by Mary McNear
Allie felt her cheeks flush in recognition. “You’re restoring my canoe?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Why not?” he shrugged. “I couldn’t resist at least taking a look at it. And once I got it out of the water, I realized how beautifully made it was.”
“But it doesn’t even float anymore,” she protested.
“Well, I love a challenge. And when it comes to restoring a boat, the bigger the challenge, the more fun it is.”
“It doesn’t sound fun.” Allie frowned. “It sounds expensive.”
“Well, it’s fun for me,” Walker said, smiling. “Probably not for most people. And don’t worry about the expense. I’m not charging you anything for it. I have everything I need at the boatyard. Or I can get it from our suppliers wholesale.”
But Allie shook her head. She didn’t like the sound of this. She didn’t want to be beholden to Walker Ford. Not for any reason. They were neighbors. She couldn’t change that. But they weren’t going to be friends. Not when he made her feel like this every time she saw him. Ill at ease. Tense. And defensive.
“You know what?” she said, suddenly. “Why don’t you keep it when you’re done restoring it? It’s the least I can do, since you went to the trouble of hauling it out of the lake. Besides, I promised Wyatt we’d get something with a motor. Even at five, he’s old enough to not be impressed by any boat you have to paddle or row.”
“Oh, well, that I know I can help you with,” Walker said, extracting his wallet from his pocket and taking out a business card. He handed it to Allie and she took it reluctantly. “Cliff Donahue,” he explained, as she examined it. “He’s the general manager at the boatyard. Come see him, anytime. He can get you a good deal on a new or used boat.”
Allie examined the card, then looked back up at Walker and saw him, really saw him, for the first time that night. Maybe the first time ever. The man was ridiculously good-looking, she thought. And the little extra effort he’d made tonight with his appearance had paid off in spades. His short, dark hair was combed neatly down, and his suntanned jawline looked freshly shaved. Not only that, but he was wearing a blue button-down shirt that brought out the intense blueness of his eyes. She wondered, vaguely, if he’d chosen the shirt for that reason, but decided he hadn’t. He didn’t look like a man who spent a lot of time looking in the mirror. Or fretting about what to wear.
As Allie was looking at him, it got suddenly darker outside, the way it sometimes did on summer evenings. She took a nervous sip of her Coke and met his eyes above the rim of her glass. But his eyes didn’t look back at her. Not exactly. Instead, they sort of brushed over her—all of her—in a way that was both hard and soft at the same time. As if they were simultaneously holding her tightly and caressing her softly.
Allie shivered, inexplicably, in the sultry summer evening and tugged self-consciously at the neckline of her sundress. It wasn’t an especially revealing dress, but there was something about the way he was looking at her now that made her feel as if she was underdressed. Undressed, actually.
She held on to his look for a long moment, held on to it until something inside of her stretched tight, as if it was about to snap. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she looked away. “I need to find Wyatt,” she murmured, almost breathless, and, without looking back, she disappeared into the crowd. She moved past people, not seeing them, and fighting a sudden light-headedness. I need to get something to eat, she thought, once she’d thoroughly lost herself in the crowd, and she headed for the buffet table.
Much to her relief, she didn’t see Walker again that night.
Later, on the drive home, stopped at an intersection, Allie looked at Wyatt in the rearview mirror just as the headlights from a passing car briefly illuminated him. He had a smudge of dirt on his face and a ketchup stain on his T-shirt. As she watched him, he yawned, sleepily. She turned around and smiled at him.
“Did you have fun tonight?” she asked.
He nodded and looked out the window, contentedly. He looks different, Allie thought, as she turned around and drove through the intersection. He looks happy.
CHAPTER 14
When Walker opened the door to his office at the boatyard one afternoon in mid-July, he found his brother, Reid, sitting in Walker’s swivel chair, his feet propped up on Walker’s desk. As Walker came through the door, Reid smiled at him and, by way of a greeting, shot a rubber band in his direction.
“Hi, Reid,” Walker said, mildly, fending off the rubber band with a raised hand. He sat down in the office’s other chair. “Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”
“Is that any way to greet your older brother?” Reid asked, feigning disapproval.
“Well, you might have given me a little warning,” Walker pointed out.
“I didn’t want to give you any warning,” Reid said, taking his feet off Walker’s desk. “It’s much more fun to surprise you. Besides, if I’d given you warning, I wouldn’t have seen that,” he added, gesturing to the window of Walker’s second-story office, which offered a view of the entire boatyard.
“Seen what?” Walker asked, warily.
“Seen you with your new friend.”
Walker frowned. “That’s not a new friend. It’s a new neighbor. And her son. They’re here because they want to buy a boat.”
“That looked like more than a straightforward sale to me,” Reid said, amused.
Walker shrugged, feigning disinterest. “Well, I just said hello to them. Then I turned them over to Cliff.” He could have shown them the sale models himself, of course, but he hadn’t wanted to. It was important to him, for some reason, to keep his and Allie’s personal relationship—if you could even call it that—separate from their business relationship. But that hadn’t stopped him from telling Cliff to take 25 percent off the price of any boat Allie was interested in.
