by Cate Cameron
Unfortunately, Charlotte didn’t seem interested in leaving Josh to his meal. “So, have you two worked together for long?” she asked. It was a question Kevin would have been happy to answer, but Charlotte was looking right at Josh.
“Off and on,” he said. “For a while.” Well, maybe that was a bit more curt than he should be to someone who’d just made him a really good sandwich. “About five years, I guess?” He looked at Kevin for confirmation.
“Almost six,” Kevin said. “But like he said, not full-time. When there’s work, I work. With Josh, or a couple other places. Busy in the summer, slow in the winter.” He shrugged. It was the reality of living in an area with a lot of seasonal visitors. When the cottages were full, business was booming. When the summer people went home, things slowed right down.
“So what do you do all winter when it’s slow?” Charlotte asked, her voice just slow and lazy enough for the invitation to be felt.
Kevin grinned at her. “We find ways to keep warm,” he promised.
Josh turned away, looking toward the lake and forcing himself to stay seated. He couldn’t leave without messing things up for Kevin, and that meant he had to sit there and listen to the two of them as they started flirting. He realized that Ashley was just as quiet as he was but he didn’t dare to look over and see what she was doing.
“How about in the summer?” Charlotte asked. “Do you give all that up in the warm months? Too busy to have any fun?”
“Oh, we still manage to find time for a little fun,” Kevin said.
“Like what? If someone was visiting from out of town and you decided to show them a good time, what would that look like?”
Josh hadn’t realized he was going to stand up until he was already on his feet. “I’m going to get measurements on those screens that need replacing,” he said to Kevin. “It’s a one-man job, so if you want to finish up your lunch, that’s fine. We should probably hold off on staining the railings until the place is empty, though—we can do it on a warm day in the fall.” He should get the job done and get the hell out of there. A couple hours that afternoon, a couple hours on Friday with the horses, and that was it. He’d have done his duty to his cousin, done his time with the movie stars.
But Kevin seemed to have different ideas. “I was hoping you’d help me out with this,” he said with a smile. “It kind of sounded like a challenge, didn’t it? Showing them a good time? Sounded like she’s not sure we can manage it.”
Josh was out of patience. “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he said. “If you want to take the afternoon off, go for it. But I’ve got some work to do.” He nodded as politely as he could while refusing to make eye contact with anyone at the table, then headed for the truck to get his clipboard and tape measure.
He didn’t realize he was being followed until he grabbed his tools, turned around, and almost ran into Ashley. “Sorry,” he said quickly.
“No, I’m sorry.” She looked miserable.
“Wait. For what?”
“For making you uncomfortable. For all the stupid stuff I’ve done. You know. For making it so you can’t even sit there and eat lunch with us.”
“I ate lunch,” he protested.
“Yeah,” she conceded. “I guess you did. But you sure didn’t enjoy yourself. And that’s because I’ve been an idiot, and I’m really sorry about that.”
Damn it, he did not want to have this conversation, especially not dead sober. “The world doesn’t revolve around you,” he said. He knew the words might sound harsh, but he hoped his tone made it clear that they weren’t meant that way.
And when she glanced up at him she seemed curious rather than insulted. “What do you mean?”
“There’s lots of reasons I don’t like hanging out with summer people,” he said. “You being an idiot is only one of them.” She looked so confused, and so sweet, that he found himself giving a little more away than he really wanted to. “And me reacting to the stuff you’ve done? It’s not just about you. Not you as a person. I just . . . I don’t get involved with summer people. That’s all.”
She stared at him. “What, like we’re not good enough for you?”
“It’s not a question of good or bad. Just not what I’m looking for.”
“Oh,” she said. It was pretty clear that she was acknowledging that she’d heard the words rather than that she’d understood them.
But it wasn’t Josh’s job to spell everything out for her. “So I’m going to get those measurements done,” he said, hoping she’d take the hint.
She nodded, then glanced back toward the cottage. The lunch table was on the other side of the building, facing the lake, so neither of them could see what Kevin and Charlotte were up to. “Your cousin doesn’t share your preferences,” she said carefully.
“No, I guess not.”
“I’m going to feel like a third wheel.”
This shouldn’t be his problem. It wasn’t his job to entertain one movie star in order to allow a different movie star to seduce a local in peace, not even if that local was his cousin.
But Ashley wasn’t saying it like it was his problem. That was the part that got to him. She was just saying it. She was sharing a piece of herself with him, however small that piece was. Even movie stars felt like third wheels sometimes. Even Ashley Carlsen sometimes felt out of place.
“You could write down the measurements for me,” he suggested. It was strange to feel as if he was doing her a favor by turning her into his assistant. “I’d do the measuring, you’d write it down. It’d save me a bit of time.” And mean he’d get the hell away from her that much faster. That was the part he should focus on. He wasn’t being soft, he was being efficient. Wasn’t giving in to temptation, just taking a long view to avoiding it.
“Sure,” she agreed. “Happy to help!”
