Snowfall at Willow Lake: Lakeshore Chronicles Book 4 (33 page)

“I can't go down from here,” he said, correctly reading her thoughts. “Safer to go up.”

She didn't want to watch, but she couldn't look away. The ascent seemed to take hours, though it was really only minutes. Her heart counted out the seconds, and she came to a stark understanding of the amazing fragility of life. Everything could change in an instant. In a single instant, a light could be switched on or off. A decision could be made. An egg could be fertilized. A climber could slip and fall.

Then it struck her—how very much she loved having Julian in the world. That was when she stopped breathing and simply held her breath. It felt like a kind of praying.

At long last, he reached the summit, disappearing over a glinting bulge of ice. Daisy slumped down, feeling weak and suddenly quite cold. A fat length of rope snaked down the wall of ice. A top rope? Was he kidding? Did he think she was going to follow him up?

Charlie,
she thought.
I can't do stupid things anymore.
She looked at the rope again. This was Julian. He was crazy, but he knew how to keep her safe—didn't he?

She put away her camera, donned her backpack, helmet and goggles, double-checked her harness, secured the rope. “Belay on,” she called, “and if I make it up there, you're dead meat.”

She made the ascent with more caution—and more ice screws—than ever, picking the easiest route she could find. Even so, it was long and hard; her arms and legs were shaking, muscles screaming. She hadn't felt this physically challenged since giving birth. She was breathless and sweating when she finally hoisted herself to the summit. She stripped off the helmet and goggles, “That,” she said, “was awesome.”

He held out his hand, drawing her to her feet, and when she got up, he didn't let go. It was still there, the pulse of awareness she'd always felt when she was near him, the recognition, the wanting.

“Julian—”

He didn't let her finish but leaned down, framed her face between his hands and kissed her. He had never kissed her before, though she'd wanted him to. It wasn't a big, epic, Last of the Mohicans kind of kiss, but gentle and warm. Exploratory—a greeting. And in that way, completely devastating, because it made her heart ache with emotion.

He stopped kissing her and she pulled away, but her hands, still in their damp gloves, kept hold of his jacket. With an effort of will, she made herself let go and step back.

He didn't appear to take offense, but regarded her with solemn thoughtfulness. “I've been waiting a long time to do that.”

“Yeah, join the club,” she murmured, then felt embarrassed by the admission. “But, um, we probably shouldn't start anything.” Oh, man. Had she really said that?

“Why not?”

“Because you and I, we're…” Her voice trailed off; she couldn't explain.

“What are we together, Daisy?” His voice was edgy with frustration. “Can you answer me that? Because I'd really like to know.”

“You're one of my best friends,” she said with pained honesty. “I wish…” So much. There was just so much she wished. That she hadn't been such a wreck over her parents' divorce when she'd first met Julian. That the two of them weren't at such supremely different places in their lives now. That she could figure out how she felt about Logan. She thought about her mom, who hadn't followed her heart; she'd married the father of her child. It hadn't really worked out for Mom…or had it? Daisy remembered those photo albums, filled with images of a normal family through happy times and sad. One choice her mom had made had defined their family. It hadn't been so bad, had it?

She blinked fast and hoped he'd attribute her tears to the icy wind. “There's never been a good time for us.” She smiled, even though she felt like crying. “What is it that you want, Julian? To date me? To be my boyfriend? To be with someone who lives miles and miles from you, who has a baby to raise? Because that's the way things are. We can go out and do crazy stuff for an hour or two, but then we come back to reality. You're heading back to Ithaca and I'm going back to Charlie.”

“Sounds like you've already made up your mind about me.”

Didn't he know? She didn't have that kind of choice, not anymore.

J
uggling mail, paperwork from the law office and the dog's leash, Sophie let herself in and hurried to the wood-burning stove to heat up the cottage. Opal immediately wanted to play, so Sophie made the fire while accompanied by the nasally squeak of a dog toy.

This, then, was Sophie's life. She spent the day either with Charlie or at the law office. She picked up Opal from Noah's, where a girl named Chelsea looked after the dog along with the other animals after school. On some days, Max came for a visit; other days, Sophie went to a hockey practice or game. Gayle had introduced her to a few friends; Sophie discovered that not every woman in Avalon was allied with the Romanos. She was becoming a person she didn't recognize, someone who lived in a small town, creating a network of friends and family. Someone who had a puppy.

And…what
was
Noah, anyway? A boyfriend? Regardless of what she called him, he had a way of taking up a lot of room in a person's life, the human equivalent of having a giant, friendly dog in a tiny apartment. No, that wasn't fair. If Sophie was honest with herself, she wouldn't have him any other way. She loved his easy humor, un-feigned tenderness and huge appetite for sex, his absolute lack of concern over the fact that they were engaged in a whirlwind affair and his sturdy conviction that this was actually more than an affair.

