Slow Burn Cowboy(15)

So today, she was doing her best to keep it dampened by puttering around in the garden. She had kept herself outside, and all forms of media shut off. No internet. No radio. No TV. No chance of upsetting images infiltrating her home.

Being on the ground, up to her elbows in dirt, was much more satisfying than catching a glimpse of the Ghost of Teenage Mistakes Past on the news.

Anyway, she had plenty to do. There was enough lettuce that she was going to have to bring it to the store if she had a hope of using it all. Picking and processing that, separating it out into individual plastic bags so it was ready for people to take home as premade salad mix, had eaten up a good portion of her time.

Then she had gone to wander around in the thicker part of the woods around her property. Her knee-length lace dress kept getting snagged on sticker bushes, but she didn’t mind. She minded more when the raspberries and blackberries twined around her legs and left little teeth marks in her skin.

But there were no prizes for timidity when it came to picking blackberries. The good ones were typically on the very top of the bushes, reaching up toward the sun. She hummed as she dropped the plump fruit into milk jugs she had cut the tops off.

They made for handy berry buckets, and they were cheap and disposable so if the juice stained the inside it didn’t much matter.

She didn’t mind the typically gray weather on the Oregon coast, but she very much prized the summertime. She closed her eyes, allowing the sun to bathe her in gentle warmth as she continued her work.

The mild weather through the winter and slightly earlier warmth of the summer had ensured that the berries ripened a little bit earlier than usual. And she held out hope that even more would ripen between July and August.

Little containers of the berries would fetch a decent price in the Mercantile, and anything extra would go to Alison, for pie and pastries and maybe for that jam she was thinking of asking Alison to supply her.

She wondered if Cassie would want any for The Grind, for a kind of special scone or biscotti. The thought had Lane humming to herself, imagining all of the baked goods she could talk her friends into making for her.

She liked her own baked goods too, of course. But sometimes things just tasted better when they were made for you.

She bent, grabbing her half-full container of blackberries by the handle, then scooping up the one she’d managed to fill most of the way up with raspberries, as well. With her free hand, she held on to her dress, trying to keep it away from the sticker bushes as she picked her way back through the thick foliage until she got to the well-worn path that would take her back to her house.

She paused for a moment in a clearing, allowing a shaft of sun to fall over her bare arms. She relaxed, holding the heavy buckets down low at her sides as she closed her eyes and tilted her face up. She listened then. To the birds, and the faint sound of the breeze ruffling through the treetops.

She breathed in, that heady mixture of soil, wood and pine that was only headier in the damp forest as the temperatures rose.

Then she heard the sound of car tires crunching on the gravel driveway that led to her house. She paused, frowning. She wasn’t expecting anybody, and unless they had gone too far and needed to turn around, no one had any reason to be driving up to her place.

She mobilized, walking up to the back door of her cabin and letting herself inside, passing quickly through the small house and peeking through the front window so that she could get a glimpse at the driver, without him seeing her first.

She let out a sigh of relief when she saw that it was Finn. And then for some reason on the heels of that relief came a surge of tension that rested like a ball in her chest.

She breathed in again, just like she had done outside, but this time, it was for fortification. This time, it was to try and do something to get rid of that tightness in her lungs.

Lane waited until he got out of his truck. Until he walked up the steps and stopped in front of the door. Then she waited until he knocked.

Only then did she open the door.

“Hi,” he said.

She just stood there, staring at him for a moment, her chest feeling tighter. He looked tired. His hat was pushed back on his head, dirt on his face making the lines around his eyes and mouth look more pronounced. His tight white T-shirt was streaked with even more dirt, and she could see on his battered jeans where he had wiped his hands on his thighs all day.

It was typical for Finn to look this filthy after a day on the ranch. But it was the exhaustion that struck her.

“What’s going on?” she asked, stepping back and allowing him entry into the house.

“It’s just a little too crowded at my place. So I thought I would come out here for a while.”

