Return to Glebe Point

by Patricia Paris

  Charlie hadn’t talked to him since he’d dropped by during the impromptu celebration on Tuesday. She’d seen him walk past the store and look in a few times, but he hadn’t come into the shop, and she’d been so busy she wouldn’t have had time to talk to him if he had.

  She glanced after Delaney. “I think she approves of you.”

  “For what?”

  Charlie grinned up at him. “For me.”

  “Really? That’s surprising since Justin and Blake were telegraphing some pretty strong steer clear warnings my way the other day. I got the feeling they think I might be trying to corrupt you. The thought even crossed my mind that they could secretly be plotting to skewer me if they get the chance.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll handle my cousins.”

  He walked through the door and she followed him inside. Facing her, he met her gaze, his brow furrowed, his deep, dark eyes studying her. “I’m a little surprised you told them about us. I got the impression you didn’t want anyone to know we were involved.”

  “I didn’t tell them anything. They either figured things out on their own, or someone saw us together and said something to one of them. It doesn’t really matter how or what they know, but I agree that they think something’s going on and consider it their responsibility to make sure you aren’t trying to seduce me.”

  “What if they decide I am?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Have you been keeping up with your workouts at the gym?”

  “I think it would be a pretty even match if I had to go up against one of them, but both at once…not too sure about those odds. What else do you got?”

  “Well, since I’m not ready to toss you aside yet, I guess full disclosure would be the best course of action.”

  He looked surprised for a moment, but then gave her a slow, sexy grin that made her want to pull him into the back room and jump him. Just like that, he filled her with a hot need that tempted her to her toes and begged a little satisfaction. She was in deep trouble, or maybe he was, because this kind of heat could only lead to one end, an end that could leave one or both of them burned.

  “If you’re ready to take our little romance public—” He moved against her and slipped his hands around to her back, caressing it as he did. “Then maybe you’ll agree to letting me take you out for dinner tonight—someplace very public—and then afterward we can find someplace very private.”

  She brought her palms up against his chest and tilted her head back so she could look at him. “Sounds tempting. I’ve already got a date, though.”

  A frown narrowed his eyes, and he rolled his jaw. She could feel his muscles tighten under her hands.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” she suggested. “I’m sure it will make for an interesting evening.”

  “So your date’s not with some guy I’ve already begun to dislike immensely even though I don’t know who he is yet?”

  Charlie chuckled. “No, not that kind of date. I can only manage one secret affair at a time. It’s a barbecue at Blake’s. Justin and his family will be there, too. It can be our coming out.”

  He ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek, looking thoughtful. “Okay, I’m game, but if I come with you, our little romance won’t be a secret anymore.”

  Although a part of her was nervous, she nodded. Taking him to a family get-together was akin to making a statement…to them…and to him. It would suggest they were dating—seeing each other, involved in some way that hadn’t really been defined, yet nonetheless was.

  “If you’re okay with it, so am I.”

  “I wasn’t the one who suggested we keep things under wraps,” he reminded her. “I’d much rather see you openly. It gives less of an impression I’m trying to get away with something and reduces the chance your cousins will try to beat the crap out of me.”

  “I’ll protect you, big guy.” She formed one of her hands into a fist and gave it a shake.

  “Yeah, that’ll deter them. Just watch you don’t hurt your face screwing it up like that when you take them on. Or maybe it’s good. They might fall over laughing, and I can get in a sucker punch or two when they’re down.”

  She hit him in the chest and he laughed. “No, really, it’s a good plan. You distract them, get their defenses down, and then I swoop in when they don’t expect it. They’ll think twice about retaliating if they know I’ve got you on my team.”

  “Very funny, but no one will be getting the crap beat out of them precisely because I am on your team—so advantage to you. Blake and Justin might circle, grumble, and glare, throw out a couple of we’re watching you threats, but once I set them straight they’ll back off.”

