Chapter Five
NOAH SILENCED HIS cell phone to stop the emoji innuendos and matchmaking.
Served him right that she’d been standing in his way.
A fiery redhead with haunting amber eyes.
He couldn’t see Rachel for the first time in years with his smile turned upside down.
Had he wanted to be angry and curt, absolutely.
But the woman held the power to disarm him.
Always had. After today, he admitted she always would.
Parked in his yard, he dropped his head, sighing.
She was the right woman, but the wrong time hounded them.
The weight of the day settled on his shoulders, bunching the muscles with fatigue.
The job.
The committee.
The town.
The future.
Rachel.
The moment he entered his cabin, he’d stripped off his ruined uniform pants and shirt.
He inspected his leg where ClamClam’s spikes had pierced his soul.
Thankfully, his skin had repelled the tiny terror from doing real damage.
The sun had quit for the day. Big bonus.
So, he tossed his wallet and keys onto the kitchen counter and left a trail of clothes from the living room to the back deck.
Water thundered around him, a relentless percussion that matched the drumming of his battered spirit. Each droplet felt like a lit match, reminding him of the discussion earlier that day.
Bare and with no one around to care, he walked the few feet from the rear of his place to the plunge pool.
Stillness surrounded him, leaving him alone with the pale glow of moonlight shimmering on the surface of the water.
A ladder rung of cucumber magnolia trees, thinly veiled in foliage this early in spring, covered the inclined bank on the opposite side.
Inhaling, he dove, submerging his weary muscles deep underwater.
Beneath the surface, his thoughts swirled as turbulently as the currents.
Committee meetings. Budgets. Building codes.
Pete. Rachel. Negotiations that would require him to manage lifelong friendships like a controlled burn through a dry forest. Noah swam downstream, closer to the only other structures near the water, his brothers’ cabins.
Letting the water press against his ears, Noah tried to muffle the world.
He burst through the water’s surface, droplets scattering to the wind like his future.
His chest heaved, caught between exhaustion and a raw, electric tension.
A rustle of movement came from the tall grass lining what used to be a clear path to the Johnson farm.
Further up the mountain from the Calvarys’ land, the two homesteads were separated by the plunge pool at the foot of Landing Falls.
Rachel used to clear the narrow passage of overgrowth, but Matt had abandoned his daughter’s favorite place after she left.
“Six, is that you?” Noah called, scanning the darkness for a familiar shape. A deer or stray pup, perhaps. “I can hear you.”
“Just keep swimming,” a feminine voice replied.
Noah’s heart began to pound, the drumbeat deafening in his ears.
Despite the evening breeze, sweat erupted across Noah’s forehead.
A blanket of heat covered his skin, and his pulse sped up.
Inside, his temperature climbed from that of a lobster floating in a cool tank to one in a boiling pot of water.
Had she come to see him? His stomach clenched with each sweep of his arm through the water. Breathe, man. Instead of relaxing, his body coiled tighter.
Swallowing his excitement, he called her name. “Six, here to apologize?”
More movement, but there wasn’t enough light for him to spot her in the darkness.
“Don’t call me that.”
His breath caught at the sound of her voice, closer now. “Why not?” Noah asked, stealthily gliding toward her, slow and deliberate. Each stroke brought him nearer to the embankment, to her shadowed silhouette. The moonlight played tricks, making her form shimmer and shift like a mirage.
“It’s your name. We’ve always had each other’s backs, right?”
A shadow shifted beside a pine tree. “We were kids, Noah.”
“Doesn’t change who we are to each other.”
“To each other. Don’t go there.” She laughed, the sound breathy and alluring, transporting Noah back in time, even as her denying what they meant to each other rubbed against his competitive spirit. “I’m looking for my cat. She escaped the house… ran this way.”
“Stop playing, Six. Come out so I can see you.”
“I’m looking for ClamClam, not you enjoying your cowboy bath. Dang it. She moved.”
“Six, this is weird. We’re at the pool—our spot—but not seeing each other.” Maybe there was a tiny bit of pleasure burning through every word. A magnetic pull gripping his chest that he recognized in her gaze.
“Name’s Rachel and… I’m fine right where I am.” Her outline began to retreat, as if she were sensing his calculated approach. “Some mysteries are better left unexplored,” she teased, but there was a tremor beneath her words—something vulnerable, something wanting.
Noah shifted, water sluicing around his body. “Watching from a distance?” he called out, his voice a deliberate provocation. “Been following your projects throughout California. I thought you were more of a front-row kind of girl now.”
“Shows how little you know about me.”
