With difficulty, she rolled the cedar log in the water until it was righted again, then heaved herself up onto it and lay draped over the side, dripping and depleted.
For long minutes, she did not move. The crown of her head ached sharply with each pulse of her beating heart, and her shin would be badly bruised, but that was all. She was alive. When she was certain she had the strength, she slowly reached a hand down to pat her pocket. Miraculously, the lighter was still there.
For another minute, Annie lay motionless as the canoe drifted in a slow circle, and then the shivering set in, starting between her shoulder blades and spreading outward into her arms. Inch by Inch, she lifted her head. An eerie silence had settled over the lake in the aftermath of her splash, and even the crickets had ceased to sing.
She forced herself to sit up. The night was not cold, but cool enough to make hypothermia a real threat, sopping wet with a steady breeze that chilled her skin through her soaked clothes. She needed to get dry.
The paddle was floating a few feet away, and Annie retrieved it with a foot. She dug the blade into the lake, her arms half useless with fatigue and cold. Stroke by stroke, the canoe moved across the water, and the movement brought warmth to her limbs again.
Not until she was even with the boathouse did she notice the lamplight, pale yellow in the three lake-facing windows and pouring out over the dock. The sight was as inviting as a Christmas card—or would have been but for the silhouette that it lit from behind: Daniel, standing still as a statue, watching her from the dock.
Chapter 35DANIEL
It was the second time he’d woken to the sound of a woman in his lake, and for the second time, Daniel stepped outside and was startled by whom he found in the water.
He waited on the dock, his bare arms brushed by the cool night breeze as Annie angled the canoe in his direction and paddled forward. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was doing here, but why hadn’t she woken him first? Asked for his help, or at least his permission, to hunt around for clues in the dark?
Stroke by stroke, she drew nearer, until at last she veered the vessel away from the dock and toward the gently sloped northern shore.
Daniel almost raised a hand, almost called out to her, but something stopped him short. It was the stiffness of her body as she paddled. The way she was avoiding looking at him where he stood on the dock. The way she wasn’t calling out to him first. It was all wrong.
The canoe drew near to the shore and Daniel walked to the edge of the dock, jumping down as she brought it up onto the bank.
“Here, let me.” He reached for the bow.
“I’ve got it,” Annie snapped, and Daniel took a step back, tensing at her tone.
She still wasn’t looking at him and said nothing else as she clambered out of the canoe, splashed around to the back of the log, and shoved it forward, straining against the weight.
Though it pulled against every one of his natural instincts, Daniel stood back at a distance and didn’t offer his help again.
It took Annie several minutes to beach the canoe, minutes during which she did not meet his eyes, but when it was properly aground and rolled over to drain, she blew out a long breath, looking up at him as drops of water fell from her sleeves and hair and the hem of her shirt.
Daniel shook his head. “Seriously, Annie, what were you thinking? You could have drowned taking the canoe out by yourself. I was right here, right inside the boathouse, why didn’t you wake me up? I could have gone with you. Helped you find whatever it was you were looking for.”
Annie stood silent as a statue while the lake lapped at her heels.
“Well?” he asked.
“I… needed to do this on my own.”
Daniel waited, but apparently it was all she had to say.
“That’s it?” he said, incredulous.
Daniel searched the eyes that had once looked into his with something close to love, but were now guarded and unreadable.
A night wind brushed the surface of the lake and met them onshore, and Annie’s hands flew to her arms. Even in the dark, he saw the trembling in her lower lip. She must be freezing.
“Come on.” He turned for the boathouse. “You can’t stay in those clothes.”
“Wait,” she called out behind him, and he stopped, turning back.
“Let’s build a fire.” She nodded toward the dark ring of stones on the ground. “I can hang my clothes on one of the chairs to dry.”
Daniel hesitated. She was watching him strangely, her face full of an anxious anticipation that didn’t match her words, and he had the distinct feeling that he was being tested, that whatever he said in response would be carefully weighed in the balance.
Slowly, he nodded once. “Okay. Let’s build a fire.”
