His eyebrows lift, and his smile catches me off guard. “Okay, yeah. What do you need me to do?”
I blow a strand of hair out of my face and stand, wiping my palms on the butt of my shorts. I gesture at him to follow me and then crunch across the gravel yard to where I’ve got a half dozen new plants lined up in the shade underneath the deck.
“I need to plant these tonight so they don’t get cooked by the sun tomorrow. I already dug the holes, so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal.”
“When did you get all these?”
“After work.” After the conversation with Brooke and Sam, I needed to feel something real, to bury my hands in the earth and let something bigger than me run through my veins. The hardware store just down the street had a good enough selection of plants to fill what I needed for now.
Blake lifts a baby hydrangea plant. “Where does this one go?”
I grab a second plant and lead him to the side yard. “This one goes here”—I lower my plant into a nearby hole—“and yours goes here.”
I take the plant from him and show him how to massage the roots to loosen them before placing the plant in the hole. Then I hand him a trowel and gesture at the bag of soil between our feet. “I assume you know what to do from here?”
“I have planted a thing or two in my day.”
“In your day.” I snort. “You say it like you’re such an old man.”
Blake narrows his eyes, and I can’t tell if he’s amused or serious or simply curious about what I’m going to say. “Aren’t I?”
He’s ten years older than me, which could be everything or nothing, depending. I take him in, drawing my eyes from his broad, ripped torso up to his hazel eyes, and for the first time, I let him see me looking. He looks powerful and real, with a lived-in body, but in the best kind of way.
I grin and shake my head at him. “Not bad for a geezer.”
I spin away and grab a new plant from under the deck, then place it in a hole and tamp down some fresh dirt around the roots.
Blake reappears when I’ve moved on to my next bush, his heat a steady presence at my back. The plant in my hands smells green and fresh, and the late afternoon’s cooling off to something almost tolerable. We’re nearing my favorite time of day, the quiet minutes when the sun dips and the world slows just a little.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman spend so much time outside in the dirt.” Blake’s voice rumbles through me, dragging heat from my chest to my face.
I like that he called me a woman, that he sees me like that even though he’s older.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being dirty sometimes.” The words sound suggestive, and I drop my eyes and blush.
“I like that about you. That you’re not afraid to dig in.”
I snort and glance back up at him. “Nice pun there.”
Blake gives me a cheesy grin back, and it makes him look younger and lighter. I want to offer him something, so I say the first thing that comes to my mind. “Did you know that hydrangea flowers change color depending on the amount of aluminum in the soil?”
He rubs a hand over his stomach, and my heart bangs in its cage of bone. “Is that so?”
“Yep. If you want them to be blue, you want aluminum in the soil. And if you want them to be pink, they shouldn’t get any aluminum.”
“I assume you can add things to the soil to change the aluminum content?”
I nod.
“So what do you want these to be?”
I give him a small smile. “Whatever they want to be. I’m going to let them do their thing.” I turn back to my plant. “Sorry, I’m totally nerding out on you right now.”
“Don’t be. Maybe we’re both like the hydrangeas.”
“Oh?”
He gives me a serious nod. “There’s still time to figure out which way we’re going to turn out.”
“Beautiful either way,” I whisper because I want it to be true.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I hope you’re right.”
6
Blake
June
McKenna’s sitting at the kitchen table when I come downstairs the next morning, her knees wedged against the edge of the table and her phone clutched in her hands. She frowns at the screen, her forehead wrinkled and her eyes worried.
“Hey,” I say quietly.
She glances up and sets her phone facedown on the table, but she doesn’t run away from me.
Progress.
“Morning,” she says, pulling on a smile that’s strained at the edges. For the first time, I don’t think it’s my fault.
Something changed out in the garden last night, and it’s like McKenna cracked open a door for me. She’s the only person I know around here, but that’s not why I want to learn more about her. It’s because there’s something interesting about her, something I didn’t expect. When my dad asked me to watch out for her, he made her out to be sort of fragile, but the girl in the garden has this funny, fierce edge to her. Definitely the kind of woman who can hold her own.
I walk to the fridge and pull out a carton of eggs. “You eat yet?”
McKenna shakes her head, and a few strands of blond hair loosen from her bun and fall down to frame her face. I try not to notice how inviting she looks this way—all gorgeous and soft and undone.
“I’m making a scramble.” I reach for some ingredients and turn to her. “Ham and cheese okay?”
She bites her lips but says, “Actually, yeah,” and I turn back into the fridge to hide my smile. She’s going to let me feed her, and cooking’s one of the things I can do really, really well.
It’s not the only thing I can do really well…
I picture that bead of water or sweat on her chest, and my cock stirs.
Dammit.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts, which were ten seconds away from indecent, and busy myself beating eggs and slicing ham.
The ingredients hit the pan with a sizzle, and McKenna lays out plates and silverware while I cook. She even moves a vase of flowers from the living room onto the kitchen table to fancy it up. Then she plops back in her chair, wedges her knees up, and continues to ignore her phone.
The scramble reaches the perfect texture—cheese oozing and ham fragrant—and I plate the food and carry it to the table.
