Chapter 23 Daniel
Daniel woke to the sound of laughter, high and feminine, as it cracked through his dream-filled sleep.
Annie…
His eyes fluttered open and he pushed himself up onto his elbows.
A gentle night breeze, warm and fragrant, was stirring through the room from the open window in the hall, carrying with it the sugar-sweet scent of the rhododendrons behind the alders, just past their prime.
A silent minute passed, and Daniel stayed propped up on his arms in the bed as his muddled mind sorted dream from reality. In the distance, a faint rumble of thunder boomed, and the laugh came again, louder this time, and followed by a splash.
Confusion brought his brows together, and Daniel sat up fully, pushing aside the blankets.
He hadn’t seen Annie since the rodeo, and she hadn’t returned any of his calls in the three days since. He didn’t know it with certainty, but he worried that word had gotten back to her about Jamie’s kiss in the truck.
He’d called at least a dozen times yesterday alone, and the one time she’d actually answered, he had only managed to say, “Annie, listen,” before the receiver slammed right back down.
He’d tried, but at some point, he was just banging his head against a wall.
The ball was in her court now, and when she was good and ready, she’d call him back.
Or maybe she had decided to come up here in person and hash it out tonight instead.
Daniel pulled on a pair of jeans and walked to the front of the boathouse.
On the other side of the windows, the sky over the southern woods flickered with the lightning of a far-off summer storm.
The lake glowed with plankton, the edges thin ribbons of electric blue, and there she was, just beyond the dock, facing away from him as she treaded water, her bare shoulders bobbing up and down in the moonlight.
Daniel’s heart leaped into his throat, and he quickly unlocked the door and stepped out onto the dock, his eyes falling on the set of clothes heaped in a pile on one of the Adirondack chairs with a pair of sneakers placed neatly beneath them.
“Annie?” his voice broke the night stillness.
The woman turned in the water, and Daniel’s breath hitched as he found himself staring into the dancing blue eyes of Jamie Boyd.
“Hey.” Her voice was as casual as if they were passing one another on the sidewalk in town.
As a flash of dry lightning lit the far hills, Daniel stared at her, seriously entertaining the idea that he was still dreaming—but the woman in front of him was all too real, and a quick spark of anger flared to life in his chest.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was hard, but he no longer cared if he sounded unkind. Jamie Boyd had already caused enough problems for him and Annie.
Jamie’s eyes widened. “I—I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to see if the lake really glowed in the dark—and look!”
She turned a slow circle in the water, beaming as the blue creatures lit up in a ring that burned brightly around her.
Daniel was wrestling for control of his racing heart. He was still waking up. He was still in total disbelief that this girl had jumped into his lake in the middle of the night, and he honestly couldn’t tell if she was wearing a swimsuit.
Crouching down on the dock, he looked her dead in the eyes and spoke in slow, deliberate sentences.
“Listen. You can’t be up here in the middle of the night. This is my property, my private land, and I didn’t agree to let you show up here whenever you feel like it.”
In the silence that followed his words, thunder rolled, low and booming, and Jamie blinked her cat eyes in the dark.
“Why not?”
She sounded genuinely surprised, and Daniel sighed, leaning back on his heels.
“It’s not safe, for one thing. That guy who killed the woman on the ridge is still on the run somewhere around here, and for another, people… people are going to get the wrong idea about you and me.”
Jamie rolled her eyes. “Exactly who are you worried about, Daniel? What people? I just broke up with my boyfriend, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
Daniel rose to full height again.
“Go home, Jamie.”
She stared up at him, making no move to swim to the dock.
“Look around.” Her treading limbs stirred up a soft blue glow that lit her body faintly beneath the water. “No one’s here. No one’s watching.”
She tilted her head as she gazed at him with those wide feline eyes, and when she spoke again, there was an invitation in her voice.
“No one’s stopping you from joining me, either.”