Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
P aige put her hair up in a ponytail and bounced down the stairs. She’d been feeling better in the mornings though the nightmares persisted. Perhaps she would finish a picture today.
She stopped dead by the kitchen. Blake’s shirtless back was to her, and she appreciated a little too much the way his muscles moved. He shut the door and took a swig out of a Gatorade bottle. He’d been spending a lot of time in her yard and it actually looked decent for a change.
He spun around. “Oh, hey, I didn’t hear you.”
He smiled at her, and her stomach whooshed. She flushed. He was one of her brother’s best friends and not at all her type.
“Sorry. I was just going to grab a drink and head to my studio.” She needed to finish something. Anything. She was ready to get out of her dry spell.
He leaned against the counter, and she tried to not stare at him. “You’ve been in there every day this week.”
“So. I like what I do.” And she did, though it was frustrating at the moment. Something was off about every picture.
He smirked at her. “Finish anything?”
She scowled. “Not yet. Maybe today.” Though she doubted it. She couldn’t finish pictures that just weren’t right.
“Why don’t you come for a ride with me instead?”
“Where to?” If he tried to get her to go into town, she’d flat out refuse. She didn’t want to run into Avery and Abby or anyone else again. Though she wouldn’t mind if Blake tried to kiss her again. It’d been just over two weeks since he arrived, and she thought about that kiss daily.
She frowned. She couldn’t think like that.
“Ida mentioned Kitch-iti-kipi at breakfast. I thought it might be kind of fun to check out.”
“That’s a two-hour drive.” Being in the car for longer than a few minutes sent her nerves on edge. Plus, she didn’t want to be trapped in the car with him. They barely knew each other and it would be awkward. Though she loved Kitch-iti-kipi. She hadn’t been there in ages. She just wasn’t sure she’d want to go with him.
“So?”
She shrugged. “It’ll be an all-day thing.”
“Let’s pack a picnic and make a day of it. Come on, please. I don’t want to go by myself.”
She wasn’t sure what possessed him to suddenly want to spend time with her. So far, he’d spent breakfast with her, along with Phil and Ida, and that was it. Most of the time he was out walking on her property and messing with her landscaping. She didn’t mind. She didn’t like working with her landscaping, just her herbs and most of those were inside.
Which was honestly for the best. Because otherwise she was afraid she might throw herself at him. Her feelings got all mixed up when she was around him.
But a picnic would be okay and she loved the lake. “I guess so.” She didn’t see how she could get out of it.
He gave her one of his grins. “Oh come on, you can be more excited than that.”
“It’s kinda boring and I’ve been there loads of times.” It wasn’t boring at all, but she couldn’t very well tell him her trepidation was spending all day with him.
“But never with me. I’ll be able to tell you all about the plant life in the water.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh boy, can’t wait.”
He ignored her insolence. “I’m going to shower. Do you mind packing the picnic?”
“Sure.”
She would pack up the picnic and try to think what on earth they’d talk about all day.
* * *
“So, I still don’t know why you are here,” Paige said now that she had him trapped in the car for a while. She wanted to know more about his past. No normal thirty-something would hide away for the summer. There was a story there and Paige was determined to find it. She kept her hands gripped on the seat. Talking would be a good distraction.
“I told you, Lukas said you needed some company this summer, so here I am.”
“No. Why were you even available to stay with me? Surely you could be out there inventing evil new drugs.”
He squirmed in his seat a little. “It’s a long story.”
“It’s a long drive. And if we’re going to live in the same house together, we should probably get to know each other a little.”
Blake sighed. “I suppose. It’s because of Debbie.”
“Who’s Debbie?”
“The love of my life.”
“Yep, there’s a good story there and I want to hear the whole thing.” This was way better than arguing about medicine.
For a second, she thought he was going to tell her to mind her own business, but he didn’t.
“It’s a bit sordid. Our romance isn’t normal by any stretch of the imagination.”
“Normal is boring,” she said and Blake smiled.
“Debbie’s older than me by about fifteen years. I don’t care. She looks like she’s about twenty and is smoking hot. That’s not why I love her, but I needed to clarify that. I suppose it’s a little like Ida and Phil, but not quite as extreme. When we met, she was my organic chem professor. Of course, lots of us were smitten with her. I booked every possible office hour with her I could. She was quiet, withdrawn, and a little sad. All I wanted to do was make her laugh. I never succeeded. Not then, anyway. The attraction between us was undeniable though. She freely admitted that. Night before the final exam we slept together. I got an A, and I didn’t see her again for another three years.”
Paige laughed. “You mean you slept with her for a grade? That’s unbelievable.” She wasn’t judging him. It just didn’t seem like something he would do. Though she supposed she didn’t know him all that well.
Blake sighed. “No. That wasn’t it. I wanted to keep seeing her, but as soon as the term ended, I went home, and when I got back in the fall, I went to her office, but she’d left. No one would tell me where she went.”
“So I highly doubt you’ve just been mooning after her since then. You must’ve hooked up again.”
“We did. Three years later she was my professor once again. This time it was grad school. She had a different last name, so I didn’t know it was her until I stepped into her classroom. I’d walked in late, and she’d already started lecturing. She stumbled when she saw me. I was tempted to walk up to the front of the room and kiss her, but I figured that would be reckless. Instead, I took a seat in the very front row. The only one sitting there, actually. Drove her crazy. Course we slept together that night and every other night until I finished my Ph.D. We had to keep our relationship quiet, so it was mostly just sex. I took a job in South America when I finished, and we both agreed it would be best to just end it.”