“Behold the magic of the scramble,” I tell McKenna, taking the seat across from her.
She drops her knees and reaches for her fork. “Magic, huh? I’ll be the judge of that.” She takes a bite of her eggs, then waves a hand at her mouth, eyes wide and watering. “Hot!” she cries.
I gesture at the steaming plate. “No shit.”
She rolls her eyes at me, then swallows and moans. “Okay, that’s really freaking delicious.”
“Thank you.” I take a tiny bite of my eggs, making a point to wave them around to cool down, and then grin at her. “The scramble is far superior to the omelet, in my humble opinion. You get an even distribution of your ingredients and shorter cooking times.”
She nods and shoves another forkful of food in her mouth. “Whatever you’re doing, sign me up.”
McKenna’s phone buzzes and her face gets stony again.
I glance at her discarded phone. “Everything okay?”
She sighs. “Just my dad, bugging me about school.”
“If it makes you feel better, parents usually have good intentions and bad execution.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes they’re just selfish.”
She sounds so defeated, and I’ve got the sudden urge to make her happy. More carefree, like she was out in the garden last night when she finally stopped running away and just had fun with me.
“That’s it, get your bathing suit on,” I tell her.
Her pretty blue eyes light up. “What?”
“I heard you have a boat. I’m taking you out.”
“Right now?” she asks.
“I mean, yeah. As soon as you eat.” I don’t let myself think about how t
his goes way beyond the call of duty my dad signed me up for. I just let McKenna’s smile be my reward.
“Guess I better eat fast.”
* * *
McKenna climbs into the passenger seat of the Jeep with an armful of towels clutched to her chest. She doesn’t say anything about how I only just got my license back after having it suspended (thanks, DUI). I don’t know if she doesn’t know about it or if she’s just being polite, but she buckles her seatbelt and pats the armrest with a pleased smile.
“I like your car.”
“Thank you.” Everyone else thinks it’s stupid that I spent my money on it, but I’m glad I have it. I’m living in a borrowed house for a borrowed summer. The Jeep is one of the few things that’s mine.
McKenna points me in the direction of the marina, and I turn left out of our neighborhood, even though if I turned right and went past the tavern, I’d hit a traffic light to make the drive easier. I’d rather not run the risk of looking at the building and feeling thirsty.
It’s another hot day, the sun beating down, and we wind through streets filled with flip-flop-and-bathing-suit-clad crowds. The air smells like salt, with the ocean and the bay breezes mingled together as we travel toward the boat.
“Wait!” McKenna calls out as we pass a Wawa. “Pull over so we can grab lunch.”
I smirk at her from the driver’s seat. “Glad you’ve finally found your appetite.”
McKenna shakes her head and blushes, and I nose the car into the parking lot in front of the convenience store. The fishing rods in the back seat clank together as I bring the car to a stop. McKenna leads me inside the Wawa, where we order hoagies and grab sodas and grapes and a few bags of chips. We stop again at the bait shop to buy a bucket full of minnows, then finally hit the marina on the bay side of the island.
We carry our gear to a sixteen-foot motorboat, and the wooden dock bobs under our feet, throwing me off balance.
The boat’s a sleek, white number that’s compact but looks fast, the name Miss Guided hand painted on the side.
“My grandfather bought this boat back when I was just a kid,” McKenna says wistfully, untying the boat from the dock. “I haven’t been on it since he died.”
I clear my throat and feel suddenly awkward at the reminder of our weird, mixed family. A family I’d like to pretend I’m not part of, at least when it means McKenna’s part of it too. Because the way I’ve been thinking about my stepsister isn’t, well, brotherly. “I’m sorry I never got to meet him,” I offer. “You sure it’s okay to be here today?”
“Yeah.” She pulls a buoy up from the water, bringing a sharp, briny smell with it, and drops it onto the floor of the boat. “I’d rather I keep having good memories on it, you know?”
“I guess that means we need to have fun today.”
“Guess so.”
The motorboat has two seats near the steering wheel, and I take the passenger seat while McKenna steers the boat out of the tight quarters of the marina. Her skill maneuvering between the rows of boats impresses me, and I glance over at her profile as we glide through the no-wake zone outside the marina.
“You seem like you’ve been driving a while.”
She shrugs. “Since I could drive a car. Have you ever driven a boat?”
I shake my head. “Is that lame of me?”
“No.” She flashes me a smile. “Just something we need to fix. We can head out to the ocean, and when I’m sure there’s nothing around for you to hit, you can have a try.”
I groan at her jab, and her grin widens. “I promise I’ll make sure you’re safe,” she says. “But first, hold on to your seat.”
“What?”
McKenna points at the buoy indicating the end of the no-wake zone, and I barely have time to grab my chair before she rips the boat forward, the engine growling as she gives it gas. The sudden acceleration takes my breath away, and McKenna shrieks in delight as we zip toward the end of the island, the boat skipping across the water and the wind rushing in my ears.
