Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 31279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 156(@200wpm)___ 125(@250wpm)___ 104(@300wpm)
“If he has meetings, Henry, he should go to those,” Kara says, brown eyes sparkling with amusement. She’s a good friend. Unfortunately for the warring-houses alliance my father fantasizes about, she’s not my person. And I’m not hers.
Dad glowers across my desk with the entitlement of a man whose office—bigger, higher, and aggressively mahogany—is directly above mine. He was born to glower from mezzanines.
“Tomorrow, then,” he says. “You have duties. You can’t pretend you don’t.”
I could list my duties: steward the lake, run the company, continue being the disappointment who won’t marry for a merger. Instead, I tip my head. “Tomorrow.”
Dad gets summoned by a crisis at the mansion—something about the pool, chlorine, my mother, a meltdown—and I thank fate for winking at me.
Kara leans a hip on the desk when the elevator dings him away. “What time are you leaving?”
“As soon as I can,” I admit.
She grins. “Text me when you’re back. I’ll make sure the board thinks you’re networking.”
This is why I’d go to bat for her every day and twice on Sunday. She covers me, I cover her, and nobody gets bartered like cattle.
Ten minutes later, I’m slipping lines off my day-cruiser. She’s not fancy, not compared to the company yachts, but she’s mine: clean deck, responsive tiller, a quiet solar motor for when the wind takes a nap. The first slap of lake-scent hits my lungs, and my shoulders drop two inches. Home.
Wind bellies the sail the second I clear the marina. Whitecaps lift. The lake wears her wild face, and I try not to grin like she’s a lover who bit me once and might do it again. I cut toward my favorite coordinates, a mile off the point where the shoreline turns to storybook forest. The anchor drops with a chain-rattle thunk that vibrates through my bones.
Data first. Fun later. I set the sampler array to draw at various depths, rig the bottom-scraper to make a slow pass, and clip the new locator to my vest. The little screen blinks all its hopeful little blinks. If it sends my vitals to the office in a storm, we’ll know it’s worth the patent.
The scraper comes up with the usual haul—silt, a ribbon of weed, one heroic bottle cap—and then, because the lake likes to mess with me, a single oyster with a pink pearl tucked inside like a blush. It’s the third one this month. Either someone is seeding my life with improbable romance novel props, or the lake is in on the joke. I tuck the oyster into my life-jacket pocket like a secret.
The rain begins as a polite suggestion—cool pinpricks on my cheeks—then upgrades to a thousand small slaps. Wind slants harder, and the water changes from glass to corrugated steel. Somewhere east, thunder rolls its shoulders.
“Okay,” I tell the sky. “I hear you.”
I move for the halyard to drop the sail when the boom slews around on a vicious gust and kisses me across the temple with all the tenderness of a brick.
Light detonates in my skull. The deck tilts out from under me. One second, I’m cursing, the next, I’m not on the boat anymore.
Cold is a slap and a watery grip. The lake grabs every inch of me, shoves up my nose, into my ears. It tastes of iron and algae. I kick for the surface, breach, gulp air, and try to spot the boat. She’s already drifting, a white smear in the rain.
My training takes over. I slap the EPIRB with numb fingers. The locator against my chest buzzes and goes silent like it’s thinking about it. The next wave breaks over my head, and my stomach heaves. I swallow it down because drowning is undignified, and I refuse to go out that way.
I yell for help, but the wind eats it.
My head throbs. My vision tunnels. The edges of the world go soft and gray and far away, and I think: Well, shit. Dad gets to be right.
Arms fold around me.
For a second, I’m convinced the lake has decided to evolve hands. Then I blink water out of my eyes and see her.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Red hair, darkened to wine by the storm. Eyes the blue of a clear noon sky, focused and determined. A face I’ve only ever seen in dreams—except dreams aren’t supposed to have the strength to tow a full-grown man through a cross chop like he’s a mildly inconvenient log.
I grab the line she shoves into my hands, and between her push and my mostly cooperative limbs, we reach the boat. She braces me and hauls my arms over the rail. I gain purchase with one knee, then the other, flopping onto the deck like a man who will absolutely feel this tomorrow.
Her palm skims my cheek. Warm in the cold. Gentle in the violence. I open my mouth to say thank you—Who are you? How are you?—and she leans down and kisses me.