Luck of the Draw (A Betting on Romance Novel Book 1) (12 page)

Kate watched a pair of kayakers on the far shore as they bobbed like orange and yellow buoys in the water. “He isn’t in the best of health.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is.” Kate glanced again at Liam, honking the boat’s horn and waving exuberantly as they passed a family barbecuing on shore. Isn’t this the kind of experience every kid should have?

Why had she let Randy talk her into moving to southern Connecticut anyway? Sure, they were near pools and gyms and lots of conveniences, but there weren’t big sloping lawns that rambled into lakes or quiet, peaceful back roads that went on for miles.

But Randy had jumped at the chance to move into Nana’s house.
We’ll never be able to afford to move there otherwise, Kate...and you know that’s where all the good customers are. Just think! If I get a job at a Lexus or Jaguar dealership... do you know what the commissions are on those babies? Do you have any idea? With my sales skills, we’ll have it made!

“Are you okay?” Rachel peered at Kate, concern creasing her brow.

“Just thinking.” The wind blew soft on her face, the hum of the pontoon’s motor washing over the murmur of other conversation. Kate gave herself a mental shake and forced a wry smile. “I suppose it’s finally occurring to me that for the first time in my life my future is entirely up to me.”

Rachel gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “That’s not a bad thing, is it? Think of the possibilities.”

“I am, and it frightens the hell out of me.”

Rachel laughed, and Kate clasped her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry! That just came out!”

“It’s okay!” Rachel brushed the hair from her face. “I feel exactly the same way!” She leaned close and smiled—a warm, friendly grin. “I like your honesty. It’s very refreshing.

“You know, I know you’re only here for the summer, but Doug will be interviewing in the area over the next few weeks
—we’re hoping to move closer to Sugar Falls—and I was thinking it’d be fun to get together now and again. We can hang out. Grace. Susan. Whomever’s around. Just us girls. What do you say?”

Kate paused. She didn’t know what to say.

Oh, sure, she’d been social enough these last few years. She’d gotten together with neighbors… coworkers… people who invited her to their Martha Stewart-inspired Fourth of July barbecues and wine and cheese buffets. But, since having Liam and moving to southern Connecticut, she’d lost touch with all her old friends. Nowadays, get-togethers seemed less about enjoying herself and more about making an impression on someone for her parents’ sake or for Randy’s.

Rachel’s relaxed invitation to ‘just hang out’ was a breath of fresh air in a life that was closing in on her.

Just us girls.

Kate grinned. “I’d like that very much.”

A
FTER THE BOAT RIDE,
S
USAN TOOK the three kids to make s’mores, and Kate followed Grace and Rachel to the house to change. She tried to duck into the hallway bathroom, but it was occupied.

Grace held open the door of the spare bedroom. “Aren’t you coming?”

Kate hesitated for a moment before following Grace into the bedroom. Grace shut the door. As the two cousins chatted and stripped to their underwear, Kate slid her shorts and tee off and dug in her tote for her things. Not having grown up with sisters, she felt the old disquiet of the high school locker room, wondering what the others would think of her plain, practical briefs and tired old bra. She really needed some new things.

“You’re not wearing that, are you?” Kate glanced up and was relieved Grace was speaking to Rachel, clad in a sporty maillot, and not about her underwear.

“What’s wrong with it?” Rachel countered.

“It’s
navy
.”

“So?”

Grace glanced around and leaned toward her cousin, “It just seems…
Oh, Rach
, I hate to think... you’re giving up. There’s always hope...”

Kate pretended to look for something in her tote as Rachel stared at her cousin.

“Giving up?” Rachel asked, but then her face broke into a coy grin. “It just so happens, Doug loves this suit on me. And for the record, it hasn’t hurt my fertility either.”

Kate held her breath as she watched the cousins from across the bed.

Grace’s eyes widened. “
No!
”

“
Yes!
” Rachel beamed.

