Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (The Butternut Lake Trilogy)

by McNear, Mary

  “I’m guessing it was a success,” Allie said, transfixed by what he was saying. Talking about his work, his usual reserve had fallen away. She’d never seen him so animated, so engaged. She remembered something Caroline had said about Walker. That he didn’t seem like a man who did anything halfway. That was true of his work, obviously. Was it true of other things, too? She felt a warmth spreading through her. An anticipation. This was not about the wine, she knew. This was about Walker.

  “You know what? It was a success,” he was saying, when Allie’s mind returned to the conversation. “We were young and dumb, but we were also incredibly hardworking. We turned that boatyard around. And the next one. And the one after that.”

  “How many of them do you own?”

  “Twelve,” Walker said, draining the last of the wine from his glass. “Twelve and counting.”

  “A boatyard empire?” Allie asked, only half joking.

  “Maybe,” Walker answered, with a shrug. “I honestly don’t know. My brother, Reid, is completely driven. Our dad left when we were kids, and I think it hit Reid hard—harder than me, even. Now it’s like he’s got something to prove, except, by all rights, he should feel as if he’s proved it already. But he’s still not satisfied.” He sighed. “I’m not sure he ever will be.”

  Allie was thoughtful, fiddling with the stem of her wineglass. “So your brother’s trying to even some score with your dad. But what about you? What’s your motivation?”

  Walker thought about it. Then he smiled, almost shyly. “Honestly?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve been out on the water on a perfect day, haven’t you?”

  “Many times,” she said, smiling. Those days were her happiest childhood memories.

  “Well, I have a theory,” he said. “I don’t care who you are or how many problems you have. I defy you to be in a boat out on the water on a perfect day and not be happy. Not just be totally, irrationally happy. At least that’s how I always felt.” He poured what was left in the wine bottle into her glass.

  “So you’re in the boat business for purely altruistic reasons?” Allie asked, teasingly.

  “No, not quite,” he admitted. “It’s a business—and a living—but if I can help someone realize the dream of owning a boat, then obviously, that’s the icing on the cake.”

  “About that dream,” Allie said now. “I think I may be ready to take you up on your offer of selling us a boat.”

  “Good, because I think I’ve found the perfect boat for you two.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “It’s used, but it’s in excellent condition. It’s a twenty-foot Chris-Craft, and it’s the perfect size and speed for this lake. I’d love for you to come in and see it. Or maybe we could even arrange to have it towed out here so you could take it out on the lake for a test-drive.”

  “Wyatt would be euphoric,” Allie said.

  “I can imagine,” Walker said, smiling. “And it’s a great all-around boat. You could even fish off it, if you wanted to.”

  Allie frowned.

  “You’re going to teach him how to fish, aren’t you?” he asked, seriously, as if teaching a child how to fish was a moral obligation.

  “I don’t see anyone else volunteering,” she joked. She didn’t add that she’d already taught Wyatt how to tie his shoes, ride a bike, and swim. Teaching him to fish wouldn’t be any harder than teaching him those things. Except for the part where you took the fish off the hook . . .

  “I’ll volunteer,” Walker said, suddenly. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I go every Sunday morning at five thirty. I can pick him up at your dock—if you think he’s ready, that is. He has to be able to wake up early. And sit still for long periods of time.”

  “Oh, I think he’s ready,” Allie said. She didn’t think it. She knew it. “The getting up early won’t be a problem, not if he’s properly motivated. Same with the sitting still. He can be amazingly patient when the occasion calls for it.”

  “Good,” he said, decisively. “Then let’s do it. This Sunday morning.”

  “Why not?” she said, fighting a feeling of unease. Everything was happening so fast. Too fast. Or was it? Because what, exactly, had happened? Walker was taking her son fishing. That wasn’t such a big deal, was it?

  They lapsed into silence for a moment, and Allie drank the rest of her wine and set the empty glass on the table. When she looked up at Walker again, he was staring at her. No, not staring at her, not exactly. He was touching her, really, with his eyes. Touching her all over with them, the same way he had at the third of July party. And just like on that night, Allie felt something inside her pull tight, like a rubber band that was about to snap. She realized, then, that she’d forgotten to breathe, and she sucked in a little breath and stood up suddenly, almost knocking her chair over.

  “I’ll make the coffee,” she mumbled, hurrying over to the kitchen counter and fumbling with the lid on the tin of coffee grounds. But when she pried it open and took the scoop out, her hands started shaking again, so much so that when she started to pour the grounds into the coffeemaker, she ended up spilling them on the counter.

  “Here, let me do that,” Walker said, beside her now and reaching for the scoop. His fingers brushed against hers as he took it from her, and Allie felt an almost adolescent thrill at his casual touch.

  “Do you really want coffee?” he asked, gently.

  She shook her head.

  He dropped the scoop back into the coffee can and took her hand in both of his. Then he turned it over, palm up, and, holding her wrist with one hand, used one finger of the other hand to trace an imaginary line up the inside of her forearm, from her wrist up toward her elbow. Allie closed her eyes. Wherever his finger touched her skin, it felt as if it were burning. Which didn’t explain why she suddenly shivered.

