“Turn around,” I said, my voice too thin, my heart hammering so loud I was sure he heard it.
He did, without hesitation. His broad back faced me, shoulders glistening with drops of lake water, muscles shifting as he treaded water.
My breath faltered as I stripped down to nothing but my bra and panties.
I jumped in before I could talk myself out of it. The water closed over my head, cool and shocking, the lake swallowing me whole until my feet grazed the bottom, and I pushed back up for air.
When I surfaced, he was there, floating on his back a few feet away. His dark hair was slicked against his head, droplets trailing down the hard lines of his chest. The sight of him—bare, unguarded—knocked the breath right back out of me. My stomach twisted, and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about our kiss.
How confident he’d been, like he knew exactly what he was doing—yet there was a gentleness, too. A type of coaxing that left my head dizzy and my mind whirling even now.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, his face now turned toward me.
I kicked my feet, putting more distance between us. “I was thinking about how I was almost discovered back there. Thank you for saving me.”
A smile curved its way through his mouth, but his eyes cut to mine, as though he didn’t quite believe me. “I’d just walked into the meeting when someone mentioned a nude model,” he said. “Didn’t take me long to figure out what was happening.”
A shaky laugh slipped out of me. “Can you imagine what they would have thought if I’d actually started painting? They would’ve known I was a fraud within seconds.”
We drifted as we talked, water carrying us little by little toward the shallows. The lake lapped soft against my shoulders, and when Dean stood, water streamed down his chest in sheets, catching the sun like glass. I swallowed hard. My own feet barely brushed the bottom.
“Sorry,” I said, pushing wet hair away from my face. “If you missed your meeting because of all that.”
He looked at me for a long moment before answering. “It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine, and we both knew it.
“The men in suits?” I asked. “Are they what your meeting was about today?”
His jaw shifted. “Yeah.”
“Was it important?”
He drew a slow breath, water lapping quietly in the wake between us, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he his gaze dropped—just briefly—to my mouth. “No,” he whispered.
Heat swept through me, so sharp and dizzying that my pulse stuttered.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m attracted to you, Emily.”
I wasn't expecting that answer––this shift. I was so thrown by it that I didn’t quite know how to breathe anymore—let alone speak.
And somehow, without my realizing it was happening, the gap between us closed, making me hyper aware of his bare skin, inches from mine.
His hand lifted, brushing a wet strand of hair from my face. But then his fingers stayed, unhurried, tracing my temple, then the soft curve of my jaw.
Every nerve in my body strained toward him, pulled taut with the certainty that he was about to kiss me again.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. Then, just as fast, hesitation flickered across his face.
“We need to be careful,” his hand fell away, then his eyes averted from mine to the water. “I don’t want things to get… complicated.”
I cut him off with a brittle smile. “Right. Of course.” I forced the words out like armor, even as something ached deep in my chest.
Six more days of pretending.
Six more days of convincing his family we were in love—while trying to ignore how the heat between us blurred every line.
The silence thickened, heavy and suffocating. His jaw flexed, like he was biting back something he knew he shouldn’t say.
