by Blair Grey
Still, I felt the need to explain. “I don’t think that Vera would approve of any guy that I brought home,” I told him. “I’ve never brought a guy home before, though, so I guess I don’t really know.”
“You’ve never brought a guy home before?” Grant asked, sounding pleased.
“I didn’t exactly bring you home with me today,” I was quick to say. But I knew that he was reading between the lines, realizing that I might care about him. That was only an issue if he found out that I was actually an undercover police officer. But if he found that out, we were going to have more than enough problems anyway.
“Well, thank you for letting me meet your sister, even if it was only in passing,” Grant said, squeezing my shoulder lightly before reaching around me to unlock the door to a car.
“No bike today?” I asked in surprise. I tried to keep the disappointment from showing on my face.
Grant laughed. “Sorry, no bike today,” he said. “The road that we’re going to end up on isn’t great for being on a bike, and my rods don’t fold down well enough that they’re entirely safe on the bike. And we’re going to pick up a canoe along the way, and that definitely would be difficult to transport with us if we were on the bike.”
“Fair enough,” I said, getting in the passenger’s seat. It made sense, but I still couldn’t help remembering that last ride on the motorcycle, the wind in my hair. Maybe I should ask him if he could take me out again sometime. Would that be a little too presumptive, though? Maybe I should let him offer. For all I knew, I had been clinging too tightly to him the whole time, and he had been super uncomfortable. What if he never wanted to take me out again?
Maybe I should get my own license. Vera would probably kill me, though. It would be yet another bead on a string of unsafe things that I wanted to do.
“Plus, the place that I want to take you to is a little bit of a drive, and I didn’t want you to be too sore,” Grant said, glancing over at me as he started the car. “I hope that’s okay if it’s a bit of a drive?”
I laughed. “I’ve already agreed to spend the whole day with you,” I reminded him. “I don’t care how long the drive is. Hell, we could even spend the whole day driving if that’s what you want to do.”
Grant smiled. “Nah, I’d rather go fishing,” he said, putting the car in drive and easing it onto the road. When I glanced out, I could see Vera watching us from the window. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. What did she really think was going to happen?
But then again, this was the first time that I had ever really been serious about a guy. And the fact that it was someone like Grant? Well, she was bound to worry. I tried not to let it bother me. I was bothered enough for the both of us. I should never have gotten this far in over my head, but it was too late to go back now.
“So do you go fishing a lot?” I asked, trying to distract myself. That seemed like a safe topic. And to be honest, I was curious. His asking me to go fishing had seemed so out of the blue, and I’d almost thought that he was just being nice in offering. But then, it seemed like he really did want to go fishing, since a couple days later, here we were.
“It’s been a while, actually,” Grant admitted.
I glanced into the back seat. “But you still have all of your own gear,” I said, finding that I was impressed. I liked the idea of him on a bike, and I liked the idea of him as the kind of guy who went fishing. I just liked that he enjoyed being outdoors. It seemed rugged and manly and all of the things that I wanted in a guy.
“Yeah, my adoptive father gave me a fishing rod for one of my birthdays. Or maybe it was Christmas; I don’t remember,” Grant said, glancing over. He shrugged. “He figured it would give me something to do with myself while I did some serious thinking. I think to both of our surprises, I really enjoyed it. But like I said, it’s been a while. It gets kind of lonely out there.” He looked embarrassed at having admitted it, but I reached over and squeezed his hand where it rested on the gearshift.
“I get that,” I said, even though I really didn’t. But I could tell that most of his life had been about staving off the loneliness, and that, at least, I could understand.
Grant recovered his good mood quickly. “So you and Vera seem pretty different,” he commented. “Not that I really got to know her or anything, but she seemed a lot more girlie than you. She’s probably never been fishing in her life, has she?”
“I think you probably insulted her by even asking her if she wanted to join us,” I said, laughing. “She’s not really into the outdoors. In fact, if she came with us, she’d probably start screaming the moment she saw a fish. She hates things that are slimy. I’ve always had to help her out with bugs in the house and things like that.”
Grant smiled. “So she protects you, but you protect her as well?” he asked. “That must be nice.”
“Yeah, she’s the best. Even when she’s acting like a total bitch to my boyfriend.” The words just slipped off my tongue, and I looked over at him with a grimace on my face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to presume.”
Grant shook his head. “No, it’s all right. Don’t worry about it,” he said. And I had to smile back at him at that. Even though I knew I shouldn’t be getting attached to our times together. Even though I knew that I definitely shouldn’t be thinking of him as my boyfriend.
Who was seducing whom? I didn’t even know anymore.
“I’m going to catch the biggest fish today,” Grant boasted.
I laughed and shook my head. “Not a chance,” I told him.
“Oh yeah?” Grant asked, arching an eyebrow at me. “When was the last time you went fishing?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Trust me; I’m going to win. I always do.”
