Lady of the Lake

Two

Violet screamed. She didn’t mean to, but when she opened her eyes and realized she was lying on a strange man’s crotch, and it was all her fault for being stupid enough to think she could charm Frank into getting her pregnant, well, it was the last straw.

She clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle the volume of her horror. The man had saved her life. She should show a little gratitude.

After all, she had been drifting for what felt like twenty minutes, getting weaker and more worried, resorting to drown-proofing techniques to save her strength.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scream…lie on you…cause you any trouble.” Violet winced. She hated meeting new people. It was so awkward and she never knew what to say. And this was awkward in spades.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and raised an eyebrow. The position brought him squarely into her space. She blushed. Because he was too close to her, because she had stupidly thought his lap was a pillow, and because she was suddenly aware of the fact that he was really, really attractive.

Like Wow attractive. Like Put Naked Pictures of him on the Internet attractive. He was muscular and dark-haired, with deep black eyes. He was Hispanic, for crying out loud.

“Look, you’ve obviously had some kind of accident. Why were you floating in the middle of the lake?”

“I…fell overboard.” Violet scooted backwards, the floor squeaking as she swung her legs around in front of her. She peeled her glasses off and looked around for something to wipe them off on. She’d feel better if she wasn’t viewing the world through water droplets, but she was in a wet bikini. No help there.

“Where’s your sailboat?” He looked puzzled as he sat up, drawing his knees to his chest. Despite her nearsightedness, she could tell it was a very masculine chest. A rippling sort of chest, with fine black hair and a cross tattooed right in the center.

She bit her lip, stuck her glasses back on, and tried to be vague. The truth was just too embarrassing. “It’s a motor boat.”

He was quiet for a second. Then, “Did it drive itself away?”

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“A person.”

“What person?”

“My boyfriend.” He was making this really difficult.

His mouth twisted into a frown. “Was he trying to hurt you, kill you? Did you have an argument? We need to call the cops.”

Oh geez. Violet shook her head. “No, don’t do that! It was an accident. I just fell over when I leaned into the cooler to get a water.”

His hand reached out and pushed her wet hair back off her face. Violet jerked away from his touch, startled.

“So…why didn’t he just turn around and fish you out of the water? You could have drowned out there!”

“He, well…He, you see…Well, it’s just that…” Violet did some fishing of her own for words that wouldn’t reveal the true breadth of her humiliation.

“Yes?”

Darn it, there was no hope for it. Her mind wasn’t devious enough to formulate a reasonable lie on quick notice. She shivered in her wet bikini as a light breeze moved over her skin. She sighed. “He didn’t notice I fell over.”

“He didn’t notice?” His head tilted. His voice was incredulous. “He didn’t notice. His girlfriend fell off of his boat, he drove away and never even noticed? That’s what you’re telling me?”

It sounded even more pathetic by the minute. “He was talking to his friends several feet away from me.” Still angry herself, Violet wasn’t defending Frank so much as herself. Could she look any stupider? “And you have to understand, Frank has a genius level IQ. He gets distracted, and isn’t always aware of his surroundings.”

“That’s asinine.” He leaned across the boat and grabbed his T-shirt.

Thank God he was going to cover that chest up. She was extremely distracted by it. In all her twenty-eight years, she’d never seen that much muscle that close up. All her boyfriends had been pencil thin. All three of them, that is.

“You don’t just not notice your girlfriend falling overboard!”

Violet winced. “Frank does, apparently.”

He muttered something in Spanish, which would have been sexy except she suspected he was calling her a dumb broad.

Which she was. Her pregnancy plan had been ill-fated from the beginning, obviously.

There was no way she was going to let Frank anywhere near her ovulating self ever again. She could forgive him for not noticing that she’d fallen overboard. But it was a good, solid twenty minutes later and there had been no sign of him. If he hadn’t noticed she was gone by now, he would probably bring the boat in, dock, head off with Jay and Shack for dinner, and never even once think of her.

He’d probably already forgotten she’d even been with them in the first place.

It was damn depressing.

“Take your bikini top off,” he said.

“What?” Oh Lord, it just figured. Why did things like this happen to her? She was a good girl. She was nice to her neighbors. She taught small children. She paid her bills on time. She led perhaps the most boring life in all of humanity outside of a penitentiary prisoner, and yet she had managed to fall off a boat and get rescued by a pervert. “No!”

