“I see,” he said, glancing down at the white blossoms he hadn’t noticed speckling the bushes beneath her window. “Get dressed and come out here.”
“Why? What are we doing?”
He felt his smile grow even more. “We’re sneaking out.”
*
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked. They were standing on the small, sandy beach at Willow Creek State Park where, technically, they were trespassing. “What if we get caught?”
“We won’t.” Cowboy took her hand in his and pulled her farther down the beach, mere feet from where the water met the sand. The moon reflected brilliantly off the lake, and he could perfectly make out the small ripples where the warm breeze tickled the water’s surface.
“I started coming out here when the beach was closed off about four years ago, after everything with my mom. It’s a good place to think about things,” he said softly. “I’ve been here the last three nights.” Since the night at the club.
Harper adjusted her glasses with her free hand. “Why?”
“Just had a lot to think about.” He sighed before turning to face her, running his thumb over hers where their hands were still joined. “I’m sorry about the other night. I was being a dick, and I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did.”
“It’s okay. You were upset about…something. I get that.”
He nodded. “I was upset, and even I wasn’t certain why until last night.”
“Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can tell me anything.”
“I know.” He brought his hand up to her cheek, grazing his knuckles over the red patch of flesh that was growing darker by the second.
He should tell her the truth. That he wasn’t this guy. He wasn’t the type to get jealous over a woman. He wasn’t the guy who got so hung up on a girl that she became his last thought each night and his first thought every morning.
Cowboy had never been that guy before, and yet, here he was with the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about the last few days. He missed her when she wasn’t there and wanted her desperately when she was, though he was just as content to simply hear her voice or see her smile. He wasn’t the guy who got nervous or feared rejection, but God help him, he was practically sweating bullets right now just thinking about it.
This thing with Harper was different. It was new and terrifying, and he had no idea where the hell he was even supposed to start.
He pulled his hand from her cheek and took a step back. “Come on.” He released her hand, then started lifting his shirt up over his head.
“W—what are you doing?”
“You and I,” he said as he tossed his T-shirt aside, “are going swimming.”
Her eyes flicked from his face to his chest half a dozen times. They froze when his fingers moved to his belt buckle. “But we don’t have swimsuits!”
“Your point being?” Cowboy removed his belt, and then he was shoving down his pants. And his boxers.
“Holy crap,” Harper muttered under her breath, spinning away with her hand over her eyes.
Cowboy chuckled, the cool water splashing over his warm skin as he tore into the smooth surface until he was waist deep. The water stilled again and the only sound he heard was the soothing chorus of cicadas.
“Come on in,” he called. “The water feels amazing!”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, her back still facing him and the water.
“I dare you.”
Even from twenty feet away, he recognized the sudden slump in her shoulders. He didn’t think he’d ever been happier to say those three little words in his life.
“Look, I’ll even cover my eyes and turn around so I don’t see anything.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You promise?”
“Cross my heart.” He turned on the spot, one hand placed over his eyes.
She sighed. “Fine.”
He vaguely heard the hesitant sound of a zipper and the rustle of fabric, and it took everything in him not to sneak a peek. He started imagining the way the moonlight would shine off her pale skin, whether the water was murky enough to hide the curves of her body beneath its surface. Blood scorched his veins like liquid fire, and he had to submerge himself completely under the water just to cool his heated skin. He swam out farther, desperate for any distraction from his painfully detailed imagination.
He reemerged, shaking the water from his hair.
“Cowboy?”
His entire body stilled. Harper stood in the water ten feet away with her arms clutched tightly over her chest, her long, blonde hair pulled up with a clip and her bare shoulders just barely peeking up through the water. Her red glasses were missing, and she squinted through the darkness around her.
“Where are you? I can’t see anything,” she whispered, turning away from him.
She waded in a step farther, searching. “Cowboy?”
He moved silently through the water, stopping only an inch behind her, her head reaching a few inches below his chin. She started as he settled one hand gently on her waist beneath the water, the other shaking as he ran a finger from one of her shoulders to the other before slowly tracing the line of her spine from her neck down to her lower back. She sucked in a harsh breath, and her skin shivered beneath his touch.
He brought his lips to her ear, gently brushing her lobe with the sensitive skin. “Are you cold?”
“No.”
“Look at me, Midge.”
She turned, her breaths coming out even more ragged than his. Her eyes focused on his, filled with a heat that melted his fear and replaced it with an all-consuming need. She pinched her bottom lip between her teeth, and he actually groaned.
“Cowboy? What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” He slid his hands down her arms before resting them on her hips beneath the water. Her chest rose and fell rapidly between them. His fingers grazed over the skin of her rib cage, and her breath hitched.
Gone was the calm and controlled Harper Maddox he’d known in high school. In front of him stood a woman unable to hide the desire in her eyes or the rate at which her pulse pounded at the base of her neck. All for him. He really was the luckiest man in the world.