He called at the usual time, just before dinner. Tonight's proposal—a hike through the woods with the dogs.

“It's freezing,” she said.

“Wear an extra layer.”

She met him on the snowy path that wound through the woods surrounding the old dairy farm. When he saw her, he broke into a grin, crossing the snowy expanse to grab her for a kiss. When had she ever felt this wanted? This important to someone—to anyone?

“How was your day?” he asked.

Or asked her about her day?

He took Opal's leash from her and they started walking. “Let's see. I vetted a real estate contract, wrote some letters in legalese, filed a brief with the superior court, consulted with a client. Atticus Finch I'm not.”

“Nope, you wear lipstick, and you dress better.”

Today's client had been Bo Crutcher, although Noah wouldn't hear that from Sophie. It was a well-known fact that Bo—whose legal name was, to his great humiliation, Bojangles—liked his beer, and while under its influence, tended to make promises he never meant to keep. His current dilemma was to make certain he was
not
the father of a local girl's baby, despite her assertion to the contrary.

The workday was over, though. Worries didn't stalk her home the way her job in the ICC had.

The path wound through the deep woods in the hills behind his farm. He pointed out some of the landmarks of his boyhood—a hickory tree where he'd once built a tree house, and a grove of sugar maples where he'd collected sap for maple syrup, winning a coveted 4-H club prize for his efforts. There was a rock he'd hit while tobogganing, splitting his head open, and the stream where he collected frogs' eggs in the spring to watch them turn into tadpoles. It was easy to imagine him in this setting, a boy at home in his world. No wonder he'd turned out to be such a well-adjusted adult.

“What's that look?” he asked her. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Lord, no. It just occurred to me that since we've met, I've been all take and no give.”

He laughed. “I wouldn't say that.”

“I would. I've been so focused on remaking my life that I've never asked you, never wondered…what do you want, Noah? What do you dream about?”

He thought for a moment. “A life that makes me happy. A life that makes sense.”

“That's too simple.”

“Maybe.” He dismissed the topic with a wave of his hand. “Watch your step,” he said, indicating a depression in the snow. “We're crossing a stream.”

“I don't see the stream,” she said.

“You just crossed it. Be really quiet, and you'll hear.”

He was right. She held very still and listened, detecting a faint trickle of water, invisible beneath the layers of snow.

“It's just starting to thaw,” he said.

“And I'm starting to freeze. Let's head back.” She looked around the quiet woods and smiled. “You can't imagine how different this is from what I used to do after work.”

“Yeah?”

“In the first place, I almost never came home before dark. On the way back to my apartment, I used to stop at a deli for a rollmops.”

“What's a rollmops?”

“My usual takeout dinner—pickled herring wrapped around a cucumber and served on a bun with onion.”

He made a gagging sound.

“Hey, don't knock it. I found it convenient, something to munch on while I spent the evening working some more.”

“Wait a minute, so you came home from work and then you worked at home?”

She tried not to cringe, remembering her lonely existence. “It filled the time for me.”

“What did you do for fun?”

“Fun?”

“You know, partying, going out?”

“Tariq—my friend and colleague—liked going to clubs. Very old-school. I rarely went with him, though.” She laughed. “Ever heard of a circle party?”

“You're not talking about the kind that takes place in a boys' locker room.”

“Noah.”

“Just checking. Is this a Dutch thing?” He made a hang-ten sign with his gloved hand. “Like, dude, circle party—”

“Well, they love inviting a
buitenlander
—a foreigner—to these things. But honestly, it's a bit like…I don't know. Watching paint dry. See, everyone sits in a circle in folding chairs, and we all shake hands, and have lukewarm tea or coffee and bad cake, meet the aunts and cousins, Oma and Opa and the little ones, and we tell each other everything is just
gezellig.
”

“Gezellig.”

“It's sort of hard to translate. It means…nice. Cozy and cordial, I suppose. You know,
gezellig.
A circle party goes on for hours.”

“I'd rather eat a rollmops.”

“Exactly.”

“But tonight, I'm making spaghetti.”

“Is that an invitation?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah. So get your
gezellig
ass in gear.”

When they returned to the house, he didn't even pretend to start dinner, but made love to her instead, and she didn't bother trying to resist. What she felt—desire, raw lust, whatever she wanted to call it—easily pushed past her customary caution. He was like the water under the snow, a secret spring, setting something free inside her. Like a couple of revved-up teenagers, they made out on the living-room sofa, eventually migrating to the bed and finally the deep, old-fashioned bathtub.

“Do you have any idea,” he asked her much later, “how crazy I am about you?”

