“Please tell me we’re going on the Swan boat.” The spring in her step told him she liked the idea.
“Okay, I won’t tell you.” The Swan pedal boats were a popular attraction, especially in the summer, and lucky for them his family owned one for spur-of-the-moment occasions like this. Typically, whenever Reese visited, they took a ride.
“Yes!” She swung their arms in joy, making him glad he’d brought her to the lake.
They bypassed the rental shack and walked down the dock to their boat. Cam grabbed the two life jackets tucked in the back behind the seats, handed one to Reese, and when they were both fitted for safety, they sat down.
He let her pedal first, picking up on her rhythm after a few cycles.
“Hold on!” She put her good hand around the steering handle between them and thrust it forward. The sudden force jerked the boat to the right.
“Easy, Nitro.” He covered her hand with his. “Remember you have to drag the handle slowly to turn.” He helped pull the handle back.
She looked down at his hand enveloping hers. “I didn’t forget how to do it, you know.”
“I know.”
Attraction crackled between them, the air around them full of electricity, like this time their hands were magnetized, reminding them of the pure enjoyment they gave each other. Only now it reached a new level. A level he didn’t think he could back away from. He rubbed his thumb across her fingers, hoping she felt the same flash of intensity he did. When—because at this point there was no more if—they got their hands on other parts of each other, he had no doubt the contact would change him forever.
The chemistry between them didn’t just flicker, it blazed.
They quietly tooled around the lake in perfect pedaling sync. Her ponytail swayed like she had a song in her head. And with a perpetual happy lean to her full lips, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. They’d pedaled together many times before, but as they’d already discovered, this summer was different.
“If you get tired pedaling, I can do it alone,” she teased, steering them toward the middle of the lake.
“Any pedaling you can do, I can do.”
“I could probably go all day,” she countered, her mood much better than it had been after hurting her finger.
“Me, too.” And then, because even without them touching anymore his body still burned for her, he added, “And not just in pedal boats.”
A sexy as hell flush crept up her neck. She batted her lashes. “Maybe I’ll let you prove that to me sometime.”
He was ready to turn their boat around and prove it to her right now. “It would be my pleasure.”
“And mine.” Her breathless tone had his pulse pounding.
“100 percent. Multiple times,” he promised.
Her teeth sank into her plush lower lip, drawing his eyes there. She stopped pedaling. Stopped steering. “We can’t let this go, can we? Not until we do something about it.”
He slid her ponytail over her shoulder. “I’ll follow your lead, Ree. This is your call.”
"I don’t want it to ruin our friendship.”
“Agree wholeheartedly. What if…”
“What if what?”
“We follow our attraction for the next week. See where it leads us. It doesn’t have to end with us in bed. Maybe it’s more kissing. Maybe it’s skinny-dipping. Whatever it is, we don’t question it. We go with whatever we’re feeling and at the end of the week we go back to being just friends.”
“You think we can do that?”
“Yes,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. He’d do whatever it took to preserve their friendship.
She studied him. “Promise you won’t break my heart?”
“I promise. Promise you won’t break mine?” That was definitely the more likely scenario. He’d had these feelings for much longer than she had, and he decided that one week would be better than nothing.
“I promise.”
He leaned closer. Closer still. Giving her time to change her mind. To tell him kissing each other again would be too big a mistake.
A mistake that would feel so good.
She gravitated closer. Her lustrous blue-gray eyes dipped to his mouth, inviting, urging, solidifying her consent. “What are you waiting for?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
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