She rolled her eyes. Since when hadn’t she pulled her own weight? It took her a moment to locate the handhold molded into the center of the board, then she hefted it and started down the slope after him. He glanced over his shoulder when she was halfway, shaking his head when he saw what she was doing.
“Should have known you wouldn’t be able to help yourself,” he said.
“Then you shouldn’t have bothered telling me not to.”
He set his board down near the water’s edge and bounded back up the slope at an easy run. She followed him with her eyes until she realized what she was doing, then she snapped her head around and made a big deal out of inspecting the view.
The early morning softness was starting to burn off, and all around her, giant pines reached skyward. She stared at the water, trying to work out what color it was. Emerald green? Azure? A combination of both, perhaps?
She heard the crunch of gravel underfoot as Reid returned.
“It’s really beautiful here,” she said quietly.
“Yeah. Got to admit, I always feel a little twitchy when I can’t see some mountains. One of the side effects of being Montana born and bred.”
She gazed up at Sacagawea Peak. She’d never lived anywhere but Marietta; couldn’t imagine not waking up to mountains every day.
“So. How does this behemoth work, anyway?” she asked, turning to contemplate her board.
“It floats. You stand on it, you paddle.” He shrugged.
“Right. It’s that easy,” she said dubiously.
“There are a few little tricks to it. When you start out, stay on your knees and get a feel for the board, what your weight does to it and how the paddle feels in the water. Then, when you’re ready, you get to your feet...”
He demonstrated, kneeling on his board and then planting a foot before rising smoothly to his feet.
“You might want to stay squatting and get both feet planted before you attempt to stand. Some people find it easier that way. And once you’re up, you want to stay in the center of the board with your feet shoulders-width apart, knees slightly bent. The board’s incredibly stable, so as long as you don’t flail around you won’t fall off.”
She glanced out at the water. “I bet it’s really cold, huh?”
“Refreshing is the word you’re looking for.”
“Refreshing. I’ll remember that when my extremities start dropping off.”
Some of the other lakes in Gallatin County had bathtub-warm water in summer due to their shallowness, but Fairy Lake was not one of them. Tara had swum here a couple of times over the years and knew from experience that it was definitely on the icy side.
“The simple solution is to not fall in,” Reid said.
“Right. Thanks for that hot tip.”
“When you’re paddling, remember you need to work either side to go in a straight line.” Again, he demonstrated. “You want to turn, just keep paddling on one side and you’ll do a big circle. And for sharper turns, work up a bit of forward momentum, stick your oar straight down and hold on tight, and you should spin around. You need to brace yourself when you do that, though, or you’ll fall in.”
“Okay. What else?”
“That’s about it.” He flashed a smile at her. “It’s not rocket science.”
“I guess not.”
He pulled off his sneakers and socks. She followed suit, then copied him again as he carried his board out into the water. He went back for the paddles, passing hers over before pushing his board out until the water was knee-deep.
“Here we go. Paddle placed across the board in front of you. One knee on the board... “
He made it look so easy as he slid first one knee, then the other onto the board and picked up his paddle, looking at her expectantly.
She walked her board out, gasping at how cold the water was. Placing her paddle as he had, she slid her right knee onto the board, then quickly clambered on, her arms stretched out for balance as the board started to rock.
“And you’re on. When you start paddling, make sure the blade is fully in the water before pushing so you make the most of your strokes.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” she said.
“I was wondering how long it would take for insubordination to rear its ugly head.”
“Not long. You should know that by now,” she said.
She experimented with a couple of strokes, dipping the oar into the water and propelling the board a few feet across the lake. She was aware of Reid keeping pace with her, watching quietly while she got a sense of the dynamics of it all.
“All good?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Good.”
She watched as he rose to his feet with cat-like grace.
“Holler if you need me,” he said.
Then he took off, paddle digging deep into the water as he propelled himself forward. He made it look so easy, as though he’d been doing this for a million years.
It was tempting to try standing, but she decided to play it smart and paddle around a little more on her knees first. After ten minutes, she took a deep breath and shifted position so that she was squatting on the board, both feet planted like an ungainly frog. Slowly she rose to her feet. As Reid had promised, the board was very stable and steady.
“Way to go, Starbuck,” Reid called across the water.
She shook her head. He knew she hated that nickname. Ever since they’d rebooted the old 80’s sci-fi television series Battlestar Gallactica and recast Starbuck as a woman, she’d been taking guff at the station.
She tried a few strokes of the paddle, keeping her knees slightly bent, and slowly her confidence grew. Soon she was able to stop staring at her feet and the paddle and gaze around herself, absorbing the incredible natural beauty surrounding her.
The sun climbed higher in the sky. A gentle breeze caught at her hair and cooled her cheeks. She watched a bird soar high on a thermal, its wings spread wide, and marveled at how it seemed to hang so effortlessly in the sky. When her legs got tired, she got back on her knees, alternating between the two positions as well as sometimes simply sitting with her legs either side of the board, drifting, letting the lake’s currents take her where they would.
