She’d left his house only long enough to make them a plate of sandwiches and had literally had to hold them beneath his nose to get him to stop working long enough to eat. Before she was even halfway through her own sandwich, he’d finished both of his and was digging into one of the dusty, beat-up cardboard boxes he’d brought down from the attic.
"I didn’t think my family had left anything behind when we moved out," he told her, "but look what I just found."
It was a frame with a faded picture in it. "Oh, Rafe, this is great!"
His whole family was in the picture, and all of them were smiling, clearly happy to be at the lake for another summer. Of course, she immediately zoomed in on Rafe. There was that easy smile she remembered, the carefree way he held his tall, lanky frame…compared to the way his big, strong muscles fairly vibrated with tension now.
"And there you are, just like you always were."
The warmth in his voice had Brooke turning her gaze to his face instead of back to the picture. "I’m in the picture, too?" She quickly looked down again and realized what she’d missed the first time. All the Sullivans were there, but so was she, tucked in between Rafe and Mia, smaller than everyone else, but beaming up at the camera because she’d been with her favorite people.
"I don’t remember sneaking into your family photo."
"You didn’t sneak into the photo, Brooke, you belonged there."
It was the nicest thing he could have said to her, even nicer than his earlier compliment about her truffles. All she’d wanted her whole life, it seemed, was to belong. Her grandparents—and the Sullivans next door—had made it easy for her in all the ways her own parents hadn’t known how to.
Feeling like he was holding her heart in his hand, she said, "How about I take this next door and clean up the frame?"
"That would be great." A moment later, he was heading up into the attic again.
She looked down at the photo and realized her grandfather must have taken the picture. Did he know back then what a big crush she had on Rafe? Or that it would only grow bigger, stronger over the years?
As she walked outside and across the grass to her house, the reflection of the sun off the glass in the frame momentarily blinded her so that she had to look away from it and out at the blue water and green mountains. For the thousandth time since she’d moved back to the lake, she was stunned by the beauty all around her. She hoped she never took it for granted, that she took the time to appreciate it more every single day.
It wasn’t right that Rafe had been at the lake nearly twenty-four hours, and he hadn’t yet been in the water. But if she suggested a swim right now, she knew he’d never go for it. He was totally focused on the job at hand, between carrying out heavy furniture by himself and crawling under the house to see how far the damage extended. Clearly, he was planning on working until he dropped.
From the moment she’d seen him get off his motorcycle, he’d been too serious, too intense. Now that he’d talked to her about his job, she knew more of the reasons for that, but that didn’t change the fact that instead of fishing or hiking or relaxing on the beach, he was killing himself to try to clean up his disaster of a house. She wanted to see him smile more, laugh more, like he used to when they were kids.
A little work was fine and dandy; Brooke knew the worth of focus and determination firsthand as a small-business owner. But as she worked to wipe the frame clean, then propped it up on the kitchen counter, she figured there was nothing to lose in trying to convince him to see the wisdom of her suggestion that they have some fun together while he was here.
Knowing she’d have to be a little sneaky about it, she went back outside to the patch of grass between their properties and called, "Rafe, there’s something you’ve got to see outside."
She expected to see his head poke out from the open—and still dirty—attic window. Instead, she heard footsteps on the roof and realized he was standing, rather precariously, she thought, on top of his house.
"What’s wrong?"
See, that was just it. He immediately assumed the worst about things. Was it all down to his job? Or had something else happened that had given him this darker view of life?
"It’s out on the end of the dock. Come quick, but be careful getting down from there."
Seeing the concern on his face, she felt a little bad for messing with him, but it was for his own good. Besides, he’d know soon enough that everything was fine. She walked out to the end of his dock and waited for him. He swung down off the roof, his long legs quickly eating up the grass and the sand between them.
"What’s the problem?"
She couldn’t find the words to answer him for a long moment. Not when sweat had made his thin T-shirt stick to his chest. She’d seen pictures of men with perfect abs, but had never been this close to one. So close that she could reach out and touch him...
"Brooke?" He all but waved his hands in front of her eyes to pull her attention back to his face. "You said I needed to come down here to see something. What’s going on?"
"This."
Before he could figure out her intent, she shoved him into the lake, clothes, shoes, and all. The utter surprise on his face had her giggling, right before she jumped in, too.
Rafe was shaking the hair out of his eyes like a wet dog by the time she surfaced. Eighteen years ago, she would have been certain he would have thought what she’d just done was funny. But now? Honestly, she was a little nervous that he’d be angry with her, especially when she couldn’t read his expression at all.
"When you were eight," he began in a deep voice that had her shivering more than the temperature of the water, "I would have let you get away with that." He paused, and she was holding her breath until she finally saw the way he was trying to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching up into a smile. "But you’re not a little girl anymore. Which means I don’t have to play fair."
A second later he was reaching out to try to dunk her, but she was fast enough to swim out of reach before he could. Both of them were laughing now as he continued to chase her, and she managed time and time again to elude him. The water felt deliciously cool as she ducked beneath the surface and shimmied playfully around Rafe’s legs.
She hadn’t had this much fun in a very long time.
Oh, how she loved hearing him laugh, especially when the rumble of his joy danced across the surface of the water, the first real laughter she’d heard from him since last night. And in the end, that was what sank her, that she was paying more attention to the pleasure of finally making him happy for a few minutes, rather than working to make sure she stayed out of his clutches.