many people shared her view of Anslow’s summer perfection, because the main street was currently clogged with tourists. The general store, which billed itself as the Anslow Emporium, was packed with holiday goers. Just a short while ago, the crush of people might have made Angie panic. Today, all that summer happiness cemented her sense of well-being.
Or maybe it was knowing that Jefferson was just a few steps away, going about his errands, somewhere on that boardwalk. Though it might be silly, she felt as if his mere presence in such close proximity was protecting her. It felt to Angie as if he would never let anything happen to her. That made Angie feel as at ease as she had felt in months.
Exploring the shop, which stocked everything from clothing to lawn mower parts to groceries, Angie was taken, again, with how delightful it felt to be normal and to be shopping for normal things. She snooped contentedly through the crammed aisles of the general store with a sense of discovery instead of with the ever-present fear shadowing her.
She came to a rack, a slender portion of which had been dedicated to bathing suits. Angie hesitated. In her rush to leave her apartment, swimming had been the furthest thing from her mind.
But now the water of the lake beckoned on these sultry, hot days. The selection was tiny. The one-piece model was a leopard print with no back that was available in four sizes, small to extra-large. The two-piece selection was not much better: the scanty bikinis were available in two different prints, leopard or red polka dots, in the same four sizes.
She snatched a small red polka-dot one before she changed her mind. He never had to see it, but it would allow her to enjoy the lake. She could pay Jefferson back for it out of her first check.
She almost sighed out loud. Enjoyment had not been part of her vocabulary—or her experience—for quite some time!
After that one impulse buy, Angie focused on her list. While Jefferson had been right that it did not stock anything exotic, it did have all the basics and a nice selection of spices, too. Since getting to the store was not an easy matter, even if it was delightful, she planned several meals in advance. Was it delightful to be normal? Or was it delightful to be planning meals for Jefferson? She ignored the heavy black lines he had drawn through many of the items on the list.
When she got to the checkout counter, there was a stand of movies for rent. The rental period was a surprising two weeks. When Angie saw the movie Wreck and Me, she could not resist adding it to the purchases. As instructed, she put them on the Stone House account. The clerk looked at her with interest but asked no questions, for which she was thankful.
Her things were loaded into her cart, which she took out into the bright sunshine. The thunderclouds were building over the mountain and there was an ominous pressure in the air. The heat had become absolutely stifling. There was not a breath of wind.
She began to push the buggy toward the dock, but Jefferson materialized at her side and began to lift bags from it. Between the two of them they got everything down to the boat in just one trip. She stowed it under the deck, absently putting her frozen items in the cooler he had brought while contemplating him. Was he avoiding looking at her? Was it because of that kiss? Should she apologize?
When she came back above deck, he was eyeing the clouds and she could sense a certain urgency about him.
“Ready?” he asked tersely. He didn’t wait for her reply. She took her seat, and he ignored her completely, scanning the water and the clouds with intensity of focus. Was she a little disappointed that his terseness might be more related to the building clouds than the building tension between them?
When they came out of the protected bay in front of Anslow, she was taken aback at the change to the water. The wind was quite ferocious out in the open and the water had gone from silky smooth to choppy.
“That was sudden,” she said.
“This lake can turn in a hair,” he said. Under the gathering wind, the chop deepened. The boat began to feel as if it was climbing in and out of swells.
Angie watched Jefferson’s face. He looked grimly determined, but not in the least afraid. And then the rain began to pelt down. Lightning hit the water, seemingly right in front of them, and the thunder was so close that the boat shuddered.
The brightness of the day was swallowed in the darkness of the storm. The heavens opened up and the rain began to pelt down.
“This falls into the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department,” he told her.
She remembered saying, when they had set out this afternoon, that she had wanted to stand in the rain. “I’m not at all sorry I wished for it,” she said. “It’s exhilarating.”
He cast her a surprised glance, and she grinned at him. He returned to focusing on what he was doing.
Angie was aware she could allow herself to feel the exhilaration because of him: unruffled by the storm, radiating confidence in his ability to handle it. She experienced, again, the exquisite sense of being protected.
She could feel the electricity in the air; she could feel the pitch and power of the water beneath the boat. After the heat of the day, having the water pour down, soaking her hair and then her clothes, felt lovely and sensual in a way she was not sure she had felt before. She felt no danger at all, only the exhilaration of being on such intimate terms with the storm, of sharing this experience with him.
The boat rolled, and she rolled toward him and then away. She realized there was no one she would rather be with in these circumstances than him. Despite the powerful twin engines at the back of boat, the boat was bobbing like a cork on the stormy waters.
“Summer storms like this don’t usually last long,” he called over the noise. “I’m going to pull into one of those coves and drop the anchor. We’ll wait it out.”
The water calmed as soon as he made it past the mouth of the cove and into its shelter. He dropped the anchor, and they stood side by side watching the fury of the storm out on the main lake. The lightning show was amazing. The echo of the thunder was caught in the steep mountain sides of the forested land around the lake.
Angie was so aware of everything: her clothes plastered to her, and his to him. The rain plastering her hair to her head, and his hair to his head, the water running down her face, and his. The blessed coolness in the air after the heat of the day. The feel of the boat moving beneath them, as if it were a living thing—a dragon—that they were riding.
Finally, the thunderstorm moved by them, though they could still hear it as it pressed down the lake.
“That,” she finally said, “was amazing.”
“Yeah,” he said, “it was. We still won’t be going anywhere for a while.” Despite the storm passing, the wind remained, and the waves in the main lake were huge.
Was it wrong to love that, to love it that she could hang on to the intensity they were sharing for just a little bit longer?
“Jefferson?” Yesterday she had not even known this man. But after she had accepted his comfort, and offered him some of her own? After she had seen how the man handled a storm on a lake? Her sense of knowing him deeply was complete.
“Hmm?”
“We have a problem.”
He turned and looked at her. His eyes went dark as
