Maeve slept better than she had in years, curled up on a twin bed next to Zoey. It had taken her a while to fall asleep, reliving the conversation with Brodie, replaying again and again the tiny nod he’d given her in understanding of her past decisions. She would never be able to put into words how important that nod had been to her, how it relaxed every muscle in her body just a tiny bit, tension she hadn’t known she’d carried with her every day for the last eight years.
She told herself that was all she cared about—if her thoughts strayed to the looks over the fire that made her heart thrum, trapped and frantic, she convinced herself it meant nothing. Brodie was nothing if not a master of the lingering look.
Thick blankets hung as curtains over the windows and the sun streamed in through the cracks giving the room a pale glow and the comforting scent of warm wool. Zoey snored softly in the adjacent bed. Maeve was torn between snuggling down and sleeping longer or getting up and making the most of a few precious hours alone before anyone else woke up.
She chose the latter, and pulling on her tracksuit bottoms and an orange sweater with a hood she could bury herself cozily inside, she went to make herself coffee.
In the kitchen, she was surprised to see the coffee machine on and half full, a note on the counter read,help yourself!in the kind of confident slanting cursive that she imagined someone like Brodie would have.
Maeve poured herself a cup and looked around but there was no sign of him in the cabin.
Hands wrapped round the thick pottery mug, she walked outside. There were no curtains to block the sunshine now and it bathed the veranda like a coat of yellow paint, filtering through the pines and the aspens, coloring the leaves the mock gold of fall.
She took a seat on the veranda steps to gaze out at the river, warm mist hovering like clouds over the water, and sighed at the calm beauty of it all.
It was then she saw Brodie carving lengths through the water, fluid and agile, water glistening off his bronzed skin with each stroke, sun catching on the droplets as they fell from his fingertips, his hair slicked back dark. She stared with her cup to her lips. When she realized she was staring, she gave herself a shake, drank a slug of too-hot coffee and burned her mouth. And rather than think about his tanned, muscular arms, she thought how surprising it was to see him so athletically active. It put her floating-on-her-back to shame last night.
As he swam through the mist, there was a serenity to the scene that made her feel like she was intruding. He always seemed to be on show and yet this was just him swimming alone in the river of his childhood.
She was staring, again. She shut her mouth, swallowed, felt the invasion of her gaze but couldn’t look away.
Before she could think about standing up and going back inside, however, he stopped swimming and, looking toward the cabin, waved when he saw her.
Maeve forced a smile and waved back. She tried to play it cool but it seemed obvious that she’d been watching him. How did raising her hand to wave back somehow feel trite and rehearsed, like she was some starstruck fan?
Brodie swam toward the shore and when he got to the shallows, strode out of the water. She tried not to stare at him, the sun glinting off his torso. “Morning!” he grinned.
“Hi.” She saw his towel draped over the balustrade and when he got close enough, she pulled it down and chucked it to him, hoping he might cover himself up.
Instead, he just roughly dried himself then wrapped the towel around his waist so his chest was still on display, the honeycomb muscles and shoulders wide enough to shadow the sun as he stood in front of her. “It’s perfect out there,” he said, slicking back his hair with both hands.
She imagined him on a photoshoot and willed the previous version of him back, the one who hadn’t known he was being watched. When she looked up, all she could see washim, her vision engulfed by all his glowing skin and bench-pressed abs.
“Do you think you could just—” She raised a hand and waved it in the vague region of his chest.
“What?” Brodie looked confused.
Maeve scrunched up her nose, embarrassed that she’d even said anything. “You know, dial it back a bit.”
“What do you mean?” Brodie looked down at himself.
“This.” She motioned up and down with her hand. “The whole photoshoot vibe.”
Brodie barked a laugh in understanding. “Sorry,” he said. “Is the sight of my bare chest too much for you?”
“Quite frankly, yes.” All hopes of playing it cool were now out the window. “Especially at seven in the morning.”
Brodie laughed as he grabbed his T-shirt from the railing and yanked it on. Then he flopped down in the chair across from where she was sitting on the steps. His hands hanging relaxedly off the armrests of the Adirondack, his head tipped slightly back, he said, “So you find me distracting?”
Maeve closed her eyes for a second, she could feel her cheeks flaming, embarrassed that she’d ever said anything. It made her defensive. “I don’t find you distracting. I find you too much of a?—”
“What?”
“Too much of a show, I guess.”
He raised a brow, feigning offense.
She shrugged, like she was only being honest but knew she was just trying to dampen his ego to level the playing field. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell with you, Brodie, what’s real and what’s not.”
