Chapter 1 — Lake Luke #2
The pool noodles went sideways, the cups scattered, and Tatum tumbled directly into my lap with a shriek that turned into laughter before she landed.
Her thighs were warm through the thin denim of her cutoffs.
One arm hooked around my shoulder. The weight of her settled over me in the exact place I least needed another body, and she didn't try to stand up.
"Oops," she said, breathless and not even close to sorry. "These coolers are trying to kill me."
Danny Bell looked over from near the grill and shook his head with fatherly resignation. "Tatum, what are you doing to that poor man?"
"He caught me," she called back.
"He always catches you."
The patio laughed. Tatum laughed with them.
Under the cover of it, she found my hand and guided my arm around her waist. The movement was small, easy, almost invisible unless you were the man whose fingers had just been pressed against her bare side.
"There," she murmured near my ear. "Better."
Her ass shifted against my cock once, a tiny adjustment disguised as balance. Then twice, slower, enough to send a hot shock up my spine.
"Your lap's better than any chair," she whispered.
Then she bounced up, collected one of the pool noodles, and ran toward the dock while everyone else kept smiling like Tatum being Tatum explained everything.
Maybe it did.
That didn't explain enough.
I took a breath, turned toward the railing, and found Reese Madden already there.
"I have been trying to get to you for twenty minutes," she said, like this was an urgent matter.
Reese didn't ease into a room. She arrived at full summer brightness, glossy brown hair over one shoulder, honey-brown eyes lit up, yellow top tied over a bikini that was doing heroic work. She leaned beside me at the patio railing, close enough for her shoulder to brush mine.
"Do you remember that Memorial Day storm?" she asked. "The one where everyone ended up in the Hollis living room and we danced because the power went out and somebody found that old record player?"
I remembered the storm. I remembered everyone crowded inside, wet towels everywhere, voices overlapping, music crackling through bad speakers. I remembered Reese laughing through the whole thing.
"I remember," I said.
"You put your hands on my waist," she said.
The way she said it turned an innocent memory into something else before I could stop it.
Her fingers touched my forearm. Light. Warm. Deliberate.
"You were so steady," she said, voice dropping, still bright but now meant only for me. "You made me feel safe. You still do."
Her thumb traced once over the inside of my wrist.
That was all.
No one ten feet away would have heard anything except Reese being nostalgic, Reese being sunshine, Reese turning every old memory into a story. But I heard the adult heat under the words. I felt it in the way she looked at me, like the memory had been waiting for years to become this.
"You were a good dancer," I said, because it was safer than telling her my pulse had just kicked hard enough to hurt.
Reese smiled. "I still am."
Then she spun away toward the dock, laughing at something Tatum yelled, leaving my wrist tingling where she had touched me.
I should have known Shay would smell weakness.
She was by the cooler near the speaker, talking big with a couple of the younger guys, her dark hair messy from the lake breeze and her blue eyes electric. When she bent to dig through a canvas bag at her feet, she did it slowly enough that even a better man than me would have looked.
Her top dropped forward.
The black lace underneath was too small for the job. Her breasts were full, heavy, and pushed up so high the bra looked one breath away from surrender. Pale skin, dark lace, deep cleavage, all of it angled directly at me while everyone else was distracted by Vince telling a story behind us.
I looked.
Of course I looked.
Shay straightened with a pair of sunglasses in her hand and caught me dead to rights.
"Careful, Luke," she said, low and amused. "You're doing that thing where you pretend not to stare."
"I wasn't staring."
"You absolutely were." Her mouth curved. "It's fine. I don't mind."
She stepped closer, close enough that her knee brushed mine, then raised her voice for the patio. "Relax. We're not that scary. Unless there's tequila, then all bets are off."
The adults laughed. The younger crowd hooted. Shay lifted her beer in a mock toast and winked at me over the rim.
I needed the lake. I needed a cold shower. I needed to go back in time and arrive in a snowsuit.
Instead, Penny Rourke lifted one hand from the long table and said, "Luke, can I borrow you for one second?"
There were sane men in the world who would have pretended not to hear her.
I went right over.
Penny turned her back to me and lifted all that platinum hair off her neck. Her perfume hit me first, expensive sunscreen, warm skin, a clean vanilla note under something sharper. A thin gold chain lay open against the back of her neck.
