by Cate Cameron
“Yeah,” Josh said slowly. “I think I noticed that.”
Theo shook his head in amusement and mock disgust, and they stood silently for a moment before Theo headed back in to his band and Josh started for home.
He was climbing behind the wheel of his pickup as a black sedan pulled up to the bar door. It looked completely out of place in the surroundings, but he knew why it was there. He’d spent enough time in the backseat of the damn thing. Sure enough, Jasmine came staggering out of the bar, her arm looped through Ashley’s. They were both dressed for city clubbing, totally over-the-top for a Vermont bar, but Josh hadn’t noticed that inside. He’d just seen Ashley, a pretty girl with a sweet smile.
Now, as Jasmine’s shrieking laughter stabbed his eardrums even from across the lot, he could see how ridiculous it all was. Ashley was part of another world. A glamorous land where housekeepers washed her underwear, drivers took her home from bars, and handymen spread mulch on her friends’ pathways. He’d visited that world, but he’d never belonged. And he didn’t want to be a visitor anymore.
He had enough to worry about. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and he didn’t have the energy for getting involved with something he knew was going to end badly. So he watched the car pull away and he drove home by himself.
* * *
JOSH usually got caught up on his paperwork on Sundays and then took the rest of the day off, but he wanted Jasmine McArthur off his back. And, maybe, just maybe, he wanted one more look at Ashley Carlsen. He knew it was stupid, but once she’d dropped the whole seduction routine, he’d really liked her.
Yet in his typical contrary manner, he carefully arranged to visit the McArthur place at the time he was least likely to run into anybody. Especially anybody who’d been out late the night before, drinking and carousing.
The sun was barely over the horizon as he parked off to the side of the driveway, well away from the expensive cars of the people who belonged there, and hoisted his toolbox and the replacement boards out of the truck bed. The McArthur cottage was, like many others on Lake Sullivan, on top of a low cliff overlooking the lake; he found his way to the long wooden staircase that connected the house to the waterside and made his way down.
That was when he saw her. She stood on the end of the McArthurs’ dock, still and graceful as a heron, silhouetted against the rising sun. She was wearing a simple one-piece bathing suit, watching a family of loons swim past.
Josh felt like a peeping tom, invading Ashley’s moment of peace and solitude. Just as he was about to turn away and find somewhere else to start his day’s work, she raised her arms and gracefully dove into the water, like a mermaid returning home after too much time among the humans.
She stayed under a long time, long enough that he started worrying about submerged rocks her head might have connected with. His feet were on the gangplank when she reappeared thirty feet away from the end of the dock. She’d turned around underwater, so she was looking back toward the shore, and he still had the sense that she was returning to her own world. He could see it in his mind, the way she’d dive again and disappear with a quick flash of her tail fin.
But she didn’t. She just raised an arm to wave at him, then ducked back underwater. By the time he got to the end of the dock he could see her skimming along just under the surface of the water, a long, pale line against the dark green of the lake.
She smiled as she lifted her face out of the water and looked up at him. “You’re here early. Is there a mulch emergency?”
“Just trying to get the dock fixed before it’s covered with people.”
“Should I stay in the water, out of your way?”
“No, it’s fine. One person won’t be a problem.”
She didn’t climb out right away, though. She floated on her back, her eyes closed, as he tried not to look in her direction. He was there for a job.
He had the old boards unscrewed and stacked by the time she climbed up the ladder and wrapped a towel around herself.
“You’re up early, too,” he said. If he’d thought about it he’d have kept his mouth shut, but he’d been distracted by trying not to watch the towel as it edged down over her breasts. “Especially since you were drinking yesterday.”
“Swimming’s the best hangover cure I know,” she said with a smile. “Nice cool water, and I swear the pressure of it against my skull helps squish my brains back where they’re supposed to be.”
“That seems medically unlikely.”
She shrugged. “I don’t ask questions, I just feel grateful that it works.” She settled onto the diving board and leaned back, her eyes closed again, her face turned toward the sun.
He worked quietly for a couple minutes, then glanced over to find her watching him. “You know what you’re doing, huh?”
