by Keri Ford
Only as he knocked, no one came to the door. He rang the bell, and still when nobody came, he used his key to let himself in. His calls for Belinda returned silence, and hot damn, looked like the house was empty. He traded the steaks for a beer from the refrigerator and headed out to the back deck. Now to just wait until sundown.
He dropped into a chair on the dock with Maiden Lake lapping on the shore under him. The chill that usually slithered across his skin at seeing the calm water didn’t appear this time. Watching the gentle ripple didn’t exactly make him feel cozy, but he wasn’t bunched about it either. He sipped his beer as the sun lowered, and damn if he wasn’t coming to even feel okay about the water.
After the accident, the water just frankly made him want to puke. It was a wonder he’d even gotten on the kayak the first night, but a desire to see Lanie had overpowered his nausea. And he’d watched her swim right by the end of the dock. If he hadn’t seen her go by that first night, he doubted he would have dared to get in.
The sun kissed the horizon, so Eriksen grabbed a life vest, pushed the kayak off the bank, settled on the rocking seat, and started off. Being close to the bank, he found himself able to settle into a leisurely paddle, even in the darkness. Each stroke and dip wasn’t as horrible as the last, and he found himself making a rhythm in the lake.
He headed for her cabin first, swinging wide around the final jut that blocked the view of her place until he got right on it. A fist wrapped his chest, and he pushed through the water. The final feet seemed twice the distance with his heart in his throat. The past three times he’d come here, it’d been to nothing. No towel tossed across the post, no truck parked next to the cabin, no lights on inside. Just emptiness and darkness.
With a final hard push, he rounded the corner, and a deep satisfaction curled through him. She stood at the water’s edges in a red one-piece suit, and it was the sexiest damn suit he’d ever seen. It wasn’t something made for a poster on a boy’s wall, but it ought to be. Not any boy’s wall, really, just his. Lanie at the edge of the lake in a suit that went over her shoulders and cut below her hips was the sexiest sight he’d ever seen.
But the smile too. Holy hell, she could be in a potato sack, under a pile of blankets. That smile tightened his jeans in all the best ways as she walked to the water. Because after her smile ripped through him, she fucking blushed, and her gaze slipped away as she dipped lower in the dark water of the lake. Just seeing her twisted him up in unexpected ways he should put in check but just didn’t know how. He had a feeling the only way to get this sensation rolling through him to end was if she asked him to leave.
She swung her arms in front of her and wide as the water swallowed up to her chest. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.”
She swam then, and he positioned himself as best he could in the area they’d been last time. Her arms seemed longer as she cut through the water closer to him. “I need to swim hard first. To warm up and get going.”
He took that to mean she wasn’t here for a chitchat. But he could paddle in comfortable silence next to her now that she was here. He could be a patient man. “I’ll make sure nobody runs you over.”
She took off. Faster than he remembered the other night, but then he had caught up with her halfway through her swim. Her arms were glorious, cutting through the water. He counted seconds off on her perfectly timed strokes. Like a pendulum swinging on a clock, she didn’t so much as falter in her movements. From the top of her head to the tip of her toes flicking a small wake, she moved in perfect counts.
Time passed, he didn’t know how much, but he rowed by the cabins and neared Hank’s place. The moon climbed higher, at its fullest now, and he paused in his stroke because soon there would be no moon. Would she be out here then? In the complete darkness?
Probably. He’d have to get a light for his head. Or mount something to the front of his boat. It wouldn’t take much to screw in a brace and put a spotlight on it.
She dipped underwater and was gone. Only ripples where she’d been disturbed the surface. No ripples, no bubbles. “Lanie?”
He leaned over, the boat rocking—or maybe that was panic scattering through him. “Lanie.”
A splash flittered to his other side, and he looked in time to see her emerging up, a grin that quickly fell into puzzled brows. She swam to the boat and grabbed the edge. “Are you all right?”
His throat was thick as he swallowed and settled back in the seat of his kayak. “Fine. I didn’t know where you went.”
“Sometimes I swim underwater. It’s weightless. Probably what skydiving feels like, without all the danger.”
Depended on whose definition of danger. “I have a parachute for the sky.”
“And I’m just a few feet from the surface.”
“Until something grabs you and holds you down.” God, what things were even lurking in this lake? Obviously not sea monsters, but what about grass or the version of tall weeds in the water?
The tightness in her brow eased as she hitched her arms on the side of his boat. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I didn’t think of that, that you’re afraid of the water and would be worried.”
“I’m not afraid.” The words rolled off, but the truth sank sickly in his gut. The water left his stomach in knots. He didn’t like lying to her and didn’t really know why he was anyway. Anyone in his position would feel the same. “It just makes me nervous.”
“You’re on the water now.”
He patted his life vest. “Not without precaution. And I have the satisfaction of knowing I’m in control of my boat. I think I could be at the shore before anyone else could run me down.”
“If you fall in, I’ll catch you.”
“Think you could?”
“I do.”