“You’re shivering, you have goose bumps.” He pointed to her bump-covered arms. “And you’ve been in the water for who knows how long. Take your wet top off and put on my dry T-shirt.” He held it out to her.

“Oh.” He didn’t want to see her breasts. He didn’t care about her breasts, any more than Frank did. Violet wondered why she’d spent so much time camouflaging her overgrown chest if it faded into the wallpaper just like the rest of her. Not that she should care. She should be glad that he wasn’t looking at her breasts. Somehow that message wasn’t quite making its way to her brain, though, because she felt mildly offended.

“Thank you.” She took the T-shirt and dried her glasses off on it. The clarity of her vision when she popped them back on her nose made her wish she’d lost them altogether. Oh, my he was hot.

“Your boyfriend is an asshole,” he said.

“Well, he doesn’t mean to be,” Violet assured him.

He scoffed. “You shouldn’t let him treat you like that.”

“It was an accident.” And why was she defending Frank? She’d already decided she wasn’t going to see him again. Sperm wasn’t worth this level of humiliation.

“I would notice if you fell overboard. He should have, too.”

Yeah, sure he would have noticed. Please. Violet knew the kind of woman she was. She was the kind of woman whom men only saw when they sat down across from her for their child’s kindergarten conference. Then she was Miss Caruthers, their child’s starchy, sweet teacher. Other than that, she was invisible to men of all ages.

Completely and utterly invisible. She was a spider web. You never saw it until you walked into it.

But still, she knew that Frank should have noticed. She deserved that much.

“You’re right.”

He nodded firmly. “I know I am. I’m Dylan Diaz, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Violet.” Why did his name sound familiar? Violet was sure she’d heard it somewhere before, but at the same time she was positive she’d never met a gorgeous, buff Latino. She was so distracted trying to place his name, she forgot to be shy. “It’s odd, but I feel like I’ve heard your name before.”

Dylan tugged at the T-shirt she was holding in her hand. “Don’t forget to put this on. You’ll feel better when you’re warmer.”

“Thank you.” Not that she had any intention of taking her bikini top off. Not until she got home and she could stuff it in her garbage disposal and flick the ON switch.

Violet pulled the sun-warmed shirt over her head and almost choked as the masculine smell of sport deodorant filled her nostrils. She was blushing it, damn it, she was blushing. But at least her breasts were covered, and in another ten minutes or so she might actually be able to look him in the eye again. Maybe.

“I’m sorry to be so much trouble. You can just…pull over and I’ll swim to shore.”

When she chanced a look at him, he was staring at her, dark eyebrows lifted. “Are you crazy? I’m not going to do that.” Then he swirled his finger in a circle. “Turn around.”

“Why?” But she did it anyway, because turning was better than looking at him. Because he was gorgeous and she was a nun trapped inside a stripper’s body, with a chess club president’s head.

It was the prim part of her that squawked in horror when his fingers jerked the ties of her bikini top loose at her neck, then deftly slid under the T-shirt and made fast work of the bottom strings, warm fingers brushing over her clammy skin. He harvested the whole dang thing with one last yank, and Violet swallowed hard.

“I’ll just lay it on the deck in the sun to dry.” He did just that, and then grinned at her when she turned back around. “You gave me a heart attack, you know. I thought you were a dead body. Scared five years off my life when you lifted your head up.”

“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely, hunkering her shoulders over so that her tight nipples wouldn’t jut out like twin thimbles. Despite the fact that it was July the water was still cold, causing her to shiver, and well, pucker.

“I’m sorry for interrupting your night. Like I said, if you just take me to the nearest dock or whatever, I’ll get out of your hair. Thank you for…rescuing me.”

He was laughing. Why was he laughing? Embarrassed, Violet stopped talking. Glancing down to avoid his eyes, she saw the T-shirt had plastered to her breasts in two round wet spots, nipples centered like pornographic bull’s eyes.

She almost wished she had drowned.

Dylan wasn’t sure why he was laughing, but it was better than drooling, which was what he really wanted to do.

Violet wasn’t anything like any woman he’d ever met. She wasn’t screaming or ranting or squawking or crying over what had happened to her. She wasn’t pissed off.

She was apologizing for inconveniencing him.

And she was self-conscious about the T-shirt plastered to her chest. His shirt. Clinging to that beautiful chest. Dylan had had so many ta-tas flashed at him over the years, he was damn near immune to the sight. But Violet had him hard, simply because her breasts were naturally beautiful, and because she was shy about a stranger seeing them.