So she took the pencil and clipboard from him and they worked their way around the cottage, assessing the screens and measuring those that needed replacing. They didn’t talk about a single thing that wasn’t screen-related, and it was actually kind of relaxing. There was a moment of embarrassed tension when they reached the lake side of the cottage and found the eating area abandoned, but a whoop from the lake made it clear that the other two had gone for a swim, not for more intimate pursuits.
It was a big cottage and it took a while to do all the measuring. The sun was warm, even filtered by the trees, and when Ashley handed the clipboard back to him at the end of the job, Josh noticed a gleam of sweat on her neck. He wanted to lick it, and then follow its path down beneath the fabric of her shirt. He wanted to know if her breasts were channeling the moisture, if there was a trickle running down toward her belly button. He wanted to know if her bra was damp, and then, of course, his mind started thinking about other damp undergarments. . . .
“Kevin!” he bellowed. Ashley jumped, and he stepped a little away from her and peered down toward the lake. “I’m done,” he yelled. “If you want a ride, it’s leaving now!”
There was a moment in which he could see their two heads bobbing in the water, facing each other, discussing it all, then Kevin yelled back, “Come for a swim! Ashley wants to know where the waterfall on the other side of the inlet is—you could kayak over and show her.”
Josh took another few steps toward the lake. “Ashley’s up here, asshole. How do you know what she wants?”
“I have a spy. Come for a swim.”
Seeing Ashley in a bathing suit, warm and smooth in the sun, her skin slick from the water? There was no way he could expose himself to that; he was still trying to forget the sight of her from that morning on the McArthur dock. “It’s the middle of the afternoon. I have work to do. If you want a ride, let’s go.”
Another brief conference on the dock below, then Kevin raised a hand and waved Josh off. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he called.
Yeah. How much later and
how messed up Kevin would be by then remained to be seen, but Josh wasn’t surprised by the answer. The siren was singing and Kevin hadn’t learned how to block his ears.
“Looks like you’re back to being a third wheel,” Josh said as he turned toward the truck.
“I’m going to find that waterfall,” Ashley said. “I can kayak over on my own.”
The waterfall wasn’t too big in the dry summer months: enough to tantalize with its sound, but not enough to disturb the water beneath it after it hit the lower rocks. And the sound echoed strangely against the cliffs, so it wasn’t too surprising that someone would have trouble finding it if they didn’t know where to look.
“Just west of the point, there’s a grove of cedars with their branches stretched out over the water,” Josh said. He felt like he was giving away a local secret. “If you can make it past their outer branches, there’s a sort of cave closer in to the trunks. Not a real cave, just a hollow in under the branches. You can see the waterfall from in there.”
She beamed at him as if he’d given her something worth having, which made no sense. This woman had travelled the world. She’d probably seen half of its listed wonders, had almost certainly been shown huge waterfalls that would make the little trickle across the lake look like someone’s leaky faucet, and she was this excited about it? Was she just acting?
Maybe. It was her profession, after all. But it felt real. Real and bewildering.
Josh didn’t like being bewildered. “Good luck with it,” he said, and he got the hell out of there. He hadn’t been lying about having lots of work to do, and he knew he was doing the smart thing by staying away from Ashley. Just because she was appealing didn’t mean he should spend time with her. In fact, it was the main reason he knew he needed to stay the hell away.
Ten
ASHLEY BROUGHT AN apple for Rocky on Friday. Actually, she brought him two apples, two carrots, and a bag of special horse treats she’d ordered on the Internet and had arranged for the store to express-courier to the cottage. Josh eyed the bag full of goodies skeptically.
“After you ride,” he said. “And not all of that!” His voice softened a little. “You don’t really need to bribe him, you know. He likes being around people. You can scratch his neck for him and that’s all the thanks he needs.”
“They’re not for him, they’re for me.” She saw his expression and grinned. “I mean, he’s the one who should eat them. But I want to give them to him because I want to. But I won’t if you say no. He’s your horse.” She wasn’t sure she should push it, but she shrugged and said, “I guess if you want to deprive him, it’s your business.”
“One apple, one carrot, a couple of whatever the hell those things are, and all of it after you ride.” His frown wasn’t as sincere as it usually seemed. “That’s the kind of deprivation my horses have to endure.”
Charlotte swooped into the conversation then. “Sunny can have the leftovers, right?”
“You two are going to leave me with two fat, spoiled horses,” Josh grumbled, but he didn’t say they couldn’t feed them the treats.
He also didn’t stalk off, stare angrily into space, or swig his beer as if it were poison and he was hoping it would carry him away from the frustrations of his world. He just leaned against the wooden railing, watching them as they groomed their horses, and only looked a little put out when Kevin led a light grey horse in from the field. “You’re riding?” Josh asked.
“You said I could,” Kevin retorted. Then, as if realizing that he sounded a bit like a rebellious teenager, he added, “Is it a problem?”
“No,” Josh said. But he ducked under the railing and headed for the gate Kevin had just closed.
“So where are you going?” Kevin asked.