He frowned. “It’s not too tricky. Take out the old boards, put in the new ones. They’re already cut to the right length, even.”
“I wouldn’t know how to do it.”
“You already do.” He held his cordless drill out toward her. “I’m using this as a screwdriver. I just place the board, slap in a couple screws, and it’s done. You want to try?”
She didn’t answer right away, then said, “Yeah, I kinda do. Is that okay?”
“Sure, if you want. There’s not much to mess up.”
She practically skipped across the dock, and stood so close to him he could smell the clean lake water in her hair.
“This trigger controls the drill. Push it gently for slow, or speed it up by pushing the trigger all the way in.”
She took the drill, played with the trigger a little, and then they crouched down and he held a board in place while she drove in a few screws. “That easy?” she asked, a pleased grin on her face.
“That easy.”
“Can I do one all by myself?”
“Be my guest.”
So he took her place on the diving board and she found a board and fit it into place. She didn’t look totally natural. She dropped one screw and it fell between two slats, landing in the lake below with a soft splash, and she looked up at him with an almost comic expression of guilt.
“It’s not a big deal,” he reassured her. “They don’t cost much, and one wood screw won’t hurt the lake.”
She nodded and went back to work, and when the board was attached she turned to him with a triumphant grin. “Look! I did that!”
“Nice work. Looks secure.”
“Holy smokes.” She was still beaming. “I can’t believe how proud I am!”
“Neither can I,” he admitted with a laugh. “You want to keep going, or should I take over?”
She looked tempted, then shook her head and held the drill out to him. “You’d better take over. I want to go out on top, before I mess something up.”
They traded places again and Josh quickly finished the remaining boards. He was done. It was time to go. But for some reason he was reluctant to leave.
“Hey!” Ashley whispered excitedly. “Look! I saw those guys before. Are those loons?”
Josh looked out at the lake. He kept his voice low as he said, “Yeah. A nice little family, huh?”
“I saw them yesterday, too!”
“You come back next year, you’ll probably see the same ones. At least the parents. They fly south for the winter, but they come back to the same lake every year.”
“Yesterday it looked like . . .” Ashley frowned. “I was going to look it up on the Internet, but I got distracted. But it looked like the babies were riding on the mom’s back. Do they do that?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure why. . . . They do it more when the water’s cold, so maybe it’s to help them stay warm? But I guess it would be good protection against predators, too.”
“Predators? Who eats baby loons?”
“Turtles. Big fish. Hawks, probably.”
Ashley looked toward the lake as if she were worrying about an attack.
“I’ve been on this lake for thirty-one years and I’ve never actually seen it happen,” Josh said. He didn’t want to ruin the poor woman’s vacation with imagined loon carnage.
Ashley relaxed a little. “Did we count any of those on our list of Vermont hazards last night? We haven’t gotten to ‘T’ yet. Maybe that should be ‘turtles.’”
“Or ‘S’ for ‘snappers.’ There’s some nice little turtles up here who wouldn’t hurt anybody, not even a baby loon. It’s the snappers you want to watch out for.”
“I think ‘S’ should probably be reserved for ‘snakes.’ Anywhere snakes live, they should be the number one ‘S’-related hazard.”
“Fair enough,” Josh agreed. He didn’t mind snakes himself, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue.
They watched the loons in companionable silence for a few more minutes, and then the dock vibrated a little as someone stepped onto the gangplank. They both turned.
“Well, you’re up early!” Jasmine said with exaggerated cheer. She had a glass of orange juice in her hand, and Josh knew from past experience that it would have at least champagne but more likely vodka in it. Ashley might swim to control her hangovers, but Jasmine preferred a hair of the dog approach. Just one more thing Josh wished he had no reason to know.
Ashley and Josh had been speaking quietly enough that the loons had come quite close, but with Jasmine’s arrival they were heading away. Josh figured it was time for him to follow their example. “I got the boards replaced,” he said, nodding at the wood beneath their feet. “And I’ll be by on Wednesday, probably, for the mulch.”
“Wednesday.” Jasmine pronounced the word as if it had an unpleasant taste. “You’re here today. Why not today?”
