Slow Burn Cowboy

“It’s not flat enough,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she countered, moving to the edge of the lake.

She repeated the same motion he’d just done, running her fingers over the cool surface of the stone, ignoring that hers wasn’t perfectly smooth.

Then she cocked her arm back and flung the rock forward.

It hit the surface of the water and crashed on through, a splash like a fountain rising up in its wake.

“One wish,” she said, holding up her finger. “I get one.”

“No,” he explained. “It has to skip.”

“You got three! If the first one doesn’t count you should only get two.”

“The first one counts if it’s a skip and not sinking,” he said.

“You’re mean. And I think this game is rigged.”

“Do you want a wish or not?”

“I wish you would jump in a lake,” she snipped.

He turned and smiled at her, that crooked grin of his making something inside her feel off balance too. “Your wish is my command.”

He took two long strides to the dock and then another long one off, diving headfirst into the still, serene water, leaving nothing but a circular ripple behind as he disappeared beneath the surface.

He reappeared a second later, whipping his head back, a stream of water flying from his dark hair. He rubbed his hand over his face, pushing water drops from his skin while he kept himself afloat.

“Come on.” He gestured broadly, slapping the surface of the lake.

She rolled her eyes and reach down, grabbing the hem of her dress and shimmying slightly as she pulled it over her head. She could feel him watching her, and for some reason it felt incredibly awkward.

Apparently stripping her dress off in front of him was more awkward than just walking out in her bikini would have been. Even though she knew she had a swimsuit on underneath, she felt somehow strange and insecure. Like maybe she was wrong, and she had forgotten something crucial and she might be getting naked in front of him without realizing it.

She flung the dress to the side, letting it land in a patch of grass. And then she checked quickly to see that she was—in fact—wearing her suit.

She wrapped her arms around herself, clinging to her own midsection as she shuffled across the dock. The wood was warm beneath her feet, but she knew the water was going to be cold.

“How is it, Donnelly?”

“Like a hot tub,” he said, smiling in a way that let her know he was lying. And not even very well.

“Somehow, I’m skeptical of that.”

“You think I would lie to you?” He swam nearer to the dock.

“Yes,” she said.

He gripped the end of the dock, looking up at her, his brows lifted, his forehead slightly wrinkled. He was the picture of boyish innocence. Except for his muscles. For some reason, she found herself drawn to the way the water droplets slid down the ridges of his shoulders, over his chest.

She blinked.

“I’m shocked,” he said, doing a very good impression of someone who might be wounded. “How could you not trust me? One of your very oldest friends?”

“That’s exactly why, Finn,” she said, leaning down slightly. “Because I’ve known you for far too long. And I think that you want me to jump in and freeze myself. Because you’ll think it’s funny. You’re a child. And I know you well enough to know that.”

“Really?”

She bent down lower, hands on her knees. “Really.”

And that was the last thing she said before Finn reached up, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up against him, bringing her down beneath the surface of the water with him. He brought her right back up again, still holding on to her.

She sputtered, a hank of dark hair drooping in her face, lake water streaming down into her mouth. “You brat!” She shrieked, pushing her hair up out of her face, feeling it resting there on top of her head in an inglorious mat. She reached out, holding on to the dock while kicking her legs, the cool lake water swirling around her.

“You were going to get in anyway. I saved us both a bunch of time and shrieking.”

“I’m still shrieking!”

“But not as much as you would have if you’d worked your way in slowly.”

“Oh,” she said, “okay, you saved shrieking. But who’s going to save you?”

She turned, launching herself away from the dock and at Finn, pressing down on his shoulders and pushing his head beneath the water. He went easily. Easily enough that she knew he hadn’t bothered with any real fight. In fact, he had allowed the dunking. It was a pity dunk.

When he came back up, he shook his head and doused her with water. Then he grinned, water rolling down his face, the look in his eye mischievous and maybe even a little bit predatory.