Josh didn’t answer because he didn’t have to. A gorgeous chestnut horse was galloping toward them across the field Kevin had just come from. They all watched the chestnut as he approached, and when it seemed as if the horse wasn’t going to stop, Ashley took a step forward in alarm, as if her movement would make any difference. He was going to charge right into the gate, right into Josh. . . .
But he didn’t. The horse skidded to a stop, his whole body moving back over his haunches so it looked like he was almost sitting down, then straightened up and waved his head over the gate, his eyes rolling and showing white around the edges.
Then Josh touched him. A calming hand on his neck, a few murmured words, and maybe most significantly, a halter slipped over his head with a lead rope attached under his chin. Ashley drew a little closer, near enough to hear Josh saying, “Did you think you were going to be all alone, Ember? Did you think they’d all left you?”
He glanced over when he realized she was watching, and shrugged. “My horse is a bit of a baby,” he said. Not apologizing, not embarrassed, just speaking the truth. “And a drama queen,” he added, this time apparently speaking to the horse. Then he looked back at Ashley. “And clueless. He wanders off, away from the others, and doesn’t keep good track of them. So we’ll go to get them and he won’t know about it. Sometimes it takes him half an hour before he figures out he’s alone, and he’s still just as panicked as he was this time.”
Josh led the horse to the side of the gate and swung it open wide enough for the animal to fit through. “I’ll just hang on to him until his buddies come back.”
“You should get him a goat,” Kevin suggested. “Goats are good company for horses.”
“But then I’d have a goat,” Josh replied. He turned toward Ashley and quietly told her, “Goats creep me out.”
“Their eyes,” she agreed. She wasn’t sure what this new dynamic was, couldn’t quite remember how she’d come to be standing next to Josh instead of grooming her own horse, but she wasn’t complaining. She liked being on Josh’s side of things. Given the amount of time Charlotte and Kevin had been spending together over the last couple of days, she figured neither one of them was too hungry for her companionship, so she could spend time where she pleased. Which apparently meant right next to Josh. “You’ll just hold him? You don’t want to ride with us?”
“He’s still young; he’s not much good at standing still yet. And I have a hard enough time thinking of things to teach you guys when I’ve got my full attention on the job.”
“You have a hard time? My God, Josh, I feel like every time you open your mouth you’re teaching me something super useful and important!” She wasn’t just flattering him. She’d taken riding lessons before, but her instructors had focused mostly on the what and the how. What she should be doing, how she should be doing it. Josh was all about the why. Why the rider might want to do something, why the horse responded the way it did . . . It was fascinating. She was pretty sure she could have a useful riding lesson from Josh somewhere far from any animals, just sitting in a couple chairs talking about why horses behaved the way they did.
But he didn’t look convinced. “Well, your lesson for right now is that Rocky’s really good at untying knots and it looks like he’s getting started on your lead rope.”
“Rocky!” she scolded, and headed back over to the animal she’d been neglecting.
She managed to tack him up without any help, even recalling the arcane knot for the girth—no, the cinch and the latigo—without prompting. She was pretty proud of herself, and was tempted to give Rocky a contraband carrot as a celebration, but she managed to hold back. Rocky wasn’t her horse, and she hadn’t even figured out a way to pay his owner for letting her use him.
Which was a conundrum she had time to think about, since Charlotte and Kevin were apparently tacking up together, with lots of giggling and groping and other annoying behavior that slowed them right down. She snuck a glance at Josh, who seemed to be working on Ember’s ground manners, and tried to figure out how to thank him for his reluctant cooperation.
No grand gestures, she reminded herself firmly. No surprise dinners and
no drunken advances. No stupidity of any sort. She shouldn’t buy him a new horse. She definitely shouldn’t buy him a goat. Probably she shouldn’t buy him anything, which made the whole problem a good bit trickier.
“Do you need help in the barn?” she blurted out.
Josh stared at her for a moment, then turned and looked at the building. “I don’t think so,” he said cautiously. “Is something wrong with it?”
And then she remembered the secret strategy that had worked so well for Charlotte at the cottage. She was going to try it. Honesty. “No, of course not. I’m sure the barn is fine. I was just hoping to find a way to repay you for your help. The part I’m trying for, in the movie? I really want the part. Really a lot. And I need every edge I can get. Char and I are going over the lines like crazy women, and I’ve talked to my agent and manager and I’ve got them lobbying hard, but I really think it’ll give me a leg up if I can go in there and tell them I know a bit about Western riding, too. And it’s good for me. It helps me get into the right mind-set. So, you know . . . I really owe you. I know you didn’t want to do this, and I totally understand why.” She caught herself. “Well, I understand why you wouldn’t want to spend time with me, as an individual. I’m still figuring out why you don’t like summer people in general. But I figure I’ve done enough stupid stuff all by myself to make it totally natural for you to not want to do this. But you did, and I just . . .” She knew she’d said far too much, but it was too late to take any of it back, so she closed with, “I’d just really like to thank you.”
He looked completely unsure of himself. Possibly he looked like someone who thought he was in a conversation with an alien. But he managed a tentative smile. “How about if I just say ‘you’re welcome’ and we leave it at that?”