  Cooper arched his brows and gave her a dubious look. She didn’t blame him for doubting her. Her cousins were formidable men, and as a friend of theirs, he probably knew better than most how protective they would be of family.

  “Besides, Gab and Delaney like you.” Just one look from their wives would be more effective at keeping those two men in line than anything she might say. “If they give their seal of approval, it doesn’t matter what Blake or Justin think, you’re in.”

  He pulled her back in, held her close, leaned down and nibbled on her mouth. “So work on the women?” he asked against her lips. She shivered. He was really, really good at making her do that.

  “No need, they’re already half in love with you.”

  Cooper feathered his fingers up along her ribcage, skimming, teasing, suggesting. “Then maybe I should devote my attentions to working on you.”

  Charlie moaned softly. “Much better idea.”

  Saturday afternoon Charlie and Cooper took Justin’s boat out to go fishing. When they were ready to drop anchor, she backed up on the throttle and slid the gearshift into neutral.

  Flipping open the window hatch, she scrambled up onto the bow of the sleek thirty-two footer and opened the anchor well. After cleating off the line and measuring out enough rode, she heaved it off the side and then pirouetted on her tush to face Cooper.

  “Give it a little reverse.”

  He eased the boat back slowly and after a few seconds shifted back into neutral.

  Charlie tested the line to make sure the anchor had set and then gave him a thumbs-up. “Okay, you can turn her off.”

  It was October, a few of the larger, cool-weather bass were just beginning to show up again, and as they’d discovered they both liked rockfish, they’d borrowed her cousin’s boat and were going to try their luck at catching dinner.

  They were using spot fish to live line, a method she’d learned from Blake, who taught her everything she knew about fishing and had told her it was the most surefire way to catch rock.

  Charlie took a spot out of the live well. Cooper had already baited his hook and she watched him let the line run through his fingers, keeping just enough tension that the spot had to struggle a little to try to swim away. That was all a rockfish would need to see, and thinking the spot was wounded, it would go after it.

  “Who taught you how to fish?” she asked him, as she slowly began to let out her own line.

  “Your cousin Blake. I never caught a fish in my life until I started going out with him. He taught me everything I know, although I think he took me along at first for comic relief.”

  “We’ve got that in common then. I was eight or nine the first time he took me fishing. When he was teaching me how to live line, he used to hold his finger on the spot’s back, right behind where he wanted me to insert the hook below the dorsal fin until I could do it without even looking. You put yours in the exact same place.”

  “Yeah, he did that finger guide thing with me, too, until I accidentally hooked the tip of it one day. After that I was on my own.”

  Charlie laughed. “Well, at least that’s all you hooked. You’ll have to ask him and Justin why they never go fishing together the next time you see them.”

  Cooper gave her a sideway glance. “I didn’t think Justin liked to fish.”

  “He doesn�
�t. He was always more skilled with a baseball than a fishing rod.”

  “So tell me why they won’t fish together. I know there’s more to it than Justin not enjoying it.”

  She shook her head, still laughing. “Nope. Blake tells it better, and it’s worth waiting so you can watch the two of them get into it. Blake knows how to get Justin’s goat better than anyone I know, and this is one fishing tale he loves to embellish. It’s like watching one of those old Abbott and Costello skits from the 1940s, or whenever they were made, when the two of them get going on about something.”

  “Now you’ve got me curious. Once they move beyond the point of wanting to jump me when no one’s looking, I might ask them about it.”

  “They’ll come around. I had a little talk with them in Blake’s kitchen last night when the kids were whipping your butt skipping stones.”

  “They weren’t whipping my butt. They were marginally beating me, and they had an advantage; you’ve been giving them pointers for most of the summer.”

  “They’re seven, Cooper.”

  “Seven, schmeven. They’ve been under the tutelage of the county’s uncontested Ducks and Drakes Champion for how many years running?”