"The clasp," she said. "I can never get it by myself."
It was a harmless favor. A tiny necklace clasp. The kind of thing a family friend did at a lake party while everyone kept eating chips around him.
I stepped behind her and took the chain.
Penny settled back against me.
Not enough to make a scene. Enough that the curve of her ass pressed into the front of my shorts with polished, practiced innocence. Her dress was thin. Her body was warm. My hands were too big for the clasp, which was useful, because it gave me a reason to take longer than five seconds.
"Your hands are shaking," she whispered.
"Small clasp."
"Is that what we're calling it?"
The chain finally caught. I should have stepped back.
Penny's hips shifted in a slow little swirl against me, so slight that from three feet away it looked like she had adjusted her stance. Her green eyes met mine over her shoulder.
"Perfect," she said.
Then she turned, smiled as if I had done nothing more intimate than return a dropped napkin, and touched two fingers to my chest before gliding back into the party.
Eden had been watching.
Of course Eden had been watching.
She materialized at my side with her phone in one hand and the expression of a woman whose plan had just reached the good part.
"Group photo," she announced. "Everybody in. Luke, sit there."
"Why am I sitting?"
"Because you're tall and useful, and if you stand in the back, you'll hide half the girls."
That explanation was ridiculous and delivered with enough authority that I sat in the patio chair she pointed at.
Eden moved fast after that, arranging bodies like she had been born to it.
Kiki on one armrest. Tatum leaning in on the other side, still laughing.
Reese behind me with her hands on my shoulders.
Shay and Penny flanking the chair like they had rehearsed it.
Then Eden looked around with theatrical frustration. "No room."
Before I could stand, she sat on my lap.
The patio cheered because Eden had made it a joke. Someone told everyone to squeeze in. Caroline laughed and told us to hold still. Reese took Eden's phone and backed up to get the shot.
What the photo would show was clean, harmless summer fun: six beautiful women crowded around Luke Whitaker at the Bishop house, everyone smiling, everyone close, nothing anyone needed to worry about.
What I felt was Eden Archer's ass settling over my cock with deliberate precision.
Her dark hair brushed my jaw when she leaned back. One hand rested on my shoulder. Her hazel eyes cut sideways to mine, bright with the private pleasure of a trap springing shut.
"Smile," she said.
I smiled.
She shifted her hips once while the shutter clicked.
My hand tightened on the arm of the chair.
"Perfect," Eden said when Reese handed the phone back. She rose from my lap like nothing had happened, looked at the photo, and smiled with deep satisfaction. "Great shot, Luke. You look comfortable."
The girls laughed.
The families laughed.
I sat there with six different scents on my skin, a painfully obvious erection under my shorts, and the dawning understanding that I had not stumbled into six accidents.
I was caught in the middle of a plan.
***
I spent the next hour trying to act normal, which was difficult because normal no longer seemed to exist.
I talked with Mark near the grill. I let Danny Bell tell me about a marina mechanic who had overcharged him.
I nodded along while Russ Madden described a boat upgrade in enough detail that my brain should have been grateful for the distraction.
Vince Hollis asked if I was still making those museum ships, and I told him yes, because discussing ironclad battleships was the closest thing to safety I had found all afternoon.
Outside, I was still Luke Whitaker. Reliable bachelor. Good bourbon. Good dock. Amazing house. Good to have around. The man who brought extra ice and fixed loose cleats and helped haul coolers without being asked.
Inside, I was a mess.
Everywhere I turned, one of them was there.
Kiki brushed past me on her way to the food table, her fingertips trailing along the back of my wrist like she had every right to touch me.
Tatum zipped by with towels in her arms and bumped my hip with hers hard enough to make me catch the plate I was holding.
Reese patted the bench beside her and made a bright public joke about me being the official Waverly rescue squad, then let her bare knee rest against my thigh while everyone laughed.
Shay didn't even pretend. She leaned against the patio rail with her beer and watched me over the bottle, blue eyes daring me to lie about what I wanted.
Penny angled another photo so I had to stand behind her, close enough to smell her hair again.
Eden kept moving people, chairs, plates, conversations, the whole party, and every adjustment put me closer to the six of them than I had been before.
The families missed all of it.