She became very aware, suddenly, of the warmth of his skin beneath her palms, in stark contrast to the chilly water. She kicked her feet, and her legs tangled with his for a moment. She gasped, moving away from him and ducking beneath the water, swimming as hard and fast as she could. Away from him.

When she resurfaced, he was still back by the dock and she had gone out quite a way. She continued to tread water there for a while, keeping an eye on him. As far as she could tell he was just looking at her. Looking at her and doing nothing. For what reason? She had no idea. But she wasn’t about to ponder it too deeply.

She shook her head and went face forward into the water again, swimming in a straight but aimless line. When she looked back at the dock, she saw that he was lying out on the wood, his arms thrown up over his head, water pooling around him.

Submerging again, Lane swam back toward where he was, gripping the edge of the dock and levering herself up beside him. She was breathing hard, the exertion of her impromptu lap swim leaving her limbs feeling wrung out and vaguely like spaghetti.

Wind whipped across the surface of the lake, rippling the dark water, and then skimming over her skin, leaving goose bumps behind. The wood was warm, so she lay down too, next to Finn but with a healthy amount of distance between them.

They had done this a thousand times—swimming, dunking each other, relaxing in the sun afterward. And never before had there been this strange undercurrent. It was her. It had to be. The non-thing with Rebecca and Finn nearly hooking up was only part of it. Normally, she would have just brushed that off. But the intensity of how unsettled she’d been recently, the almost-manic energy and drive she had felt to do something—anything—with her business so that she would be as accomplished as she needed to be—it was making her tense even around her oldest friend.

She felt like a fragile, knit creation that had gone through the past ten years with a loose thread hanging free somewhere. Unnoticed. Undisturbed.

Until the past few weeks when Cord McCaffrey had gone national with his whole handsome, charismatic politician shtick.

Now the thread had been pulled. She had been pulled. That loose string yanked and yanked until she felt threadbare and dangerously close to unraveling completely.

This edginess was just a symptom of that unraveling. All of those patchy, unprotected places suddenly more vulnerable to...whatever this was.

What she had to do was get their friendship back on typical footing. She should ask him how things were going with his brothers. Why he was so tired. If there was anything she could do.

She rolled over onto her side, and her breath caught in her throat. Anything she’d been about to say died.

Her eyes were held captive by him. By that sharp, angular curve of his jaw that was dusted with a couple days’ worth of stubble.

From there, she looked at the strong column of his throat, which was notable somehow. Maybe because it was yet another thing that signified his maleness. And then there was his chest. She had been swimming with him about a million times, give or take. She had seen him without a shirt the moment she had looked out her living room window today. They had walked down to the lake together. But still, she had somehow managed to avoid really seeing.

For years, she had managed to avoid seeing.

Now all she could do was see.

That broad expanse of chest covered with dark hair. The ridges of muscle that shifted each time he breathed, running down his abdomen like a perfect, living washboard. Down to the hard cut of muscle at his waist that pointed downward, framing the flat space of his stomach just below that final ridge of ab and drawing her eye down to the waistband of his shorts.

She refused to ponder any farther down.

He sucked in a deep breath, every well-defined line moving as he did, then again as he released the breath on a masculine sigh.

Finn Donnelly was a man. Like, a MAN. In all capital letters. With muscles and chest hair and everything beneath the waistband of his shorts.

She knew that. Of course she did. But she had spent a very long time pretending she didn’t. Pushing it to the back of her mind. What did it matter if Finn was a man? Why would she ever think of him that way specifically? He was her friend first. Above all else. Her rock, her comfort and her stalwart in times of need.

The fact that he was a man had only ever been secondary in their relationship. An incidental.

But it was full frontal now. Big and glaring and impossible to ignore.

She didn’t know why it was suddenly so obvious. Except for that damn pulled thread. It was the only thing she could think of. That everything felt like it was a little bit off balance, and this was just one of the many symptoms of that.