“When I saw that guy dancing with you, touching you, I wanted to tear his arms from his body.” His finger glided beneath the water, tracing odd shapes and patterns lightly over her hip. “I wanted to beat him within an inch of his life, and I had no idea why. It couldn’t have been jealousy. I’d never been jealous before in my life. Never cared enough to be jealous.”
He raised his wet palm to cup her cheek and traced over her bottom lip with his thumb. “And then I saw him kiss you. My Midge. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone so much.”
His Midge. The words came so easily now, it really was a wonder he hadn’t realized sooner just how much she’d grown to mean to him. He’d known they would be friends. Even the very first night he’d taken her to that bar over in Dublin, he’d seen how easy it would be to have a friend like Harper. Like he’d sensed how special she would be to him even then.
If he only knew.
Her gaze fell to the water between them, her cheeks turning a shade darker. “It wasn’t very good.”
A massive weight lifted from his chest, and he started to grin uncontrollably. “No?”
She shook her head. “It didn’t feel right.”
“Why’s that?”
Her eyes slid up to meet his. “Because it wasn’t you.”
Those four words demolished any restraint he had. Cowboy pulled his thumb from her lips and swiftly replaced it with his own. He was gentle at first, gentler than he remembered ever being with a woman before.
It was Harper who pushed the kiss deeper. Her hands slid through the water and up Cowboy’s torso, one hand gripping the back of his neck while the other explored the muscles of his shoulder and bicep.
His tongue flicked invitingly over her lip, and she welcomed i
t with her own. Her hands were impressively steady, greedy to take in every inch of him from his hair to his abs to the smooth, hard skin of his back.
His hands were under much the same predicament, unable to choose any one part of her body to settle on. His fingers splayed as they traveled down her spine and hesitated just above the curve of her backside, and every ounce of blood in his body flooded downward, a painful reminder that they were both naked and very, very alone. She moaned as he pulled her closer into him, pressing her bare chest against his.
“Wait, stop,” Harper cried, pulling herself out of his embrace and crossing her arms over herself beneath the water. Golden strands framed her face where they’d fallen out of their clip, and he wanted so badly to let her hair down and tangle his fingers in it. His skin was buzzing and his body aching, begging to touch her again.
“I can’t—I haven’t…” She struggled to catch her breath. “I’ve never done any of this before.”
“Neither have I,” he said through panting breaths of his own, and her eyes narrowed. “I mean, yeah. Of course, I’ve done that. But not with someone I actually care about.”
“Not ever?”
He took a deep breath as he moved a strand of wet hair from her cheek, his voice tender. “Never. I don’t want to screw this up, and I definitely don’t want you to do something you aren’t ready for.”
“Really?”
Cowboy nodded. He lowered his lips to hers slowly, placing a chaste kiss there before pulling away, even as his entire body screamed for more. “What do you say we just swim for a while? And then I’ll take you home.”
“I say that sounds perfect.” A sweet grin spread across her lips, and he knew with utter certainty it was the first and last face he’d think of for many nights and mornings to come.
And, Lord help him, he couldn’t wait.
Chapter Fourteen
The sky was gray and overcast as Harper watched the lake water rippling in the breeze on the cool October evening. The sand of the beach was cold on her bare legs, and she pulled her jacket tighter around her arms. The first time Cowboy brought her here three years ago he’d said it was his favorite place to think about things, and she’d hoped the quiet of the empty beach on a cloudy day would help her sort out her own issues.
Except now that she was here, the only thing she seemed to be able to think about was that first night she was here with Cowboy. It was the first time she’d gotten even remotely intimate with anyone. Heck, she’d just received her first kiss only three nights prior.
It had been so overwhelming. Somehow Harper Maddox, who usually strived to feel in control of herself and her emotions, had wound up swimming naked in Willow Creek Lake with none other than known playboy Russell Hart. She should have been intimidated by his looks, his charm—certainly his copious experience—and yet she hadn’t been scared. Not even close. Cowboy was so gentle that night, so sweet, that any anxiety or fear she should have had never came. Instead, she felt unusually brave, excited. She’d been so ready to give in to her body’s needs. She’d wanted to give up her control altogether.
And then he touched her. She didn’t know where or how she’d gotten the sense to stop it before they’d gotten too far. They swam a bit longer, and then Cowboy took her home just as he’d promised. He kissed her so gently and with so much care that it nearly knocked the wind out of her. And then she’d crawled back in through her window and lain wide awake in her bed for the next several hours, trying to process it all.
The worst part had been not having anyone to talk to about it. Sadie was only thirteen back then, too young to discuss the warring emotions and impulses running through Harper’s veins that night. And sure, there had been Grams. But her elderly grandmother was hardly the person she wanted to tell about her naked swim with Cowboy. She would have done anything for the chance to talk to her mom that night.
God, what she wouldn’t give to talk to her mom or Grams right now. She’d always felt cheated in the motherly advice area, and now she didn’t have a grandmother to turn to either.
