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as if he thought he had said too much.
He snapped the slider shut, then expertly backed the vessel out of its mooring, guided it to the mouth of the bay and opened the throttle.
“But you like it, don’t you?”
“Absolutely. But I grew up with it. I understand there are certain hardships and inconveniences associated with living in a remote place.”
There was something about the way he said I that alerted Angie of something deeper going on.
“Your wife didn’t like it,” she guessed softly.
“She thought she would, but—” He shrugged. His voice drifted away, and he squinted intently at the water ahead of them.
“But?” she prodded carefully.
He shot her a look. “But she didn’t,” he said tersely. “Look, there’s an eagle.”
The fact that he had pointed out the bird to distract her did not make it any less magnificent. She watched, awed, as the bald eagle floated on the wind current.
Then, clear of his bay, Jefferson opened it up. The nose of the boat lifted, and they rocketed across the smooth surface of the water, cutting it cleanly, leaving sprays of white foam in their wake.
“Oh,” she called gratefully over the sounds of the engines, “it’s as if the air-conditioning has been turned on.” She could feel a fine spray of water misting her skin. The wind tangled in her hair. It was glorious on such a hot day. It was so sensual it made her feel almost delirious. Angie laughed out loud.
Jefferson glanced at her, and his gaze held before he looked away. The stern line that had appeared around his mouth at the mention of his wife softened.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she called to him over the powerful purr of the engines. “It’s fun. Oh, my gosh, this is so much fun.”
* * *
Jefferson glanced at her. Angie’s face was alight, and she laughed out loud again as he opened up the throttle even more. The boat lifted from the water and then went back down with a bone-jarring whack that sent spray right over the windshield. The wind was wreaking havoc on her curls.
It was so completely different from last night when she had awoken in terror that he gave himself over to it a tiny bit. He was trying his best to hold himself away from her, but her laughter and her genuine enjoyment were an enchantment.
He reminded himself, sternly, what he had said to her this morning.
That’s the problem with improvements. They make you dissatisfied with the way things were before.
Jefferson was well aware that Angie could be that kind of problem. She could storm his world and it wasn’t just because she was so cute with the wind tangling in her hair, and her T-shirt molded to the front of her, her slender legs shown off to advantage by a red-and-white flowered skirt. It went deeper: her vulnerability and her laughter, her recipes and ideas. She could pry secrets best left untold—like the secret of Hailey’s growing discontent with the lake life—from him. She could make him dissatisfied with the life he’d had before she had arrived.
Despite her diminutive size, he was well aware she was a powerful presence. And right now, with the wind catching in her hair and the laughter bubbling out of her? She was beautiful.
In fact, it was dangerous how attractive he found her. He reminded himself of what he had told himself last night. It was an equation, not unlike the equations he put together for companies and corporations. One plus one equals.
And this equation went like this: caring about somebody equaled pain. It left you wide-open to a world of hurt.
And yet, if he contemplated the past few years of his life, where he thought he had evaded more hurt at all costs, he saw a great stretch of emptiness that he was suddenly and acutely aware had caused pain of its own.
He hated that. Angie had been in his life one day. It was just a little over twenty-four hours since she had arrived on his doorstep and cajoled her way into his house and his life. And something was shifting. That something was his own perception, which he was aware could be the most powerful thing of all.
Even knowing that, even knowing that he was playing with fire, he could not resist her smile.
“So, you have seriously never been on a powerboat before?” he called over the powerful thrum of the engines.
“Grew up in a place that was landlocked,” she said. “It was just my mom and me. We would have never had the resources to go on a boat.”
“Where was your dad?”
The carefree look disappeared from her face. “He left when I was ten. It was a shock. Nothing had seemed really wrong between him and my mother. Someone else caught his fancy. He didn’t really factor into our lives, much, after that.”
“It may be the way of the world,” Jefferson said, and he could hear the tightness in his own voice, “but I always feel put out when I hear people have thrown away a family—for something as ridiculous as something or someone else catching their fancy—when mine was taken from me. Do they not understand the value of what they have?”
Angie reached across the space that separated them and laid her hand on his wrist. It was just for a second, a small gesture, but in that moment he felt as if she got it. She got exactly what he was saying.
“My grandparents’ generation had many things right,” he said. He had inherited strong traditional values from them. He still remembered his shock when Hailey had told him after they married that she didn’t want children. It was the kind of thing they should have discussed first, but they had been so caught up in the passion they hadn’t. And he would have never left her because of it. Never.
“They did have many things right,” she agreed.
The mood had become somber, and Jefferson realized he wanted to make her laugh again. He was ridiculously pleased by the total lack of worry and tension in her as she embraced the mild adventure of a boat racing across a lake.
He gave in to a small temptation to show her how much fun it could be, and began to cut powerful S patterns through the water. The boat was so responsive. It leaned deep into the twists.
Instead of hanging on tight, she threw wide her arms. She held out her hand to catch the spray. She chortled with uninhibited delight.
And a trip that should have taken him ten minutes took double that, as he traveled the long way, cutting big looping S’s across the mirror surface of a lake that they had all to themselves.
He finally pulled into the mouth of Anslow Bay.
“It is so beautiful,” she whispered.
He followed her gaze to the shoreline. It was beautiful. He felt as if he was looking at it with fresh eyes: the cluster of pastel-colored houses, visible through the thick greenery of trees, climbing up the hills around the bay. A church spire shone brilliant white in the afternoon sun.
But he had seen Anslow from the water a thousand times before. He was aware, again, of the sway Angie was holding on his perception. He dared to glance at her.
She was what was beautiful. He made himself look away, cut back the engines and focus on docking at the public pier that was at the heart of downtown Anslow.
He was almost afraid to look at her, again, and he was annoyed with his fear. Still, he leaped out of the boat and onto the dock to moor his boat. When he looked back at her after fastening the lines, he understood his fear completely. Angie’s skirt had ridden up her legs. Her hair was crazy. Her cheeks were bright from wind and sunshine. Freckles were darkening over that little snub of a nose. Her lips were curved up in a delighted smile. And her eyes were shining with a light that a man could live to see.
It was with reluctance that he leaned from the dock and held out his hand to her. As he suspected,