There was something there. Something pulling at him, like being dragged against his will to something, but he didn’t have a damn clue what the thing could be. She was so serious, so earnest, not even blinking, that he had trouble coming up with a response.
She saved him from having to. “I’m a good swimmer, after all. I could pull you out if I needed to.”
“I weigh at least twice as much as you.”
She shrugged, a smile tipped her lips. “Not in the water. Maybe one day you’ll get in and I’ll show you.”
Instinctively, his hands tightened on the paddle. “Maybe.” He wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. Part of him wanted to jump in the water right then and let her wrap her body all around his. That actually sounded like a hell of an idea. If they could just do it a little closer to shore.
She released the boat and began her backstroke. “This is usually about where I turn around.”
She settled into a pattern with her backstroke. “Occasionally I dip under to give my arms a break, but I’ll be right up. I promise.”
There was something in that. That single statement that relaxed a knot in his gut. An appreciation or just acknowledging that she knew he’d worry and she cared enough to put him at ease. And she dipped back then. An arch of her back, breasts thrust up, and she slipped under as graceful as a dolphin, diving through the water. Then she went and did something that made him appreciate her all over again. Little bubbles tracked her progress. She held her breath for a stunning length of time, but the trickle of bubbles continued marking her path. So long as the little bursts skated over the surface, he paddled along. He was just thinking of counting seconds when she appeared as smoothly as she’d gone under and stroked right back into it.
She repeated the progress. Backstroke, disappear under, then back up. They’d slowed considerably since they’d started off, and before he was ready to see it, the strip of land signaling their end was in sight. If only she could swim farther, though he had a feeling she could swim farther if she wanted. She could probably swim across the whole damn lake and set some Happily record.
As they neared the end, he was losing his chance to get answers. Or at least answers to one of the things
he wanted to know. She slowed more, floating mostly and moving herself by shoving her arms to her side, up her body, out wide again. She seemed content, so he took his chance. “What’s the whale tail thing about?”
He watched her swim enough to notice the slight adjustment of her stroke. “What are you talking about?”
It took all he had not to laugh at the inflection in her tone, the subtle shakiness. She lied no better than him. “I saw you last week, drawing it on the Dumpster.”
She was quiet. The silence grew as her strokes stilled. She floated completely then, didn’t even try to swim. He took it as a point that she stopped. Now if he could just get an answer.
So he kept talking. “I ate lunch today, and someone anonymously paid for my meal.”
“That was nice of them.” She responded right away, confirming there was nothing wrong with her hearing.
“It was. When I got to my truck, there was a piece of paper on the windshield that had a drawing of your whale tail on it.”
She sighed and returned to the side of his kayak, but she still didn’t speak. She chewed on her lip. Desire wrapped all over him to replace her teeth with his thumb and then his lips. “When I saw you drawing it, I just thought it was something you had going on, so I wasn’t going to ask, but then it was on my truck after I got lunch, and you definitely weren’t there, and there’s no way you could have snuck past me.”
Her gaze lifted to his with a bit of fire in them. “How do you know? I slip past my older brothers all the time, and there’s five of them. Plus my dad.”
He leaned on his paddle, wanting to be closer to her, but he rocked the little boat too much to risk getting any nearer. He’d never been more tempted to get in that water so he could get his hands on her. He flat-out and ridiculously itched with the craving to bring her in against him so she completely understood his words. “You wouldn’t have slipped past me, because I’m not your brothers or your dad.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s a mermaid tail, diving back into the water. Not a whale.”
The image formed in his mind, and he could see that. It made more sense and explained why the tail had been slender at the fins. Not that he knew a lot about mermaids, but that was the understanding he got from movies growing up. “What’s it about?”
She laughed in a not-hollow way, but like she was just empty for words for a moment. “I don’t know, it’s just something I do.”
“I know we don’t know each other well, but I won’t tell anyone.”
She rubbed her finger around the rounded bow of the kayak. “It started in high school. Cindy and Violet were a year ahead of me in school, so it was just me my senior year. It’s a good-deed thing. Tara calls it a pay-it-forward movement.”
So someone paid for his lunch and left the marker. That made sense, but still, who. “Who all knows about it?”
“Just me and Tara. She caught me coming home the other night with dirt all over me.”
“Why were you covered in dirt?”
“I weeded the beds around the library sign and planted new flowers.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d driven by the library, but without a doubt he’d be there first thing in the morning to see her work. “So you anonymously do a good deed, but you don’t tell anyone about it.” He rolled the thought through his mind. “That’s pretty awesome.”
“Thanks. It’s my feel-good thing of the year.”
He chuckled. “I bet. How does the mermaid tail tie in?”
She bit her lip on that for a moment. “To a teenager, it sounded cool. I had this thought that I would leave my tails all over the place. People would see it, and I would secretly know it was me while they all tried to figure it out.”
“Did it work out?” The wind pushed them gently across the lake, and he just let nature take them where it wanted.
She made a face. “Not really. I mean, I felt good about the few things I did, but it was hard to sneak stuff like that when you still answered to a curfew and your whereabouts. Especially considering Violet had moved away during this time, and Cindy had the pressures of her stepmom and stepsisters then, so I didn’t really have the blanket excuse of hanging out with friends for when I wanted to slip away unnoticed.”
