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, when she took it, it was as if an electrical circuit had been completed. His awareness of her was jolting. Her hand was soft in his, and yet strong. He gave a little tug and she flew up onto the dock beside him. He didn’t release her. They stood staring at each other.
“There are no words for the way you just made me feel,” she whispered.
Because of the boat ride? Or the confidences they had shared? Or the way it had felt, just now, when their hands touched and the circuit was completed?
And then, he supposed because there were no words, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, in almost exactly the same way he had kissed hers the night before.
Her lips were as soft as a hummingbird’s wings on his skin. He felt that electrical awareness of her tingle right into his belly.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and stepped away from him, embarrassed. As well she should be!
You didn’t kiss your boss! But, somehow, the words evaporated within him. Instead, he said, “The store is right across the street. Just walk to the end of the pier, go through that gate, turn right and cross the street. Have them put everything on my account.”
She wasn’t fooled that he hadn’t been affected. It bothered him that she wasn’t fooled. Then she ducked her head and scurried away.
He touched his cheek. That moment of weakness—of wanting to make her happy—had cost him. He knew that. He knew something so small as that kiss could change everything. It could make a man dissatisfied with what he’d had before.
If he let it.
“Hellooo, Jefferson.”
He had just left the dock area and was making his way through the summer-crowded streets to the post office. He whirled around.
Maggie. He hoped she had not seen him receiving kisses on the dock.
“I’ve been hoping to run into you. Are you going to come, Jefferson? To our fund-raising event? A Black Tie Affair?”
Jefferson was annoyed with himself. He’d been so distracted by that damned grocery list, and by Angie, that he hadn’t really prepared himself for an encounter with Maggie. For him, going into Anslow was often like running the gauntlet.
He looked at Maggie’s face. In its wrinkled lines he saw wisdom and compassion and caring...for him. She was trying so desperately to try to make something good come from something bad. She was trying so desperately to bring him back from the abyss.
A few days ago, he would have made an excuse. He would not have been able to see the naked caring in her face. No. Maybe he would have seen it. But he would not have allowed himself to feel it.
But now, after he had just lectured about people throwing away the things that mattered? But now, after he had made an effort to be better man? After he had comforted the crying, terrified woman instead of walking away? After he had committed to giving her that moment’s enjoyment she had not experienced as a child? After he had committed to making her laugh? It was hard to put that particular horse back in the barn.
He reached out and touched Maggie’s shoulder. “Of course, I’m coming,” he heard himself say.
“Oh, Jefferson, that means so much to me.”
Her eyes had tears in them. He was not sure he could handle any more tears this week. He was at his quota. So, he gave Maggie’s shoulder one more squeeze and went on his way.
He wanted to believe nothing about him was changed.
But the fact that he was considering feelings—those pesky unpredictable things—meant something major had changed already, not needing any kind of permission from him.
ONCE JEFFERSON HAD turned back to the boat, Angie touched a finger to her lips. She had just kissed her boss.
Oh, it had been a casual thing, an impulse when words had evaded her. She had just wanted to let him know how much she had loved the boat ride, and she wanted to acknowledge she knew he had made an extra effort to make it pleasurable for her. Maybe, she had even wanted him to know, in that brief touch of her lips to his cheek, that she saw, despite how much he did not want her to see it, that he was a good man.
She could tell he felt guilty about his wife not liking the lake, that it was a burden that had become heavier because Hailey had died. Maybe she had hoped that kiss could tell him what she could not: that his guilt was uncalled-for.
It was a lot to expect of a kiss.
And it had rocked her world more than she had expected it to. She had intended a light peck on his cheek, and really, that was all it had been.
And yet she had been so aware of the rough scrape of his whiskers, the sun and water scent of him, the color of his eyes, the easy strength and confidence of him.
“No more kisses on the cheek or otherwise,” she ordered herself internally. Otherwise? How had that crept in there? But you did not kiss a man like Jefferson Stone on the cheek without wanting more, without contemplating the sweetness of his lips.
Distracted as she was by the pure and unexpected pleasure of the boat trip—and her lips on the roughness of his cheek—Angie made herself focus on Anslow. She had passed through here briefly just yesterday. It was a measure of how fraught with anxiety she had been that she had barely noticed the town.
Now, she saw the sleepy lakeside village was like something you would see on a postcard of a perfect place to be in the summer. The pier jutted out from the main street. That street had a row of single-story false-fronted stores on one side of it, facing the lake. The buildings were authentically old, mostly whitewashed, though some were weathered gray. Oak whiskey casks, cut in half, served as planters, and spilled abundant displays of colorful flowers. All in all, downtown Anslow looked like a set for a Western movie!
Along the wooden boardwalk the Emporium was front and center, but there was also a post office and a museum, an ice-cream parlor and a law office. There was a bookstore and a place to rent canoes and bicycles and, farther along, a barn-like
