and he’s right. You’ve earned it.”
“But I don’t need your money.”
“Whether you need it or not, it’s yours all the same,” he says as he resumes wiping down the bar with a white towel. “I’ve paid you up through tonight, but if you come in for more shifts, I’ll be sure to square up with you before you leave.”
She tucks the envelope into her purse. “Because it would insult you if I gave this back to you, I’ll graciously accept. But the money isn’t why I’ve been helping, Keegan.”
“And that’s just one of the reasons you’ve earned it.” He winks and walks down the bar, leaving us to walk into the kitchen. I fire up the grill and oil, and while they heat up, I toss Lexi an apron and grab one for myself, as well.
Lexi hurries into the walk-in freezer and comes back out, her arms loaded down with a big bag of frozen fries. She’s quiet as we prep the kitchen, getting ready for the dinner crowd.
O’Callaghan’s doesn’t serve lunch because I can’t be here all day, every day.
“What’s on your mind, angel?” I ask.
“I don’t need your brother’s money.”
I chuckle and pull her in for a hug. “You really shouldn’t be feeling guilty about this, Lex. He’d pay any person who was in here busting their butt, night after night. You’re no slacker. You earned the money, and he’s happy to pay you for a job well done.”
“Still. Maybe I’ll donate it to a soup kitchen or something.”
“It’s your money. You can do what you wish with it.”
She nods decisively.
“I’m going to donate it.”
“Well, now that that’s settled, let’s get to it, shall we?”
Maggie pushes through the swinging door and starts reading off her tablet.
“I need two burgers, one with cheese, an order of cheese fries and chips and salsa.” She looks up and grins. “And how are the both of you?”
“Excellent,” Lexi says. “The rough draft is done.”
“Very nice,” Maggie says and hurries around to hug Lexi. “Good job, friend.”
“Hey, what about me? Don’t I get a hug?”
“I suppose so.” Maggie smacks a kiss on my cheek and hugs me close. “What happens now?”
“Now, we have to proofread it, fine-tune, that sort of thing,” Lexi says. “We’ll do that this weekend.”
I frown at her. “No, we won’t.”
Lexi blinks at me. “Of course, we will.”
“You get started on that order. I’ll be back for it,” Maggie says. “I know when a fight is about to break out.”
She leaves the kitchen, and Lexi braces her hands on her hips. “Why wouldn’t we be working over the weekend?”
“Because we’re going to the cabin.”
She blows out a breath and shakes her head. “Maybe we shouldn’t go, Shawn. We really should finish things up so I can go home on Monday.”
The thought of her leaving doesn’t sit well with me, so I reach out and rub my thumb over the apple of her cheek before tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.
“We need a few days off to clear our heads. We can read through it with fresh eyes on Monday. It’s only one extra day, Lex.”
She bites her lip, thinking it over, and then nods. “Okay. The cabin it is, then.”
I grin and turn to the griddle, slap some patties on, and take a deep breath.
I get one more weekend with her.
And I’m going to make it count.
“Ooh, it’s chilly this morning,” Lexi says when we climb out of my car in front of the cabin. She pulls her blanket out of the back of the car, wraps it around her shoulders, and then reaches for her overnight bag. “Mountain air is a little different than ocean air.”
“Very different,” I agree. “It’s about the same temperature here as it was when we left. But ocean air is humid. This is a little drier.”
“Chilly,” she repeats and follows me up to the front door.
“You get settled. I’ll grab the rest.”
“And I’m going to let you because it’s warm in here,” she says with a smile. “I’m gonna check out the kitchen.”
She skips off, already feeling at home.
Being with Lexi is easy. When we aren’t working on the screenplay, she’s easygoing and funny. She isn’t high-maintenance at all.
She’s a happy person.
And just being around her makes me happy.
God, I sound downright sentimental.
I carry the last few things inside and then join Lexi in the kitchen.
“I’m starving,” she announces, pulling ingredients from the fridge and pantry. “I’m going to make waffles.”
“You know how to cook?”
She laughs and sets a dozen eggs on the island. “Of course, I do. I just haven’t needed to because you’ve been feeding me like a freaking queen. But I suddenly have a craving for waffles, so I’m making them. Unless you hate them.”
“I’d love a waffle,” I reply and sit on the stool, settling in to watch her sashay around the kitchen. “If I’d known you were starving, we could have stopped somewhere on our way up here.”
“I wanted to get here,” she says with a shrug. “And it wasn’t too bad until about fifteen minutes ago. I just crossed the line to give me food or I’ll rip someone’s face off. ”
“Since I’m the only other person here, I encourage you to make that waffle quickly.”
She laughs and gestures to the waffle maker that she set on the counter. “Can you please plug that in and heat it up?”
“Sure.” I do as she asks. When I turn around, she’s holding the bowl under her arm, stirring the batter quickly, watching me. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She shakes her head and turns away. I sit on my stool again and narrow my eyes at her.
“Really, what is it?”
“I like looking at you.” She dips a finger into the batter, tastes it, and then adds a touch more vanilla. “Do you want berries in yours? We have blueberries in the fridge.”
“No, thanks.”
“Me neither.”
I’m still stuck on I like looking at you. I can’t get enough of looking at her . I brace my chin in my hand and watch as she moves about the kitchen, fixing her waffles and humming to herself.
Now that the screenplay is finished, it’s like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. Was working on this project with me that difficult for her? I know we had our tough moments, especially to start, but all in all, I thought it went well. Even if one or both of us got frustrated, we worked it out.