  When his finger reached the hollow of her arm, opposite her elbow, he stopped. Then, still holding her hand, he bent slowly and kissed her lips, so lightly that Allie almost wondered if she were imagining it.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, opening her eyes.

  “I’m doing what I should have done as soon as I got here,” he said, in a low, throaty voice. “As soon as I saw you standing there in the driveway, looking so ridiculously beautiful.” He kissed her again, and again. Maddeningly light kisses that barely left an impression on her lips and that left her whole body aching for more of them.

  “Please,” she said softly, without even knowing what she meant by it. But Walker knew. Letting go of her hand, his arms slid around her waist, and he backed her up, almost imperceptibly, against the kitchen counter. She thought it was probably a good thing that he’d given her something to lean on for support. Because when he bent to kiss her again, it was a different kiss altogether from the gentle, soft kisses he’d already given her. This kiss was demanding. Hungry and urgent. And when his tongue pushed into her mouth, she felt a hot, liquid sensation slide through her whole body.

  Breathe, Allie, she told herself. Just try to breathe normally. But it was hard to concentrate on anything other than how this kiss was making her feel. She felt like her whole body was a tuning fork, and Walker’s touch was making it sing.

  She ran her hands around his waist and then, palms down, slid them up his back, feeling the warmth of his skin through the material of his shirt. She simultaneously pulled him closer and pressed herself harder against him. She wanted—no, she needed—to feel more with each passing second.

  And she knew, suddenly, what needed to happen. His shirt needed to come off. She needed to feel his bare skin beneath her hands. So she slid her hands up under his shirt, up over his flat stomach and well-built chest, and then she slid her hands back down again, grabbed the hem of his shirt and, in one fluid motion, pulled it up over his head and let it drop to the kitchen floor.

  There, she thought, pressing herself against his bare, suntanned skin, too absorbed in the moment to be surprised by her own behavior.
She ran her hands over his chest again, over his shoulders and back. His skin was smooth and sun warmed, his chest lightly sprinkled with dark hair, and his shoulders were strong and muscular.

  Walker, she knew, liked the way she was touching him. His breath came faster now, as his chest rose and fell more rapidly. She let her hands come to rest on his shoulders, tipped her chin up, and invited him to kiss her more deeply. He did, his tongue probing farther into her mouth in a way that made Allie’s breath come faster, too.

  Far away, though, in some still sane part of her brain, there was a warning straining to be heard. Slow down, it’s going too fast. Put the brakes on.

  But she paid no attention to it. She was too busy thinking about how good it felt. The holding, the kissing, the touching. I’ve missed this, she thought. I need this.

  But just when she felt like their passion was reaching a tipping point, Walker seemed to pull back. To slow down. His grip on her loosened, and his lips left her mouth and traveled down her neck, coming to rest at the hollow at the base of her throat. It was an exquisitely sensitive place for Allie, and he seemed, intuitively, to know this. He brushed his lips over it, softly, slowly, with such deliberate gentleness that Allie practically squirmed with desire.

  And as he was kissing her there, his hands moved to the front of her blouse and felt for the first of its many tiny buttons. He worked at them, patiently, unbuttoning one, then moving on to the next. When he’d unbuttoned several, she heard him give a little sigh of frustration.

  “Too many buttons,” he murmured, his breath warm against the nape of her neck.

  Is this really happening? Allie wondered. Are we actually undressing each other? In my kitchen? And are we going to make love here? On the countertop? On the floor? It seemed incredible. But also, in some crazy way, possible.

  She felt, for all the world, as if she was having an out-of-body experience. Not that she couldn’t feel her body. God knows she could feel it—every single cell of it—but it was like someone else was temporarily inhabiting it. Someone who cared about one thing and one thing only: how amazing everything Walker was doing to her felt.

  He finished unbuttoning her blouse and pulled it open, carefully, exposing her cream-colored, lacy bra and her suntanned cleavage. “Beautiful,” he said softly, gazing down at her. He peeled back one side of her blouse and slid it down one shoulder, then started kissing that bare shoulder with exquisite tenderness.

  Allie shivered again, violently, even though the night breeze coming in through the open kitchen windows was sultry and warm. She waited for Walker to take off her blouse, but instead he turned his attention back to her lips. The difference now, though, was that Allie could feel his bare chest through the filmy material of her bra. Her nipples hardened, almost painfully sensitive to the touch of him against her, and she pressed into him with a new, almost frantic hunger.

  Walker groaned, low in his throat, and Allie knew he was finally losing his grip on control. It scared her a little, but it thrilled her even more. She knew the logical conclusion—or maybe the illogical conclusion—to their shared passion would be mind-shatteringly pleasurable. She just needed to let go, she told herself. She just needed to stop listening to that tiny alarm going off somewhere in her brain and relax. Relax and let it happen.

  But no sooner had she told herself this, then a memory came to her, seemingly from out of nowhere. A memory that was so fully formed, so minutely rendered in every detail, that it was less like remembering something than being catapulted back to another time in her life. A heart-wrenching time in her life . . .