“Oh. My.
God
!” Grace blinked then turned and yanked a fistful of tissues out of a box before flinging herself bodily at her cousin. “I’m
so
relieved! I thought there was something awful happening. You weren’t talking to me... Then Jim made this
stupid
comment—” She blew her nose heartily, still clenching her cousin tightly to her. “Pregnant? Really?”

Kate’s hand went to her own stomach.

“I know!” Rachel beamed. “I’ve been popping with the news all night, but I wasn’t sure how to tell you. If you’d be okay with it…”

“Are you crazy? I’m so happy for you!”

“No one else knows,” she said. She turned to include Kate. “And I don’t want to make it public until I’m further along, so if you guys could just keep it between us?”

Grace pretended to zip her lips and drop the key. “I can’t believe it!” she burst out in a whisper. “When?”

“February, we think, but I totally stopped charting in December because it was stressing me out, so we’re a little sketchy on the date of conception. It’s ballpark until I go for my ultrasound next week.”

“An ultrasound!” Grace enthused.

Kate dropped her hand and eyed Rachel in her swimsuit, her blonde hair and petite figure set off beautifully by the classic lines and deep color. Kate looked at her own tankini, as the cousins quietly chatted about the good news, and quickly stuffed it back in her tote. Baby belly or not, there was no way she was wearing a stretched-out runner-up of a navy swimsuit. Rachel was
glowing
.

Kate pulled out her coral, tropical print bikini and tugged it on before she could chicken out.

Thankful for the waning light, she pulled her towel snug around her and followed Rachel and Grace to the dock. The mother in her noted Liam with Dick Pearson at the outdoor fireplace toasting marshmallows. The woman in her quickly saw the men at the water’s edge, laughing and jostling each other like teenagers. Carter was threatening to throw Doug off the dock. Ian was trying to block his escape, and Jim was standing to the side, laughing, an easy, light-hearted sound that rolled through the air and sent warm shivers up her bare arms.

Each was good-looking in his own way. Ian and Carter, clearly brothers, with their dark hair and broad shoulders. Doug, lean and golden-haired like his wife.

But it was Jim who drew and held her attention. Slightly taller than the others, his body all fluid muscle and masculine beauty, a soft thatch of hair on his tanned chest. He wore khaki swim trunks, and Kate’s mouth went dry as he absently adjusted the waistband.

Ruth Pearson, or Grams as everyone called her, waved them to the dock. “Took you girls long enough. I thought we might start with some races.”

Kate gulped. No one had said anything about... “Races?”

Rachel leaned in. “Grams is a hotshot swimmer. She was quite the competitor in her day. Even after her knee replacements last summer, she’s hard to beat.”

“I’m not sure...”

“Only if you want to,” Grams allowed. “I enjoy a brisk swim, limbers up the old bones, but you can sit this one out if you like.”

Kate sighed with relief even as Rachel challenged her husband to a race. Grace quickly decided she could beat Carter, and Jim’s grandmother paired off against Ian.

This was clearly not the first race of its kind. Rachel explained the rules to Kate. “We swim to the Bellevieu’s dock, rock the buoy to show you’ve made it that far, then be the first to grab the ladder at the end of our dock.”

“Ready, set...
go!
” Grace yelled. With that, Rachel and Doug dove into the water. Rachel took a decisive lead. The far buoy wiggled once, then twice, then the pair swam back, Doug calling out for mercy.

Rachel grabbed the ladder in triumph as Grams dove over her like a member of an Olympic relay team. Ian quickly followed.

“Go, Grams! Go!” Grace yelled as Ian began to catch up.

“Can’t you beat your own grandmother?” Carter bellowed. “Get the lead out!”

“You’re still ahead!” yelled Rachel.

Grams lost a little momentum on the return trip, but was still ahead by a whisper when Grace dove in with Carter in hot pursuit.

Kate wished she felt like a strong enough swimmer to take part, but there was no way she’d pit herself against the likes of Jim. Not with his reputation!

Grace cut through the water with single-minded determination, Carter pounding his strokes inches behind.

“Go, Gracie!” Rachel yelled. “He’s right behind you!”