Paige clutched at her seat. “Was she married?” Maybe all men were like Emery.
“Divorced, I think. She never talked about it. I did ask her if she was married, and she said no. In love or not, I wasn’t going there.”
Paige heaved a sigh of relief. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t going to get involved with Blake anyway, but at least he wasn’t a cheater.
“You’ve had a career since then, so what happened next.”
“A few years after that I took another job in Europe, consulting with a university in Italy.”
“Let me guess. Debbie was there.”
Blake nodded. “New last name again. This time though, I played things differently. You see, the other times we hooked up we couldn’t date openly because she was my professor, but now she wasn’t. Instead of jumping in bed with her, I asked her out for dinner. We dated for three months before we slept together again. I didn’t waste any time after that. We moved in together and were happy for two years.”
“Two years, huh. That sounds serious.”
“It was. I planned on proposing. Had a whole scheme worked out. My buddy from Egypt flew up to Prague to help me pull it off. But she never showed up. Called me and told me she needed a break and met an Italian. She told me I could clean out my stuff from the apartment the next weekend because she would be staying with her new boyfriend.”
Without thinking, Paige reached over and squeezed his hand. “That must’ve been hard for you.”
“It was. I left her alone for a while after that, but I just couldn’t stay away. Just before I came out here, I went to win her back, but discovered she was getting married.”
“Wow. I thought I was the only one with a messed up story.”
Blake chuckled a little. “Nope. I’m pretty messed up too.”
Paige let out a breath. “Enough of this heavy stuff. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your travels? It sounds like you’ve been all over the world.”
“Do you want to hear about the time I got bit by a Brazilian wandering spider or nearly drowned off the coast of Australia?”
“Both.”
As they neared Kitch-iti-kipi, Paige realized that she hadn’t minded the drive. In fact, the two hours had flown by. Blake had kept up a stream of stories of his travels.
The parking lot was empty, which was unusual for early summer, but it was a Wednesday. They parked, and Blake put Tria on a leash. She cowered away from him as he latched it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her on a leash.” Poor girl. She’d probably love to roam free out here. She certainly did at home.
“She hates them. You’d think with as much traveling as we do that she’d be used to them, but she’d much prefer to run on her own. Once she gets a whiff of something interesting, she’ll be fine.”
They walked down the boardwalk and came around a corner. The idyllic spring-fed lake came into view, and a large boat sat tied to the dock.
“Come on,” Paige said, excitement bubbling in her stomach. She hadn’t felt this way in a while, but she was eager to see Blake’s reaction to the water. It was like nothing else on this earth. Though she hadn’t been all over the world, so maybe there was something like somewhere else and he’d seen it. She’d be so disappointed if he wasn’t awed by it.
On the lake the single boat was available for anyone to board and take across the lake. It was on a rope that spanned the lake and when you turned the big wheel the boat went in a straight line along the rope and back again. It was only about a five-minute ride to the middle of the lake if you went slowly.
It appeared more like a flat barge, with a wooden roof and rails all along the side.
When it was busy a ranger manned the boat, but on slow days it was up to the passengers to figure it out.
She pushed open the gate and held it for Tria so she could get on the boat. Blake followed.
“You can let her off the leash if she won’t jump in the water,” Paige told him.
He did, and she grabbed the wheel to take them to the center of the lake. She cranked the big wheel slowly.
Blake glanced over the rail.
“Wait,” Paige yelled.
“What?” He turned, and Paige was acutely aware of how close he was to her.
“Don’t look yet. It’s better if you get the full effect in the center.” She wanted to see his reaction and the best part was in the middle.
He stared at her. “Then where am I supposed to look in the meantime?”
He took a step closer to her. His boldness surprised her, but she supposed it shouldn’t after that grocery store kiss and how he’d stepped up to help her. She continued to crank the wheel to keep the boat moving, but there was an energy between them that wasn’t there before.
She swallowed. “Just look at the trees. I bet you know what all of them are called.”
He tore his gaze away from her, and the spell broke. She could still feel his body heat, until he leaned against the rail, looking up into the trees. Occasionally their elbows would brush together.
“Do you want me to do that?” He nodded toward the wheel.
She shook her head. “You can get us back. I like this part.”
It didn’t take more than a few minutes to get to the middle of the lake, and she stopped the boat.
“Can I look now?” he asked.
She nodded, and he moved to the center of the boat where a cutout had been made for people to view the lake bottom. Kitch-iti-kipi was one of the clearest lakes in the world. You could see everything. Large fish swam among the reeds and the sand bubbled up where the spring fed it.
Blake smiled and glanced up at her. “This is incredible.”
“I know. I normally don’t make it out here much because of the drive, but when I’m here, I could spend hours watching the fish.”
“You and me both,” he said. “But I thought you said it was boring.”
She flushed. “I was just trying to get out of spending the day with you.”
He mocked outrage. “Am I really that horrible?”
“No, but we don’t know each other all that well and I worried it would be awkward.”
“And has it been?”
“No. It hasn’t.”
She glanced down and watched the water because even though he said he could spend hours watching the fish, his eyes were on her.