  “Sounds like maybe you’ve got a competitive streak in—”

  Charlie started waving a finger toward the water. “Cooper, look! Your line’s free spooling!”

  “I didn’t feel the pull, but you’re right.”

  “Let it run until you’re sure he’s got the whole thing in his mouth.”

  He frowned at her. He might not have been fishing as long as she had, but he knew what to do. When the free spooling stopped, Cooper closed the bail and raised his rod.

  “Gotcha!” He grinned triumphantly and started to reel in his catch.

  Tonight they would eat rockfish!

  “THOSE CLOUDS don’t look too friendly,” Cooper said as he pulled in the anchor.

  Charlie looked over her shoulder where he’d nodded, indicating toward the darkening sky. “No,” she agreed, “and looks like rain in the distance.”

  “Think we’ll be able to outrun it?” He’d been impressed with the way she’d handled the boat. It shouldn’t have surprised him. She’d probably been driving them since she could see over the bow. Unlike him, who’d spent the first twelve years of his life in Italy and the rest of it in DC’s suburbs until he’d moved to Glebe Point just over three years ago, she’d grown up on the water.

  “We can certainly try.”

  “Anchor’s free,” he said when it broke the surface of the water.

  Charlie shifted the boat into forward and slowly turned them around while he put the anchor back into the well and coiled the line.

  He scooted back over the bow and dropped onto the deck. When he sat down, she looked over at him and said, “You ready to rock and roll?”

  “I’m ready,” he said, and she pushed the throttle all the way forward. The boat leapt to life, the bow rising out of the water and obstructing their view for a few seconds before it came back down and the boat settled onto a plane.

  The wind picked up, whipping the water into whitecap-topped waves, and the sky began to grumble behind them.

  “Thunder,” he yelled. “Sounds like we’re in for a storm.”

  “It moved in early. We weren’t supposed to get anything until after midnight,” she shouted back. “As long as we don’t run into any lightning, we’ll be fine.”

  The first drops of rain found them fifteen minutes out on the river. By the time they got within shouting distance of Justin’s they were drenched, and although they’d seen some lightning over the Bay, it never caught up to them.

  Charlie eased the boat way back. She looked over at him, and they both sucked in a mouthful of air before breathing it out in a sigh of relief that they’d made it back with nothing worse than their wet clothes.

  “That was quite a ride,” Cooper said. “Glad you were at the helm and not me. It was starting to get dicey out there, and I wouldn’t have known how to handle some of those waves.”

  “I was really pushing it; sorry it got a little rough. Blake always told me: respect a storm—if you think one’s coming, get off the water. If I’d known it was going to move in early, we never would have gone out.”

  “No need to apologize, sweetheart. It came up out of nowhere, and you did an amazing job getting us back safely.” Cooper grinned at her. “You might be my new hero.”

  Charlie snorted but threw him a big-ass smile that lit her entire face as if someone had shown a spotlight on it. Thick, soggy curls hung from her head like coiled ropes, water dripping from them and running down her cheeks like rain on a window pane. Her clothes were plastered to her body, she wore no makeup, and he’d never wanted to make love to her more than that moment with her beaming at him.

  Justin was waiting for them on the pier as Charlie guided the boat into the inlet. He waved his arms over his head and called out to them, “We were getting worried about you two.”

  As they slid into the slip, Cooper threw him a line and Justin secured it to one of the piles. “I saw you coming in through the binoculars,” he told them.

  “The storms moved in early.” Charlie shut down the boat and started handing up gear. “Caught us off guard.”

  “That’s the way of the Bay.” Justin reached out a hand to hoist her up as she climbed out of the boat. “Just glad you made it back before it got any worse out there.”

  Working quickly together, the three of them were able to manage all the gear and made for the warmth of the house.

  Gabriella greeted them with thick, fluffy towels as they came through the back door. “Oh, you poor things,” she said when they stumbled in, dripping buckets all over her kitchen floor. “You’re soaked to the bone, and you’ve got to be freezing.”

