by Leddy Harper
And I needed to know what it was.
I squeezed her foot, ignoring the way her breathing stopped when my thumb grazed the sensitive skin over the arch. “I’m glad you’re a rebel and ignored the no trespassing sign. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone to watch the show with. So thank you for staying and keeping me company, Kenny.”
She glowered, a smile hiding in the corners of her lips. “My name is McKenna,” she reminded me.
But I didn’t need reminding. “I know.”
“Then why’d you call me Kenny?”
Honestly, I didn’t know. It wasn’t like I even knew a Kenny and had accidentally called her by the wrong name. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to it, but now that it’d been said, my only choice was to carry on with it.
“Does everyone call you McKenna?” I questioned, and when she nodded, I added, “Well, I’m not everyone.”
“And to be different, you have to call me by a guy’s name?”
I smiled at the feigned offense that painted her expression and engraved creases into her brow as she glared at me. I might’ve believed that I had truly insulted her had it not been for the amusement lining her lips like balm. “No, I don’t need to do anything to be different. I just personally think that Kenny is a better fit for you.”
It didn’t make any sense, and I knew that, but for reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain, I had a soul-deep need to call her Kenny. It felt natural on my tongue and, based on the way she nonchalantly shrugged and grinned at me, I could only assume she didn’t mind it as much as she wanted me to believe.
“Let’s try this again…” I flexed my fingers, gripping her ankle a bit tighter, and leaned forward, making sure she could feel my eyes on her. “Thank you for the company, Kenny. I have very much enjoyed spending time with you.”
The night had grown darker, her face harder to see clearly. But as the bright colors danced through the sky, I was rewarded with the most genuine smile I’d ever seen on anyone. Pure happiness. Maybe a little reluctance, but mostly contentment. “My pleasure.”
Chapter Two
Kenny
When Drew stopped the golf cart in front of my rented cabin, I opened my mouth to say goodnight. However, the second I met his stare, my tongue and lips decided to form other words, as if they had a mind of their own. “Do you want to come in? I have drinks in the fridge and some snacky stuff if you’re hungry.”
It’d been a long day—an early morning followed by a very lonely and tiring drive—but I felt as though the heavy exhaustion from earlier had dissipated. Meeting Drew seemed to have renewed my spirit and had me on the verge of giddiness. Evidently, it only took a couple of hours with a hot guy beneath the sprays of glittering color to revitalize me. At this rate, I’d probably be up until dawn.
Although, nothing could’ve reinvigorated me more than the sound of his response.
“Yeah, that sounds good. Just for a little bit, though; I’ve got work in the morning.”
To my surprise, inviting him in was the easy part. Once I had the door closed behind us, I didn’t know what to do; it was as if I’d never been around a guy before. Rather than act cool, I pointed to the sofa that sat only a few feet from the front door, basically ordering him to sit like I would command a dog. And still, without saying anything, I dropped my cabin key onto the table in front of him and walked into the kitchen, which wasn’t far thanks to the open floorplan of the small space.
“What would you like to drink?” I opened the refrigerator and bent over, peering inside in the hope it’d cool off my overheated cheeks. Thanks to my fair skin, I tended to wear embarrassment the way most women wore makeup. “I have water, soda, and wine coolers.” I peered over my shoulder at him, forcing myself to ignore the heat in his gaze as he stared at me. “But if I’ll get in trouble for having alcoholic beverages, then no…I don’t have any wine coolers.”
The hardness of his features from only a moment ago fell away as his shoulders jumped in silent humor. “Have you already forgotten the beer I gave you on the dock?”
“Technically, you didn’t give them to me. I took them out of your cooler; you just didn’t say anything about it. I thought maybe you didn’t notice,” I teased. Flirting with Drew felt so natural, as if we’d been doing it my entire life.
“I was wondering where half of my six-pack went. I started to question my sanity, thinking I drank them without realizing it.” Amusement filled his every word as he played along. “But I’ll take water now, thank you. I have to go in early tomorrow to get caught up on paperwork, and I’ve learned from past experiences that too many drinks the night before leads to frequent discrepancies in my math.”
I set the bottle of water on the coffee table and took a seat next to him, tucking my feet beneath my bottom to get comfortable. Well, at the very least, to appear comfortable. I doubted there was much I could do to relax and ignore the carnal urge I had to run my fingers through his messy, windswept hair. His dark locks—long enough to sweep over the tops of his ears and hang over his smooth brow without looking overgrown—begged for attention.
It was the epitome of sexy chaos.
The last thing I wanted to do was run him off by spending the entire time gawking at him, but the magnetic attraction was hard to ignore. I took a long pull of my fruity drink and desperately tried to come up with something intelligent to say. However, the only thing I could think about was how hot he was, which made me wonder why I hadn’t seen him when I’d checked in earlier today. “You said you have paperwork to do in the morning…does that mean you work in the office?”
“Sometimes…but I mostly do other things.”
“Oh, yeah? What do you normally do?”
