by Ramsay, Hope
He drank in the scene with all his senses. Not just the light, but the babbling of the river and the buzzing of the dragonflies; the soft swish of Molly’s reel as she cast and the little click as she reeled in; the warm, humid wind that kissed his face; the scent of copper on the air.
“So,” Molly said into the long silence, “you’ve been working like a fiend.”
“And you haven’t caught anything.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She leaned her fishing rod against a tree and strolled back to the little clearing along the riverbank where they’d set up a couple of lawn chairs.
She collapsed into one. “Oooph, it’s hot in the sun.” She opened a small cooler and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “You want one?”
He shook his head.
She peeked at his sketch. “Oh, my God. Please tell me my butt is not that big.”
It amused him to think that Molly, who seemed not to care at all about how she dressed, was still woman enough to worry about the size of her butt. “It’s not big. It’s perfect.” His heart stalled the moment the words left his mouth.
“Perfect? Get real. I swear, Simon, if you paint a picture of me from the rear I will never forgive you.”
“I’m sure it’s just your baggy pants,” he muttered, putting his pencils away.
“You think my pants are baggy?”
He ground his teeth together, his mood suddenly sinking. There was no way to make her happy. He’d watched his father have the same ridiculous conversations with Mother. And over the years, he’d had his own impossible conversations with the women in his life. They never liked the way he told the truth.
He turned the conversation. “I’m getting hungry. You said something about the Pig Place and a beer?” He had become a master at the pivot.
“You’re changing the subject, aren’t you?”
“Yup,” he said, as he started putting his sketchbook and pencils into his field backpack.
“Okay, you’re right. My pants are kind of baggy,” she said in a little voice. “But that makes them really comfortable.”
“It’s okay, Molly. I didn’t mean to—”
“But in any case, I don’t want anyone recording me or my butt for posterity, or posterior as the case might be. It kind of creeps me out.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she gave him a woeful look that he might have mistaken for a female pout. But on Molly, that sad-adorable look touched something deep inside him. “Why does it creep you out?”
“Because I’m not pretty. I don’t have a great body. And I’m not particularly photogenic. Or in this case, sketch-o-genic. The idea of people looking at some image of me and making fun is just creepy.”
This admission stunned him. “But you’re beautiful. One day I’d love to paint you without—” He stopped speaking. This was the kind of talk Coach would frown upon. He’d been thinking with his heart again.
She gave him her squinty-eyed look. “You’d like to paint me without … what?” She stared at him for a long moment as the truth settled in. “Without my clothes? Oh, my God. You want to paint me naked?” She got up and stalked away toward her fishing gear. She was visibly upset.
And he wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. If he told her he was only joking, it would underscore her own self-doubts. If he told her the truth, he’d be breaking his word to Coach. But someone needed to tell Molly that she was stunning.
So he prayed that Coach would forgive him for telling Molly the God’s honest truth. “You’d be lovely. Backside and all,” he said.
“Did you paint that other chick, Jill or whatever her name is?”
Her question zinged through him. “No. I never wanted to paint her.”
“So that’s the reason you painted her out of the photograph?”
“Molly, we’re not talking about Gillian right now.”
“Why not? You keep looking at her photo. You say you’re not heartbroken but you really are, aren’t you?”
“Christ,” he swore. “Will you please stop it? I’m not heartbroken. I’m trying to recapture the spark of something I felt the day I took that photo.”
“Something you felt for her?”
“I don’t know …” He hesitated for a moment. “No, not for Gillian. It’s something else entirely. When you stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon, something moves inside you. Like awe. Like lightning. I took dozens and dozens of photos that day. I look at them now to try to capture that feeling I had. If I can find that feeling, I’m sure I can finish the Harrison commission. But I can’t find it in the photos. It’s disappeared. And that has me running scared. I’ve been worried that I might never find that spark again. The thing is, though, I felt that spark right here. Just now.”
“You’re teasing me, and that isn’t nice. Let’s go get a beer and pretend we never had this conversation.”
No, he wasn’t going to do that. Molly needed to know the truth, no matter what limits her daddy had set.
“I’m not going to pretend anything,” he said. “I stopped pretending eighteen years ago, when I told my parents that I didn’t want to be a doctor. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. So if I tell you that I think you’re beautiful, I’m not teasing you or handing you some line. I’m telling you the truth as I see it. And that spark I felt, just now, happened as I watched you fishing. So it’s about you as much as it’s about this place.”
She kept right on packing her things. His words bounced off that armor she’d pulled around herself. He knew that armor well. He had his own shell.
But damn it, he wanted to crack her open. He wanted to see what was really inside. And she needed to respect the fact that he was telling her the truth. He didn’t give one damn what Coach might say about it.
And then it hit him—one of those deep memories he’d been reluctant to face—he and Luke Raintree shucking their clothes and diving into the Edisto River. They were thirteen, maybe. And it was before Luke had lost his life. Before Simon had donned his armor.
He could almost feel Luke’s ghost behind him, reminding him of how easy it had once been as a boy to just be himself. How happy he’d once been in this place, before life had taken its toll. Before he’d learned to hide himself from the hurt.
