Chapter 15
Blake
As luck would have it, the moment my granddad and I cleared the bend and came face-to-face with the beautiful sparkling waters of Mt. Craigleith’s lake, so too did we find ourselves coming up on the sunbathing Marlow freaking Knight.
He was stretched out on the dock, laying flat on his back with a pair of dark-tinted sunglasses covering his eyes, his feet still hanging over the edge and submerged under the cool water, just like Lydia had said.
His fingers were laced and tucked under his head, cushioning him from the hard wood under him.
But that wasn’t the part that was catching my eye the most. It was the fact that he was in nothing but a pair of swimming trunks that were pulled dangerously low on his hips, showing off the beginnings of his pelvis, that I had to rip my gaze away from before I got dangerously turned on.
Of course he was out here looking like a damn catalog model posing from a shoot that was beach-theme inspired.
All washboard abs and thick, ropey arms that looked like they could pick up anyone under two hundred and throw them right over his shoulder like they were merely a beach towel slung out of the way in order to carry the precious cooler of beers down to the water’s edge.
Bet the veins in his arms would pop if he did that.
Bet he could carry two coolers.
His tanned skin was definitely getting dark from when I’d met him a week ago, a full shade at least, and damn, did a little color look good on him. He wasn’t pale to begin with but now no one would definitely be accusing him of spending too much time indoors.
“Nice day for sunning yourself,” my granddad called out, snapping me out of my lust-filled thoughts while taking in a long sweep of the waters and the guests currently swimming in the roped off area.
“Can’t beat it,” Marlow replied instantly.
My heart thudded uncomfortably in my chest.
He didn’t sound upset, so that was at least a positive sign.
Perhaps Lydia was reading too much into his behavior.
She’d only gotten to know him one other time during the hike back down from the waterfall where she couldn’t wait to tell me all about Marlow’s quirky antics the moment she got back to base camp.
Since then, she’d kept a skeptical eye on him.
That was the man she’d had her first opportunity to know—a vivacious and eccentric personality that was both the life of the party and a master at charming anyone he talked to. A snake charmer that could flatter even the coldest of hearts.
In reality, Marlow was so much more than that.
He had depth to him. More sides than simply the class-clown mask he liked to wear when in social situations.
I’d seen it for myself first hand in those passing moments when I’d actually allowed myself to stop with the professionalism and let him in a bit.
When I’d actually set aside my worry with crossing boundaries and given in to the itch.
I liked that side of him. It was just as compelling as his eccentric self.
If only we’d met five years ago. Maybe then, I would’ve let myself get caught up in the whirlwind.
It would’ve absolutely ended in heartbreak, but aren’t all first loves like that?
“You enjoying your time here so far?” my granddad asked.
“Besides the hangover? Absolutely.”
My brows knitted together.
Hangover?
How in the world did he manage that when we only permitted two alcoholic drinks per guest per night?
Unless he hoarded them all over the weekend from the bonfires... But then again, getting drunk off four beers, maybe six, enough that he’d woken up with a hangover this morning, seemed a little... unbelievable.
There was no way he was that much of a lightweight.
“Did you talk someone into getting you something off the property?” I asked.
Marlow shifted on the dock, his hand popping out from under his head to shove the sunglasses down under his eyes to stare at me over the rim of them. “Ah, Mr. Director... so nice of you to leave your cave and join us for a little sunlight. AC getting a little too cold up there?”
The jab, aimed true, right for my chest and hitting home. Dead center.
Talk about a sucker punch.
Ouch.
So he is pissed at me.
Unfortunately, his comment made my granddad practically double over with laughter. “Don’t tell me you’ve been hiding away in the damn office.”
Clearly, I wasn’t as scot-free as I thought I was.
The unmistakable taunting was barely covered up with his usual light tone.
A simple tease to any other person that wasn’t familiar with the way he spoke or joked around, but to anyone that was a little more seasoned like me, it became quite obvious he wasn’t at all kidding in his mockery.
If this was how it was going to be for the next five weeks, I wasn’t sure how the hell we were going to both manage. Having such thick tension had already been practically suffocating when it was simply sexual. Slap on a dose of irritation and it turned into a regular recipe for disaster.