And slowly, slowly, the peace of the place, the lap of the water, the warmth of the sun began to seep into her bones and the terrible tension she’d been holding within herself all week started to unwind.
Simon, the incident at work, the painful self-realizations she’d had, her uncertainty about what she wanted for the future... she let it all go, let the wind whisk it away, leaving nothing but a quiet, still calm within her.
She was kneeling on her board, sitting back on her heels as she watched fluffy white clouds scud across the sky when Reid’s voice echoed across the water.
“My stomach says it’s lunch time. What do you think?”
She started and almost fell off the board. It took her a moment to realize Reid was on the shore, one hand shading his eyes as he watched her.
And he’d taken his tank top off.
Even from a distance, his chest and torso looked amazing. She started paddling back toward shore, feeling absurdly nervous about the prospect of standing on dry land with him with so little clothes on.
Partner. Feels sorry for you. Remember?
Reid waded out into the water to hold the board as she jumped off, dragging it up the bank for her. Her mouth went dry at the way his abdominal muscles rippled with the effort.
God, he had an amazing body. Really, really impressive.
She’d always known that, of course—even the utilitarian cut of the Bozeman PD uniform couldn’t disguise his great physique—but seeing him like this, almost naked, was a whole other matter.
His pectoral muscles were cleanly defined, his shoulders broad. His belly was ripped, showcasing his zero percentage body fat. Then there were those thighs, and his beautifully sculpted calves...
She dragged her gaze away from him, concentrating inste
ad on the picnic blanket he’d spread on the wild grass covering the slope, a cooler anchoring one corner.
“It’s a long way to the nearest McDonalds,” he explained.
“Very efficient of you.”
She settled on one side of the blanket while he took the other and started unpacking the cooler. She made a point of concentrating on the food he was unloading instead of him, even though a part of her was desperate to ogle him some more.
In some deep, dark, barely acknowledged corner of her psyche, she’d always wondered what his body was like.
And now she knew.
Food. Concentrate on the food.
There were sandwiches, little baby quiches, some of what looked like his mother’s lemon cake, apples—naturally—and two amber-colored glass bottles slick with condensation.
That got her attention, successfully distracting her from his body for a few valuable seconds.
“Please tell me that’s Dalton cider?” she asked, already reaching for a bottle.
“Courtesy of Dad. He insisted.”
“I freaking love his cider,” she said.
Reid’s family sold most of their apples to the public or to big retailers, but every year his father set aside a certain quantity for his apple cider run. He only ever pressed a few hundred bottles of the stuff, but it was delicious—sweet and full-flavored and fruity—and she was practically drooling as she remembered the last bottle she’d enjoyed at the department barbecue Reid had hosted at the Dalton’s place earlier in the year.
“Better enjoy it, then.”
There was a dark note to his voice and she risked a look at him. He was gazing out at the lake, a grim set to his mouth.
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged, and she got the sense that he wished he could take back his words. “It’s a limited resource. You know that. Have a sandwich.”
He unwrapped his own, taking a big bite.
She mustered all her resolve and managed to stop her gaze from drifting below his chin as she continued to study him.
“Is something going on with the orchard? Is your dad okay?”
Reid frowned, then glanced down at his sandwich. Really wishing he hadn’t said anything now if she had a guess.
“You started it, Dalton,” she pointed out.
“Thanks for reminding me.”
She took a swig from her cider and unwrapped her sandwich. Chicken, mayo and walnuts. Yum.
“You might as well tell me. I’ll get it out of you eventually.”
“Going to use your stellar interrogation technique on me, are you?”
“You want to tell me. You wouldn’t have said anything otherwise. Might as well just cut to the chase.”
He took a long pull from his cider, then tilted the bottle and studied the amber glass for a long beat. She pretended that she didn’t want to reach out and wrap her hand around his gorgeously developed biceps and munched away on her sandwich.
“Mom wants to sell the place.”
Tara frowned, jerked out of her preoccupation by his words. The Daltons had grown apples for three generations. Selling up would mean giving all that away. Abandoning a legacy.
“Only your mom?”
“She hasn’t brought it up with Dad yet. But Mom’s pretty persuasive when she’s on the warpath. And there’s no doubting that the accident shook him up a lot. Who knows? Maybe he’ll be relieved to be able to walk away.”
“I take it this has come up because you don’t want it?”
He frowned, almost as though her words had irritated him. “Something like that.”
“Well, either you do, or you don’t. I assume your folks wouldn’t sell if you were going to step in at some point.”
“Maybe we should drop this.” He crumpled up the plastic wrap from his sandwich.
Wow, she’d really touched a nerve.
“Do you want the orchard or not, Reid?”
“It’s not as black and white as that.”
“Why not?”
He sighed, his mouth curling up at the corners as he threw her a rueful look. “You’re like a dog with a bone sometimes, you know that?”
She growled deep in her throat before giving him her best dog bark.