She had to know this wasn’t the end of the discussion. “Suit yourself, fan girl. That means I’m coming to you.”
Her breath caught—a perceptible hitch that told him he’d scored a win. She popped out of the shadows then. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, I would,” he said, lengthening his strokes to reach the rocky shore.
Time for the bonus round of eyeing her up close and personal, in private.
She stormed down the incline. Her foot slipped once.
Noah’s heart lurched in his chest. There were rocks, some obvious, others not so much. Was she insane?
“Be careful, Six. There are trip hazards over there that are hard to see at night.” The bank was steep and riddled with thick roots hidden by the grass.
“Don’t even try to tell me what to do.”
“Stay put,” he commanded, swimming faster.
“The day I need Noah Cal—” Moonlight caught the briefest flash of long legs before a wild tangle of limbs careened down the hill and then hit the water. A wall of water took flight. Ripples pushed against his body, and then she vanished as water swept over her head. “Rachel!” Noah bellowed.
In one breath, she was fussing. He loved hearing her talk; he would’ve kept pushing on her one nerve if it meant they’d stay like this for hours. Talking instead of a bunch of unanswered emails and snail mail letters. In the next breath, she went silent.
“MRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOWWWWWWW!” ClamClam screamed, lifeguarding after luring her to the water. Nutty cat generated more blasted noise than the rig sirens down at the station.
Approaching the site where she’d gone under, he used both hands to fish beneath the water, spinning in circles.
His fingers made contact with soft, cool skin, and closed around her arm.
He plucked her up. She coughed, and he felt wetness pelt his chest. What he knew to be red curls lay matted to her forehead, obscuring her eyes.
She lifted her left hand to clear the crushed nest of curls hiding her face and froze. “Ouch,” she hissed, using her right hand to feel along her left forearm and wrist.
“Are you hurt?”
She stuttered as water dribbled from clumps of wet hair into her mouth. Her gaze locked on his chest, then scanned lower. Quick as a bull out of the chute, her head snapped back up. Their eyes met, kind of. There was still a mass of curls for her to contend with.
“Are you naked?” she asked, her voice high-pitched with accusation.
“By your tone, neither my man parts nor I are reassured of our safety.” Especially with her white T-shirt clinging to her wet flesh, and those boy shorts showing off toned, smooth legs that had him biting back a groan.
She’d been a cute kid, a beautiful teenager with freckles he counted in his dreams. But this version of the farmer’s daughter called to his wild side.
“Are you?” she demanded.
He scooped her up into his arms as he glided back across the pool. “Does it matter?”
“Ah, yeah, it kinda does,” she shot back, head angled, eyes wide in shock. Disbelief.
“You know, Six, I’ve spent years wondering how it would be when I had you in my arms again,” Noah murmured. “About what you’d say. Where would it lead?”
“Stop talking, naked boy, and put me down. You have an injured leg.”
He’d forgotten about his battle wounds from earlier.
“A corner street poet in training if I ever heard one. And it’ll take more than a cat named ClamClam to hobble me,” he chuckled, her back cradled against his forearms, her soft curves against his biceps.
Boy, it felt amazing to hold her again. She kept talking, and Noah fought to keep his eyes from straying to her mouth.
“And you’re still a big jock who does as he pleases.”
“Guilty and unrepentant. Now answer my question. You hurt?”
“I’m fine. My wrist tingles a bit.”
He frowned, not liking one bit that she had gotten herself hurt because of him. “I have a first aid kit at my place.”
She stiffened. “You can’t take me there.”
“Too late,” he said, reaching the bank, the single bulb on his back deck lighting their path.
“If I hadn’t challenged you, you would’ve stayed away from the shoreline.
Least I can do is take care of you.” On steady legs, he strode toward warmth as the temperature dropped in the growing darkness.
He wanted to make a good impression, but his lower half opted for bad behavior.
He hoped Rachel wouldn’t notice his physical reaction to her nearness.
“Are you seriously carrying me into your house in the middle of the night, dripping wet and naked?”
He paused. “Is that the word of the night? Naked?”
“Oh, that’s such a Noah question.”
His outraged bundle of woman shifted in his arms. Even shadowed, he could make out her lowered chin and parted lips.
The sexual tension hummed between them, unspoken, charged with possibility and years of unresolved longing.
He smiled, a part of him pleased that the spark of attraction burned eternal. “Me naked—Is that a problem?”
“Yes, Noah. It’s a huge problem.”
She lifted her head higher off his chest, their mouths mere inches apart. “Then don’t look down.”
She threw her head back and whispered, “Too late.”