LOST WITH YOU - Lisa Ann Verge Page 0,7
out of the yard. She’d been so worried about posing in a bikini under this Viking’s pillaging gaze that she’d forgotten what else she’d been exposing when she’d swung open the van. Her career was about meeting new people, asking about their vocations, their ventures, their lives, but she never invited them to ask questions about her. She’d slipped up. The physical attraction was already too strong to ignore.
Get a grip on yourself, Casey.
“We only have a few hours left of sunlight,” Dylan said a few minutes later as the tires crunched on gravel. He turned into a clearing not more than a few miles down the road. “We’ll paddle the circumference of this waterway in that time.”
“No problem,” she said, eyeing the pine-rimmed lake.
“Do you know how to back ferry, eddy hop, or pry stroke?”
She swung open the door. “I assume that’s jargon for paddling?”
“You’ll learn the language soon enough.” He reached into the back seat, his arm brushing her shoulder. “Don’t forget your PFD.”
She eyeballed the orange life vest he held out to her. “I can swim.”
“Stubborn, aren’t you?”
She snatched the life vest and wrinkled her nose at him. He was right, she had to stop being contrary. She was letting hormones interfere with better sense. She shoved the life vest over her head and tightened the straps.
He unhooked the bungee cords and slid the canoe off the back of the Jeep. He showed her how to dip under it and grip the gunwales with both hands. As they carried the canoe over their heads to the edge of the lake, a cold aluminum seat rested against the back of her shoulders. Bending their knees, they lifted the vessel off their heads in unison and turned it, keel down, to set it at the lapping edge of the water. Dylan strode back to the Jeep to grab the paddles, all business.
“First things first. You take the bow, for now.” He tossed the paddles into the canoe and then pushed the vessel into the water. “Climb in carefully. Canoes wobble.”
“I know. I went to camp.”
She gripped the side and swung a leg over. His sister’s boat shoes fit well, and the rubber soles gripped the bottom. She turned her back to him and took a seat. She knew when he climbed in behind her, because the whole vessel shifted with his weight.
“Listen,” he said, dipping his paddle into the deeper water with hardly a splash. “There are a lot of paddling techniques…”
Dylan slipped into what she supposed was his professor mode as she picked up her own paddle. He taught her what he called a draw stroke, used to turn the vessel so the prow faced into the lake. Using a forward stroke, they shot out into the middle of the deep water. There, they paddled backward, sideways, and in a circle. Lessons learned, he directed her closer to the shore and ordered her to paddle at full speed.
Dipping and pulling, she powered the vessel, occasionally glancing behind for instructions as he steered them so that they stayed parallel with the shore. The breeze tossed the hair off her face. She felt his gaze like two spots of heat on her back. They fell into a silence broken only by the gurgle of the prow slicing through the water.
She knew he was testing her endurance. Sweat ran down the middle of her back, pasting the cotton tank against her spine. She fell into a rhythm, her heart kicking up at the exertion. She wasn’t long-distance running, but after they’d completed half a circuit of the lake, she felt the same lightness of body, the same roiling runner’s high.
Three-quarters around, just when they were within striking distance of where they’d launched, he clattered his paddle into the bottom of the canoe.
“Secure your paddle,” he said. “Under the struts.”
“Why?”
“I’m captain here, Casey,” he said. “Buck that, and there’s no expedition.”
Her jaw tightened. “You were teaching me—”
“I am teaching.” He loomed up, off his seat. “Now it’s time for emergency procedures. Stand up.”
She did as she was told just as the canoe wobbled and then keeled to a tipping point. With a shout, she lost her footing and tumbled over the gunwale. She plunged deep, cool water closing over her head. She kicked hard and sputtered up to the surface, gasping for breath. Shoving hair off her face, she glared in the direction of the canoe, only to find it upright, empty, and drifting. Dylan shot up from the water only a