  It was a warm night in late spring, a few nights before Gregg’s National Guard Unit was deployed to Afghanistan, and Allie woke up to find his side of their bed empty. She sat up, immediately alert, and called out to him, but he didn’t answer. Then she heard the familiar, rhythmic sound of someone dribbling a basketball. She got out of bed, walked over to the window, and looked out in time to see Gregg sink a basketball neatly into the basketball hoop in their driveway.

  She left the window and went to check on Wyatt, sleeping soundly in his brand-new, toddler-sized bed. Then she padded, quietly, through the house and came out through the open garage door. She watched, unseen, while Gregg did a few more layups.

  When she came out from the shadows and he saw her, he looked a little sheepish.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, coming over to her. “Did I wake you up?”

  “No,” she said, taking the basketball away from him. She let it roll off her hands, and then she folded herself into his arms and pressed her cheek against his sweat-dampened T-shirt. “You didn’t wake me up. But you might wake up the neighbors.”

  “I know. I’ll stop,” he said, hugging her back.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, looking up at him now.

  “I don’t know,” he said, quietly. And then, “I’ve just been thinking. And that’s probably a mistake. I should be trying to not think now, right?”

  “What were you thinking?” she asked, putting her cheek back on his chest. She was afraid to look at him. Afraid to know, really, what he’d been thinking about.

  He didn’t answer her right away. She listened to the sound of his breathing, to the sound of the crickets, to the whisper of a breeze in the trees.

  “What if I don’t come back?” he said, finally. “What if these next couple of nights are all the time we have left together?”

  She tensed in his arms. “Of course you’ll come back,” she said, hugging him to her. “Of course we’ll be together again.”

  She made him come back to bed then, and they made love to each other until the sun rose on their quiet suburban cul-de-sac. But neither of them was able to go back to sleep.

  Suddenly, Allie felt Walker jerk away from her and the present come rushing back.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, disoriented.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong. You tell me,” Walker said, breathing hard.

  “Nothing . . . nothing’s wrong,” she said, feeling confused. It was strange, somehow, to find herself back in this kitchen with him. In her mind she had been so far away.

  “One minute you were here. And the next minute, you were gone,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.

  “I . . . I was distracted,” she admitted, her body already aching for his. “I’m sorry. I’m here now.”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “You’re not ready for this,” he said, picking up his shirt from the kitchen floor and putting it back on.

  “I am ready,” Allie corrected him, automatically.

  “Maybe physically,” he said, reaching over and trying to button her blouse back up. “But not emotionally.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, tears springing into her eyes.

  “Allie,” he said, struggling with the buttons on her blouse. “How can you say you’re ready when you’re still wearing your wedding ring?”

  She looked down at her finger. There it was, glowing softly in the kitchen light. The fact that she wearing it was indisputable. Incontrovertible. She sighed, shakily, and quickly wiped a tear away. She had no idea why she was crying.

  Walker buttoned the last button on her blouse, his fingers unsteady, his breath still coming unevenly. Stopping now was hard for him, too, Allie realized. There was a part of him, a big part of him, that wanted to keep going. To see where this would take them.

  “Stay,” she said softly.

  He shook his head, his blue eyes so dark they looked almost black. “God knows, I want to. But I wouldn’t feel good about it later. And neither would you.”

  She nodded, dumbly. She had nothing to say to that. She knew he was right. She also knew she still wanted him so badly right now that she was experiencing the desire almost as a physical pain.

  “I’m going to go,” he said, almost apologetically. “But I meant what I said about taking Wyatt fishing. I’ll pick him up at your dock Sunday morning. Five thirty sharp, okay?”

  She nodde
d. But as he started to leave, something occurred to her.

  “Walker?”

  He stopped and came back.

  “Walker, what about . . . what about us?” she asked, making a gesture that included both of them.

  “Us?” he said. “Well, I guess ‘us’ will have to wait until you’re ready.”

  She thought about this. It sounded straightforward enough. There was just one problem. “How will I know when I’m ready?” she asked, softly.

  “I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I guess you’ll just know.”

  “And then I’ll come to you and say, ‘I’m ready’?” she asked, skeptically.

  “Something like that,” he said, with a half smile. He kissed her quickly on the forehead and then he was gone.

  Allie felt suddenly weak. She sank down on the kitchen floor and sat there for a long time, fighting back more tears and considering the absurdity of the situation. She was trapped. Caught between two worlds. One—her marriage to Gregg—had ended. The other—her relationship with Walker—was poised to begin. But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—let it begin. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  So much for baby steps, she thought, miserably, remembering Caroline’s words.

  CHAPTER 20

  Need help, buddy?” Walker asked.

  Wyatt shook his head. “No, I got it,” he said, frowning in concentration. He was holding a fishing hook in one hand and a wriggly pink worm in the other.

  Ordinarily, Walker preferred to fish with lures, but he’d decided that fishing with live bait would be more exciting for someone Wyatt’s age. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was how hard it could be to get a worm on a hook when your hands were as small as Wyatt’s. Not that Wyatt complained. He didn’t. He just kept trying.