  She handed them all one of the towels. They were warm, and Cooper wondered if she’d thrown them into the dryer to heat up for a couple of minutes when she and Justin had seen them coming in. He hadn’t noticed how cold he really was until after they’d tied off the boat, and the towel felt like a real luxury as he dried off his hair and held it against his wet skin.

  “You need to get out of those clothes so you can warm up. Come on upstairs and I’ll give you something to change into.” Gab waved them to follow her, not waiting for agreement. “If you don’t have other plans, why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  “Cooper bagged a rockfish,” Charlie informed them. “It’s a big one; I’ll bet it’s over twenty pounds. We were going to make it for dinner, but we could make it here. There’s way more than enough for all of us.” Charlie grinned up at him, looking all proud that he’d caught the fish. He wasn’t sure if she was bragging on his part or if she was teasing him, so he just licked his lips and smiled.

  “Oh.” Gab sounded a little disconcerted. “Uh, does anyone know what to do with it? I mean, I’ve never, you know, made fish that didn’t come vacuum sealed.” She turned toward Justin. “Honey, do you know how to cook a real fish?”

  “You mean as opposed to the fake ones we usually have?”

  “They’re not fake, Jus. They just aren’t so…fresh.”

  “It’s okay,” Charlie chimed in, probably picking up on her cousin’s discomfort. “I know what to do.”

  Gabriella got him a pair of Justin’s sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and Cooper changed into them in the upstairs guest bathroom. When he came back downstairs, Charlie had also changed. She was wearing some of Gabriella’s sweats but had to roll up the legs and the sleeves as Gab had several inches on her.

  While Charlie dealt with filleting the fish, most of which got wrapped in parchment paper, put in storage bags and into the freezer, Justin and Gab dealt with the rest of the meal. Cooper, for his part, set the table and watched Charlie work.

  Chloe, who had been watching a kid’s movie in the other room, joined them at the table when everything was ready. Gab put Travis in one of those walker things that looked like a chair on wheels. He boun
ced around the room while they ate, and after about ten minutes Cooper was convinced they had been designed for the sole purpose of babies running them into walls.

  They’d had some tense moments out on the water, spent more time than comfortable in cold, wet clothes that put them at risk of hypothermia. Travis ran over his bare feet twice with the walker from hell. But as Cooper sat on the couch in Justin and Gabriella’s living room with his arm around Charlie’s shoulder, having an after dinner drink, he smiled. He’d enjoyed the day.

  “YOU’VE MET my prerequisites,” Charlie told Cooper as they sat on the floor in front of the wood-burning stove in the corner of the cottage’s living area later that night sharing a bottle of wine.

  They’d taken all the pillows from the couch and piled them up in front of the fire, and even though they were no longer chilled, the heat felt good.

  Cooper stroked the skin along the inside of her wrist, his thumb gliding back and forth, sending little shivers along her nerves.

  “What are you telling me, bellissimo angioletto?” He stared into the depths of her eyes, his, black as night, never looking away, as if he were trying to see into her soul.

  Her heart felt like a pair of wings, beating furiously, as if it would take flight and soar right out of her chest. She put it down to nerves, but she’d made her decision.

  Charlie swallowed. No turning back; she didn’t want to, not now. She leaned toward him, touched her lips to his, and felt his fingers thread through hers.

  “It’s getting nastier out there.” She slid her tongue along his bottom lip. “I hate to think of you driving home tonight in the storm.”

  She stretched out beside him, propping herself up on her elbow, and he followed suit.

  “Do you have another option?”

  She nodded. “You could spend the night.”

  Cooper searched her eyes. “Is that what you’d like me to do?”

  Charlie wrapped her hand around the back of his head and angled her mouth over his, giving him her answer.

  The lights flickered and then everything went dark, leaving them with no light but the flames from the fire to see each other by.