Page 21 of Lakesides and Longing

He stared at her. “Then where am I supposed to look in the meantime?”

He took a step closer to her. His boldness surprised her, but she supposed it shouldn’t after that grocery store kiss and how he’d stepped up to help her. She continued to crank the wheel to keep the boat moving, but there was an energy between them that wasn’t there before.

She swallowed. “Just look at the trees. I bet you know what all of them are called.”

He tore his gaze away from her, and the spell broke. She could still feel his body heat, until he leaned against the rail, looking up into the trees. Occasionally their elbows would brush together.

“Do you want me to do that?” He nodded toward the wheel.

She shook her head. “You can get us back. I like this part.”

It didn’t take more than a few minutes to get to the middle of the lake, and she stopped the boat.

“Can I look now?” he asked.

She nodded, and he moved to the center of the boat where a cutout had been made for people to view the lake bottom. Kitch-iti-kipi was one of the clearest lakes in the world. You could see everything. Large fish swam among the reeds and the sand bubbled up where the spring fed it.

Blake smiled and glanced up at her. “This is incredible.”

“I know. I normally don’t make it out here much because of the drive, but when I’m here, I could spend hours watching the fish.”

“You and me both,” he said. “But I thought you said it was boring.”

She flushed. “I was just trying to get out of spending the day with you.”

He mocked outrage. “Am I really that horrible?”

“No, but we don’t know each other all that well and I worried it would be awkward.”

“And has it been?”

“No. It hasn’t.”

She glanced down and watched the water because even though he said he could spend hours watching the fish, his eyes were on her.

CHAPTER13

“You want to watch a movie after dinner?” Paige asked. Things had been better between them since their trip to the lake a few days ago, and now they had easy conversations at dinner.

Though Blake refused to let her put a crystal in his room that ward out the negative energy. When she tried, he reminded her that she had one in her room and still had nightmares.

Blake quickly chewed and swallowed his chicken. Paige was a surprisingly good cook. Based on the kind of food he found in her house when he arrived, he hadn’t thought she could cook at all.

“Only if there is popcorn.” Their friendship had been growing and he enjoyed it. She woke up screaming every night, and every night he went in to wake her up. She didn’t cry anymore though. Well, she did once, but she used Tria to sob on instead of him. Tria slept with her now, and Blake had hoped that would help the nightmares, but it didn’t.

“Duh. No movie is ever good without popcorn.” She winked at him and stood.

“I’ll clean up, and you can pick a movie, but nothing too girly, okay?”

She giggled. “So no Hallmark movies for you?”

He groaned. Those were the worst, but Anna loved them so every time he went to their house, she made him watch them. “No, please not those.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you won’t be around for Christmas then. I pretty much just leave it on twenty-four seven. They are my favorite.”

Blake cleared the plates and stuck a popcorn packet in the microwave, then found a bowl and waited. Things moved much slower here, and he had a lot more time to just think. It was peaceful, though sometimes he wanted to get away from his thoughts.

He found it odd that even though his mind was free here, he rarely thought about Debbie. He was too distracted by Paige but didn’t want to think about what that meant. Because Debbie was his future. Her marriage wouldn’t last.

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