Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(48)

There was a sense of tightness in the room now, filling the space. Attraction was like that. It filled. It poured into you like batter into a pan, sticking to the sides. Lisette stood abruptly.

“Lisette?” Jack called as she ran out, knowing he could not chase her. She tripped and fell on her hands just as she reached the end of the path.

She got up quickly and went to the kitchen through the back of the house so no one would see the great spectacle she was making of herself, running away from the sweetest man on the planet because she thought her presence might poison him somehow, like it had done with Luc. Luc was leaning back in the chair when she entered. He watched with great interest as she angrily scrubbed her hands at the sink. He was smiling at her, as if he knew what had just happened. Smiling as if it made him happy.

*

She had said no, of course. Jack was embarrassed. Not that he’d asked her out, but that he’d asked her to dinner first. He knew her better than that. He knocked himself lightly on the head with his hand. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She never ate dinner. In all the years he’d been coming to Lost Lake, Lisette had never come out to the lawn at night for barbecue and cocktails. When the sun set, she was always in her room, the single light from her window like a wink. Most of the summer faithfuls knew how Eby had saved Lisette, how she’d been sixteen and about to commit suicide because, over dinner, she’d broken the heart of a boy who had loved her. There was part of Jack, a part tucked back behind everything he treated so logically, that understood why the boy had taken his own life, because he understood how powerful an attraction to her could be. She was enchanting. He loved the notes she wrote in her pretty handwriting, the way she smelled, like oranges and dough, the savage blackness of her hair.

It suddenly occurred to him.

Was that what he was supposed to tell her? Was that what Eby meant?

It seemed so simple. He thought she knew.

But what if she didn’t? What if she didn’t know he loved her?

He frowned at another possibility. He felt fear heat his ears, the same fear he felt when he had to go to a place he’d never been to before or speak in front of people. It made him want to run, to avoid the embarrassment altogether.

What if she did know, and it didn’t matter?

What if she didn’t love him back?

*

“Wes!” Devin said, and Kate watched her run up to him.

The sun was setting behind the trees, streaking over the water. The heat had gone from boiling to a soft, wet simmer. Devin had been sitting on a picnic table since Wes had arrived, elbows on her knees, chin resting on her hands, waiting, waiting, waiting for him to finally stop working. She watched as he first put up the canopy Kate had mended last night, then fixed the barbecue grills. Kate was sure that he could feel her daughter’s impatience as surely as if she’d thrown it and hit him with it.

“I want to ask you something,” Devin said, almost sliding to a stop. “Did you and your brother live someplace close by?”

“Yes, we did,” Wes said. “About a half mile from here. Through the woods.” Wes pointed to the east side of the lake. “But the house is gone now. It burned down.”

Devin turned and squinted in that direction. She put her hand to her good eye and covered it, something she often did when she was looking for something. She’d been doing it most all her life. She saw that Kate was watching, and lowered her hand. “Is there, like, a trail or something?”

“There used to be. My brother and I walked it here every day.”

“Will you take me there?” Devin asked, turning back to him.

That caught him off guard. “Take you there?”

“Yes. Can we go on a hike through the woods?”

“Devin, you can’t ask him to do that,” Kate said, walking over to them. Her hands were stained green and brown from pulling up weeds in Eby’s neglected planters in front of the main house.

“But I’m not asking,” Devin said. “The alligator wants him to.”

“That sounds ominous,” Wes said, taking off his tool belt.

Devin looked over her shoulder at Kate. “What does that mean?”

“It means it sounds like the alligator wants to eat him,” Kate clarified for her.

“No!” Devin said immediately. “It’s not like that. He’s friendly. And he really, really likes you, Wes. Out of everyone here, he talks about you the most.”

Kate’s brows dropped in confusion. “He talks about Wes?”

“All the time.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” Wes said.

“Really?” Devin said.

“Never argue with an alligator,” Wes said.

Devin nodded at him seriously. “Exactly.”

So the three of them headed off to the lake. “We’ll be back before dark,” Wes called to the others. “I’m going to show them the path to the cabin.”

“Be careful,” Eby said. She’d been waiting for Wes to finish with the grills before she started dinner for the guests. She was now lighting charcoal in one. “Do you have your phones with you?”

“Mine, um, accidentally fell into the lake,” Kate said.

Wes took his out of his pocket and held it up. “I have mine.”

Once they reached the path around the lake, Wes ducked into the woods and soon found the trail. After a few minutes of walking, Kate began to notice some markers on the trees. “What are all these plastic tags?” she asked Wes, reaching out to touch one of the small bright ties that were deliberately attached to some low-hanging limbs.