Chapter 10
Daniel
The house sounds like a cattle drive collided with a bridal magazine.
I stand in the kitchen doorway with my coffee halfway to my mouth, watching Miss Maggie direct traffic like a general commanding green troops.
Kitty’s got fabric swatches spread across the table in some color-coded system that puts my supply manifests to shame.
Two women I don’t recognize are arguing about chair covers with the intensity of diplomats negotiating a ceasefire.
And Delaney—
Delaney’s got her laptop open, her phone pressed to her ear, and that white-knuckle grip on her pen that means she’s three seconds from using the sharp end as a weapon.
“Yes, I understand the florist had a family emergency.” Her voice is tight in that way that tells me she’s been professional for about six hours too long. “But we need centerpieces by Saturday, so I’m asking if you have any referrals—”
The laptop pings. Her jaw flexes.
“Can you hold for one second?” She mutes the call and types something one-handed with enough force to crack the keyboard.
I set my coffee down and cross the room.
“Daniel, sugar, what do you think about ivory versus cream for the—” Miss Maggie starts.
I hold up one finger without breaking stride.
She grins. Four decades of running this family. She knows exactly what I’m about to do.
I reach past Delaney and close her laptop.
“What—” She spins, phone still at her ear, eyes flashing. “I’m on a call.”
“You’re off duty.” I pluck the phone from her hand, unmute it. “Ma’am, we’ll call you back.” I hang up before the florist can respond.
Delaney stares at me like I kicked her dog and insulted her spreadsheet formatting in the same breath. “Daniel.”
“You’ve been at this since five-thirty.” I grab her jacket off the chair. “We’re leaving.”
“I have seventeen emails to answer, a vendor meeting in an hour, and the caterer still hasn’t confirmed—”
“And you’re about to break.” I keep my voice low enough that the chaos won’t hear. “I can see it, sweetheart. You’re running on fumes and spite.”
Her shoulders sag. Just for a second. Then she reaches for her laptop. “I’m fine. I just need to—”
I catch her wrist. Gentle. “This wedding is supposed to be ours. Not another crisis you white-knuckle through alone.”
That lands. I see it in the way her breath catches.
“Two hours. I’ll have you back before your vendor meeting.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Miss Maggie catches my eye as we head for the door. She’s already got her phone out, and I know the vendor meeting will be mysteriously rescheduled.
“Don’t hurry back,” she calls after us with enough knowing in her voice to make Delaney’s cheeks flush.
Copper Lake sits thirty minutes north, tucked into a valley where it’s fed by snowmelt and hidden by a switchback trail that doesn’t show up on any map. The water runs clear as glass over copper-colored stones, surrounded by pines and silence so deep you can hear your own heartbeat.
I park in the clearing where I’ve parked a hundred times before. There’s a blanket in the truck bed that Miss Maggie pressed into my hands with a knowing look. A cooler with sandwiches. A thermos of coffee.
Delaney climbs out and takes it in. The lake. The mountains. The stillness.
“Daniel.” Her voice drops to a hush. “This is beautiful.”
“My mom used to bring me here when I was a kid, before everything got complicated. She said it was the only place she could hear herself think.”
She turns toward me, putting pieces together.
“This is your place. Your real place.”
“It was.” I take her hand. “Now I want it to be ours.”
The water is cold enough to make her shriek.
“You could have warned me!”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I’m already waist-deep. “It’s snowmelt. Builds character.”
“It’s hypothermia.” But she’s still coming, teeth chattering. “If I get pneumonia, I’m putting it in my vows.”
She makes it to waist-deep and stops, shivering in a way that does interesting things to the wet fabric clinging to her curves.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you're calculating how fast you can get me out of this swimsuit that appeared so conveniently.”
“I’m not calculating. I already know how fast.” I move closer. “I’m calculating how long I can make myself wait.”
Her breath catches. Then she splashes me.
The water hits my chest like ice, and I let out a sound that is absolutely not a yelp.
“Oh, that’s how it is?”
“That’s exactly how it is, cowboy.”
I lunge. She shrieks and dives sideways, surprisingly graceful for someone who couldn’t sit a horse three weeks ago. Her hair comes loose in dark wet strands, and she laughs as she splashes me again.
God, she’s laughing.
This deep, unguarded sound that transforms her whole face and erases the tension lines around her eyes. All those weeks of banter and walls, and underneath was this joy, waiting for permission to exist.
I want to hear that sound every day for the rest of my life.
“Come here.” I catch her around the waist.
She’s still laughing, water streaming down her face. “Make me.”
“That a challenge?”
