Page 3 of Love Me Brazen
When I turn into my lakeside neighborhood, Quinn shifts in her seat, one eyebrow arching beneath her shades. “Okay, this is cute.”
“You think I’d bring you to some backwoods slum?”
She laughs. “If you’re happy, that’s all that matters to me.”
When I turn onto my street to see the two-tone F-150 parked in my neighbor’s driveway, I can’t help the groan rumbling up my throat.
Quinn cocks her head. “What?”
“Nothing, just…” I was hoping he would be on shift today. “He’s home.”
“Who?”
“My neighbor.”
She lifts her shades to peer at me. “The firefighter? The one you can’t stand?”
“Yep.” I turn down my driveway, which parallels Linden’s, separated by a narrow hedge. The row of A-frames used to be summer cabins for the wealthy ranch families who founded Finn River. There are six in all, each within steps of Bear Lake. Apparently, the pitched roof is better for withstanding the Bitterroots’heavy snowfall, a fact that must be true because I hardly shoveled any snow this winter.
I love snow, but shoveling it, especially after trips when I have to fly with Russel, sucks.
“I hope you brought earplugs.” I park in front of my house and glance past Quinn to where my neighbor’s side deck reno is underway. He’s thankfully not outside, so he’s either taking a break, or maybe his daughter, Greta is with him. How someone so irritating and grouchy could make such a spunky and delightful kid is totally beyond me.
We grab our black suitcases from my trunk and wheel them across the bumpy gravel to my porch.
“It’s adorable,” Quinn says while taking in my tidy entryway with the potted pansies and dainty ferns and the bamboo wind chime thunking softly above us. She glances down the right side of my house, along the narrow strip of deck that connects to the bigger one at the back, to the lake. With the sun gleaming off the calm water and the pretty spruce and cottonwoods shifting in the soft summer breeze, my place looks like a slice of heaven.
If only my neighbor would stop being so annoying, it would be perfect.
“Just wait until the sunset.” I unlock the door and we step inside the narrow entryway.
Quinn gasps. “Oh wow.” She gazes up, taking in the warm wood beams and the light pouring in from the giant windows at the front of the house.
A flash of gray fur zips from the kitchen, and I reach down to scoop him up. “Hey, sweet boy,” I coo, and nuzzle his face. He smells of earth and peanuts and his fur is warm, like he’s been napping in his sunny spot in the living room.
“Missed me, huh?” I ask him as he purrs loudly.
“Hey, you little stud,” Quinn says, giving my cat a scratch behind the ears. “Long time no see.”
I set Kodiak on his feet and kick off my work pumps. “Your room is there,” I say, pointing at the guest room to the left, across from the bathroom.
Quinn pulls her suitcase into the space. “Oh my stars, this is simply lovely.” She tugs her neckerchief loose, her eyes bright. “Show me the rest, then let’s go jump in that lake.”
I float on my back, gazing up at the pale, blue sky deepening one hue at a time.
Next to me, Quinn rises to the surface, her dark brown hair slicked off her forehead. “So where is this mystery man?”
“Don’t jinx it,” I warn.
“Is he at least hot?”
My chilled skin tightens everywhere at once. “Kind of hard to get past his scowl, so how would I know?”
“Hmm.”
“His kid is cute,” I say to move the conversation along. “Well…’cute’ isn’t probably the right word since she’s almost sixteen.”
“She seems to have taken good care of Kody,” Quinn says, pursing her lips.