She felt breathless. Like she had been hollowed out from her chest to her stomach. She was about to look away when Finn turned, opening his eyes.

That electric blue hit her hard. All the way down. To where she felt hollow and for some inexplicable reason it made her feel full again. But not in a good way. In some kind of strange, restless way that made it seem as though her skin was too tight for her body.

She wasn’t an idiot. It might’ve been a while since she’d had a relationship—physical or otherwise—but she knew what attraction felt like.

It wasn’t this. It couldn’t be this. Because this was Finn. And they weren’t that way. She didn’t see him that way.

He didn’t say anything. But he shifted slightly, his tongue dragging briefly over his lower lip before he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with the motion.

And just as the strange pang hit her stomach, in response she levered herself upward, pushing herself to her feet. “I’m cold,” she said, moving quickly off the dock and over to that patch of grass where she’d flung her dress down.

He was still looking at her, and for some reason putting the dress on didn’t make her feel any more covered up than she had just a moment ago. Maybe because he had already seen her in her bathing suit, so she knew that he could still see it in his mind.

Not that there was any reason for him to want to. Just because she was having a great unraveling didn’t mean he was.

But she thought of the way he had looked when he walked up to the house today. There was a slight, unraveled edge to it, she couldn’t deny.

“Feel free to stay down here as long as you want,” she said, turning on her heel and cursing when a piece of gravel dug into her skin. “Ouch,” she muttered, lifting her foot and brushing her hand over the bottom, making sure there were no rocks lingering behind. “See you at the house,” she said, flinging her hand in an approximation of a wave.

It took a minute to realize she was literally running away from her best friend. She slowed for a moment, her heart thundering sickly in her throat.

She swept her hand over her forehead and tried to catch her breath. She turned, facing a knotty pine that was just off the side of the trail that led to the lake. She braced herself against it, pressing her hands firmly against the bark. Then she leaned forward, resting her forehead against it too.

For a moment, she just stood there, conscious of the way her heart was beating in her head. She stood there until it slowed. Until her breathing slowed. Until the quivering sensation in her stomach stilled.

“Are you okay?”

She turned and saw Finn coming up the path, dragging his towel over his damp chest. Her mouth dropped open as she watched the motion of the terry cloth over his muscles, as she watched him wick away the drops of water.

She squeezed her eyes shut tight, then opened them again, forcing herself to look away from his chest.

He was carrying her towel in his other hand, and right then she realized that she had left it sitting down there on the dock. And also, that her dress was wet and clinging to her skin because she hadn’t thought to dry herself off before she had run away.

Her mouth went dry as he continued to advance on her. And the quivering sensation was back.

“Fine,” she said.

His gaze was hot on her, and far too assessing. She didn’t know what he was seeing. How could he be seeing anything? She couldn’t untangle what was happening inside her, so there was no way he could. And yet, she felt something. Thought she might see something a lot like understanding in his eyes.

That wasn’t fair. Not at all. Because there was nothing to understand. Not only that, if there was, she deserved to understand it first. So she could deal with it. Crumple it up in a little ball and throw it away. Or at least stuff it back down deep inside of herself where she didn’t have to acknowledge it.

“Then why did you just run away from the lake like there was a rabid varmint after you?”

“I told you, I got cold,” she said, gripping her elbows with opposite hands. “It’s cold. And you dragged me into the water.”

He took a step toward her, and she didn’t move. She just kind of stayed there, rooted to the spot, watching him take another step toward her. Then another.

“That’s what happened?”

She was mad that he was asking, because she had a feeling that he knew. That he knew this terrible, strange thing that was happening inside of her that she didn’t want to put a name to. That he knew exactly why she had jumped up and run in the opposite direction like her very life depended on it.

Or, at the very least, her life as she knew it.

She didn’t know why she was still standing there. She should turn around and walk back toward the house. They looked like idiots, her standing there with her dress clinging to her damp skin, and him shirtless in wet swimming shorts, just staring at each other.