Maybe there was a lesson here for Molly. Maybe if he forced her out of that defensive shell she’d built around herself, she’d learn that she was beautiful, and utterly unique.
He started unbuttoning his shirt, and by the time Molly turned, he’d almost divested himself of his jeans. The look on her face was priceless. For a moment, she must have thought he was some old pervert. But he didn’t let her startled expression stop him.
“Last one in the river is a rotten egg,” he shouted as he finally lost his boxers. And then he took a flying leap into the freezing-cold water of the Edisto River.
Jeez Louise! Simon was an amazingly good-looking man with his clothes on. Without them, he was … Well, she didn’t have any words, because all the words left her mind as she watched him jump into the water.
He wasn’t built like a muscle-bound linebacker. Oh, no, he had a body like a kicker, with broad shoulders, a flat belly, and strong legs. The years had been kind to him. Or maybe he worked out on a regular basis.
She’d been skinny dipping a time or two. She knew how this worked. Only a wus would stand up here fully clothed. But she didn’t want to bare it all in front of Simon. For some reason, allowing him to see her naked was scary as hell.
He surfaced and shook his head to clear his eyes of water. He grinned up at her as he treaded water. His teeth were beautifully white, sort of like the wolf at the little piggie’s front door.
“Are you scared?” he asked.
Damn him. He was really perceptive for a guy. “Taking off your clothes was completely unfair.”
“Was it? I was mighty hot. And the water is cold.”
“Mighty? Man, you’re getting your southern back, aren’t you?”
“My southern?”
“Yeah. And I hate to tell you but
it’s attractive on you.”
“Really?” He laughed. It was the first time she’d ever heard him laugh. He started swimming upstream. He was a strong swimmer. He made excellent progress against the current.
She stood there envying him. Guys never had any problems dropping their drawers. Her brothers were completely shameless in that department.
“Hey,” she yelled.
He stopped swimming and let the current carry him back to the pier where she was standing. “What?”
“I need to make something clear, okay?” she said.
“Okay.”
“I don’t do relationships.”
“Oh. Well, neither do I.”
“What about Gillian?”
“Molly, I don’t want to talk about Gillian.”
“But I do.”
“All right, Gillian was a big mistake. She broke the rules.”
Molly didn’t know whether she liked this response. She tended to hate rules on general principle. Especially the rules that said a woman’s place was in a yarn shop and not a garage. “What rules? And who made them?” she asked.
“My rules.”
“Oh. And what are your rules?”
“I don’t do relationships, commitment, marriage, children. Gillian knew that going in. And then she changed her mind. I didn’t.”
“Oh.” Molly found Simon’s attitude and honesty remarkably refreshing. “I think I like your rules.”
“You do? That would make you the first female I ever met who had that reaction. But it’s neither here nor there, because I’m way too old for you. You do know that, don’t you?”
She thought about that for a while. “No, I don’t know that. I think you’re hung up on age. What difference does it make? Especially if you don’t do long-term relationships.”
His reaction was priceless. She had definitely scored a point with that one. Although she wasn’t sure she wanted to score any points on him. This wasn’t a football game. In truth, she was hopelessly attracted to him, which was why she hadn’t yet shucked her clothes.
He recovered his cool and gave her another one of those sexy smiles. “So are you going to get naked or stand there on the sidelines afraid to jump in? The only issue at hand is skinny-dipping. Not Gillian or my age. And also I really want to see what kind of underwear you have on. I have a theory that you’re wearing La Perla.”
Heat crawled up Molly’s face. She was so busted. She might as well confess. “Okay. The underwear was mine. Why are we doing this exactly?”
“Because you wanted to play hooky. And, I’m sorry, whenever I came down here as a boy it usually ended up with everyone losing their clothes and jumping in.”
“So you’re just trying to get me naked.”
“You’re giving this entirely too much thought. You’re a chicken. It’s clear.”
Oh, boy, that was a dare, pure and simple.
“You’re scared to bare it all, aren’t you?” he asked, punctuating the point.
She shook her head. “It’s just complicated.”
“How?”
“I’m Coach’s daughter.”
“Ah. Yes you are. So I’m going to have to be very careful with you. I admire your father. But I still want to see you naked.” His words were seductive. Most guys just ran for the hills the minute Coach’s name came up.
“Honestly,” she said, “he has a rule that I’m not allowed to date any football players. I hesitate to think what Coach might do if he found out I got naked with one, even if it was just to go skinny-dipping.”
He snorted another laugh. “And do you always do what Coach tells you to do?”
“Are you nuts? You have seen him when he’s angry. Have you ever defied him? Ever?”
He gave her the strangest look. “Yes, I have. And there’s something else I remember about your father. He always used to say that the best way to live your life was to dive right into it without fear.”
Damn. Simon had it all figured out, didn’t he? And that line about diving in just happened to be something that Momma said all the time. Coach had merely borrowed it. Momma had certainly lived by that credo. She’d gotten tired of waiting on Coach, and she’d just gone off and dived in and left everyone else on the shore.
