Chapter Twenty-Six Luke
Twenty-Six
Luke
Luke woke to the gentle rhythm of Sophie’s breathing against his chest as morning light cut through his bedroom windows.
He tightened his arm around her, still not quite believing how fast she’d become a fixture in his bed—and his life.
Her books were even on his side table, her spare toothbrush in his bathroom.
Five weeks. Just five damn weeks since that night on the boat and Luke could hardly remember what mornings were like before Sophie Bennett crashed into his life.
Before her neat little charts and color-coded labels had taken over his tool chest. Before he’d found out that beneath all that proper British talk was a woman who could shut his brain down with just her hands and that smart mouth of hers.
Their evenings had settled into something of a routine.
They’d sit out on his deck most nights, sharing one of his grandfather’s old wool blankets while nursing mugs of tea or wine.
Sometimes they talked—about her plans for the bookshop, about his tours, about the way the light hit the water differently each season.
She’d ask questions about the lake’s history that made him see familiar things through her eyes.
Other nights, she’d read one of her books—he now knew everything he never needed to know about those hockey romance novels she liked and something called “romantasy,” involving characters with names he couldn’t pronounce doing things that would make a sailor blush.
Apparently there was a difference between the two, though damned if he could figure out what it was beyond one having dragons and the other having guys with sticks chasing a puck around ice.
He’d grown to crave those evenings, her reading while he whittled pieces of driftwood into whatever shape his hands felt like making, the comfortable silence broken only by the occasional rustle of pages or the soft scrape of his knife against wood.
The way she curled up against his side, completely absorbed in whatever romance novel was making her sigh or laugh or mutter things like “oh, you absolute disaster of a man” at fictional characters who probably deserved it.
“Morning,” he murmured now, fingers tracing the curve of her spine.
“Is it morning, though?” Sophie groaned, burrowing deeper against him. “Seems fake. Let’s ignore it.”
“It’s six, lazy bones.”
She propped herself up, fixing him with a bleary-eyed glare that shouldn’t have been as adorable as it was. “That’s not morning. That’s the middle of the night with light. You’re one of those terrifying morning people. I’m sleeping with the enemy.”
“Lake doesn’t sleep in and we’ve got work to do if you want to open your place in six weeks.”
“The lake can bloody well learn some manners.” Sophie flopped back down, burying her face against his neck. “Five more minutes.”
Luke tightened his arms around her, breathing in the scent of her hair: something floral mixed with sawdust from yesterday’s work. “Five more minutes,” he agreed, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “But we still have a bunch of work to do.”
Over the past five weeks, between tours and odd hours he’d squeezed in, Luke—plus Ray and Jake when he could bribe them with beer—helped Sophie tick off more than he’d expected.
The worst of the floorboards were gone, replaced with solid planks that didn’t threaten to kill anyone with every step.
The front door had been swapped out, too; Sophie had nearly gone for some ridiculous bubblegum-pink thing, but in the end she’d settled on a clean white wood and he had to admit it suited the place.
The dry rot in the walls had been cut out, the stairs shored up so they no longer wobbled (no book-spine patterns yet but she was working on that and maybe he was giving in), and the outside decking—where she was determined to scatter seats and fairy lights—had been sanded back to something usable.
Inside, Sophie had started painting the wood panels a soft willow green and though Luke had teased her about it, the color worked, especially against the cream walls above.
She’d even sourced a replacement for the big arched window, due any day now.
He’d built her a counter, too. Not just any counter, either.
He’d decided to add etchings of cherry blossoms curling into book spines, even a couple of Coral-shaped dogs, which Sophie had loved.
They were long days, long nights, not much sleep either between the work and the time spent exploring each other.
Certainly wasn’t how he’d planned on spending his spring season.
Hadn’t planned on waking to a woman every morning, either.
But here he was anyway, trying to figure out how someone who’d irritated the hell out of him at first sight had gotten so far under his skin so fast.
Speaking of skin, he really wanted to kiss her skin right now. Before he could follow that thought through, a sharp knock echoed from downstairs, followed by Ray’s booming voice.
“Rise and shine, folks!”
Luke dropped his forehead to Sophie’s shoulder with a frustrated grunt. “Harbor rule number seventeen: never hire friends.”
“Can’t hire people who are helping for half the usual price,” Sophie pointed out, reluctantly untangling herself from his warmth.
More knocking. “Delivery’s here and it ain’t getting any lighter!” Ray called.
“What delivery?” Sophie asked as she reached for her dressing gown.
“The new window for the east wall,” Luke said as he pulled his shirt over his head.
Sophie’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean the east wall I specifically earmarked for floor-to-ceiling bookshelves? The wall that’s meant to house my carefully planned reading nook with the vintage ladder I found in that charity shop? That east wall?”
“Same wall,” Luke said, already heading for the stairs.
“I saw a stained-glass window a coupla days ago that’d be a perfect replacement for the window you have there now.
Original boathouse fixture from the nineteen thirties.
Guy was practically giving it away since it’s from a teardown across the lake.
Trust me on this one. You’re gonna love it.
Come on.” He paused, noticing Sophie wasn’t following him.
Instead, she was kneeling on the bed, arms crossed with a look of thunder on her face.
Oh shit.