“I don’t know your dad well, but I can’t imagine him putting a stop to something like this. I think he probably would have helped.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to share it then. I don’t really know why. It was my thing, but I’ve had fun getting to run around with Tara. We’re telling Torrance tonight and letting him pick something to do this weekend. Course, she thinks it’s fun because we haven’t told Violet or Jacob. Tara wants to do something for them.”
“So now you’re fine if anyone does this?”
“Yeah, I mean that’s kind of where I wanted it to go eventually. I started it and someone else would do it too, leaving the tail behind also.”
“I don’t understand. You said you wanted it for yourself.”
“I wanted it to be more than me, but not attached, you know? Like someone wakes up, finds something nice and the tail. And so they do something nice—secretly—and leave the tail too. It’s like we all become connected, without tracing to a beginning.”
That actually made a lot of sense. It became less about who did something and more about something getting done. “What can we do?”
“You want to do it?”
He was a little offended by her questioning tone. “Sure.”
“Right now?” Her voice hitched.
“After your swim. Or tomorrow. What’s something we can do?”
She shrugged. “Anything. I tend to pick a chore someone wouldn’t want to do. You pick.”
“I’ll think on it.”
She pushed off his boat, giving him a tiny shove that she answered with a laugh before turning for the cabin with a burst of energy she must have pulled from somewhere. He found himself paddling faster than he had to so far, and they were at her place in no time.
She left the water with the same grace as before. He’d walked out of the lake enough to know the bottom was slick with mud, but she crossed through it like it was nothing. She gathered her hair in one fist, twisting it and ringing it out. A towel was thrown around her, and he rowed back to Hank’s place with the last image of her glancing his way before disappearing inside her cabin.
He secured his kayak back to the dock and went to fetch his beer when he found Hank sitting there. He eyed him with his hands crossed behind his head. “Tell me more about her mermaid tail.”
Eriksen just blinked at him.
Hank chuckled and pointed in the direction of the lake. “Sound carries over water, man. I was checking a cabin when you two went by.” He dropped his feet to the deck and leaned forward with his elbows across his knees. “Though now I know the real reason you keep popping up.”
Well, fucking hell. She told her secret, and he couldn’t make it half an hour without spilling the beans. The words were on his tongue but he shook his head. “You want to know, you ask her.”
“I will.”
“I’m heading in.”
“No comment about she’s the reason you’re out here?”
Eriksen paused and didn’t really have an answer for that. He wanted to know why he knew Lanie Lange. That’s where all this started, but somewhere along the way the reason didn’t matter so much. Just the possibility of getting to know her more drove him out here every damn night. “Not really.”
“I hope you know what you’re getting into with that.”
That drew Eriksen to a stop and brought him back to his friend. Hank didn’t antagonize or play games. He was a straight shooter. Eriksen sat next to him and pulled a beer from the small cooler. “You know something.”
“Not a whole lot. I looked into all three of the girls before giving them the building.”
Eriksen found he was more interested in peeling the label from his bottle instead of drinking out of it. “This sounds bad.”
“Not really. Just thought it’s worth mentioning that the pride and joy of all the Langes, not just their dad, is Lanie. She didn’t have much of a past, and everywhere you turn takes you right into one of her six-foot-plus and over-two-hundred-and-fifty-pound brothers. I’m just suggesting you tread carefully because I don’t think any of them will be pleased when it comes to their little sister’s broken heart.”
“I’m safe there because I’m just getting to know her as a business associate to us, that’s all.” As he tipped his beer to his lips, it didn’t feel true to him any more than it must have sounded to Hank judging by the cock of his eyebrow.
Chapter Five
Lanie gripped the steering wheel as she parked outside her dad’s house. She squeezed a little tighter until the burning pull in her joints distracted her from thoughts of Eriksen. There was so much about him that it was far too easy to get swept away in her imagination, and that just wouldn’t do around her dad’s dinner table. All she needed was to be wrapped up in her memories and start repeating bits of their conversation out loud like she had this morning in her bathroom mirror.
Especially those parts where he had been flirting with her. Maybe? That’s what that was? With her. Eriksen, flirting with her. She just kept spinning in circles at the very idea of it.
So there. Thinking of all that needed to be locked up tight to the darkest, deepest part of her mind through lunch with her dad and brothers. That and all those curious thoughts over what he had in mind for her mermaid tail. It had been three days since they’d discussed it. He’d kept in contact with her, letting her know he was still trying to decide so she knew he hadn’t forgotten. Something for Hank? Jacob? What about his parents? She fanned her face and got out of the truck. No more of that. At least not until she was back within the privacy of her truck again.
The smoke off the grill from outside filtered in through the opened back window. She’d be able to smell the hickory in her clothes tomorrow if Cindy didn’t get her hands on them first. Her brothers moved through the kitchen, running into each other as clumsily as ever. She shoved her phone in her back pocket. “Have y’all broken anything yet?”