And the finished product is really great, if I do say so myself. I’m looking forward to sending it off to Luke.
“Here you go,” she says as she sets a piping-hot Belgian waffle before me. “Butter and syrup are here.”
“Thank you.”
Relaxing in the kitchen, eating our breakfast and enjoying each other, is the best way to start our weekend in the mountains.
“What do you want to do today?” she asks after she takes her first bite of waffle.
“I want to take the canoe out on a nearby lake and do some fishing.”
Her fork stops midway between her plate and her mouth and she stares at me. “Fishing?”
“Yes.”
“Like, with a pole?”
“Since I’m not a bear, that is my preferred way to fish, yes.”
“Huh. Well, okay.”
“Nothing’s biting my hook.”
I laugh and cast my line out on the calm water. “We’ve been out here for fifteen minutes, Lex. You have to be patient.”
“I don’t think I have patience,” she says with a sigh. She blows a raspberry through her lips and then looks around the lake. “Are we trespassing?”
“I own it.”
“You own what, the property we launched from?”
“The lake,” I reply.
“Hold on. You own the whole lake?”
I reel in my hook and then cast again. “After Kane bought the cabin, and I came up a couple of times, I decided that I’d like to build something up here someday. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ocean, and because it reminds me so much of Ireland, I’ll always be there. But a small place to get away that’s all mine and not something I bum off my brother sounds good to me, as well. So, when this property came up for sale, I bought it.”
She glances around again. “How many acres?”
“About one hundred. The lake takes up almost half of that, which leaves plenty of space to build a cabin nearby.”
She’s staring at me now, but I see her pole moving with something tugging on it.
“You have a fish.”
“I have a what? Oh!” She starts to reel it in, and when the fish is close to the canoe, I reach down with the net and help her bring it aboard. “Look at that! My first fish.”
“It’s a good size, too. Looks like a rainbow trout.”
“How do you know?”
I turn the fish on its side. “See? It has a rainbow in the scales.”
“Beautiful,” she murmurs. “So, I can hike and fish. I’m a regular outdoors enthusiast.”
“Says the woman who just, five minutes ago, was over it,” I reply with a laugh as I unhook the fish and let it go back into the water.
“What did you do that for?”
“You mean you wanted to gut it and cook it later?”
She scrunches up her nose. “No. I didn’t want to gut it. But I thought we’d eat whatever we caught.”
“We can’t eat them without gutting them.” I laugh at the look of horror on her beautiful face. “This is just for fun. We get the sport of catching them, and they get to live.”
She’s sitting two feet away, staring at me.
“What?”
“I need more bait. That fish ate it.”
“So bait your hook. You saw me do it.”
Lexi clears her throat. “Listen. I know I’m a pro at this whole outdoorsy thing and all, but I don’t touch worms. Not today or any other day. So, if you want me to toss this godforsaken line back into the water, you’re going to have to impale the worm yourself.”
“Now you’re just being dramatic.”
But I grab her hook and quickly stick a squirming worm on it, and she casts the line back out into the water.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know that you own a whole lake.”
“It’s not a very big lake.”
“It’s a lake. ”
I shrug. “I suspect there’s plenty we still don’t know about each other. Like when did you get the tattoo on your shoulder?”
She smiles softly. “It was a stupid place to put it because I always forget it’s there. I got it after I published my first book. It says I Rise in French. I wanted to write for years. Actually, correction, I did write for years. I went to school to be a nurse, but creative writing really set my heart on fire. Anyway, I sent a couple of manuscripts off to agents and was told no a lot. Like, a lot. One agent told me I was a horrible writer, and I should stick to my day job.
“He was a complete dick.”
“And totally wrong, by the way,” I reply.
“Thank you. You have to have a thick skin in this business. And I do. But that one stung pretty bad. About a year later, I got up the nerve to attend a conference in New York, and I took some workshops from some incredible, very well-established authors. The thriller world is small, and it was awesome to network with those people. I made some friends, got some advice, and I was in the right place at the right time.”
“How so?”
“I was seated at a table with an agent. She started a conversation, and by the end of the evening, she was my agent. I’ve now published six novels, with a movie in the works. So, last year, after Luke approached me for the movie rights, I got this tattoo. Because I sure did fucking rise after that bastard basically told me I was nothing.”
“That’s the best story I’ve ever heard.” She looks up at me in surprise. “I hope your father knew you achieved this before he passed.”
“He did,” she says with a smile. “He was almost giddy with pride.”
She finishes reeling in her line, and I paddle us back to shore. Just as I’m pulling the canoe out of the water, Lexi stands and somehow ends up face-first in the lake.
Before I can rush over to help, she comes up sputtering, pushing her wet hair out of her face.
“Meant to do that,” she says. “Boy, that crisp water sure is refreshing.”
She stares at me, and then we both start laughing, big belly laughs that bounce off the trees and echo back to us.
“You’re a mess,” I say, taking her in. “Let’s get home and put you in the shower.”
“Yes, please.”
I lay my jacket under her on the seat of the SUV so she doesn’t soak the leather too badly, and thank the gods that the cabin is only a five-minute drive away. She hurries into the shower to warm up and clean herself off, and I decide to go downstairs to work out a bit in the home gym that came with the house.
I’m into my third set of pull-ups when I hear her scream.
“SHAWN!”