Well, if Momma could do it, then Molly could do it, too. Because, right now, Simon Wolfe looked like an adventure worth having. She’d be a fool to stand here like a ’fraidy cat.
So she pulled off her T-shirt. Simon’s dark eyes seemed to light up the moment he caught sight of her lacy La Perla bra. “Nice,” he said drawing out the syllable until it sounded like the hiss of a snake.
Her nipples tightened. “If you tell anyone about my underwear, I swear I’ll murder you.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
She undid her pants. This time he didn’t say a word. But there was a hungry look in his eyes that made her skin go warm.
He watched her strip in silence—a silence that got deeper and tenser with each item of clothing she lost. A silence that was so wide and so deep and so hot that Molly thought she might just combust before she got all the way naked.
Thank God the Edisto River was freezing cold.
Molly broke the surface, her curls slicked back, making the angles of her face sharper. The brown river water turned her eye color to raw umber, and drops clung to her eyelashes. Her skin was like alabaster, with a dusting of delicious freckles across her nose and shoulders. Simon wanted to swim over there and kiss her.
But he couldn’t do that. Skinny-dipping was as far as this was going. So he kept his distance, treading water just enough to keep himself stationary against the pull of the current.
“Oh, my God, you didn’t tell me the water was freezing,” she said with a big eye roll. She was so young.
His cheeks hurt from the big smile on his face. “You’re a local girl. You know how cold the Edisto is.”
“Yeah, I guess. But it’s been a while since I went swimming in it.”
“Me too.”
They bobbed there, each of them fighting the current.
“Too bad we’re not swimming at the country club. We could drift down to the float,” he said.
“So did you ever make out with anyone on the float?” she asked.
“Naked?”
She giggled. Her lips were turning blue. The water was really cold. “It would be hard to swim naked at the country club, especially in the light of day.”
“I kissed Annie Roberts when we were both fourteen and wearing bathing suits at the time,” he said. “It was during the Watermelon Festival. She didn’t like my braces. And besides, even then she was more interested in Nick Clausen.”
“She’s Annie Jasper now. And Nick died.”
“I heard about Nick.” A little fissure opened in his heart. As much as he tried to square this place with where he’d grown up, the images didn’t fit or overlap.
He pushed those thoughts away. “And you? Did you make out on the float?”
She shook her head and then dived under the water. She surfaced a few yards upstream and started swimming. He followed her. They swam for a few minutes, until Simon’s muscles started to burn.
“So what now?” she asked as she let the current pull her back down toward the public pier.
“Now we go put on our clothes and get some dinner at the Pig Place.” As much as he wanted to suggest something else, he still planned to keep his promise to her father. He was glad he’d gotten her to drop her defenses, get naked, and go swimming. But he had no intention of “messing” with her as Coach had so inelegantly put it.
“You get out first,” she said.
He chuckled. “No, I don’t think so.”
She turned and splashed water in his face.
He retaliated.
The splash fight soon escalated into a full-out dunking war in which he discovered that Molly was one part mermaid. She eluded him, swimming upstream, mostly submerged, her long hair trailing out behind her as she swam. She
was sneaky and fast and could stay under for a remarkably long time.
But he had more stamina than she did. And fighting the current required lots of that. He caught her at last, but the moment his fingers encircled her arm, his desire to dunk her evaporated, replaced by a yearning that was almost adolescent in its intensity.
She stopped fighting him and snaked her hands around his neck. The slide of her skin warmed him. Her lips were cold, her mouth was hot. And even in the freezing water, desire pumped through him the minute he got his first taste of Molly Canaday. She kissed him back with complete abandon, as if the Edisto had washed away the mask she wore most of the time, as it surely had washed away the promise he’d made to her father.
Heaven only knew how far he might have gone if Zeph Gibbs hadn’t rescued him from his own stupidity.
CHAPTER
15
Zeph stood on the beaten earth by the public boat launch watching the young’uns in the water. Painful memories whirled and tumbled through him. He wanted to hide deep in the woods where the ghost couldn’t find him and punish him for remembering.
The ghost was edgy, and now Zeph knew why. The ghost was jealous of the living. And he would be particularly jealous of Simon. Simon could still go swimming. Simon got to kiss a girl.
“Is that you, Simon?” Zeph called. He knew it was Simon out there with Coach’s daughter. He knew he shouldn’t be here invading their privacy.
But he had to stop what was happening, before the ghost did something bad. The ghost had learned how to haunt real good in the last few years, like a poltergeist from right out of one of those books Gabe Raintree wrote. And Zeph sure didn’t want that ghost to get a notion to haunt Simon. That boy had been through enough. He didn’t need the ghost making things even harder.
The young’uns broke apart. The ghost settled some.
“Zeph?” Simon’s voice.
“It’s me. It’s your old Zeph. I hate to interrupt but can I have a word with you?”
Simon said something to the girl and took a couple of strong strokes toward the shore. He emerged, the water streaming down his sides. He was all growed up now. Not even really a young’un anymore. Which made Zeph feel ancient.
