The Bachelor They Wanted (Lake House Girls #1)

Chapter 1 — Lake Luke

Lake Luke

The Bishop place looked exactly the way I remembered.

Sunlight flashed off boat windshields. White dock posts stood bright against the water.

Coolers sat open under the patio shade, already half-dug through by people who had been there since lunch.

Bright towels hung over chair backs and railings.

Somewhere behind the house, the big grill breathed out charcoal smoke, burger fat, and the first real promise of summer.

I parked in the grass where I always parked, cut the engine, and sat there for one extra second with my hands on the wheel.

Waverly Lake did that to me. Even living there full-time, I still felt the season change when Memorial Day weekend arrived.

The quiet stretches of shoreline filled with boat engines, music, sunscreen, and grill smoke, and the whole lake seemed to wake up around me like it had been waiting for the families to come back.

By the time I stepped out of my truck, I wasn't thinking about the quiet house waiting three properties down, the half-finished ironclad on my worktable, or the peaceful bachelor routine I had been telling myself was enough.

I was just Luke again.

Lake Luke, Mark Bishop liked to call me, which wasn't exactly sophisticated, but it had stuck because everyone at Waverly knew a worse nickname was always possible.

Thirty-eight years old. Single. No ex-wife.

No kids. A lake house of my own. Enough money that nobody at the Bishop patio needed to know how much I had unless they had been around when I bought the place.

A life that looked complete from the outside, or close enough that people stopped asking why I had never filled it with someone.

I grabbed the bourbon from the passenger seat and started across the lawn.

The patio was already full. Parents had claimed their usual chairs.

Siblings and friends cut through the crowd in wet swimsuits, holding paper plates, chasing towels, shouting from dock to house and back again.

Music came from a portable speaker near the outdoor kitchen.

Ice rattled in coolers. Boat engines coughed at the dock.

The whole place had that Memorial Day disorder everyone at Waverly pretended was tradition because tradition sounded better than chaos.

Mark Bishop spotted me from the grill and raised a spatula like a weapon.

"There he is. Thought you might bail on us."

"I never bail on you."

"No, you don't." Mark clasped my hand, pulled me into a shoulder grip, and took the bourbon from me long enough to inspect the label. "Good man. Caroline's been asking where you were since noon."

"It's two-fifteen."

"She's been asking since noon," he said, as if this explained everything.

Caroline Bishop appeared from behind him with a dish towel over one shoulder and hostess command in her smile. She kissed my cheek, pressed a cold beer into my free hand, and hugged me like I had been late for something that started only when I arrived.

"You made it," she said.

"I always make it."

"I know you do, sweetheart. Go find a chair. Go find the girls. They've been excited to see you."

I smiled because there were a lot of safe ways to answer that sentence.

None of them came to mind.

I had already seen Kiki.

She stood on the far edge of the patio near her brother Cooper, laughing at something Reese Madden had said, her golden-blonde hair loose around her shoulders and catching the afternoon light in a way that made it look staged.

She wore a pale blue sundress with thin straps, short enough to show off tanned legs, snug enough to show the shape of the bikini underneath when she turned.

The fabric shifted with the breeze and with her body, hinting at full breasts, a narrow waist, and the kind of soft-looking curves that only happened when a woman lived in yoga clothes and still ate ice cream at midnight.

She was Kiki Bishop. Caroline and Mark's sweet golden daughter. The girl everyone trusted. The one who could ask for anything with blue eyes and a smile and have half the patio volunteering before they knew what the favor was.

Except she wasn't a girl.

None of them were.

That was the problem I had been managing for two summers without admitting I was managing it.

Tatum Bell was by the coolers, red hair wild, freckles bright, wearing cutoff shorts and a bikini top under a cropped white tank that rode up whenever she reached for anything. She moved like trouble had gotten a body and decided to laugh about it.

Reese Madden sat on the dock rail with glossy brown hair, honey-brown eyes, and a bright yellow top that made her look like every good summer memory I had ever tried not to ruin. She talked with her whole body, laughing, leaning, glowing, turning every second into motion.

