what?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Len Brunswick,” Danny clarified. “He opens and closes the place for us, stocks the fridge, that kind of thing.”
“All-knowing Giles?”
“Ah.” Danny waved his hand in dismissal.
Allie giggled. “Dad likes to think of Mr. Brunswick like one of those English butlers on TV. He says they’re always named Giles. And he’s psychic because he always seems to bring our favorite foods.” Without missing a beat, she turned to her father. “Did you bring out the chips?”
“Forgot ’em,” Riggs said over a full mouth.
“Chew your food,” she remarked, hopping up and heading inside. “Were you raised in a barn?”
Riggs cackled and shook his head at Jessie. “She’s a clone of her mother.”
Allie reappeared with two bags of chips, and she tossed one to her father before taking her place at the table. “Can we go paddleboarding after supper?”
“Let’s save all that rigamarole for tomorrow. We’ll get an early start.”
“Early, as in early for you? Or early for the rest of the world?” his daughter teased.
“Hilarious.”
“Then can we go swimming?”
Riggs took another large bite from his sandwich before nodding and talking over it. “Yeah. I guess.”
* * *
Riggs and Allie raced down the dock and, without even the slightest hesitation, both of them catapulted off the end of it into the water. Danny shook his head and chuckled.
“Two pieces of the same cloth,” he remarked. “He thinks she’s just like Charlotte, but Allie’s so much like him it scares me a little.”
“She’s beautiful,” Jessie commented.
Danny held back from returning that observation back to her. She looked almost ethereal sitting there, sideways on the bench, in cropped cotton pants and a short, loose gauze blouse, the breeze from the lake toying with her hair. As she leaned against the planter, she raised her knees and wrapped her arms around them. The afternoon sun illuminated her, gave her hair the appearance of spun glass. When she lowered her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose and looked at him over top of them, his heartbeat picked up the pace to a full-on hammering against his chest.
“I’m glad you invited me along, Danny. And I especially appreciate you all shifting things to Sunday.”
“I knew you couldn’t be away from the store on a Saturday. It worked out fine. I’m just glad you wanted to come. I wasn’t sure.”
“No?”
“No,” he admitted. “The air between us has gotten a little thick since that night at your place.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you feel like telling me what that’s about?” he broached. “What is it about him and what he’s done that makes you think you can’t trust me?”
She clucked out a chuckle and pushed her sunglasses back into place. “I have no doubts about whether or not I can trust you, Danny Callahan.”
“No?”
“No,” she assured him. “I just became painfully aware of my history of leaning on the men in my life, and I don’t want you to become one of them. I need to stand on my own. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that.”
At first, he thought she must be joking. When he noted the seriousness shadowing her expression, he told her, “You’re the strongest woman I know.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.” He wasn’t about to back down. Not on this. “Everything you’ve been through in the last few months would have done most women in, Jess. But look what you did—”
“Oh, Danny,” she said softly. “You don’t understand.”
He stood and crossed the deck toward her. She reached up and took his hand, squeezing it, and Danny sat on the redwood bench beside her feet before she released him.
“Don’t shut me out, Jessie.”
The words seemed to stroke her. She removed her sunglasses entirely and balanced them on her knee. “I might have to,” she said, her voice like warm velvet. “Just for a little while.”
He wanted to argue, to plead his case and tell her how important she’d become to him. But something stopped him from doing it. Good sense, he figured. But before he could question it any further, he noticed someone walking up the stairs from the dock.
“Danny,” the older woman called out to him. “Danny Callahan.”
He stood up and waved to her. “Mrs. Slaughter, how are you?”
“Can I stop up?”
“Of course.” Danny nodded at Jessie. “Our neighbor, Kaye Slaughter.”
She turned and planted her feet on the ground, combing through her hair with both hands.
“Danny, how are you, honey?” the woman said as she reached the top of the stairs. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
“Of course not,” he said, taking her hand. “Let me pour you something to drink. Is tea all right?”
“That would be just fine.” She brushed Jessie with a warm smile before stating, “Hello. I’m Kaye Slaughter.”
“This is Jessie Hart. Jessie, Mrs. Slaughter owns the place right down the dock.”
The woman reached out and shook Jessie’s hand. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told this boy to call me Kaye, but he insists on formalities. I don’t know whether to feel insulted or respect his upbringing.”
Jessie chuckled. “I wouldn’t be insulted.”
“Pleasure to meet you, dear.”
“You, too.”
She sat down on the bench next to Jessie and accepted the glass of tea from Danny. “Thank you. I saw your friend Aaron swimming out there with his young daughter. My, she’s grown up, hasn’t she?”
Danny grinned. “She has.”
“I was so glad to see you were here, Danny. I thought perhaps we could have a chat.”
“Anytime. You know that.”
Kaye fidgeted with a lock of short silver hair. She ran her finger around the rim of the glass and stared down into it for another long moment before speaking. “I have a situation, Danny.”
“A
