The Long Hot Summer

“Still can’t,” he admitted. “I fixed the dock yesterday. That’s why I was late making it up to the house last night. You’d gone to bed. Guess I forgot you old people turn in early,” he teased.

When he turned around to give her one last look, he caught her smiling. “You always had a smart mouth. But it’s a good-looking one, to be sure,” she conceded. “Join me for supper?”

Somehow, arriving on the back doorstep like a stray dog looking for a handout didn’t sit too well. Johnny shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

She grunted, and she, too, shook her head, which sent the loose skin on her cheek into a slight tremor. “The more things change, the more things stay the same. Supper’s at seven. Come through the front door, and put on a shirt.”

A bar of soap jammed in his back pocket, Johnny left the boathouse and headed for Oakhaven’s swimming hole. He didn’t have to think twice how to find his way. He hung a left off the trail, ducked under a familiar leafy hickory, and the swimming hole came into plain view. Small and secluded, the pond still looked like a well-kept secret in the middle of nowhere.

Johnny pulled off his boots, stripped his socks and unzipped his jeans. He was just seconds away from sending them to the ground when he heard a loud splash. He gave his jeans a tug back to his hips, yanked his zipper upward, then moved to the water’s edge.

So this is where she’d gone.

Johnny watched as Nicole surfaced, then rolled onto her back and began kicking her way to the middle of the pond. Something blue caught his eyes along the shore. He slipped through the foliage and found her towel and cutoffs draped over a downed hickory limb. A pair of canvas sling-back shoes were perched on a stump.

She had no idea someone was there, and he could have sat and watched her all afternoon—something he would have enjoyed doing if he weren’t so annoyed by the fact that she was so unobservant. He scanned the bank until he found two flat stones. Then, gauging the distance, he dropped down on one knee and let the first rock fly. It entered the water like a shot out of a gun, sailing past Nicole’s pretty nose with deadly accuracy. By the time he’d sent the second rock zooming on its way, her feet had found the bottom of the pond, and she was searching the bank with alarm in her wide eyes.

When she spied him, her alarm turned to anger. “Are you crazy! You missed me by less than an inch.” Her voice was shrill, irritation evident in the straining pitch.

“No, it was more like four,” Johnny quipped.

She waded toward him, her breasts swaying gently in her swimsuit. She left the pond behind and kept coming up the grassy bank. “One inch or four—I don’t see much difference, Mr. Bernard. It was too close and—”

“Johnny.”

She stopped a few feet away and met his eyes disparagingly. “What?”

“You keep forgetting my name.”

She glared down at him where he still knelt in the grass. “We’ve been all through that,” she snapped.

“Yes, we have.” He glanced around as if looking for something, or someone. “You haven’t seen old One Eye around, have you?”

“One Eye?” She tipped her head to one side and began squeezing the water from the ends of her hair. “What’s a ‘one eye’?”

Johnny stood and hung his hands loosely on his hips. “One Eye’s a gator. He used to take his afternoon nap in this here swimming hole years ago.”

Her hands stilled. “An alligator? Here?”

Johnny told the lie easily. One Eye had always favored the privacy of the black bog deeper in the swamp. And he might still be there. But more than likely, the aging gator had been turned into a purse or a sturdy pair of boots by now.

He let his gaze travel the length of her delicate curves. Outlined in the skimpy, two-piece swimsuit, she was definitely hot. He wanted to stay in control of the situation, but his imagination was working overtime, and right now he would have liked nothing better than to run his hands over her satin-smooth skin, lick the water beads from her bare shoulders, lower her to the grassy bank for some serious one-on-one.

“You always run around half-dressed, or is this a sign my luck’s changing? Twice in one day. I’d say that’s—”

“Is there something you wanted besides stopping by to give me a hard time?”

Now there was a phrase. Johnny shifted his stance hoping to ease his discomfort, then reached for her towel and tossed it to her. She caught it, and after drying herself off, she picked up her cutoffs and slipped them on.

