Slow Burn Cowboy

He turned and smiled at her, that crooked grin of his making something inside her feel off balance too. “Your wish is my command.”

He took two long strides to the dock and then another long one off, diving headfirst into the still, serene water, leaving nothing but a circular ripple behind as he disappeared beneath the surface.

He reappeared a second later, whipping his head back, a stream of water flying from his dark hair. He rubbed his hand over his face, pushing water drops from his skin while he kept himself afloat.

“Come on.” He gestured broadly, slapping the surface of the lake.

She rolled her eyes and reach down, grabbing the hem of her dress and shimmying slightly as she pulled it over her head. She could feel him watching her, and for some reason it felt incredibly awkward.

Apparently stripping her dress off in front of him was more awkward than just walking out in her bikini would have been. Even though she knew she had a swimsuit on underneath, she felt somehow strange and insecure. Like maybe she was wrong, and she had forgotten something crucial and she might be getting naked in front of him without realizing it.

She flung the dress to the side, letting it land in a patch of grass. And then she checked quickly to see that she was—in fact—wearing her suit.

She wrapped her arms around herself, clinging to her own midsection as she shuffled across the dock. The wood was warm beneath her feet, but she knew the water was going to be cold.

“How is it, Donnelly?”

“Like a hot tub,” he said, smiling in a way that let her know he was lying. And not even very well.

“Somehow, I’m skeptical of that.”

“You think I would lie to you?” He swam nearer to the dock.

“Yes,” she said.

He gripped the end of the dock, looking up at her, his brows lifted, his forehead slightly wrinkled. He was the picture of boyish innocence. Except for his muscles. For some reason, she found herself drawn to the way the water droplets slid down the ridges of his shoulders, over his chest.

She blinked.

“I’m shocked,” he said, doing a very good impression of someone who might be wounded. “How could you not trust me? One of your very oldest friends?”

“That’s exactly why, Finn,” she said, leaning down slightly. “Because I’ve known you for far too long. And I think that you want me to jump in and freeze myself. Because you’ll think it’s funny. You’re a child. And I know you well enough to know that.”

“Really?”

She bent down lower, hands on her knees. “Really.”

And that was the last thing she said before Finn reached up, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up against him, bringing her down beneath the surface of the water with him. He brought her right back up again, still holding on to her.

She sputtered, a hank of dark hair drooping in her face, lake water streaming down into her mouth. “You brat!” She shrieked, pushing her hair up out of her face, feeling it resting there on top of her head in an inglorious mat. She reached out, holding on to the dock while kicking her legs, the cool lake water swirling around her.

“You were going to get in anyway. I saved us both a bunch of time and shrieking.”

“I’m still shrieking!”

“But not as much as you would have if you’d worked your way in slowly.”

“Oh,” she said, “okay, you saved shrieking. But who’s going to save you?”

She turned, launching herself away from the dock and at Finn, pressing down on his shoulders and pushing his head beneath the water. He went easily. Easily enough that she knew he hadn’t bothered with any real fight. In fact, he had allowed the dunking. It was a pity dunk.

When he came back up, he shook his head and doused her with water. Then he grinned, water rolling down his face, the look in his eye mischievous and maybe even a little bit predatory.

She became very aware, suddenly, of the warmth of his skin beneath her palms, in stark contrast to the chilly water. She kicked her feet, and her legs tangled with his for a moment. She gasped, moving away from him and ducking beneath the water, swimming as hard and fast as she could. Away from him.

When she resurfaced, he was still back by the dock and she had gone out quite a way. She continued to tread water there for a while, keeping an eye on him. As far as she could tell he was just looking at her. Looking at her and doing nothing. For what reason? She had no idea. But she wasn’t about to ponder it too deeply.

She shook her head and went face forward into the water again, swimming in a straight but aimless line. When she looked back at the dock, she saw that he was lying out on the wood, his arms thrown up over his head, water pooling around him.

Submerging again, Lane swam back toward where he was, gripping the edge of the dock and levering herself up beside him. She was breathing hard, the exertion of her impromptu lap swim leaving her limbs feeling wrung out and vaguely like spaghetti.

Wind whipped across the surface of the lake, rippling the dark water, and then skimming over her skin, leaving goose bumps behind. The wood was warm, so she lay down too, next to Finn but with a healthy amount of distance between them.

They had done this a thousand times—swimming, dunking each other, relaxing in the sun afterward. And never before had there been this strange undercurrent. It was her. It had to be. The non-thing with Rebecca and Finn nearly hooking up was only part of it. Normally, she would have just brushed that off. But the intensity of how unsettled she’d been recently, the almost-manic energy and drive she had felt to do something—anything—with her business so that she would be as accomplished as she needed to be—it was making her tense even around her oldest friend.

She felt like a fragile, knit creation that had gone through the past ten years with a loose thread hanging free somewhere. Unnoticed. Undisturbed.

Until the past few weeks when Cord McCaffrey had gone national with his whole handsome, charismatic politician shtick.

Now the thread had been pulled. She had been pulled. That loose string yanked and yanked until she felt threadbare and dangerously close to unraveling completely.

This edginess was just a symptom of that unraveling. All of those patchy, unprotected places suddenly more vulnerable to...whatever this was.

What she had to do was get their friendship back on typical footing. She should ask him how things were going with his brothers. Why he was so tired. If there was anything she could do.

She rolled over onto her side, and her breath caught in her throat. Anything she’d been about to say died.

Her eyes were held captive by him. By that sharp, angular curve of his jaw that was dusted with a couple days’ worth of stubble.

From there, she looked at the strong column of his throat, which was notable somehow. Maybe because it was yet another thing that signified his maleness. And then there was his chest. She had been swimming with him about a million times, give or take. She had seen him without a shirt the moment she had looked out her living room window today. They had walked down to the lake together. But still, she had somehow managed to avoid really seeing.

For years, she had managed to avoid seeing.

Now all she could do was see.

That broad expanse of chest covered with dark hair. The ridges of muscle that shifted each time he breathed, running down his abdomen like a perfect, living washboard. Down to the hard cut of muscle at his waist that pointed downward, framing the flat space of his stomach just below that final ridge of ab and drawing her eye down to the waistband of his shorts.

She refused to ponder any farther down.

He sucked in a deep breath, every well-defined line moving as he did, then again as he released the breath on a masculine sigh.

Finn Donnelly was a man. Like, a MAN. In all capital letters. With muscles and chest hair and everything beneath the waistband of his shorts.

She knew that. Of course she did. But she had spent a very long time pretending she didn’t. Pushing it to the back of her mind. What did it matter if Finn was a man? Why would she ever think of him that way specifically? He was her friend first. Above all else. Her rock, her comfort and her stalwart in times of need.

The fact that he was a man had only ever been secondary in their relationship. An incidental.

But it was full frontal now. Big and glaring and impossible to ignore.