Chapter Four Luke
Four
Luke
The oil can was right where he’d left it, behind his grandpa’s beat-up toolbox. Every tool marked with that R for Rhodes, like anyone else would dare lay claim to them. Luke grabbed the can. Sophie would need it for that stubborn lock.
He froze. Damn it. Why the hell was he helping her?
The woman had been here all of five minutes and already had him playing handyman.
It had to be those eyes. Or maybe it was the way her jeans hugged those curves that had no business looking that good after a flight across the Atlantic.
Or how that wet sweater stretched across her…
No. He wasn’t going there. Not again. Getting tangled up with pretty city girls and their bright ideas was exactly how he’d ended up with a broken heart and why half the town still gave him those pitying looks whenever Claire’s name came up.
He’d watched this shit play out before. Some bright-eyed dreamer rolls into town thinking they’ll open a cute little business then bails when the first winter hits or the tourists dry up. And who gets stuck dealing with the abandoned eyesore? The locals. People like him.
The lake’s delicate balance was already hanging by a thread—just enough tourism to keep businesses running, not enough to ruin what made the place special. A bookshop would mean more traffic, more noise, more smartphones pointed at everything like the whole damn place was some kind of prop.
A buzzing sound cut through his thoughts. Sophie’s phone, abandoned on the table when she’d rushed off to shower. The screen lit up, flashing what looked like one of those Pinterest things. Against his better judgment, he leaned in.
“Boathouse Dreams & Schemes” the screen announced in some fancy font.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered as the images loaded.
Floating bookshelves that would warp in a week.
Some ridiculous “Instagram wall” plastered with fake flowers that’d be covered in mildew by fall.
Those pretentious hanging egg chairs his ex had circled in every design magazine.
Chrome fixtures that belonged in some overpriced urban coffee shop, not next to his weathered dock where they’d tarnish before the first weekend was over.
Every single picture screamed “clueless person who’s watched too many TV home renovation specials.
” Not one goddamn consideration for how metal corroded in lake air, or how glass walls meant freezing in winter and baking in summer, or how that cute little “reading nook” would become a moldy nightmare after the first heavy rain.
The woman didn’t have the first idea what she was getting herself into.
He shoved the oil can back and his feet carried him to the edge of his dock.
The lake always settled him. Had done since he was a kid raising hell on these docks.
He paused and looked out at it, the water now still as glass.
Right there, that was where his pa had taught him to cast his first line.
He’d been six, could barely hold the rod straight, but he’d hooked a bass barely bigger than his palm.
“That’s Rhodes blood showing through,” his grandpa had said, watching from the dock, proud as hell.
“Been fishing this lake since before your daddy was a glint in my eye.”
The cherry trees his great-grandmother had planted swayed, dropping their petals on the lake like nature’s confetti.
Luke had learned to swim in that water before he could walk properly, spent more time jumping off that dock than he had in school.
Got his first bloody nose right there when he caught his now best friend Jake Martinez trying to steal one of his grandpa’s boats for a night-time joy ride.
Christ, the trouble he’d caused on this lake.
Our lake.
That was what his grandpa always called it. No one questioned it either because the Rhodes family had been there since before the town had indoor plumbing. They’d built every boathouse on this stretch with their own hands, including the one Sophie was planning to turn into a Pinterest fever dream.
Another memory hit him hard then, this time of his grandpa in the hospital fifteen years ago, gripping his arm hard enough to leave marks.
“Listen here, boy. This lake…it ain’t just water and wood.
It’s got stories in every splinter, history in every wave.
These city folks come in thinking they know better, but they don’t understand what they’re messing with.
Promise me you’ll keep it safe. Promise me, Luke. ”
He’d promised. Meant it with every callus on his hands and every scar earned keeping these old boathouses standing in their original form. That was why he stayed. When the other kids Luke went to school with left for college or to pursue some dream or another, Luke stayed.
His gaze drifted to his own boathouse, where Sophie was probably still in his shower, water running over…
Nope. He shut that thought down fast, though the image of soap suds and bare skin lingered longer than it should.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Focus.
This wasn’t about how good she looked soaking wet or how that determined glint in her eye made something twist in his chest. This was about her plans for a boathouse built by his family and what it might do to this town.
Mabel’s lunch invitation to Sophie floated back to him.
Her chance to charm the pants off everyone with that British accent and those doe eyes.
Damn it. He’d better show up, too. Somebody needed to be the voice of reason before the whole town fell under her spell.
Solace Springs wasn’t some weekend project.
This was generations of history, his family’s blood and sweat, his town’s heart and soul.
“Sorry, old man,” he muttered to the lake. “Looks like your grandson’s about to cause trouble again.”