Reid didn’t say anything now, but he’d sensed Walker’s defensiveness. And he was enjoying it immensely.
“Look, Reid,” Walker said, with an exasperated sigh. “Don’t try to make this into more than it is, okay? It’s very simple. They want to buy a boat. I want to sell them a boat. I mean, that is what we do here, isn’t it? Sell boats?”
“It is,” Reid agreed. “But, Walk, seriously, I wouldn’t make a habit of doing business that way. The way you were looking at her, it didn’t look very professional to me.”
“How was I looking at her?” Walker asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.
Reid pretended to think about it. “Like she was a cupcake you were waiting to eat,” he said, finally. “You know, the kind with a lot of frosting on it? And those little sprinkles all over it and—”
“Okay, Reid, I get it,” Walker broke in, chagrined that his attraction to Allie had been so obvious. With any luck, though, she wasn’t as perceptive as Reid. His brother, after all, had had a thirty-five-year head start getting to know him.
“Hey, Walk, don’t worry about it,” Reid said, with a shrug. “It’s not a problem. At least not as far as I’m concerned. Unless she’s married. And then, of course, it’s a big problem.”
Walker shook his head, a little glumly. “No, she’s not married. But she’s not available, either.”
Reid raised his eyebrows, wordlessly asking for an explanation.
“She’s widowed,” Walker said, after a pause. “Her husband was sent to Afghanistan and . . .” His voice trailed off.
“How long ago?” Reid asked, quietly.
“How long ago was he deployed?”
Reid shook his head. “How long ago did he die?”
“A couple of years ago, I think.”
“So this isn’t brand-new?” Reid clarified. “For her and the kid?”
Walker shook his head. “No. Her son was three then. He’s five now.”
“Well, then I don’t see a problem,” Reid said. “I mean, I don’t mean to sound callous. Or disrespectful to her husband’s memory. After all, he gave the ulti
mate sacrifice for his country. But, Walk, his life ended. Her life’s gone on.”
“That’s just it, though,” Walker said. “I don’t think her life has gone on. I mean, superficially it may have. But emotionally, at least, I think she’s still kind of shut down.” Kind of, but maybe not all the way, Walker thought. Unless he’d imagined that moment at the third of July party. That moment when they’d looked at each other and he’d felt something pass between them. Something buzzing and sharp, like a current of electricity.
“Well, if she is shut down,” Reid said, “maybe that’s where you come in.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, at the risk of sounding cliché, that you give her a reason to open up again. To start living again.”
But Walker shook his head. “I don’t think I’m that person, Reid. Let’s face it. Not with my track record.”
“Are you referring to your divorce?”
Walker’s jaw tightened. “Obviously.”
“Well, you two never should have gotten married in the first place,” Reid said, dismissively.
“But that’s not the point,” Walker objected. “Once we did get married . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Walker,” Reid said, impatiently. “You’re not still blaming yourself for her losing the baby, are you?”
Walker flinched. “Reid, I’ve told you before. I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Reid said, holding up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not minimizing your loss, Walker. Yours or Caitlin’s. But, Walker, you’ve got to let it go. Put it behind you. It’s been a couple of years now. That woman”—he gestured at the window—“isn’t the only one who needs to move on. You need to move on, too.”
Walker said nothing.
“Okay, fine, don’t move on,” Reid said, with a sigh. “But at least ask her out for a cup of coffee? How difficult can that be?”
Maybe too difficult for me, Walker thought, pushing up from his chair and wandering over to the window. Allie’s car was still in the guest parking lot.
“Are they still here?” Reid asked.
But Walker ignored the question. He had one of his own for his brother. “Reid, since when are you so interested in my personal life?”
“Since I realized that neither one of us has any personal life to speak of.”
“I thought you liked it that way. You know, all work and no play for both of us.”
“Not for both of us,” Reid qualified. He got up and came over to the window. “I like it for me, but I don’t think I like it for you anymore. Because for all your bluster, Walk, I think you want marriage and children. I think you want the whole nine yards.”
“Well, then you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Walker said, honestly.
Reid put a hand on his shoulder, surprising Walker. His brother, as a general rule, wasn’t very demonstrative. Now, though, he left his hand there for a long moment, then squeezed his shoulder and let go. “I’ve got to push off,” he said, heading for the office door.
“You didn’t come all this way just to dispense brotherly wisdom, did you?” Walker asked, over his shoulder.
“Of course not,” Reid said. “I was looking at a boatyard for sale near Ely. It has definite potential. I’ll be in touch with you about it.”
“If you want to stick around while I finish up some paperwork, we can grab dinner,” Walker offered, leaving the window and sitting down at his desk.
“Another time,” Reid said. “I’ve got to be getting back to the city.”
Reid started to leave the office, then turned back.
“One more thing, Walk.”
“What?” Walker asked, distractedly, looking up from the stack of papers on his desk.
“Think about what we talked about. About asking that woman out. Because the brother I grew up with was many things, but he was never a coward.” And he left, shutting the door behind him.
It’s not going to work, Reid, Walker thought. I’m not twelve years old anymore, and I don’t take the bait every time you offer it to me.
