Page 83 of Someone to Tempt
“Yeah, I’m sure. I can’t imagine anything I want more except…” He stops and kisses me again. “Ever done it in the woods?” he asks against my mouth.
“Uh, no way, no how,” I tell him.
He chuckles and his hands move underneath the hem of the sweatshirt I’m wearing under my jacket. “We might have to change that.”
I push at his chest. “One, bears. Two, sap. Three, bears.”
“I’m going to enjoy changing your mind. You’ll see how much fun we can have,” he tells me. “No sap necessary.”
“Are you leading me up this path to some deserted caretaker’s cabin to have your wicked way with me? This isn’t a historical romance, Byrne.”
He cocks his head. “I don’t know what that means, but if it involves you wearing a fancy dress with a low neckline, and I get to untie the laces in the back, I’m all for it.”
“You’d make a good Lord of the Manor.” I laugh. “But I thought your grandfather tore everything down.”
Jake nods. “He demoed the main cabin and smaller structures but left the equipment shed standing. Said even though the accident happened thousands of miles away, the water reminded him of Mike. I planned to rent something from the co-op in town for this outing, but he told me the boat we used to take out is still here.”
He pulls a set of keys from his jeans pocket and approaches the door of the structure, its wooden planks weathered from years of exposure to the high-altitude elements. “He couldn’t bear to get rid of it. Said the memories were good, even if it was too much for any of us to revisit the past.”
“He’s okay with us taking it out today?”
The smile Jake flashes looks more like a grimace. “I have a feeling he thinks my coming up to the lake is an example of my commitment to starting over in Skylark.”
Those words put a damper on my good mood. “Even if you don’t live here full time, you’ll come back for visits and for foundation meetings. That will mean something to him.”
But will it be enough for the two of us?
“Have you ever caught a fish?”
“If by catch, you mean order sushi, then the answer is yes.”
“Come on.”
He unlocks the door. The shed’s interior is dim and musty, and I see the boat propped against one wall and covered with a canvas tarp.
“I think you call this a dinghy,” I tell him when he pulls off the fabric.
“It’s a skiff,” he clarifies.
“Is it seaworthy?” I knock on the edge of the fiberglass boat. It’s small but sturdy, paint faded to a dull silver from years of use.
“I wouldn’t take it out on the open ocean, but it’s perfect for Echoveil Lake.”
“I wonder if I get extra points in the book club for doing more than what was initially expected for my bucket list item.”
“A gold star for being an overachiever?”
“Afunachiever.”
“I’ve got a reward in mind,” he says, a devilish glint in his eye.
“So after the Lord of the Manor stuff, we’re going to move right into teacher-student role play? Got it.”
He indicates that I should take the narrower end of the boat, and we lift it and pull it out into the daylight.
“Yeah, but I’m more a hot-for-teacher kind of guy, so we might have to play that a different way.”
“Oh, naughty schoolboy kink. Is that your thing?”