She doesn’t finish her retort because I’ve lifted her off her feet and I’m spinning her through the water. The lake sprays around us in silver arcs, and her laughter echoes off the mountains.
“Put me down!”
“Say please.”
“Daniel Sutton, I swear to God—”
I dunk us both.
We come up sputtering, and she’s laughing so hard she can barely stay upright. The cold doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the way she’s looking at me.
“Truce.” She holds up both hands. “I surrender.”
“Truce accepted.” I pull her close, her legs wrapping around my waist. “But I want to try something first.”
“If you dunk me again, I’m filing for divorce before we’re married.”
“Not that.” I shift my grip, one hand on her lower back, the other between her shoulder blades. “Lean back. Let the water hold you.”
She tenses. “I don't—”
“I’ve got you. I promise.”
She tips backward, slow and careful. My hands stay firm as she extends into the water. Her hair fans out like dark silk. Her eyes find the sky.
“Let go,” I murmur. “I’ve got you.”
“I know.” Barely above a whisper. “That’s what scares me.”
But she relaxes anyway. Inch by inch, the tension drains, and she floats—supported by the water and my hands and the trust she’s letting herself feel.
“This is...” She swallows. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Floated?”
“Let someone hold me up. I’ve always been the one doing the holding.”
My chest aches. “Get used to it.”
She smiles. Soft and real and just for me.
I bring her upright, and she wraps her arms around my neck. For a moment, we just breathe together.
“Okay.” I grin. “I want to try something else.”
“What?”
“You ever seen Dirty Dancing?”
Her eyes widen. “Daniel, no.”
“Daniel, yes.”
“This isn’t Crazy Stupid Love. You’re not Ryan Gosling.”
“I’m better than Ryan Gosling.”
“You’re delusional.” But a smile tugs at her mouth. “You’re not lifting me over your head in the middle of a lake.”
“It’s iconic. Very romantic.”
“It’s romantic when Patrick Swayze does it. Swayze was a professional dancer.” She pokes my chest. “You’re a rancher who trips over his own boots twice a week.”
“Slander. Once a week, maximum.” I position her, hands on her waist. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”
“It’ll be a disaster.”
“Same thing.”
She laughs, shaking her head even as she lets me guide her. “This is terrible. You’re going to drop me.”
“I’m not going to drop you.”
“You absolutely are. I’ll end up at the bottom of this lake, and my tombstone will say ‘Death by Dirty Dancing.’”
“Ready? On three. You jump, I lift. Simple physics.”
“Simple physics. Says the man who failed calculus.”
“I got a D. That’s passing.” I tighten my grip. “One...”
“Daniel—”
“Two...”
“This is such a bad—”
“Three!”
She jumps. I lift.
For one glorious second, it works. She rises out of the water, arms extended, and I think holy shit, I’m actually doing this—
Then physics remembers I’m a two-hundred-pound rancher with the grace of a determined ox. My foot slips on a mossy rock. My balance goes sideways.
We go down in a spectacular tangle of limbs and shrieking.
I come up coughing, and the sound that escapes her—
She snorts.
Actually snorts, this undignified honking that turns into full-body laughter so intense she can barely keep her head above water. She doubles over, tears streaming. I cough up lake water, my dignity somewhere at the bottom of Copper Lake. And I don’t care.
“Oh, my god.” She gasps for air. “Your face when you realized—”
“In my defense, Swayze made it look easy.”
“Swayze trained for months!” She’s wheezing. “You watched a YouTube tutorial in the truck, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
She loses it. Goes under, comes up sputtering and still giggling. I’m laughing too—when did I start laughing like this?—and the sun is warm and the water is cold and nothing has ever felt this right.
“Okay.” She catches her breath. “No more Dirty Dancing. Ever. I’m putting it in the prenup.”
“We don’t have a prenup.”
“We do now. Clause one: no romantic lifts in bodies of water. Clause two: no romantic lifts anywhere.”
“What about unromantic lifting?”
“Acceptable. Romantic lifting is grounds for annulment.”
I pull her close. “I’m counting that as a partial success.”
“Partial—Daniel, you nearly drowned us.”
“But I didn’t.” I brush wet hair from her face. “And you laughed.”
She stops. The giggles fade. Her expression shifts into something softer, something that makes my chest tight.
“Yeah,” she says. “I did.”
We float there for a moment, wrapped around each other, the water holding us both. Her fingers trace patterns on the back of my neck. My thumb strokes slow circles on her hip. The playfulness is still there, but underneath, something else is building. Something that’s been building for weeks.
I press my forehead to hers. “Let’s get out of this water before we freeze.”
“And then?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with possibility.
“And then I’m going to show you exactly why I brought you here.”