Grant chuckled. “Oh, you’re on,” he said. He sped up a little, like he wanted to get us to his mystery destination even faster.
29
Grant
I took Holly to one of my favorite lakes to go fishing. It was a bit of a haul from Las Cruces but not terrible, and the drive with her was just comfortable, whether we were talking or just sitting there in companionable silence. A couple of times, I heard her faintly singing along to the radio, and I wished there were some way to surreptitiously turn the thing down so that I could hear her better. She had a nice voice.
Yet another of the things that I liked about her.
We stopped along the way to borrow a friend’s canoe, and my friend helped me strap it to the roof rack while Holly watched us. Then, we were back on the way.
It was all worth it to see the expression on Holly’s face when we came around a bend with the lake spread out before us. “Oh wow,” she said, and I could hear that she was stunned. Good. That was just what I wanted from her.
“You know, a lot of people think that New Mexico is just dry desert for as far as the eye can see,” I told her proudly. “But there are a lot of really beautiful parts too. I mean, I think the desert is beautiful as well, but the mountains are great, and there’s even skiing in the winter, if you can believe that. And then there are plenty of little lakes like these. I love it up here.”
Holly looked like she didn’t know what to say in response to that, but when I parked, she got out of the car and took a deep breath of the pure air, letting it out slowly. “Wow,” she said again.
I smiled at her, leaning back against the car as I just watched her face for a moment. She was so innocent, so wonderfully open. I loved just watching her enjoy the world around her, like everything was new to her. And even though I knew that all of this was new to her, in fact, it seemed like there was something more to it as well. Something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Maybe it had something to do with these feelings that I had for her. Maybe I just saw her in a different way that I saw anyone else. She was the first woman I’d ever had feelings for, and even though I was trying my best not to succumb to them, I knew they were always there in the background.
Holly looked over at me and laughed. “What?”
she asked self-consciously.
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m glad you like it.” I opened the back of the car and started bringing out our things. “Which do you want to do first, head out fishing or have our picnic?” I asked her.
“Honestly, Vera cooked us up a pretty solid breakfast this morning, so I’m not very hungry,” Holly said apologetically. “But if you’re hungry, I don’t mind if you want to eat now.”
“I’m actually not hungry right now either,” I told her. “Let’s take the boat out and do a little fishing.” I winked at her. “Who knows, maybe we’ll catch something worth adding to our picnic.”
Holly giggled. “Did you even bring the things that we’d need to prepare it?” she asked. “Or to start a fire?”
“Nope,” I told her, amused that she had seen right through me. “To be honest, I usually just catch and release. It’s more fun that way. Means that there should still be fish in here the next time I come out.”
“I like that,” Holly said. She helped me get the canoe down off the roof and carry it to the water, and then she stood there with it while I loaded in the fishing gear. She climbed in, and I pushed the canoe out into the shallows before climbing in as well, expertly using the oars to guide us out into the middle of the lake.
“You’re like a pro at this,” Holly said. “Lots of practice?”
“A bit,” I admitted. “Like I said, my adoptive father gave this to me as a way to sit around thinking and sorting my life out. I really needed that at one point in my life.”
“I can imagine,” Holly said softly, and I wondered if she was thinking back to something that had happened in her own life. If maybe a good bit of fishing would have solved her problems in Montana, rather than an interstate move.
“Are you still thinking about going back to Montana?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Holly gave me a surprised look and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m pretty serious about looking for jobs here.”
“What kind of jobs are you looking for now?” I asked.
Holly’s face went through a complicated set of emotions, but I blinked, and then she was smiling sheepishly at me again. “Actually, I was thinking that maybe I’d do something with criminal justice,” she said. “I want to change the world. I know that sounds cliché.”
“A bit,” I agreed, smiling at her. I remembered my thoughts from before, about how she might be a police officer in disguise. But she hadn’t told anyone about the meeting I had with Ray and Linda, which had been obvious. There had been no one there trying to stake out the café while we were in there.
Anyway, Holly continued, “It’s not something that I ever thought that I’d go into, but just more and more, that’s where my leanings are. I know you said that there’s a lot of corrupt stuff that goes on in the police force around here, but don’t you think that maybe someone, the right kind of person, could change that?”
I grimaced. I didn’t want to burst her bubble, but she sounded a little too naive now. “I’d like to think that someone could change that,” I finally said. “But I just don’t know if that’s possible. It seems like it’s all so ingrained in it. I don’t know if that ‘right kind of person’ would last a day in the police force that we have here.” I paused. “But if you’re really interested in it, I might know some people who could help you out with getting your foot in the door.”
It probably wasn’t the smart thing to say. As soon as she joined the police force, she was going to realize that I was one of the bad guys. By proxy, if nothing else. I didn’t know how she would handle that. But then again, that time was probably a long while off. She would need training before she got any of that sort of information.
Maybe by the time she would actually learn something like that, either she would have decided on a different career path or else I would be out of the MC. I could only hope. If I was leader of the MC and she was a police officer, things between us would be impossible.