Once I get a feel for the bounce of the boat and feel less like I’m going to spill off my chair at any second, I turn my eyes back to McKenna. It’s a pleasure to watch her drive, her hands on the wheel steady and confident. Another surprise. It doesn’t hurt that her jean shorts are cut high on the thigh, that the wind has plastered her thin T-shirt to the curves of her body.
On second thought, maybe a day alone on a boat isn’t such a good idea.
Too late now.
We turn around the southernmost tip of the island, passing through a choppy patch of waves where the bay meets the ocean.
“You going to be able to find your way back?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at the land dropping away in the distance.
“The boat’s name is Miss Guided. She’ll get us where we need to go.”
“If you say so.”
McKenna smirks at me. “Also, there’s a GPS.” After a minute driving away from land, she cuts the engine. “Here good for fishing?”
“As good a place as any.”
She nods and then walks across the boat to lift an anchor and drop it over the side. The anchor hits the water with a splash, and the faint smell of boat fuel drifts across my nose, mixed with the tang of the ocean. The water is wide and pure around us, the sky so heartbreakingly blue. The same color as her eyes.
“I’ll let you get your sea legs before we do too much driving practice,” she says. “I assume you know what to do with the fishing rods?”
“What?” I ask as I realize she doesn’t plan to participate. “After all that, you’re not going to fish with me?”
“I’m going to lie out for a bit.”
“Seriously?”
She waves a hand at me. “I spend eight hours a day on my feet. Let me be lazy for once.”
She reaches for the button of her shorts and I have to look away because—Jesus Christ—she’s stripping down to her tiny pink bikini. I pretend to stay busy with a fishing pole, baiting it with a minnow while her shirt comes off and pools in a soft pile at her feet.
McKenna reaches for one of the towels and climbs up onto the bow of the boat, her ass in the air like the curve of a peach. My throat goes dry. She looks so fucking good. And young. And unspoiled.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m supposed to be protecting her, not lusting after her.
McKenna lays out her towel and calls over her shoulder to me, “Let me know if something bites.”
For a long time, nothing does.
We drift in a small circle, the anchor tethering us to a small diameter, and I force myself to stare out at the horizon, the line blurring as the waves rock us up and down. It’s hypnotizing and timeless, and I’m drowsy when the rod jerks in my hand.
Holy shit. I bolt upright. I reel in the line and feel a tug of resistance at the far end.
I’ve got something.
“McKenna,” I call, not wanting to let go. “McKenna!”
“What?” she mumbles, her voice hoarse with sleep.
“I’ve got a fish.”
She lifts her head from the towel, and her voice brightens. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. Get over here and help me.”
She climbs back over the bow of the boat, her eyes wide, and thank god there’s a fish in my hands to distract me, or I’d be looking at her body enough to get caught.
I reel in the fish and try to keep it on the line while it fights me.
“Oh my gosh, don’t let it get away,” McKenna says, breathless. I look over, and her face is pure and happy.
“Want to try?”
She licks her lips and nods. “Hell yes.”
“Come here.”
She hesitates for a second before stepping between my arms, pressing her back to my chest. She brings her soft hands over mine on the rod, and a jolt of electricity races up my spine.
“It’s strong,” I say, and I don’t know if I mean the fish or our connection. “You need to reel it in, bu
t don’t let it break the line. Give it space to swim if it needs.”
Her hair brushes my face as she nods. She smells like shampoo and sunscreen, something intoxicating. I’m so very aware that if I bent my head just an inch, I could press my lips to the delicate spot on her neck just under her ear.
It takes almost everything in me not to act on that thought.
The boat dips in a sudden wave, and a spray of water hits us cold in the face, but we don’t let go of the line or of each other.
“Shit,” she giggles, and then she’s gasping and wet and wriggling in my arms, and my cock doesn’t care that I’m not allowed to have her. It starts to react, and I drop her hands and step back.
Fuck.
“It’s all you,” I say, trying to use chivalry as an excuse for my retreat when really I’m just a teenager again, unable to control myself.
I lean against the far side of the boat, breathing heavy, to watch McKenna work. Muscles stand out on her arms as she reels in the fish, and her face is so damn delighted.
“I can see it!” she shrieks. “Grab the net!”
I lift the net and dash to her side. Sure enough, a flash of brown scales peeks through the froth on the water. I lean over the boat and skim the net down, bringing it below the fish as McKenna reels it to the surface of the water.
“Gotcha.”
The net drips into the boat as I inspect the wiggling fish. “What the hell is wrong with it?”
“What?” Her eyebrows draw together, and she leans closer to look at the fish. “Nothing’s wrong with it. Other than it being caught.”
“Why’s it flat? And why the hell does it have two eyes on one side of its face?”
McKenna giggles at me. “You’ve never seen a flounder before?”
I shake my head. “You mean a mutant fish.”
She groans. “That’s what it’s supposed to look like.”
“Well, can we eat it?”
“Technically, yes.” Her lips pull into a frown. “But can we throw it back?”
“You don’t want dinner?”
McKenna shakes her head, her forehead wrinkled in concern. “I just wanted to know I could do it. To enjoy to game.”
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