She was in his bedroom, in the middle of getting dressed in the semidark. “No idea,” she said. “Remind me.”

He took hold of the sweater she had just pulled on. “Crazy enough to do it all over again,” he said, shimmying the soft cashmere up over her rib cage.

She was inches from going along with him. “Do you find it a little discomfiting, doing this in the same house where your parents—”

He stopped her with a kiss. “My mind doesn't go there. But I like the idea that there's love in this house.” He laughed at the expression on her face. “And yes, I did say that. I said the
L
-word.”

Love.

She tugged her sweater down. “You shouldn't use a word like that carelessly.”

“Who said I'm being careless? I love you. It's simple.”

“You can't know that,” she said, folding her arms tightly in front of her.

“I know what I know. You're still trying to pretend we're nothing but a hookup, but you're wrong. We've both been around enough to know we've got something here. And yeah, it's new and unexpected and sudden and all that. Doesn't mean it's not real. This is turning into something. Trust me on that.”

“It's…too soon.” She was so startled she didn't know what else to say.

“It's right now. And right now, Sophie Bellamy, this very minute, I'm crazy in love with you.”

It wasn't what she wanted to hear. And as declarations went, it was what some attorneys might call a squinting statement. It looked both ways, and gave itself a loophole.
Right now…this very minute.

He laughed again. “You take the term
overthinking
to a new level.”

“How would you know I'm overthinking this?”

“I can practically hear the gears grinding in your brain. But don't worry. There's a way to fix that.” His hand slid smoothly up under her sweater. He had an assured—and now familiar—touch, yet she always got the sense that he was surprised and turned-on as though touching her for the first time.

This time, she didn't resist, and for the next hour, she didn't think at all. Moreover, she didn't have to continue the dialogue he'd opened with that one little word. Still, she couldn't stop the emotions from welling up when he touched her with such tenderness. Here was something she had been missing in her life and until Noah, she had not known precisely what it was. Now she did. There was a special grace and power in holding someone and being held, a feeling of both strength and vulnerability, a sense of safety. Sophie felt it now, unexpectedly and unmistakably, with Noah.

In The Hague, she had friends and colleagues, but they were not the sort of people who could fill her up with such sweetness, with the feelings Noah stirred. The lack of a grand romance in her life had never been some huge issue or problem with her. Except in the sense that she didn't believe she had room for such a thing. She didn't want to wake up every morning thinking,
I need someone to hold me.

But now, with Noah's arms around her, she knew a part of her needed this connection like air and water. He had the ability to see into her heart, and for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, she didn't feel so alone. She finally knew what love felt like, true romantic love, and its power was devastating. It scared her to need him so much. She was supposed to be making it on her own, wasn't she?

“Enough,” she murmured, dragging herself back from the blissful edge of a postcoital nap. “You promised me dinner.”

“Maybe it was a clever ploy to lure you to bed.” He grinned and sat up, the sheet falling away to reveal a physique that nearly made her change her mind about getting up. There should be a law, she thought, requiring all men to train for Ironman triathlons.

With an effort of will, she left the bed and hurriedly dressed. Then she fixed her hair and put on fresh lipstick, pausing to study her image in the mirror.

“What's that look?” asked Noah.

“Shopping with Daisy was certainly fun, but I'm not so sure about this new wardrobe of jeans and skimpy sweaters.”

“What's wrong with skimpy? I like skimpy.”

“It looks ridiculous on a woman my age.”

“You look hot. Don't knock it. Your daughter has good taste. I hope she picked out something dressy for you, too.”

“Why is that?”

“There's a dance on Saturday night, at the fire hall. The whole town shows up for it.”

She frowned at the mirror again. “It sounds…fun.”

“Trust me, it's no Dutch circle party.”

“Oh, Noah. It's just not really a good time for me to—” She stopped, took a deep breath. “Noah, I don't want my kids to know. About us.” There, she'd said it, finally. She didn't let herself look at him in the mirror.

“Why not?”

“I came here for them. Not for…this. Not to meet someone, start something. They wouldn't understand.” Finally she turned to look at him. “
I
don't understand.”

“Quit worrying. I'm into you. I think you're into me. Any kid can understand that. What are you really afraid of, Sophie?”

Of how much it's going to hurt when it's over.
“Noah, I don't—”

The doorbell rang, followed by the sound of stomping feet. “Yo, Noah!”

“Saved by the bell.” He kissed her, briefly and hard, one last time. The bell rang again. “The guys are here.”

“You knew they were coming?”

“Sure. I promised them spaghetti, and we're practicing afterward.” He picked up a plaid flannel shirt, sniffed it.

“Nice of you to tell me. Now I'm trapped,” she said. “They're going to know we're sleeping together…”