“It’d be easier to list the things I don’t do,” he said with laughter rippling through his gravelly baritone. “I work a lot in the restaurant. Well, I guess I should say manage, not work. When the orders get backed up, everything falls apart. So that’s where I prefer to be, overseeing it all.”
“Do you do any of the cooking?”
“None.” His easy smile made his earlier statement of knowing each other resound in my thoughts. There was absolutely no way we’d ever met before today, except that didn’t stop the feeling of familiarity from settling into this conversation, as if talking to him was the most natural thing in the world. “I keep the kitchen running smoothly while taking care of the maintenance tickets and tracking the inventory.”
“How did you manage to get the night off? I walked past the restaurant earlier, and they were packed. I’d imagine they would’ve needed all hands on deck tonight.”
He shrugged and cocked his head to the side, staring straight ahead as if contemplating his response. “I’m sure they probably could’ve benefited from having me there—not because they can’t do it without me.” He swung his attention my way and lifted one corner of his mouth in the sexiest smirk that had ever graced a pair of lips. “But running this place comes with perks, and deciding when and where I work is one of them.”
Drew seemed to be full of confidence without the arrogant edge that most guys I knew had. In fact, it was a kind of confidence all of its own, unlike any I’d ever seen. There was a hint of humor in the things he said as if it were a joke, though if I had to bet, I’d say he meant every word.
I’d never met anyone like him.
“Are you, like, the manager of the resort?”
He shifted in his seat, twisting at his waist so that we were face to face. And, oh my God, my lungs refused to expand as everything came to a halt. His dark eyes—so dark that, even with the light on, I couldn’t distinguish between his pupils and irises—sucked all the air out of the room. They were just endless abysses of onyx crystals.
Like two shields of armor keeping anyone from seeing his soul.
“Technically, my dad owns and operates Black Bird Resort. But ever since his heart attack a few years back, I’ve had to help him run nearly every aspect of this place. We have employees, b
ut it’s mostly Dad and me who manage everything.”
“So if you do all that, what does he do?”
“He mainly works in the office, writing the schedules for everyone, finalizing The Feeder menu, keeping up with the boats—fuel, tune-ups, oil, regular upkeep. That sort of thing. He’s also in charge of making sure the guests are happy…so if you have a complaint, feel free to let him know. But on the flip side, if you’re really happy with something, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.”
I shook my head in amusement while laughing under my breath.
He’d mentioned that his dad worked in the office, but the guy who had checked me in this morning couldn’t have possibly been his dad. He couldn’t have been anyone’s parent. Well, unless it was possible to father a child while still in diapers. Drew did say that they had employees, so I assumed it was one of them and moved on.
“At least you guys seem to be doing well for yourselves.”
“Not really. Sure, the tours are full, the cabins are booked solid, and the restaurant and bar never slow during this one week of the year. But after this weekend, it won’t be like this again until the next Fourth of July.”
I became thoroughly invested in this conversation, as though the success of this resort somehow affected me. Either that or I was simply baffled by the news that they weren’t this busy every week. I simply couldn’t imagine that. “Why is it so slow the rest of the year?”
“Just is. People ’round here don’t care about the lake’s conception or the history buried beneath it. They only come for the festivals and celebration of Independence Day, so this is the only week that people flock to us. Any other time, they stay for the day or come for dinner.”
“It’s always been this way?” I couldn’t imagine how a resort could survive like this.
“Pretty much, which is why most of the tasks fall on us—well, mostly me.”
I picked at the soggy label on my bottle, not knowing what to say. Finally, unable to deal with the silence much longer, I shrugged and whispered, “It just seems like a lot to put on one person.”
“It was a lot easier when my grandmother ran things. She had my dad do all the manual labor while she took care of everything else—housekeeping, paperwork, taxes, et cetera. When I was younger, I would do little odd jobs here and there to help out, but once I got older, I started taking over a lot of my grandma’s responsibilities. And now, after my dad’s heart attack, I’ve had to do even more. But for the most part, we have our own duties, and it works out well for us.”
“Your grandmother works here, too?”
His hooded eyes held me captive, and the way he looked at me made me wonder if he could read my thoughts. There was a glint in them that I couldn’t ignore, convincing me that he understood me on a level no one else ever had. “Not anymore…she died three years ago, two months before my dad’s heart attack.”
I wanted to say something, but the only words I could think of were I’m sorry, and I believed in reserving that for recent losses. Offering someone—especially someone you barely knew—condolences for something that happened years ago felt more like a cowardly copout than genuine compassion to me. However, it didn’t make the desire to offer him my sympathies go away. Instead, I took a swig of my wine cooler and asked, “I take it this resort is family-owned?”
“Yeah, my grandma opened it right after the reservoir was created. It began as just a simple bed and breakfast on the side of the mountain, which is now the main house on the property. That’s where we keep the artifacts and history of Chogan. My grandma actually lived upstairs until the day she died, and it’s also where my dad grew up. He didn’t move out until he and my mom built their own place.”
“Your mom runs the resort, too?”