Goddamn it.
This was why I was supposed to keep my damn dick in my pants.
“I haven’t.”
My granddad shook me by my shoulder. “The paperwork can wait, Blake. Enjoy the summer while it’s here.”
“Yeah, Mr. Director. Enjoy the summer while it lasts,” Marlow chimed right in, stoking the fire like the fucking pot-stirrer he was determined to be. “Unless you’re avoiding something down here with us common folk.”
I shot him a subtle glare.
Knock it off.
He sent back a cheeky smile and then winced. “Ugh.”
I tried to narrow down the list in my head one-by-one.
Talos was too much of a rule follower to be talked into leaving the property in order to make a booze run for a guest. Lydia was usually in bed before the sun went down, and Lindsay was definitely not the type to be hanging around the guests after her shift was done.
There was the possibility of my other set of crew, my night shift-ers, but would Marlow have approached a staff member he wasn’t at least a little bit familiar with?
I supposed it didn’t really matter, considering he was good at disarming anyone he came in contact with.
It’d take one long and meaningful conversation after the sun went down and the bonfires were blazing against the night sky before he had them fishing their keys out of their pocket and scurrying off to the staff parking lot to run into town for him.
“Who’s your hook up?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
I had to know. If he had anyone in his back pocket, I wanted their name and once I had it, they’d immediately be switched to day crew for the next five weeks.
No way was I tolerating this bullshit flying under my nose.
He wasn’t about to be getting a special on-call meal service whenever he pleased just because he sweet-talked someone into feeling special.
He’d signed up to come here for a reason. He wanted a life change and goddamn it, he’d get just that. He’d get the full authentic experience of living at a wilderness and survival adventure camp, I’d make sure of it.
While I was also going to pretend that a spark of jealousy most definitely wasn’t brewing in my chest at the possibility of Marlow talking someone else up like he had me—cornering them against the mess hall and inviting them back to his cabin for a little getting-to-know-each-other.
My jaw tinged suddenly from grinding my teeth together.
I wasn’t supposed to care about being a passing interest. That’s what our whole one-time arrangement had been agreed to.
He had no loyalty to me, and nor did I have anything for him.
I wasn’t supposed to, anyway. I was only another notch on his bedpost. A consequence of giving in to my stupid desires like I had no control over them in the first place.
That was it.
Why the hell did that sting so badly?
“Can’t say, my lips are sealed,” he muttered, a hand coming up to massage his temple.
My granddad’s eyes were lazering into me. “I see we’ve gotten quite familiar with the guests.”
I almost groaned.
This was not how I wanted any of this to go.
We’d come out here to walk the grounds and catch up, not run into Marlow and have my whole cover blown.
Him calling me out on everything because of his bitchy mood wasn’t what I’d signed up for after agreeing to leave the safety of my office and coming down here to spend time with my granddad.
Marlow was the last on my list of people I wanted to run into at this point.
“I don’t know if you can tell but I’m kind of his favorite,” Marlow said as he shoved his sunglasses over his eyes once again and relaxed back down onto the dock.
“Is that what you think,” I challenged.
“Oh, that’s what I know.”
“I’m glad to see my grandson is making friends.” My granddad beamed.
That had Marlow lowering his shades once again. “Grandson? Blake, why didn’t you say we were in the presence of royalty?”
In a surprising show of resilience, he pushed up from the dock and rolled to his feet. There was a brief wince that I caught right before he smothered it in order to plaster a pleasant smile on his face, offering his hand out to my granddad to shake.
As the two men shook hands, my gaze wandered to Marlow’s body again, shamelessly taking in every little line of his muscles and the slight difference in tan shade starting right above the hem of his swim trunks. I bet if I placed my hand right over his pec, he’d be hot to the touch.
Scorching, even.
“Marlow Knight,” he said with a flourish. “Your grandson’s been keeping me company since I signed up for the wrong package. Turns out, I got in on a couple’s retreat and had no idea until I got here. Who knew!”
“The welcome packet, for one,” I said.