Shay Hollis stood near the speaker with dark hair, vivid blue eyes, and a black top that had either been designed to fail at covering her cleavage or had given up under pressure. She lifted a drink and caught me looking before I could pretend I had not.

Penny Rourke held court near the long table, platinum hair sleek even in the lake humidity, green eyes behind oversized sunglasses, pale dress cut to look casual in a way that probably took serious planning. She was the kind of woman people photographed by accident and then pretended they meant to.

And Eden Archer moved through it all with glossy dark hair, hazel eyes, and the pleased focus of someone who had already arranged three outcomes nobody else knew were coming.

She shifted chairs, redirected a friend with a plate, pointed two people toward the dock, and still found time to look at me like she had been waiting for this exact moment.

They had all come back different this year.

Not as girls from old summers, not as harmless memories, not waiting for permission to be noticed.

They were twenty-one now, all bright smiles and bare legs and confidence, looking at me like they had spent the off-season deciding exactly what they wanted.

I took a drink of beer and told myself the old rules still applied.

That was the summer circle: the Bishops, Bells, Maddens, Hollises, Rourkes, and Archers, six families who had spent enough Memorial Days together that affection had its own loose grammar.

Everyone hugged. Everyone teased. Everyone stood too close because lake houses were crowded and sun made people loose. None of it had to mean what my body kept insisting it meant.

Then Kiki turned, found me across the patio, and smiled.

Not the public smile. Not exactly.

The one underneath it.

She said something to Cooper, touched his arm, and came toward me with that sweet Bishop glide everyone in her family recognized as harmless.

"Luke," she said.

Just my name. Warm. Soft. Public enough for anyone to hear.

Then she stepped into my space and hugged me.

The patio kept going around us. Mark called for someone to bring him tongs.

Caroline laughed at something Danny Bell said.

A cooler lid slammed somewhere behind me.

To anyone watching, this was nothing. Kiki Bishop hugging Luke Whitaker hello, the same kind of summer affection everyone had seen for years.

Except, this time, she pressed her whole body into mine.

She smelled like sunscreen and vanilla, clean hair and warm skin, and the scent went straight through every layer of self-control I had.

Her arms slid around my neck. Her breasts flattened soft and full against my chest. Her hips fit against mine with just enough pressure that my body reacted before my brain had time to call it a bad idea.

The hug lasted one beat too long.

Then another.

Her breath touched my neck, her whisper in my ear. "I missed you."

It was quiet enough that no one else heard it. Sweet enough that anyone who did would have smiled.

Then she shifted.

Not much. Not visibly. Just a subtle roll of her hips against the front of me, exactly where my body had started betraying me. Her blue eyes lifted to mine as she pulled back, and for one bright second, I saw the truth behind the sweetheart smile.

She knew.

She knew what she had done to me, and she liked it.

"Good to see you, Kiki," I said.

My voice came out steady. I was proud of that. I was less proud of everything below my waist.

Kiki's hand lingered on my arm as she stepped beside me. "You always smell like summer out here."

Her mother passed three feet away with a bowl of potato salad and smiled at us like the whole thing was adorable.

I stood in the middle of the Bishop patio with Kiki's vanilla-sunscreen scent on my shirt, a hard-on I could not adjust, and a very sudden feeling that the old summer rules had not survived my first five minutes at the Bishop place.

***

I tried to recover by doing what men in lake crowds had done for generations when their thoughts became dangerous: I talked about boats.

Danny Bell wanted to know if I had opened my pool yet.

Russ Madden had opinions about a motor he was thinking about buying.

Vince Hollis wandered by with a beer and a joke about my dock lights making the rest of them look cheap.

It should have been easy to sink into that world.

Engines, water levels, the best time to take the boats out tomorrow.

Safe topics. Familiar faces. The ordinary language of men avoiding anything real.

I lasted maybe four minutes.

Then Tatum Bell happened.

She came around the patio corner carrying two pool noodles, a bag of ice, and a stack of plastic cups, which was three more items than any sane person should have trusted Tatum with. Her red hair bounced in a messy knot. Her eyes were bright. Her grin announced trouble before her feet confirmed it.

"Luke! Catch!"

She didn't throw the ice. She didn't throw the cups.

She threw herself.