He tilted his head back, swallowing, a motion that she was somehow hyperconscious of now. This everyday thing that he did as easily as breathing. Breathing. What the hell was wrong with her that she was noticing his breathing?

He took another step forward. He was close enough that if she raised her arm and reached out, even with her elbow bent, she would be able to plant her hand on his chest. Not that she would. That would be inappropriate.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe if she really saw him as just a friend it wouldn’t be strange or wrong at all.

She gritted her teeth, rebelling against that thought.

Of course he was a friend.

A friend who was a man. Something she knew, and always had, but was a little bit more aware of right now. That was it.

He lowered his head then, leveling his gaze with hers. He looked at her. Really looked at her. His eyes searching hers, wandering over the planes and angles of her face. She could feel him looking for the answers that she didn’t have.

She balled her hands into fists, keeping them resolutely at her sides.

Tension stretched between them, long and tight. Then, heat rose in his eyes. So blatant and obvious, making such a mockery of all the vague I don’t even know what’s happening assertions that were jumbling around inside of her that she had to turn away.

She walked in front of him, toward the house, taking a deep breath, then letting it out. Doing her best to keep it rhythmic. To keep her pace slow.

So that she didn’t look like she was running.

Even though she was. She absolutely was.

He didn’t say anything, but she could hear the weight of his footsteps behind her, crunching on the gravel. More than that, she could sense his presence, and that just weirded her out even more.

When they came up to the house, she stopped on the bottom step, flinging her arms to the side and turning to face him, grabbing hold of the railing, forming something of a human blockade. “Thanks for coming by,” she said.

He blinked. “Okay.”

“It’s late,” she said. “And I have some work to go over. Things for tomorrow.” She was lying. “Because, you know, the subscription boxes.”

“Right,” he said.

“And I’m going to go to bed early. And probably, I’m going to wash my hair. I have to do some cuticle thing, with my fingernails. And scrub the dry skin off my feet. I have a pumice stone.” She wanted to grab all those words and stuff them back into her mouth. A pumice stone? She had no idea what was wrong with her. Except, if what had just happened down by the tree was actually sexual tension she had probably killed it forever.

She had just mentioned dead foot skin. She had a feeling that was in the handbook for how to turn a man off permanently.

Not that Finn had been turned on. Absolutely not.

“Okay. Well, I guess I will leave you to your...pumice stone.”

“It’s a real thing,” she said, immediately wanting to brain herself.

“I don’t doubt you. Maybe you should put them in your subscription box.”

She took a step back, up onto the next step. “They aren’t a local thing. I mean, this is a pretty volcanic region, so I imagine you could probably... But, they aren’t specific to Copper Ridge. Which is kind of the whole idea.”

“Right,” he said. “I’ll see you later, Lane. Thanks for the swim. I needed it.”

“Sure. Anytime,” she said, taking another step away from him. “Later.”

He turned away from her and walked to the truck, and she wasted no time scampering back into the house and closing the door behind her. She leaned back against it, pressing her hand to her chest, waiting for her heart rate to go back to normal.

She made her way back toward the kitchen, the silence of the house settling around her. It didn’t feel like a refuge right now. It just felt like a big echo chamber of every stupid thing that had gone on in the past hour.

She heaved out a long, vocal breath, going to the fridge to retrieve her berries. Then she stopped and swore. She caught sight of the calendar that was hanging there, and the girl’s night she had written down on it. Unlike their casual catch-up dinner the other night, this was their official monthly let’s-never-let-life-get-too-busy-for-friends night.

They were all supposed to go to The Grind tonight for their Main Street get-together. She, Alison, Cassie and Rebecca all owned businesses on Copper Ridge’s Main Street and as female business owners they had all bonded pretty quickly.

Usually, she didn’t take a day off on girl’s night, but everything was all jumbled up in her head so her decision-making had suffered.

She could skip tonight. She could legitimately stay home with a pumice stone.