But he didn’t go back to work. Instead, he went back to the window and brooded about what Reid had said. Five minutes later, he was heading down the stairs to the showroom.
When he walked into it, he immediately spotted Allie at the far end. She was holding a sheaf of glossy boat brochures with one hand and shaking hands with Cliff with the other. Wyatt was nearby, playing on one of the boats.
“Hey, Walker,” Cliff said, when he joined them. “Ms. Beckett was just leaving.”
“I hope you’re taking a boat with you,” Walker said.
“Not quite,” Allie said. “But Cliff has given me plenty to think about.”
“Good,” Walker said, nodding.
Another customer walked into the showroom and Cliff excused himself to greet them.
“Wyatt, it’s time to go,” Allie called. Wyatt glanced up briefly, then went back to pretending to drive a powerboat. Allie sighed. “It’s amazing how selective his hearing is,” she said.
Walker laughed, glad for the opportunity to have her to himself, even for a few minutes.
“How are you two settling in?” he asked.
“We’re making progress,” she said. “Or at least Johnny Miller, our handyman, is. Thanks to him, our cabin isn’t falling down around us anymore. So that’s a good sign, I guess.”
“How long’s it been since you got here?” he asked. He knew exactly how long it’d been since he’d seen a light on in their cabin that night, but he was at a loss for conversational topics. She never failed, it seemed, to have this disorienting effect on him.
She looked especially lovely today, too, in a summery blouse and skirt with flat sandals. Her luxuriant, sun-streaked brown hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and her suntanned face was devoid of makeup. Not that she needed it. Her skin already had a soft, golden glow, and her long-lashed hazel eyes had a luminosity that no eye makeup could deliver.
“We’ve been here for six weeks,” she said, bringing him back to reality.
Something about the way she said it made him ask, “Six long weeks?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But we’ve gotten into a routine, which is good. It makes the time go faster.”
“Do you know what would make it go even faster?” Walker suggested.
She shook her head, suddenly wary.
“A boat.”
She smiled. “You’re quite the salesman, aren’t you?” she remarked
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I think if you live on a lake as beautiful as Butternut Lake, you should have a boat to explore it with.”
Her hazel eyes were thoughtful as she considered what he’d said, but then she seemed to remember something, and she looked at her watch.
“We need to get going soon,” she said, glancing over at her son. “I have to get Wyatt over to Jax’s house. Believe it or not, I have a job interview.”
His expression must have said he didn’t believe it.
“At the Pine Cone Gallery,” she explained. “Sara Gage, the woman who owns it, is looking for a part-time salesperson. And Jax has somehow persuaded her that I’m that person. Personally, I think they’re both crazy.”
“I don’t know about that,” Walker said. “They both seem like smart women to me. But good luck, anyway. And Allie?”
“Yes?”
Here goes nothing. And forget about asking her out for a cup of coffee. That’s starting too small. “I was wondering if you and Wyatt would like to come over some night for dinner. Nothing fancy. I could throw a couple of steaks on the grill. Maybe take you two out for a boat ride after dinner . . .”
Allie frowned. “Well, Wyatt would like that . . .” she said, uncertainly.
And you, Walker wanted to ask. Would you like that? He waited. But when she didn’t say anything, he added, “It’s not a big deal. Just a couple of neighbors having dinner together.”
“Is tha
t all it is?” Allie asked, leveling her gaze at him.
“Yes,” he said, unsettled by her directness.
She waited.
“No,” he amended. “I mean, I don’t know what it is.”
She waited for him to say more.
“Maybe it would just be dinner,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe it would be something more. We don’t know each other well enough to know that yet. But, Allie, I do know one thing about us.”
He paused. This part was awkward. He wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it without offending her.
“What’s that?” she asked, coolly.
“I know that at Jax and Jeremy’s party, I felt something between us. I don’t know what you’d call it. A mutual attraction, maybe. But I don’t think I imagined it. And I don’t think it was one-sided, either. Whatever it was, I think you felt it, too.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “Are you saying you think I’m . . . attracted to you?” she clarified.
He nodded. He thought he’d made that pretty clear.
Her gold complexion flushed pink. Embarrassed, he wondered. Or angry? He saw her lovely jaw set in a hard line. Angry, he decided.
“Look, I don’t know what you felt that night, Walker. But I can tell you right now that whatever it was, I didn’t feel it. I’m not attracted to you, Walker. Not even a little.”
“I don’t believe you,” Walker said, without thinking.
Her cheeks flushed darker. “Well, then you’re even more arrogant than I thought you were.”
Ouch, Walker thought. That stung a little. But he still didn’t believe her. Not entirely.
“Wyatt, we need to go,” she called out to her son. “Now.”
And Walker, desperate to repair the damage he’d done, tried to backtrack. “Look, I apologize. Obviously, I read too much into the situation.”
But Allie didn’t answer him because at that moment Wyatt ran over to her.
“Mommy,” he said, his excitement momentarily overcoming his shyness. “I want that boat!” He pointed to the boat he’d been playing on. “I already know how to drive it,” he said earnestly. “I taught myself.”