He’d had so many women and their body parts just shoved right smack into his face, that he liked the allure of knowing there was something gorgeous under there that he wasn’t allowed to see. When she’d been on top of him, he’d felt her flesh, but again it had been just a hint, just a tease, enough to make him want to explore her slowly and thoroughly.

Which he wouldn’t, because he wasn’t a total pig, and she had a boyfriend, no matter how much of an ass he was.

“You’re welcome, Vi. But you don’t need to feel bad. It’s not your fault.” He shouldn’t say it, but he couldn’t help it. Any man who didn’t notice his girlfriend was missing was a first-class jerk-off. “It’s your boyfriend’s fault.”

She shook her head. “I’m the one who tripped. And I’m sure he noticed after a minute or two. He’s probably looking for me right now.”

Violet squeezed the water out of her long hair while Dylan groped in his pocket for his cell phone. She wasn’t exactly gorgeous, but more like pretty. Soft. With pale skin and pink cheeks, a pert nose, and a pair of rosebud lips.

Jesus, he was attracted to her. It completely amused him. Maybe he was just feeling protective of her because he’d rescued her.

She licked her lips and tossed her hair over her shoulder, causing her breasts to thrust forward before she realized it and sucked them back in.

Schwing. He could practically hear his dick popping up. Nope, it wasn’t a misplaced hero thing. He was really, really attracted to her.

“Why don’t you call him and put his mind at ease then?” He handed her the phone.

There was only a slight hesitation, then she took the phone from him, dialed a number, and turned a little away from him.

“Frank? This is Violet.”

Dylan rolled his eyes in the opposite direction and reached for his bottle of water.

“Oh, I know, I’m sorry, it was an accident. But someone found me and picked me up.” Her voice dropped lower. “No, no, you don’t have to stop fishing. I’ll just get to shore and call Kindra to pick me up.”

Asshole. Dylan sucked down half his water and fought the urge to grab the phone from Violet and tell Frank to go fuck himself.

Two bright red spots of color were in her cheeks now, and behind her glasses her eyes looked sharp and angry, despite the mild tone to her voice. “No, don’t come over tonight. I’m not in the mood. But you can stop over tomorrow and we’ll talk.”

After saying good-bye she pushed the end button and just clutched the telephone for a minute, her breathing a little quick.

It was none of his business, but he didn’t suppose that had ever stopped him before. “You’re going to ditch him, aren’t you? Please tell me you’re through with him.”

She gave a little sigh. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“No guessing. You deserve better than that, Violet. He doesn’t appreciate you and you need to stand up for yourself here.”

And since when had he become an inspirational speaker?

“It’s not Frank, it’s…something else.” She pushed her glasses up. “It’s complicated. There’s something I want and I can’t have, unless I do something I really don’t want to do because it seems a little risky and unnatural to me.”

She’d lost him with that sentence. “We’ve got a bit of a boat ride ahead of us. You can tell me all about it, Violet. We’re an hour from Sandusky and an hour from Cleveland. Which way do you live?”

“ Cleveland. I live in Westlake.”

“I’m east of that.” The thought of spending another hour on the boat with her was very appealing. And they were really only forty minutes away, but if he held the sail in a little, it would slow them down. Plus, he would have to keep her with him until someone came to pick her up. Maybe his birthday would shake out better than he’d thought it would.

“I live in an apartment right by Burke Airport, with a dock for my boat.”

“Those apartments right on the water there?” Her eyes had widened.

He nodded.

“I know where I’ve heard your name before.” She put her hand on her throat and tugged at the neck of his shirt. “You play for the Indians, don’t you?”

He gave another nod. “Catcher.”

Her breath caught and she looked like she was in pain. “Oh, Lord.”

Usually this was the part where women gushed or flashed him. Instead of giggling or asking him how much money he made, Violet closed her eyes.

And kept them closed.

Damn, she was cute. Dylan reached for another bottle of water from his cooler. “Do you want some water?” He put the cold bottle against the skin of her cheek. “You look flushed.”

She jerked back and opened her eyes. “I don’t want any water.”

“What do you want?” Dylan gave her a slow, lazy smile, and let his eyes linger over her lips. They looked so kissable, so smooth and shiny.

“I want you to push me back into the water and let me drown.”

Dylan laughed. She had a quirky little sense of humor.

He liked that about her. So far, he’d have to say he liked a lot about her, and it had only been ten minutes since he’d fished her out of the water.

Just think what he could like in the next thirty.