“Of course,” she said, backing into the kitchen, moving behind the counter and for some reason breathing a little easier once she did.

“What do you have there?” he asked, gesturing to the milk jugs.

“Raspberries and blackberries,” she said, picking them up and turning to put them in the fridge. “I’ll deal with them later.”

“I take it this is your version of a day off.”

“Some of us don’t work outside every day. I find a little bit of time in the garden relaxing. I took a walk through the woods, spent some time picking lettuce.”

“Basically, a rabbit’s perfect day.”

She made a face at him. “And a Lane’s perfect day.”

He chuckled. “I was actually wondering if you’d mind if I took a swim in the lake.”

“Of course not,” she said. Suddenly, she felt hot and sticky, and the idea of cooling off at her own piece of Lake Carmichael was more than a little enticing.

“Great. I have all my swim stuff in the truck. I’ll strip down out there so I don’t get any of my dirty clothes on your floor. Do you want to join me?”

For a full second Lane’s brain was hung up on the words strip down and join me. She knew that they were separate. She did. But there was something about him saying them in such close succession that snagged her brain and just sort of hung there. Like the stickers against her dress.

“In the lake,” she said finally.

“Yeah,” he returned slowly.

“Sure. Yeah. I’ll just... I’ll go get ready while you... Strip down.” She cleared her throat and scampered her ass out of the room.

She forced her brain into a blank space while she undressed and pulled her bikini on. The idea of walking out in her bathing suit seemed weird somehow. Even though they were only going to swim together, which they had done a million times. She growled and grabbed her dress, tugging it over the top of her swimsuit. There.

But was he done getting dressed? That was the question.

She hemmed and hawed for a minute before finally exiting her bedroom and making her way cautiously back to the front door. She peeked out the curtain again, and saw him standing there in nothing but a pair of shorts.

Well, he was dressed. Sort of.

He had a towel hung over his arm, and that reminded her she needed to grab one. She detoured back to the bathroom and took one off the shelf, then burst outside, not hesitating this time. “I’m ready,” she said.

He looked at her, a strange light in his eyes. “Okay,” he said.

The gravel was warm beneath her feet, and she kept her eyes down, making sure she didn’t step on anything sharp as they walked down the well-worn path to the lake.

There were houses all around the perimeter of the lake, but mostly on the other side, around a slight curve that kept everything from view. Those were larger houses, more desirable.

Lane’s friend Rebecca had owned one of the more modest houses on that end of the lake, near to Gage West’s extravagant lakeside cabin.

Lane’s house wasn’t exactly lakeside. Neither was it extravagant. But still she owned a little bit of the shoreline. The first year she’d been financially solvent she had had a dock put in, and then she had commissioned Jonathan Bear, Rebecca’s brother, to build her a bench swing that hung from a tree that stretched over the water.

It was her sanctuary.

Finn bent down and picked up a rock, running his fingers over the smooth-looking edges. And she tried not to think about why that made her stomach feel hollow.

He drew his arms back, then flung the rock toward the lake. It skipped three times across the surface before sinking to the bottom. “Want to make a wish?” he asked. “I’ve got three.”

This had been their game for a long time. Skipping rocks and earning wishes. Mostly because she couldn’t do it. So he always got to portion out the wishes he earned with his superior skills.

“I will get my own,” she said, bending to choose her own rock.

“It’s not flat enough,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she countered, moving to the edge of the lake.

She repeated the same motion he’d just done, running her fingers over the cool surface of the stone, ignoring that hers wasn’t perfectly smooth.

Then she cocked her arm back and flung the rock forward.

It hit the surface of the water and crashed on through, a splash like a fountain rising up in its wake.

“One wish,” she said, holding up her finger. “I get one.”

“No,” he explained. “It has to skip.”

“You got three! If the first one doesn’t count you should only get two.”

“The first one counts if it’s a skip and not sinking,” he said.