“Next time you think about swimming, it would be smart to tell somebody where you’re going.” Johnny glanced over Nicole’s shoulder to where a snake hung camouflaged in the branches. It was a harmless variety, and yet it could just as easily have been poisonous. She was completely unaware of her surroundings, and, again, it angered him. “This isn’t L.A., cherie. You got more to worry about here than rush-hour traffic and parking tickets. Here, you never know what might fall out of the sky.”

She looked thoroughly annoyed with him. She said, “If that’s all you came by to say, it’s getting late. Gran will be—”

“Glad I came along to make sure you didn’t drown, or worse.”

“I’m a good swimmer.”

With lightning-quick reflexes, Johnny shot his arm out past her head and yanked the snake out of the tree. As it dangled from his outstretched hand, thrashing to free itself, he drawled, “And just how good are you with curious snakes?”

To his surprise, she didn’t go crazy on him and start screaming the way he’d expected she would. She did, however, take several steps back. “I didn’t see it,” she admitted.

“I know.” He gave the mottled brown snake a mighty heave into the woods. “It’s just a harmless milk snake, but until you see it, how would you know? By then, it could be too late.” Lesson over, he changed the subject. “You call Craig about those supplies we need? Talk to him about ordering shingles?”

“I tried.”

“What do you mean, tried?”

“Farrel Craig wasn’t in his office when I called this morning. It’ll have to wait until Monday. I’ve decided to go into town, that way then I can order the shingles.”

His bar of soap must have slipped out of his pocket. She bent to pick it up and tossed it to him. “When you decide to wash, don’t forget to use it.”

She was past him before he had a chance for a comeback. Johnny watched her go, her hips swaying slowly. Each step she took appeared innocent enough, and maybe that was the turn-on. There was something erotic and very inviting about a woman who had no idea how completely she affected a man, inside and out. And there was no doubt Nicole Chapman affected him. He’d spent half the night thinking about her, and most of the morning.

Once she was gone, Johnny unzipped his jeans and shoved them to his knees. He was just stepping out of them when he saw her shoes sitting on the stump.

Nicole stopped to examine her injury. The inch-long cut on the bottom of her foot wasn’t deep, but it hurt like the devil. Angry with herself for forgetting her shoes, she started back to the pond, limping like a lame bird. She wouldn’t have forgotten the damn shoes if it hadn’t been for that blasted snake. It had taken all the composure she owned to keep from screaming and acting foolish.

If she’d returned to the pond a second sooner, Nicole was sure, she would have caught Johnny Bernard buck naked. He looked as surprised as she did when she reappeared—his hair loose and hanging free to his shoulders, his jeans riding low on his hips, the zipper at half-mast.

She motioned toward the stump where her shoes sat. “I—I forgot them.” She took a step to retrieve them, and winced when a sharp pain shot into the bottom of her foot.

“What happened?”

“Just a scratch.” Nicole tried to downplay her injury and the pain it was causing. Johnny Bernard hadn’t come right out and said what he thought of a city girl moving to the country, but she sensed he didn’t think she would last long.

His gaze sharpened. “You didn’t step on something you shouldn’t have, did you?”

Was he trying to be funny or was he serious? She had thought it was a stick that she’d stepped on, but now suddenly worried, Nicole hobbled to the nearest tree. Leaning against it, she raised her foot to examine the injury. The blood covering the bottom of her foot made it difficult. She wiped it away, trying to pinpoint the pain.

“Here, let me have a look.”

Nicole glanced up and found him standing over her. “No, really, I’m fine.”

“Let’s make sure.”

She slid down the tree and sat. “Just don’t make it hurt worse.”

He crouched in front of her and took hold of her foot. His hands were big and warm, rough from the kind of work he did. He wiped away the blood on his jeans, then carefully examined the cut. Finally he said, “You’ll live, but you need surgery.”