I didn’t want to stop her from being whatever she wanted to be, though. She was smart and talented, and she deserved to have whatever she wanted in the world. I couldn’t tell her not to do that just because I had made a stupid choice to stay there watching some business on my initiation day, all that time ago.
Again, a flicker of emotion on Holly’s face, but the look was gone before I could recognize it.
“You still have never told me what exactly you do,” Holly said. “I know you said it was a family business of sorts. But what kind of business?”
I laughed and shook my head. “It’s nothing exciting,” I told her. “And I’m not sure it’s really a career. Not like joining the police force.” It was as close to the truth as I could get without telling her all about the MC. “The thing is, I was never very career-minded,” I told her. “My job was just never how I wanted to define myself.”
“How do you define yourself?” Holly asked. “Or how do you want to define yourself?”
“To be honest, I want to be a father,” I said, the words coming easily and naturally. It was too early in our relationship, if this really was a relationship, to be talking about having kids. But somehow, I wanted to talk to her about this dream of mine.
“A father?” Holly echoed, sounding surprised.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding as I put bait on both of our lines. “Like I said, a career or a job was never my main goal. I just want to have kids and bring them up in a better way than I was brought up. I guess partly to prove to myself that it can be done, but also because I just want to have a family. I want to give my kids the whole world. Whatever I need to do to support the family, I’ll do it.” I shrugged sheepishly, glancing at her out the corner of my eye. “But yeah. I just want a family. Not now, not today. But someday.”
We were both silent after that. At first, I wondered if maybe I had said too much, but then I realized I could practically see the gears churning in Holly’s head. Whatever it was in what I had said, something had stirred her deeply. She was clearly thinking something through. And that was what fishing was all about for me.
As much as I enjoyed the conversation with her, I didn’t want to press her. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to share her thoughts with me. I wanted to give her a little special place that she could come, whenever she wanted to, and think through her thoughts. I knew that the move had been difficult on her.
And deep down, I liked to think that maybe, just maybe, she was thinking about having a life with me. Because even though we weren’t in that point in our relationship yet, I knew that I liked her, and I could picture maybe, one day, starting a family with her.
We fished for a few hours, neither of us catching anything worth bragging about. I scratched the back of my head. “My buddy said that this place was really happening right now, but I don’t know,” I said, feeling kind of embarrassed. If I had realized we weren’t going to catch anything, I might have brought us somewhere else, as beautiful as this place was.
But Holly smiled over at me. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, pulling in her line and shrugging. “Why don’t we go have our picnic, though? I’m getting pretty hungry.”
“Good call,” I said, reeling in my line as well and steering us back toward the empty shore.
“I can’t believe there’s no one else up here,” Holly remarked as we started our picnic.
“I know,” I said. “In all the time that I’ve been coming here, and there’s been quite a few times now, I think I’ve only seen three people up here. I guess it’s just not one of the more popular places. At least when the tourists aren’t up in their cabins for the summer. But we can’t even see any cabins from here; that’s the other nice thing about this specific pull-off.”
“Yeah,” Holly said.
We ate our food in companionable silence, both staring out over the lake. The sun was starting to disappear behind the trees at the far end. It wasn’t quite setting, not this early, but it cast a warm glow across the lake. Whe
n I glanced over at Holly, my breath caught in my throat.
She turned to look at me, and I could tell that she was just as struck by the moment as I was. She leaned in to me and our lips met, slotting against each other’s as though we were made to go together.
30
Holly
It had been an altogether perfect day, I had to admit. We hadn’t done as much talking as I had thought that we might. But then again, I remembered what Grant had said about fishing being his time to come out here and think. And wasn’t there some sort of weird thing about how talking scares away the fish?
We hadn’t caught many fish that day, despite the fact that neither of us were scaring them away with our talking. The fish that we had caught were pretty small, and it was probably a good thing that we hadn’t been planning on adding them to our meal, because they wouldn’t even have been worth the effort of preparing and cooking them, but that was all okay.
It was restful, relaxing, recharging. I don’t want to say that I sorted through all my work-related angst, or that I sorted through everything that I was feeling for Grant. But I definitely felt better after sitting there all afternoon. There was some sort of magic in it, something so utterly perfect about it. I wondered if Grant realized that fishing was exactly what I needed.
Of course, he thought that I had just moved there from Montana, so it would make sense that he would think I had some things that I needed to think through. He thought I was a totally different person.
But somehow, he seemed to understand the true me so well.
Now, as he turned toward me with naked longing in his eyes, I could feel desire swell deep within my gut. He looked absolutely gorgeous in the golden light of evening, like some painting come to life. I was relaxed, I was content, and I wanted nothing more than to lie back on the picnic blanket that he had thoughtfully brought with him. We might be out in public, but there was practically no one around, and I didn’t think I could wait any longer.
