My cheeks heated. Damn him. Of course he had to bring up the one time he caught me skinny dipping in the lake. I’d been twelve and mortified for months. “I’m older now. Things have changed quite a bit since then.” Like an idiot, I gestured to my boobs.
“I wouldn’t—” he started to say, and then stopped. Something passed over his face I couldn’t name, and he swam toward me.
My heart thudded in my chest as I wondered if the rest of his sentence would have been the words mind seeing them. I hoped he would continue with his train of thought once he surfaced. I needed to hear the end of his sentence. Desperately.
My cell chimed with a new text, and I glanced at the screen. It was Sadie.
Did you make it there okay?
I typed a reply, not wanting to take my eyes off Dawson as he hoisted himself up onto the dock beside me.
I did. ~ Charlotte
I watched as water dripped off him, pooling where his hands pressed into the wood of the dock. It trickled down his sculpted chest and rolled off the tip of his nose. He sat beside me, and wrung out the legs of his trunks. My cell chimed with another text from Sadie.
Any good first impressions you should be thanking me for? You looked hot in that outfit.
My lips quirked into a smile as I read her text.
One. Thanks. ~ Charlotte
“The lake is all yours,” Dawson said. He barely looked at me when he spoke.
Something was off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Thanks, but I didn’t come here to swim, the water is too cold.” I moved my toes around in the chilly water and leaned back against my palms again. “I came here for the view.” The second I said the words, I wished I could take them back. The way they came out made it seem as though I was implying the view of him swimming was what I had come to see, not the beautiful lake. My cheeks and neck grew hot. Surely he knew what I meant.
Dawson arched a brow at me and grinned. “You still blush like crazy when you’re embarrassed.”
I pressed my hand to my fiery cheeks. “Yeah, I know. I still joke that I blush when I breathe. I hate it.”
“Don’t. It’s cute.”
The heat I’d felt spreading across my face made its way to my toes. I opened my mouth to say something, but another text came through from Sadie.
Was he at least hot?
I glanced at Dawson. Hell yes, he was.
Oh yes. ~ Charlotte
“Someone must miss you already,” he insisted as he stood. There was a weird tone embedded in his words. Did he think I had a boyfriend I’d left behind? Did he even know why I was here?
“It’s my roommate, Sadie,” I said, hoping to clear up any misconception about my relationship status. “I’m only here for Emma’s engagement party.”
“I figured as much.” I expected there to be a smile on his face when he said the words, but there was nothing. He only nodded as though we were talking about the weather. Maybe he wasn’t interested in me. God, did he still think of me as some little kid?
He was the same age as Emma, barely three years older than me. I now understood the age thing when we were still in school, but now age was only a number. It didn’t matter. I was twenty-two and he was twenty-five. It was the perfect age difference if you asked me.
I watched as he smoothed his wet hair away from his eyes. “I should get going. It was nice seeing you again. I’m sure I’ll run in to you later.” A hint of a smile graced his lips, but not the one I wanted. Where was the sexy one that always used to make my knees weak? The genuine one from earlier at the gas station? This one was standoffish and awkward, leaving me questioning what had changed the mood between us.
“Yeah, sure. Bye.”
Dawson walked away, his feet leaving wet marks across the weathered wood of the dock. I pursed my lips together, thinking of how that could have went a heck of a lot better.
Another text came through.
Has fate finally caught up with you, Miss Charlotte Rose Montgomery?
I twisted my lips together, and glanced at Dawson’s retreating form. I hoped so, but I couldn’t be sure.
THE NEXT MORNING I woke to the shrill sound of a smoke alarm going off somewhere in the house. I practically jack-knifed out of bed and darted out my bedroom door. The horrible scent of something burning wafted to my nose, tickling the back of my throat as soon as I started down the hall. The bathroom door swung open and Emma ran out, slamming into me. We butted heads. Both of us stumbled backward from the impact.
“Damn it!” Her hand went to her nose, which was what my forehead had collided with. “What the hell is going on?”
“You tell me. I was sleeping,” I shouted, rubbing where she hit with the palm of my hand.
“Mom!” Emma pushed past me, heading toward the kitchen.
I followed after her, not knowing what the problem was. Mom was in the kitchen. So what? When I rounded the corner, I realized how big of an issue that was. Smoke billowed out of the toaster, and something in a pan on the stove seemed to be burning. Mom stood in front of the stove with her hands cupped against her ears, her eyes squeezed shut, looking like a small child. It took me a moment to realize she was crying.
Emma turned off the stove and reached to unplug the ancient toaster. “Open the door! Let some of the smoke out so that thing will shut up!” She was talking to me, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from our mom in her fragile state. “Charlotte! Open the freaking door!”
I snapped out of it at the sound of her voice, and rushed across the kitchen. When I opened the door, cool air blasted me awake.
Mom had nearly burned down the house! Holy hell.
I moved the door back and forth like a fan, hoping it would help get the smoke out faster so the alarm would go off. Glancing back, I noticed Emma standing next to Mom. She was soothing her by rubbing her hands over Mom’s arms. The sight scared me more than I cared to admit.
Abruptly, the alarm stopped its incisive beeping, and it was almost as though the entire scene in front of me froze. Emma stopped her soothing motions, and Mom dropped her hands from her ears. None of us spoke. Emma’s sigh of relief was the only noise heard through the kitchen.
“Thank God,” she muttered under her breath.
I stopped fanning the door, and stared at my sister as she left our mother’s side to clean up her mess. With her hair still wrapped on her head in a towel, Emma picked up the pan on the stove and the spatula beside it. She scraped the charred bits of whatever our mother had been attempting to cook into the trash can.
“What were you doing, Mom?” Emma asked her in an exasperated voice. “I told you, I don’t want you cooking anymore.”
“I wanted to make breakfast for my girls,” Mom answered in a small voice. I watched her as she walked out of the kitchen and cut down the hall with her head in her hands.
A few seconds passed. When I finally walked away from the door, leaving it open, I moved to the toaster. “Has she done this before?”
“Yes.” The harshness in her tone surprised me.
I clamped my lips together. If I didn’t, I would mention moving her to a home again. I reached for a butter knife and attempted to get the burnt fragment of toast out, but it wasn’t working. It crumbled each time I stabbed at it and dissolved into dust when I gripped its edges. Giving up, I flipped it over to dump its contents into the trash can. The sight of it turning to dust before it made its way to the trash had me laughing.