Actually snorts, this undignified honking that turns into full-body laughter so intense she can barely keep her head above water. She doubles over, tears streaming. I cough up lake water, my dignity somewhere at the bottom of Copper Lake. And I don’t care.
“Oh, my god.” She gasps for air. “Your face when you realized?—”
“In my defense, Swayze made it look easy.”
“Swayze trained for months!” She’s wheezing. “You watched a YouTube tutorial in the truck, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
She loses it. Goes under, comes up sputtering and still giggling. I’m laughing too—when did I start laughing like this?—and the sun is warm and the water is cold and nothing has ever felt this right.
“Okay.” She catches her breath. “No more Dirty Dancing. Ever. I’m putting it in the prenup.”
“We don’t have a prenup.”
“We do now. Clause one: no romantic lifts in bodies of water. Clause two: no romantic lifts anywhere.”
“What about unromantic lifting?”
“Acceptable. Romantic lifting is grounds for annulment.”
I pull her close. “I’m counting that as a partial success.”
“Partial—Daniel, you nearly drowned us.”
“But I didn’t.” I brush wet hair from her face. “And you laughed.”
She stops. The giggles fade. Her expression shifts into something softer, something that makes my chest tight.
“Yeah,” she says. “I did.”
We float there for a moment, wrapped around each other, the water holding us both. Her fingers trace patterns on the backof my neck. My thumb strokes slow circles on her hip. The playfulness is still there, but underneath, something else is building. Something that’s been building for weeks.
I press my forehead to hers. “Let’s get out of this water before we freeze.”
“And then?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with possibility.
“And then I’m going to show you exactly why I brought you here.”
Chapter 11
Daniel
Her skin tastes like lake water and sunshine.
We’re on the shore, still damp, and I’ve got the truck doors open so the radio can reach us. Some old country song my mom used to love, the kind with a slow fiddle and lyrics about forever. I didn’t plan this part—the dancing—but when the song came on and Delaney was standing there with the sun turning her hair to silk, I couldn’t help myself.
I pulled her in. She came willingly.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” she murmurs against my shoulder, her body swaying with mine like we’ve done this a thousand times.
“My mom taught me.” The words come easier than I expected. “When I was a kid, I used to stand on her feet while she danced around the kitchen. She said a man who can dance is a man who knows how to listen to his partner.”
Delaney pulls back enough to look at my face. Her eyes are soft. Searching. “She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.” I spin her out, pull her back in, and she laughs with surprise at the move. “She used to bring me here, to this lake. Said it was the only place in the world where she could hear herself think. After she died, I couldn’t come back for years. It hurt too much.”