“That is... wrong on so many levels,” he said.
But he was smiling now.
“Tell me why it isn’t as simple as black and white.” Having polished off her sandwich, she reached for a baby quiche.
“Because it’s not just about me. My grandfather bought that land and cleared it. Planted more than three hundred trees by hand. It doesn’t feel like it’s mine to give up.”
“But you don’t want to be tied down by it?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I used to hate the place, when I was younger. Resented the hell out of it. Took off the moment I could.”
“Funny, I thought you’d enjoyed helping your dad out this past year. At least, that was the sense I got.” He’d never complained about having to spend his downtime in the orchard. Not once.
“I don’t mind the work. Not anymore. In a lot of ways, it’s really rewarding.”
“But you don’t want to be tied down?”
He finished his bottle of cider before responding, setting the bottle carefully back in the basket. His father recycled them, she knew.
“I guess I just never imagined my whole life being played out in Marietta.”
“Then I guess that’s your answer, then.”
She felt sad as she said it. She liked having Reid around. Working with him and getting to know him had been a privilege.
Looking at him wasn’t too bad, either.
She distracted herself from her inappropriate and dangerous thoughts by helping herself to a piece of lemon cake. Once she’d demolished that, she brushed the crumbs off her T-shirt and lay back with her ankles crossed, arms behind her head, and closed her eyes.
If her eyes were closed, she wouldn’t be tempted to keep staring at him. That was the theory, anyway.
In practice, she was almost preternaturally aware of him moving around, putting food back in the cooler, rearranging things.
“Here,” he said, and she opened her eyes to find him leaning over her.
He was so close she could see the individual hairs of his eyelashes and she drew in a nervous breath. Then she realized he’d folded her towel into a pillow for her and was waiting for her to lift her head so he could position it for her.
“Thanks.”
She engaged her belly muscles and lifted her head and shoulders, and he slid the folded towel into place. She was powerless to stop herself from breathing in the smell of him as he did so—deodorant and sun-warmed skin and man.
He was back on his side of the blanket in no seconds flat, arranging his own towel in a similar fashion. Her gaze got caught on the dark silk of the hair beneath his arms before darting to the sexy little trail that led beneath the waistband of his shorts. Parts of him she didn’t normally see. Parts of him she’d always wondered about.
Traitorous heat unfolded in the pit of her stomach. When she and Scarlett were teenagers, her sister’s bedroom walls had been covered with posters of hot guys in various states of undress, but Tara’s bedroom walls had been all about the athletes she admired and the movies she loved. She’d never considered herself the type of woman who ogled men or got all squirmy when a well-built guy happened into her orbit.
What a fool.
She concentrated on her breathing, aware that her heart was beating too fast. She needed to calm the hell down and stop thinking like this. If Reid knew what was going on in her head... she didn’t even want to contemplate how embarrassing that would be.
Instead, she thought about work, and her mom, and how happy she was that Scarlett had found Mitch—although, strictly speaking, it had been the other way around, since Mitch had come looking for Scarlett, tracking her all the way from the Australian outback to Marietta.
Gradually her hyper-awareness faded and she breathed
a sigh of relief.
“So, you ever going to get around to telling me about this motorbike?”
Chapter Eight
Reid’s voice was lazy and relaxed, but it didn’t stop her eyes from popping open.
“I thought we covered that last night.”
“I can think of a million better ways to live a little than buying a motorbike,” he said.
She turned her head to find him watching her. If it was anyone else, she’d tell them where to stuff it, but she could see the concern in his espresso-dark eyes.
“Maybe you can. But this is about what I want, and I want that bike.”
“You said something last night. About being sick of waiting for people to leave you.”
Three cheers for her beer-lubricated mouth.
“Did I?”
“Tell me you don’t think you had anything to do with Simon cheating on you? Because that is straight-up bullshit, Tara. It’s all on him, all of it.”
He sat up, no longer lazy and relaxed. Not wanting to be at a disadvantage, she sat up, too.
“I don’t think it’s my fault he cheated. But it’s my fault for being with him. That’s all on me.”
He frowned and she could see he didn’t understand.
“It’s hard to explain,” she said, thinking about all the elements that had fed into the unconscious decision she’d made to play it safe with Simon. Her father, her mother, the way things had been after he left...
And then suddenly she was talking, the words pouring out of her, almost as though she’d been waiting for an opportunity to share this part of herself with him.
“When my dad left, my mom fell apart. She loved him so much, and she just... couldn’t cope without him, I guess. She was so wounded and hurt and broken, and for a long time all she did was cry and spend days in bed and talk on the phone with Aunt Margot.” Tara swallowed past the tightness in her throat. She couldn’t think about those hard times without getting emotional. Life had been so precarious, every day had felt as though it balanced on the edge of disaster. “I felt so guilty. So responsible. I did everything I could to help out, but I couldn’t bring Dad back and that was what she wanted, more than anything.”
Almost A Bride (Montana Born Brides) Page 8
