Daniel watched her silently, his posture tense, and Annie sighed as she turned to him.
“This is the first time you’ve had a woman in here, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
For a few beats, Annie said nothing. This was difficult for him. Brand-new. And given his history, his trust issues were probably just as bad as her own, if not worse. He had been hiding out here for the better part of a decade without anyone knowing who he truly was. Inviting someone in to poke around his private sanctuary had to be setting off every alarm bell in his head, and sympathy pooled in Annie’s heart as she gazed at him, standing stiffly in the kitchen.
Just like her, he needed time to open himself fully to someone else, though she sensed that he wanted to, badly.
“Come on,” Annie said, moving past him to grab the pail on the kitchen counter. “These cherries aren’t gonna eat themselves.”
Out on the dock, Daniel pulled the Adirondack chairs close together and Annie took her seat with a contented sigh, kicking off her shoes and placing the pail of cherries between them on the wooden arm.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said as he sat down, “now that I know the truth, do you still want me to call you Daniel?”
Daniel lifted a cherry from the bucket and popped it into his mouth.
“Nico Dunn is dead, as far as I’m concerned.” He spit the pit into the lake. “Daniel’s just fine.”
“How about Danny, then?” she joked. “Danny and Annie?”
He shot her a sideways eye roll.
An hour passed, stretching into another, and the sun floated slowly across the lake, shimmering and hazy. They ate the fruit in easy conversation, laughing as they tried to outdo each other in launching the pits farthest into the water.
The shadows on the western shore were growing long, stretching dark, pointed fingers into the lake when Annie lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
“What are you thinking about?” Daniel asked as she gazed out across the water.
She turned to face him. “Honestly?”
He nodded.
Annie lifted another cherry from the pail and pulled the stem free, twisting it back and forth in her fingers.
“I’m wondering how it’s possible that I feel more like myself with you in less than a week than I did in five and a half years being married to Brendan.”
Daniel’s answer was silent, a simple gesture that said more than words ever could as he reached for her hand and took it in his own, lacing their fingers together.
Annie gently squeezed his hand in return, smiling.
Shedidfeel like herself.
More than that, she felt free, and younger, and bolder than she had in a long time, and when Daniel gave her hand a little tug, she rose wordlessly from her chair and joined him in his, sliding onto his lap and cupping his face in her hands as their lips met.
Chapter 20DANIEL
Padding barefoot and bleary-eyed to the front of the boathouse, Daniel was greeted by wide puddles on the dock and a gloomy morning in the clearing beyond. The leaves and boughs drooped with moisture and thick fog rolled across the surface of the lake.
A heavy sigh passed his lips as he walked to the kitchen to start breakfast. It was less than ideal weather for what he and Annie had planned for today, but they’d figure out a way to make it work.
After a bowl of canned hash and eggs, Daniel donned a hooded sweatshirt and stepped outside to wait, leaning against the boathouse in the shelter of the awning as cold raindrops fell at his feet.
A few minutes before nine, the rumble of the Jeep’s engine rose above the patter, and Daniel stepped forward as Annie rolled into the clearing, smiling behind the sweeping windshield wipers. Instantly, his worries about the weather vanished. Annie was a trooper.
She laughed up at the sky as she stepped out of the Jeep, then ran for Daniel, who wrapped her in his arms before they made a dash for the shelter of the thick firs on the lake’s western shore.
“You sure you’re up for this?” he asked as they approached a tarp-covered heap on the ground, and she nodded, brushing away the dropsthat had gathered in her hair. Daniel slid away the tarp that covered the canoe and folded it in a sloppy square, leaving it on the ground.