Kate clapped with excitement as Grace jiggled the buoy and flipped around in one smooth turn. Moments later, Grace gave a yelp of surprise and disappeared under water. She came up howling as Carter roared past her.

He was nearly a body length ahead when he choked out a bark of surprise himself, then Grace surged forward, grabbed the ladder and thrust a fist in the air. “The women are the victors!”

Carter slicked his hand over his face. “At least the losers still have their pants on.”

“Where are they, anyway?” Grace demanded. “Don’t you know when you pants somebody you’re not supposed to rip them completely off?”

“Serves you right for buying a swimsuit so cheap it falls apart with one yank.” Carter climbed onto the dock and tossed the scrap of material onto the decking.

“You better not have torn my new bikini, or you’ll be buying me a new one!” Grace grabbed her swimsuit.

“It’s shocking, I know,” Jim said from behind Kate’s shoulder.

“What?”

“This unsportsmanlike behavior. I can see you’re shocked. As well you should be. Pants-ing is strictly forbidden. Automatic disqualification. Now we’ll never know the victors.”

Grace pointed at Carter. “He started it.”

“Regardless, there’s just one way to finish it,” said Grams. “Jim and Kate will have to compete.”

Kate felt herself pale. “Oh, no. I don’t think so. I’m no match for Jim.”

“Nonsense. You’re a perfect match for Jim! We’ll just level the playing field. Ian, fetch the chicken raft.”

Rachel clapped her hands. “Perfect! All you have to do is stay on the raft, Kate. You can’t touch each other,   but whomever stays on the raft the longest is the winner.”

Ian soon returned with a bright red plastic raft about six or so feet long by three or four feet wide. He dropped it in the water by the dock. It bobbed reassuringly.

“Okay,” said Grace, fully clothed again. “Paddle out so nobody falls into the dock and gets hurt. When you’re both standing, we’ll start.”

Jim stood holding the tow line on the raft so it stayed near the dock. Self-conscious now with all eyes on her, Kate dropped her towel.

“It looks stable enough,” she said, eyeing the raft.

Jim’s eyes were downcast, his expression blank. So much for the tropical print bikini catching his eye. “Kneel on it for now. We’ll stand once we’re away from the dock,” he instructed.

Kate climbed on.

Soft waves and Jim’s paddle strokes carried them thirty or forty feet from shore, making the once benign raft feel markedly less secure. Kate knelt awkwardly on the hard plastic, trying to simultaneously relax and suck in her stomach, wondering if she’d remember how to swim if she fell overboard.

“Just out of curiosity,” she asked as much to break the awkward silence as anything else, “how deep is the water here?”

Jim glanced somewhere over her left shoulder. “I don’t know. Fifteen? Twenty feet?”

Kate nodded. They were fairly close to shore, and she was a reasonably good swimmer last time she’d been in water deeper than the kiddie pool.

“Do you want to go back in?”

She looked up. He was incredibly close, so close she could see a soft sheen of sweat on his cheekbones. He swallowed then, his sinewy neck working, and Kate’s mouth filled with something that might have been desire. “No. No. Just wondering. I’m more used to pools with depth markers.”

Jim stared over her shoulder again, his hazel eyes turning a mysterious green like the water around them. “It’s probably easiest if I get up first. I won’t start until you’re ready, okay?”

He stood with an easy grace, and Kate’s heart sank. There was no way she’d be able to stand on this thing much less knock him off when he was such a natural. She mentally rehearsed the rudiments of swimming as he extended his hand and pulled her up in front of him.

“Bend your knees a little. Loosen your hips. It’ll help.”

Kate nodded and tried to emulate his relaxed posture. But how could she relax when she was in a ridiculous little bikini over water that looked like it might disgorge the Loch Ness Monster at any moment? Okay. Forget mythical monsters. When she fell off she would just have to remember to close her mouth and let herself bob to the surface. Then, she could grab one of the raft’s hand-holds and kick toward shore. Theoretically speaking.