“Since then....” An arm was thrown around my shoulders, pulling me toward a very warm body. “Blake’s been filling in as my partner. It’s been great, other than him constantly ditching me for paperwork halfway through our adventures.”
The worst part about being so close to him was how easily it was to melt into his side. Like my legs were suddenly turned to Jello and all I wanted to do was let him hold me like this while I soaked up the heat radiating off of him from his sun exposure like a fucking lizard.
Since I was little, I always knew I was gay. Had never tried to hide it or explain it away to anyone, including my granddad, who wasn’t at all phased when he caught me making out with one of my classmates while we were at the campgrounds for a class field trip.
All he’d told me as I got older was to keep myself safe and to never give into anything that I wasn’t comfortable doing. He’d always been my rock throughout my life. My sage advisor.
Who was hopefully totally oblivious to what Marlow’s arm around me was doing to my brain by practically melting it into mush.
Fraternizing with the clientele was a big ole’ fat no-no.
Getting caught doing exactly that by my granddad?
I’d rather throw myself into the lake and try to drown before facing that lecture.
“Blake.” The head shake was all the scolding I needed.
“I wasn’t—I’m not.” The words were hard to form. Worse with me trying to find what kind of sentence to string them into.
“It’s okay.” Marlow’s long and drawn out sigh snapped me out of my delusional thoughts. “I get it. I’m not fun enough to hang out with. The glitz and glam have all worn off. I’m simply a rusted up toy, no longer used and tossed into the bottom of the toy box.”
I nearly rolled my eyes.
I slammed my elbow right into his side, digging in hard enough to force him off of me. “Don’t you have a hangover to nurse?”
The second he let go of me, my stomach sank. What a traitorous bastard my body was being at the moment.
“That’s what I was doing before you came over here and interrupted my nap.”
My granddad was watching us with abject fascination. An amused smile playing on his lips that had an all-too-knowing uptick to it. If he was making assumptions about anything, I sure as hell hoped it was all innocent.
A simple case of me falling into an easy friendship with a bodacious man that clearly had too much fun ribbing me whenever he got the chance to.
So far, I still had plausible deniability. However, if Marlow kept this up—the teasing, the poking, the slightly bitchy attitude—we were going to become real fucking obvious soon enough.
I was trying not to be paranoid, however, my granddad also wasn’t a stupid man. Far from it, actually.
Not much flew by him without him taking notice, storing it away for later in that file cabinet of a mind he had until the relevant time came around to extract the file and lay all of the evidence out on the table for both parties to see.
There was a reason not many people fought him on how he ran this place back in the day. I’d simply ridden in on his coattails and maintained the status quo.
“My apologies,” I said, stepping away from him. “We’ll let you get back to it.”
Marlow’s smile turned tight. “Yeah, of course.”
Don’t fall into it. Just turn around and walk away.
“It was nice to meet you, Marlow. I hope I’ll be seeing more of you later this evening at the bonfires.” My granddad’s tone was pleasant, betraying nothing of whatever was swirling around in his mind—theories, questions, evidence pointing toward a particular opinion.
My head snapped back around to him. “You’re staying that late?”
He chuckled. “Planning on kicking me off of the property soon?”
My cheeks grew hot from embarrassment. “No. Not at all. Stay as long as you’d like. You know you’re welcome to.”
Not to mention my entire staff would riot if they found out I booted our former owner off the property.
This man had done everything for this place, birthing it into existence from nothing and turning it into something incredible.
I’d never be able to face myself in the mirror if I did something as stupidly selfish as sending him on his way in order to avoid accountability.
Whatever lecture was on the horizon for me, I’d have to take in stride. Hopefully, I could cover my own ass and make all of this seem like one giant misunderstanding, depending on what the hell kind of vibes he was picking up on.
“We should get going.” I looped my arm back around his. “Ready?”
My granddad threw one last amused smile Marlow’s way before letting me tug him away from the docks.
The farther we got away from here, the better.
I needed to put as much distance between me and this man as soon as possible before I did something stupid, like invite him back to my cabin to join us for dinner. The last thing I needed was for him and my granddad to share a dinner table like I was bringing him home to meet the family.
“See you soon!” Marlow called after us.