“Really?” he asked at last.
“Yeah.” Jake nodded. “I mean it. It’s high time you had a real relationship. This’ll be good for you; it’ll break you out of your shell. And, listen, I know there’s a few years of age difference between the two of you now, but that won’t matter as much later on. Truly, man, I’m happy for you.”
Though it went against his nature, Daniel hopped down from the dock and wrapped Jake in a hug.
“Thanks, brother,” he said into Jake’s shoulder.
“Of course.” Jake pulled back to look Daniel in the eyes. “I’ve always believed there’s someone special for all of us. A soulmate. Who knows, she might be yours.”
Daniel couldn’t help the cynicism that rose up to meet Jake’s claim. “I doubt fate has much to do with it. People lose their soulmates all the time.”
Jake stepped toward the car and opened the door. “Finding them in the first place is the miracle. After that, every day is a gift, not something we’re owed.”
Daniel followed him to the car, smiling. “You know, one of these days you might spout your Sunday-school philosophy to the wrong guy and earn yourself a punch to the mouth.”
Jake turned for a moment, lifting his arms at his sides, palms open to the sky. “Whom shall I fear, brother?”
Daniel shook his head, still smiling, and Jake climbed into the car and pulled backward, whipping the cruiser around in the clearing and roaring through the open gate.
Daniel spent the rest of the morning with his drawing pad on the dock. As noon approached, the fog lifted in earnest and the firs appeared around the lake, richly green and bathed in sunlight. A deerstepped out from the shadows on the western shore, and he watched as it approached the water, bending its graceful neck to drink.
“Hey!”
Daniel jerked his head to the right, startled. Jamie Boyd had materialized out of nowhere and was climbing onto the dock, her high ponytail swishing behind her.
“Hey.” Daniel frowned as she stepped past him, pulling her hair free and letting it fall to her waist. “What are you doing here?”
“Thought I’d go for a swim.”
Daniel’s frown deepened. “When’s the swim test, again?”
Jamie shimmied out of her shorts and let them fall around her ankles.
“Last week. I got the job at the pool, but it’s closed for the rodeo, and I kind of had to get out of the house. My dad decided to start drinking early today. It’s better to not be around when he does that.”
She didn’t look at him as she said it, but Daniel heard it in her voice, and he remembered all too well the desperate feeling of needing somewhere, anywhere, to hide.
“Okay. Don’t swim too far out.”
She pulled her shirt over her head, revealing a turquoise suit that perfectly matched her eyes. Daniel dropped his gaze back down to his drawing pad as she stepped to the edge of the dock and dove forward into the lake.
He should head inside.
He flipped the pad closed and stood, hesitating, remembering Jake’s warning from earlier. He couldn’t very well leave Jamie alone in the lake with a wanted killer wandering the woods. With a heavy sigh, he sat back down and crossed his legs at the ankles.
Sunshine was pouring freely from the sky now, and there was a steady wind from the south, the lake so bright with thousands of sunlit dimples that it hurt Daniel’s eyes as he watched Jamie slicing her way across the surface with strong, clean strokes.
Quickly, he opened his drawing pad again and flipped to a blankpage. He sketched straight dark pines and the rough outline of the lake. Jamie was still swimming powerfully, and Daniel’s eyes flicked back and forth from the lake to the pad as he captured the scene.
Swiftly, he drew her, the curving outline of her body barely cloaked by the clean surface of the water, the strong, well-defined arm mid-stroke over her head, and the long fair hair sleek and smooth down her back.
His sketches of the mountain sold well enough in town, but he’d learned over the past few years that the highest prices were fetched by drawings with people in them. Jake mid-shout, his eyes hooded by the brim of his baseball cap as he reeled in a fish. Phil at the General Store, asleep behind the counter with his dark face lined in slumber, his chin resting on his hand. Those had gone for a hundred and fifty each, though the sketch of Phil had been bought by his wife, Sheila, and Phil later grumbled to Daniel about it, muttering that the woman could watch him sleep any doggone time she wanted without paying a small fortune for it.
Sketches with movement in them did well, too, like the one of the bald eagle soaring low over the lake, casting a long, distorted shadow on the water.
This drawing would tick both of those boxes. Two hundred bucks at least, if he could get the basic sketch done here, then copy it onto a larger canvas later on.
Jamie slowed in the water and rolled over, floating on her back with the sun kissing the front of her body. She spun in a slow circle and kicked her feet, propelling herself toward the boathouse in a backstroke.
