She hitched up her nice, sweet, demure skirt to the tops of her thighs and began to slowly roll one thigh-high down her leg with great care. He wanted to watch, did he? She'd give him something to see.
Funny how the thought of him watching her undress made her breath catch.
Ever so slowly, she rolled the stocking down her thigh. Her fingers brushed her knee and she bit her lip, hesitated, and then continued downward, gently tugging the stocking down her calf. She arched her foot and pointed her toes as she lifted her leg into the air and carefully pulled the stocking off. "You don't mind if I'm the one who goes into the water, do you?" she asked him in a sultry voice, placing the stocking into the grass.
When he didn't answer, she looked over.
Jonathan's jaw was set, the lines of his mouth hard and flat. He might have looked angry if it weren't for the dark, smoky look in his eyes that she'd seen so many times before.
He was incredibly aroused.
And suddenly, Violet felt as if she were playing with fire. What was she doing? Why did she care if Jonathan was aroused by the sight of her stripping her stockings off? Jesus, was she insane? Violet suddenly wanted to kick herself. This was not the way to keep him in the friend zone. This was just her torturing him with what he couldn't have.
It was rather classless of her.
One of the geese honked again, as if to agree.
Angry with herself, Violet jerked at her other stocking, shoving it down her leg as unsexily as possible. When both of her legs were bare, she got to her feet and paused on the bank. She'd originally planned on taking off her cardigan so she could see how Jonathan reacted to her wearing nothing but a skimpy camisole underneath, but that suddenly seemed like an incredibly stupid idea. What was she thinking? Violet frowned to herself and buttoned her cardigan up higher. "Just hold my coffee until I get done, all right?"
"Of course," he said in that low, ardent voice.
Shivers rippled through her. She ignored them, ignored him. Brushing off her skirt, she headed to the edge of the water. "Thirteen steps in, right?"
"Thirteen," he agreed tensely. "Be careful."
"I'll be just fine," Violet assured him, glad for the distraction. She tiptoed to the edge. It was hard to tell how deep the water was from the bank, but there was a bridge, so that meant deep, right? Violet swung one foot over and dipped the other in, trying to determine how deep it was.
To her surprise, it only came up to her calf. "Wow. It's not all that deep. Maybe the river's low at the moment." She took another step in and let her hitched-up skirt drop, since it was clear that it wasn't going to get wet. Another step in and she turned around, glancing back at Jonathan. "Do you think that it's thirteen steps from the bridge, or thirteen steps into the water?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
"Well," Violet said, and put her hands on her hips. "Nothing to do but wander around and hope I hit something with my feet, then."
"Be my guest," Jonathan said. "I'll just be here on shore with coffee and muffins."
"Beast," she teased, feeling a bit more at ease. It didn't sound like he was holding her little striptease against her, which was good. "If you break out those muffins, watch for the ducks. They'll chew off your arm to get to that bread, I suspect." Even now, they were hovering near him, ignoring her.
"I'll save my muffins for you," he said, and the amusement was back in his voice. Good. She was relieved to hear that.
Violet trudged along the muddy bottom of the river, moving slowly and feeling around with her toes. The water was cold but shallow, and she took her time, not wanting to step over something and miss it. It got deeper as she moved farther in, and she ended up hitching up her skirt a bit more. There was a little graveyard and a church across the river, and she wondered if she was starting from the wrong side. Did that have meaning? Was Shelley buried there and they were looking in the wrong place? Now that they were here, the clue seemed awfully vague.
"How's it going?" Jonathan called after a time.
"Nothing," she said, turning around and moving a step or two over, then heading back the way she came, toward the bank. She looked over at him with his coffee, sipping it as he watched her. "I'm starting to think I shouldn't have been so quick to volunteer. That coffee looks rather good."
"It is rather good," Jonathan said. "But I promise not to relish it an unfair amount."
She shook her head, grinning. "Do you suppose there's a box of some kind buried here? What if it got picked up by the current and went downstream? What do we do then?"
"Don't know," Jonathan said. "It might take us a few weeks to find it."