He stared off across the room and hesitated for a moment before answering, making me regret my question. “No. She left a long time ago. She didn’t want to live her life day in and day out at the resort, so she left. I was six. I don’t remember too much of it other than their fights when she’d come to see me…then she started canceling trips. And by the time I turned thirteen, she just stopped visiting altogether.”
I covered his hand with mine on the cushion between us in an involuntary attempt to comfort him. But to my surprise, he found my stare and offered me comfort of his own in the form of a brilliant grin that turned his hooded eyes into two perfect crescents. They were like two oysters with obsidian stones glistening through the shadows and holding me hostage.
“It’s okay. I’m beyond over it.”
I wondered if that was the equivalent of a woman saying she was fine. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Three years ago, when she came to my high school graduation.”
“Have you at least talked since then?” I couldn’t imagine going longer than a few days without hearing from my mom, so the thought of going years was a concept I couldn’t grasp. It shocked me so much that my voice lifted a few octaves—which made him smile even more, so I couldn’t complain.
Rather than move his hand away from mine, he gently caressed my nailbeds with the pad of his thumb. And instead of turning away, he kept his attention glued to my face. “I don’t really see a point in reaching out to her, and she hasn’t made any effort to contact me either. There was a brief moment when my dad was in the hospital after his heart attack that I thought about calling her, but I knew what she would say, so I decided against it.”
“What do you think she would’ve said?”
“Same thing she said the last time we spoke…that I’m wasting my life here.” He released a heavy huff and leaned further into the cushion, dropping his head to the back of the couch. “I understand what she was saying—being trapped in these woods limits all aspects of life. But I disagree with the notion that higher education is the be-all and end-all. I’m getting real-life managerial skills here. Just because something is limited doesn’t make it wasted.”
“That’s what your mom told you when she came to your graduation?”
“Yup,” he whispered with a solemn nod, now staring at our hands between us. While he mindlessly traced my fingers with his, his thoughts seemed to be somewhere else. “It was such an absurd idea that I couldn’t even give it any thought. Leave my family? At eighteen, when my grandmother was ill? No way.”
I seriously wondered just how beyond over it he was.
It seemed pretty evident that it was, in fact, the equivalent of fine.
“My dad has always been my hero, and my grandmother had been—and always will be—my angel. In life and in death. I would’ve never been able to look at myself in the mirror had I left them behind. Especially considering that my grandma died a couple of months later…then my dad collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. Imagine what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been here.” His pain toed the line of anger.
Needing to turn this back around—this was not how I’d pictured this going—I squeezed his hand, earning his full attention. “It’s clear that this place holds a lot of meaning for your family…I want to hear about it. Tell me the importance of Black Bird Resort.”
My heart melted with the easiness that spread across his face.
“My grandmother used to live in Chogan—which, as you probably know by now, is the town that rests beneath the reservoir. She moved away after high school, which was about a year before the flood, so her entire childhood was built there. That’s where she fell in love for the first time—from what she said,” he added with a smirk. “Shortly after they flooded the valley, she built her house on the side of the mountain, basically to watch over the lost town.”
“That’s it? You guys have poured your blood, sweat, and tears into this place for three generations, all because your grandmother wanted a reminder of where she grew up?” There had to be more to it; no one would sacrifice that much for something that should’ve been a vacation home.
Drew removed his hand from mine to run it down his face, showing his fatigue. As he spoke, h
e stared at the ceiling, refusing to meet my gaze, which was odd because he didn’t sound sad or upset as he explained it to me. “She wanted to make sure no one forgot about Chogan. She wanted to make sure that people remained educated about the town and give the former residents a place to come and stay—since their houses had been buried.”
“Do you get a lot of Chogan residents staying here? Or people coming to learn about the town and the reservoir?”
“No,” he muttered with a flippant eye roll. “To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from there. If I had to guess, I’d say they are either dead, don’t have a clue this place even exists, or they simply don’t give a shit about it.”
Unfortunately, that didn’t clear up my confusion. “Why keep it open?”
He shrugged and returned his attention to me, making me wonder if he’d glanced away out of embarrassment over his family’s motivations. “If you ask me, it’s pointless. But my dad, following in his mother’s footsteps, has continued her mission. I get it…he grew up listening to her stories and reasons for keeping this place going. Hell, I’ve heard it all, too. I don’t blame him for wanting to carry it on, but I just don’t see the point. I personally believe that it’s time to let it go.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Because my dad refuses to give it up.”
I took a moment to understand what he was saying while also contemplating possible solutions—I thoroughly enjoyed a good puzzle to solve. And even though we’d just met, I couldn’t stop myself from making suggestions. “Okay, so why not keep it but make changes? If old Chogan residents aren’t visiting, why keep it as a place for them? I think if you switched up your marketing, made it more of a destination resort, you’d get plenty of people booking with you. Look at this place.” I extended my arm to show off the interior of the cabin, as if he didn’t know exactly what it looked like. “It’s gorgeous. Not just the villas but the grounds too. The land itself is breathtaking.”