“Church,” Josh said. He hadn’t been inside a church since the last wedding he’d attended. And Jasmine would know his Sunday routine as well as he knew her hangover cures. But he didn’t think she’d want to explain how she’d come by that knowledge, not with a witness. So he smiled blandly at her then nodded in Ashley’s direction. “Snakes and turtles,” he said. “But I think we missed a couple letters in the middle somewhere.”
“Next time,” she said.
He knew better, but he smiled anyway, then gathered the discarded boards and tucked them under one arm while he carried his toolbox with the other and headed off the dock. He tried not to react at all when Jasmine followed him.
When they reached the top of the stairs she said, “So you two are still being adorable, are you? With your little game?”
“We just can’t help it, I guess. We were born that way, you know?”
“Well, I hope Ashley doesn’t think that our game is still in play.”
“Whose game?”
“Ashley’s and mine.” Jasmine looked at him and her face transformed into the first genuine smile he’d seen from her in ages. “Oh, Josh! She didn’t tell you?”
Anything that made Jasmine that happy was going to make someone else sad, and Josh had a pretty good idea who the “someone else” would be in this situation. “So hopefully I can do the mulch on Wednesday. Might not be until Thursday, though.”
But Jasmine wasn’t so easily distracted. “I’m surprised she didn’t mention it to you, with all the giggling you two have been doing together.”
Josh was pretty sure he hadn’t been giggling, but he was at the truck now, tossing the wood into the back and not bothering to secure his toolbox as carefully as he usually did. He wasn’t going to engage with whatever Jasmine was up to, certainly not to debate whether he’d been laughing. Then he turned and saw Jasmine leaning against the driver’s door. She wasn’t going to let him leave until she said whatever it was. He braced himself and she smiled wickedly.
“I bet her she couldn’t fuck you.” Jasmine waited for a reaction, but Josh was pretty sure he managed not to give her one. Jasmine’s shrug was over-casual. “She’s having a bit of a tiff with her boyfriend at home, and I thought she could use a little distraction. For all your failings, Josh, you’ve always been a good distraction that way. So I thought you might be good for her, but she wasn’t interested. I mean . . .” She ran her eyes down Josh’s ragged clothes. “Not really her type, obviously. But with the bet? The girl’s a competitor, I’ll give her that. That’s what made her come over to you in the bar.”
It was just one more sleazy interaction with Jasmine. Just one more opportunity for her to poke at him, looking for holes in his armor. This wasn’t anything new. There was no reason for Josh’s stomach to be churning.
“I need to get going,” he said, but she didn’t move from her spot by his door. He could have picked her up and set her aside without any trouble, but she was a client and he was on her property. He supposed he could have gone around to the passenger side and worked his way across the cab, but it would have been awkward, especially with her laughing at him the whole time. So he just stood there and waited.
“She’s a movie star, Josh. Did you honestly think she’d be interested in you without a little outside encouragement?” Jasmine smiled sweetly.
And he managed to return the expression. “No, not really. I mean, you and me? Yeah, okay, that made basic sense. But someone like Ashley? Totally out of my league. We were just talking about loons, Jasmine. Nothing for you to be jealous about.”
He saw her eyes narrow and knew he’d gone too far. But he just couldn’t make himself care. She had more money than God and she had a lot of influence with the Lake Sullivan summer people. She wasn’t a good person to have as an enemy. But she was an even worse person to have as a friend.
“Excuse me,” he said, and she stepped aside, letting him climb into the truck. He watched her in the rearview mirror as he pulled away. She wasn’t moving, just standing there, staring after him. Planning her revenge, he was sure.
Damn it. He’d worked so hard to keep his cool around her, and he’d managed it for so long. And then he’d blown it with one stupid conversation.
He didn’t want to think about what had made him so angry. Didn’t want to think about Ashley and her stupid grin when she’d attached the board to the dock. So she’d been playing around. So she hadn’t really wanted him. Big deal. He’d known she was trouble, and he’d stayed away. He’d done the right thing. He was fine. Just fine.
He wondered how long it was going to take before he started believing the lines he was telling himself.
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