“Anything outdoorsy,” Nate repeated, lips twitching.
She gave a nervous laugh. “Yeah, well. Big fan of nature.”
In truth, her last hike had been a stroll through a manicured palace garden in Versailles, flanked by security and a photographer discreetly snapping “candid” shots of her and Jullien. The whole thing had taken a month of planning. But this, bobbing beside a man who wasn’t doing mental math on her net worth, made her feel buoyant and unmoored for the first time. Like freedom with a mild case of vertigo.
“What about you?” she asked, desperate to change the subject before he cornered her for details.
Nate shifted against the buoy and shrugged. “Oh, you know. My life is a rich tapestry.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I build things.”
Her brows flicked up. “You build things?”
“Small things,” he clarified. “Model kits. Furniture I probably shouldn’t attempt without adult supervision.” He shrugged again, this time a little sheepish. “I like following instructions. There’s something comforting about knowing that if you complete steps one through seven, the thing actually becomes a thing.”
“That is alarmingly wholesome.”
He groaned. “I was going for brooding.”
“What kind of things?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“So, I’ve gotten into… birdhouses.”
Allegra lost it. “Birdhouses?!”
“You promised!” he howled, splashing her.
She squealed. “Okay, I’m leaving. Sunburn incoming.”
“Yeah, go. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Allegra kicked back to shore, wrung out her hair, and tugged on her clothes before plopping onto the pebbles. Nate emerged from the water a few minutes later, and oh. Oh, hell. She watched, transfixed, as the lake surrendered him inch by glorious inch. Chest. Bellybutton. The V of his groin. And then—shit, shit, shit—the rest of him, water sluicing down his skin like the universe was showing off.
She tried not to gawk. She really did. But it was like asking the sun not to shine. Impossible, when the outline was right there, stretching down his left thigh in an obscene diagonal, the wet fabric straining as if it were one wrong move from giving up entirely.
Allegra pushed her sunglasses up her nose and twisted, pretending very hard to be fascinated by a seagull fighting a toddler for a bag of chips. Too late. The image was burned into her retinas.
Nate strolled up the beach, grabbed his T-shirt, and dabbed his face. “Huge, huh?”
Her brain went record scratch. “I, uh, what?”
“The lake. Must be the biggest in Europe?”
“Yes. Lake,” she blurted, voice an octave too high. After a slow breath: “Actually, it’s fourth. Lake Ladoga’s the biggest.Followed by Lake Onega. And then… Vänern. In Sweden.” Why are you still talking?
He squinted at her. “You had all that ready to go?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
He grinned, shaking his head. “You’re adorably weird, Ella. Total nerd. But, like, cool nerd.”
“How kind, birdman,” she said, chin lifted, praying her cheeks weren’t broadcasting her embarrassment in HD.
