“You have no idea.” She opened the gate, intertwined her fingers with his, and walked through. “Come on.”
The line of trees between the backyard and Lake Earhart had been her first playground for adventure filled with hollowed out trees that served as fairy kingdoms, pirates that lived in the branches overhead, and—of course—an entire village of gnomes plotting worldwide domination. When she got older, it was where she’d gone to escape and plan. Now, holding Sawyer’s hand, she looked up at the thick green leaves overhead and the bright wildflowers at her feet and realized that she couldn’t remember a day when she wasn’t running away from the white picket existence she’d been born into. However, instead of running to the trees or the lake beyond them, she went around the globe.
It only took a minute of traipsing through the trees before they got to the small clearing around the lake and her family’s dock that led out into it. Her dad’s boat was moored at the marina at the other end of the lake, but the summer storage box sat at the end of the dock. She hurried over to it and pulled out a blanket so they wouldn’t get splinters in their ass while they sat and figured out how to get through tomorrow without giving her dad a heart attack for real. Then after a few days, she’d break the news to her family from the safety of Harbor City. Chicken? Her? Absolutely.
She sat down facing the lake, it’s waters smooth and inky blue. “We need to come up with the details that will make tomorrow work—and it can’t be the truth because I really don’t want to welcome dad home by giving him a heart attack for real.”
“We already did, remember?” He sat down next to her, close enough that their hips and thighs touched, sending a jolt of electricity dancing along her skin. “The napkin?”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’s not gonna fly with my family. My mom is like a laser-guided missile when it comes to the truth. Nothing gets past her.”
He shrugged and lay back on the blanket, his arms folded so his hands were behind his head. In a plain white T-shirt and a pair of dark indigo jeans that clung to his hips, he looked like he belonged here in the world she’d grown up in. She shouldn’t be surprised. He’d been as at ease in his office at the top of Carlyle Tower as he’d been at the flea market haggling over the metal medical cart they’d renovated. Unlike her inability to fit into his world, he’d done just fine finding a place for himself in hers.
“So we stick to the truth without elaborating,” he said, bringing her back to the reality of the here and now.
She snorted, just trying to picture her mom not digging for details. “How’s that story go?”
Out in the lake, a fish cleared the surface with a pop and dove back in with a soft splash.
“You fascinated me from the moment I met you and after that we were inseparable.”
“Fascinated you?” It sounded ridiculous. He was a multibillionaire with model-like wife candidates everywhere he turned and she fascinated him. More like was different enough to stoke his curiosity for a few weeks. “Is that what we’re going with?”
“It seems close enough to the truth to work.”
“And after we get back tomorrow night?” Her chest tightened, and she looked down at where her hands were clenched in her lap, letting her hair fall over her face. Damn it. She hated it when Daphne was right. Forget falling for him, she was already halfway there.
“We’ll think of something in the car.”
“No helicopter this time?” she teased, trying to regain some of the emotional high ground from that part of herself that was starting to crumble.
He laughed and rolled onto his side facing her, propping up his head in his hand. “You don’t want to know what kind of favor I’m going to owe Hudson for borrowing that.”
“I thought you and your brother were close.”
“We are, but he’s…well, he’s Hudson.”
Grasping ahold of the conversational lifeline that didn’t have anything to do with lying or saying good-bye, she settled back onto the blanket, echoing his position on his side. “What does that mean?”
“That he’s a guy who seems like he doesn’t have anything on his mind except for ways to burn through his trust fund as quickly as possible, but that’s not really him. He just does a damn good job of hiding who he really is.”
“Why?”
“You’d have to ask him. We don’t have deep introspective chats about our feelings. Do you with your brother?”
“Bobby?” She laughed out loud. Even the idea of a heart-to-heart with her brother was too weird to be able to form a mental picture of what it would be like. “No. If it doesn’t happen in his lab, Bobby isn’t very interested. He’s got all of his attention glued to whatever experiments he’s working on. He graduated from college at the top of his class while I was still in high school, and he’s two years younger than me.”
Sawyer reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear, his fingers grazing the shell of her ear and sending a delicious shiver down her spine. “But he came home when he got the call about your dad.”
“It’s family.” Unable to stop herself, she turned her head so that her face brushed against his warm palm. “It’s what you do.”
“You obviously care, so why do you spend all your time avoiding them?” he asked, gliding his thumb across her cheek.
“Are you my shrink all of the sudden?” She pulled away, cutting off the touch she craved so much, and rolled onto her back because if she didn’t she might not be able to later—and that scared her right down to her pink toenails. “Or is this like spilling my guts to the stranger at the bar because I know I’ll never see him again?”
“Sure.” He slipped off his glasses and sat them on the storage box beside them. “Now that the world is a little bit fuzzy, I can be your stranger at the bar. Tell me everything.”
It was both exactly what she wanted to hear and just the words to shred her up a little bit more. Looking up at him—at this man she wouldn’t see again after tomorrow—the knot in her belly unwound, and she knew exactly what she needed to do next. The first rule of adventuring was to enjoy the experience while you could and that was exactly what she was going to do tonight with Sawyer.
…