But no, that was a bad idea. If she stayed home alone there would be nothing in the house with her except the memories of today’s events, which she would undoubtedly play on an endless loop, combined with that loose thread. Which she would pull out endlessly until she had finished the damage external events had already started.

She didn’t want to sit at home alone. She didn’t want to feel sad. She didn’t want to feel regret. She didn’t want to feel at all.

So, the alternative was going out. And that was exactly what she was going to do.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SHE WAS EXCEEDINGLY grateful that she had decided to come into town. Spending time with a group of friends was precisely what she needed to lift the dark cloud that had fallen over her lately. She was being overdramatic. About everything.

Spending time listening to other people talk about their lives had given her some much-needed perspective.

Maybe the real issue was that she was working too much. Not that she needed to work harder. She needed to do something to get out of her head, most likely.

“I know he’s going to propose,” Rebecca said, talking about her boyfriend, Gage.

“That’s great!” Lane said.

“How do you know?” Alison asked, folding her arms and leaning forward on the table.

“You just do,” Cassie said pragmatically.

Cassie had been happily married to her husband, Jake, for a little over three years, and of the group, was definitely the expert on relationships.

“Well, that and he’s terrible at keeping secrets,” Rebecca said. “He left a receipt for the ring in his pants pocket, which I found...”

“When you were doing laundry?” Alison asked.

“No,” she said, “when I was going through his pants pockets.”

Lane snorted. “Well, then that wasn’t too indiscreet of him.”

Rebecca shrugged. “He had better never have an affair. He leaves too clear a paper trail.”

“You’re not actually worried about anything like that, are you?” Cassie asked.

Rebecca shook her head. “No. And I was kidding about going through his pockets. I trust Gage.”

She said it so easily, so matter-of-factly. As if there was nothing huge or concerning about a statement like that. About trusting another human being so completely.

Lane didn’t even trust herself.

But, instead of pondering that any deeper, she smiled a little wider. “Are you going to say yes?” she asked. She already knew the answer, but she was enjoying the conversation.

“I might make him suffer a little bit,” Rebecca said, a smile playing with the edges of her mouth. “But there’s no one else for me. He knows that. And I think... I think there’s no one else for him. It’s kind of an amazing feeling. To find the person that just fits with you. I didn’t think that person existed for me.”

Cassie was smiling and nodding in a knowing fashion.

Lane shared a glance with Alison. She knew their thoughts on the subject of romance were similar. Although Lane had never known Alison to date at all.

Ever since her marriage had ended in divorce, her abusive husband driven out of town, Alison had sworn off the male species.

Lane couldn’t really blame her. She had certainly suffered her own brand of pain at the hands of a man. But it wasn’t like what Alison had been through. Lane couldn’t even imagine. To love someone, to marry them and to have them betray you like that. To have them turn into this whole different monster.

It was nice that Rebecca had someone now. It was nice that Cassie had someone. But sometimes Lane wondered if she and Alison had just been wounded too deeply to ever take that kind of chance again.

Oh, Lane dated. Casually. She liked men. But she liked them in their own space, and not in hers. She liked them to fill a manageable portion of her life. To fulfill a physical need and that vague emotional craving for romance that she sometimes got, particularly around Valentine’s Day or the holidays.

Someone to go to parties with. Someone to go out to dinner with. Someone who might bring her flowers and tell her she was pretty. To kiss her and make her feel good.

She’d had boyfriends since leaving Massachusetts. Some of them had even lasted quite a while. But they had never been serious. Not in the sense of her imagining they would become anything long-term.

The very idea of a husband, of children, made her feel sick inside.

It was a future she couldn’t have.

A future she didn’t deserve.

Without permission, a vision of Cord McCaffrey and his family flitted in front of her mind’s eye. His beautiful wife, his two darling children.

Her throat tightened, bile rising in it. Why did it hurt so much? Why did it still hurt so damn much?