She had no idea what she was doing with Sadie, no idea how she’d let this distance get between them. Harper hadn’t considered it before, but hearing Sadie talk about her life with Grams these last three years showed her how little she knew her baby sister at this point. She’d gone from an innocent, painfully compassionate thirteen-year-old to a junior in high school with apparently way too much responsibility on her shoulders. The only thing Harper did know for sure was that it was all her fault.
If only she could go back to that night here on the beach. When everything felt good and simple. Okay, not simple, but it had felt right. Back before she’d thrown away the dream she had for herself, the plans she’d made for her future. She’d had her whole life ahead of her that night, and now she just felt lost.
Then again, it was that night, and the relationship they’d started as a direct result of it, that had set her monumental downfall in motion. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why Harper had been so hopeless in med school. She’d been so distraught over their breakup, she’d found it impossible to focus on anything else. Classes, labs, papers. She’d lost any drive she had, all her passion for the dream. It was no wonder she failed so miserably.
The sound of slow footsteps approaching over shifting sand filled her ears. Harper didn’t have to look to know who was walking up the otherwise empty beach toward her. She would recognize him with any of her five senses. Sound, smell, touch, taste—
“What are you doing here?” she asked without looking back.
“Technically, this is my thinking spot.” Cowboy huffed as he settled heavily into the sand beside her. “Though I’m sure you could find some way to convince me to share it with you.”
She threw a side-eye glance at him.
“Geez, Midge. Get your mind out of the gutter. I don’t think I like the way your friends in Boston have corrupted you.”
“I assure you, you did your fair share of corrupting before I left,” she said, a little more bite in her tone than she intended. Cowboy cocked an eyebrow as he stared back at her. “Sorry. It’s been a rough day.
“What are you here thinking about that’s got you so upset?”
She took a deep breath then released it. “Christmas,” she lied.
“Christmas?”
“Grams used to have this tradition. Every year since we were born, she would give me and Sadie a new ornament. She’d have it specially made, commemorating some important moment in our lives from that year. The year I lost my first tooth, got my driver’s license, graduated from high school. I was just thinking how this’ll be the first year Sadie and I won’t get an ornament for Christmas.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, letting the unwanted sympathy roll off. “It’s not your fault. In fact, I’m almost certain Sadie will find some way to pin that on me, too. Not that I can blame her.”
“Ah, I see,” he said with a tone of understanding. “More problems with the Sadie Lady?”
“You know she hates when you call her that, right?”
“I know she pretends to hate it but actually secretly loves it.” Harper didn’t laugh, and he shifted in the sand. “Hey, seriously. What’s going on?”
She turned her steady gaze on him. “Tell me the truth. How bad was Grams after I left?”
Cowboy was still for a while. Then he nodded slowly, as if he knew this conversation was coming eventually. “Some days she was clearer than others. I hardly even noticed anything was off until a little less than a year ago.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Aside from you blocking my number? I assumed Sadie was talking to you about it.”
“Well, she didn’t,” Harper grumbled. She pulled her legs up to her chest, crossing her jacket-covered arms over her knees. “She should have told me. I would have come home. She shouldn’t have had to deal with that all on her own for so long.”
“She probably wasn’t sure what wa
s really going on and didn’t want to admit to you she couldn’t handle it,” he offered.
“I’m a horrible sister. I was so desperate to get away and start over in Boston. I hardly even thought about how distant Sadie was. I had no idea what she was going through or what was happening to Grams. She sounded so normal on the phone. But I should have known. I should have called more or visited.” Her breaths were coming fast and unsteady as everything she’d tried to gain control over let loose. “Grams was the only parent I had left. God, what kind of person goes three years without once coming back home to her family?”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close. “Hey, it’s okay. You can’t blame yourself for everything that happened while you were gone.”
“But I should have been here—”
“Look, Grams and I talked a lot after you left. She never once held your leaving against you. She knew you left for a reason, knew that you had a life and friends and school, and all she ever wanted was for you to be happy. She loved you.”
Harper wiped her face dry, hating how easily Cowboy’s words comforted her. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to make me feel better.” She didn’t deserve it. “It’s like a superpower you have.”
“Yeah, well, when your entire happiness depends on someone else’s, you learn how to cheer them up pretty quick.” His smile was small and carried the heavy weight of sadness, the first time in weeks he’d looked at her with anything other than that carefree grin of his. It broke her heart to see him like this, but she didn’t want to feel bad for him right now.
If it weren’t for Cowboy, she wouldn’t be sitting here feeling so lost on an empty beach. She wouldn’t have disappeared without once visiting her grandmother and little sister. She would have seen what was happening with Grams and been able to take the pressure off Sadie’s shoulders. She wouldn’t have come so close to failing out of med school, and her dream would have been closer than ever.
If it hadn’t been for Cowboy—or more accurately, their breakup—everything would be different now. It was his fault, an angry voice cried inside her. She pushed it down deep, sucking in a breath.
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