turn.
He’d been willing to make amends after their less-than-stellar first meeting when he’d heard her Jeep pull into the parking space behind the duplex that first night. He’d gotten up off the couch, even though he was bone tired, and walked out into the cool, humid night to greet her and offer a hand to help unload her Jeep. He could hear a radio playing in a nearby cottage, and traffic sounds from Lake Street intermittently drowned out the chirping of crickets and the eerie wail of a loon calling for its absent mate. A small tingle of uneasiness prowled at the edge of his consciousness. A motorcycle going by had masked his footsteps on the gravel, so she whirled in surprise when he spoke, hitting him in the thigh with a big overstuffed duffel bag as she swung around.
“Oof,” he said.
“Good heavens, you scared the life out of me. What are you doing here?” She dropped the duffel with a thud, barely missing his foot in the process.
“I was coming to offer my help unloading your Jeep.”
They were standing under a streetlight. He could see her face clearly. Surprise at his appearance had widened her eyes momentarily. Now they narrowed with suspicion. “Where exactly did you come from?”
He hooked his thumb over his shoulder toward the duplex. “Didn’t your dad explain? We’re neighbors. Real close neighbors.”
“No.” Her lips thinned. “He did not. He just said he knew the cabin was my favorite place and since it had become available—” She put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t acceptable,” she said.
“Why not? You just said how much you like the place.”
“What I am worried about is what people will think of us living so close. It’s...it’s not professional.”
“Come off it, Dr. Layman. This isn’t the Middle Ages. You’re not giving your friends and neighbors enough credit. Why should they care?” She had a point, though. There would be some small-minded people who would raise their eyebrows and wag their tongues—there always were in a town this size. “It’s no different from a coed dorm. Are you saying you’ve never lived in close proximity to a man?”
“I...” she sputtered. “Of course I have.”
Did that mean she’d been in a serious relationship? Did she still have a boyfriend? Somehow he didn’t like that idea, although he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. He didn’t pursue the topic, however, for the same reason he hadn’t elaborated on town gossips. Now that she was here, he didn’t want to scare her off. “Do you believe your dad would have sent you down here if he didn’t trust me to behave myself?” He was beginning to enjoy this. She was so easy to rattle.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, but she sounded as if the fight had gone out of her. For the first time he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the droop to her shoulders. She’d had as long and as hard a day as he had. He ought to be ashamed of himself for goading her. “Good. Then that’s settled. You’re staying. It’s late. We can work out some ground rules for sharing the place in the morning so we can both have our privacy.”
He bent to pick up the duffel and so did she. They both straightened with a hand on a strap. He tugged and she had the grace to let go without a struggle. “I don’t need ground rules,” she said. “I just believe it’s better if I find another place. We’ll be together quite enough during office hours.” She didn’t give up easily; she’d hold her ground in an argument or a fight.
“Whatever you say, Dr. Layman,” he replied as formally. “But don’t count on finding anything better. It’s high season. The town’s booked solid. No landlord in his right mind will accept the stipend the Physician’s Committee’s willing to pay, except for that old coot at the Commodore. If you’re determined to make up the difference out of your own pocket, you might as well stay here.”
“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “You have made your point, and it’s too late to argue with you any more tonight. Just be careful with that duffel. It’s got my coffeemaker in it and I don’t want it to get broken. I can’t function in the morning without my caffeine.”
That scene had taken place Saturday night. Now, four days later and three days into their working relationship, it was still the longest conversation they’d had so far.
It was shaping up to be a long summer.
He punched the button to start the coffeemaker he’d found in the thrift store and headed for the closet-size bathroom to shower and shave.
Ten minutes later he was on the porch, one shoulder propped against the stone pillar that supported the roof, drinking his coffee while he kept one eye on the leaden skies. He heard the door on Callie Layman’s side of the duplex open. He shifted position slightly so it wouldn’t seem as if he was hiding from her as she sat down in one of the two pine rockers that matched the set on his half of the porch. She was already dressed for her day at the clinic in slacks, a tailored shirt and the long white lab coat that he thought was an attempt to look as much like a man as possible. It didn’t work, though. The curves beneath the layers of fabric were all female.
“Good morning, Dr. Layman,” he said, lifting his mug in salute—might as well be neighborly. He wasn’t going inside just so she could have the porch to herself.
She jumped a little in surprise and hot liquid sloshed over the rim of her coffee mug. “I didn’t see you there,” she said with a hint of accusation in her voice, holding the mug out so it didn’t drip on her slacks.
“Just checking on the weather.” The duplex was about the size of a two-car garage, with doors at opposite ends of a shared front porch. The porch was divided by a screen made from an old pair of folding doors that offered about as much privacy as adjoining hotel balconies. In the past the building had been a garage, then a bait shop and finally used for boat storage before Callie’s dad had remodeled it into two one-bedroom rental units. It was built of native river rock and, with its weathered wood trim and faded green shutters, was solid and sturdy and rooted to its spot on the lakeshore. It was small and cramped and lacking in all kinds of creature comforts like internet service and cable TV, but it suited Zach just fine.
“Looks like the storm might miss us.” He gestured out over the lake with his mug. The air was cool, and mist shrouded the far shore of the lake and clung to the tops of the high dunes in the distance, but when the sun eventually broke through the clouds, it would be a warm day.
“It will,” Callie responded confidently, scanning the dark rolling clouds at the far edge of the lake. She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t smell the rain, so it’s not coming this way.” She tilted her head slightly as though waiting for him to contradict her.
“You think so?” Why couldn’t he just agree with her? What was it about her that made him want to challenge everything she said?
“I know so. I grew up on this lake, remember. And I come from a long line of avid weather watchers.”
“Can’t argue with that,” he conceded.
She nodded, satisfied she’d won the argument. “Just a light show in the sky giving the fishermen time for another cup of coffee before they head out onto the lake,” Callie said as a three-pronged lightning strike arced out of the dark clouds and disappeared behind the dunes. Thunder rolled on like a giant’s chorus of kettledrums. Zach tightened his grip on the handle of his mug and worked to slow his too-fast heartbeat. He forgot the retort he’d been going to make. “Where
