Finding Mr. Write, page 10
As if on cue, a fish jumped from the water to catch a flying insect.
“Leaping lake lizard?” he said.
“Oh, it’s a fish. A little grayling. There are some out here, but not many of the proper size.”
“But I saw people out this afternoon. With fishing rods.”
“And beer,” she said, stretching her legs. “People do fish in this lake. They just don’t expect to catch anything. Putter around. Have a beer. Chat with your buddy. Enjoy a gorgeous afternoon while pretending you’re doing something productive.”
“Uh…”
“Yep. That’s why I wanted to discuss it.”
He winced. “I thought you were concerned that I didn’t know how to fish. Okay. So…” He looked around. “Even if I did manage to snag one of those little guys, they won’t see it from the shore.”
“Yep.”
“Would lures even work on them?”
“Nope.”
“So I’m screwed?”
“Yep.”
“Great.” He slumped onto his seat. “Footage of the mighty Zane Remington getting skunked.” He glanced over. “Hey, maybe I can use that. I’ll say I got skunked, make a joke of it, and then use the opportunity to point out that there are no actual skunks around here. Self-deprecation plus a pompous Zane lecture moment.”
“You are good at those.”
“Notice how I slip in references to the book? Media Training 101.”
She smiled at him. “I noticed. Thank you.”
“See? We can pull this off.” He looked around. “Except when I fail to check whether there are actual fish in the lake before I suggest fishing. Or when I fail to ask whether you have a motorboat.”
Another warm smile. “You’re doing fine. Here’s my suggestion. We paddle around a bit to give them scenic shots. Then we go back, and you say you surveyed the situation and realized the fish aren’t as active tonight as it appeared.”
“The water is so clear I can see the lack of fish. Notice how clean the water is? That’s what a nonpolluted lake looks like, blah, blah. Drawing on my vast experience of wilderness living—which I used in my book, At the Edge of the World—I can tell that fish are not forthcoming, blah, blah. Got skunked. No actual skunks in the Yukon, however, that reminds me of the time I encountered one out east.”
“You really are good at this. Let me get us turned around, and we’ll hug the western shoreline for the best shots. You play human fish-finder while I navigate.”
He saluted. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
Chris settled into his front seat and peered over one side and then the other, shading his eyes for added effect. The water really was clear enough to see all the way down, including the odd fish that was, as Daphne said, barely bigger than a minnow.
He was leaning over when a gun fired on shore. He nearly fell into his seat and then rocked forward, hands going behind his neck.
“Is that the crash position for planes?” Daphne said.
He glared at her.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling. “It was really cute, though. You have excellent reflexes… even if it’s slightly less than situationally appropriate.”
“Hey, you never know. I might have ducked just enough to save me from being hit in the head by stray rifle fire.”
“That was a beaver.”
“Someone’s shooting beavers?”
The corners of her mouth twitched. When she saw he was serious, she coughed, as if to erase the smile. “No, the sound you heard was a beaver tail hitting the water.”
“Someone dropped a beaver from a plane? See, I wasn’t wrong, assuming the crash position.”
She hesitated, until he smiled to tell her he was joking this time.
“Beavers slap the water to warn of danger,” he said. “You know where I read that? In my book, At the Edge of the World. I’m such a genius.”
“Not if you need to read the book you wrote in order to learn things.”
“Don’t mock my memory issues. That’s mean.”
She shook her head.
“So that was a beaver,” he said, peering around. “Warning its family about us, I presume?”
“Possibly. See the dam over there?” She pointed to what he sheepishly realized he’d mistaken for a random pile of branches. “There’s another over by my place.”
“That is so cool. I’ve never seen a beaver in the wild.”
Silence. Then she choked on a laugh.
He replayed what he’d said. “Hey.” He jabbed the paddle her way. “No beaver jokes.”
“You started it. Never seen one in the wild, huh? Only on your computer screen?”
“Are you judging my love of nature movies, woman? They’re very informative. Did you know that, in its natural environment, the beaver displays an unusual affinity for bikers and pizza-delivery boys?”
The laugh started at a sputter and then became a snorting wheeze, as Daphne covered her mouth with one hand.
“It also—” he began.
“Stop.”
“You started it. Now—” He twisted fast as he caught sight of something moving in the water. “Holy shit, is that a beaver?”
“Ha-ha.”
“No, seriously.”
The large shape swam right under the boat, and Chris lunged to watch it come out the other side. He didn’t think. He just moved—fast. The canoe started to tip.
“Chris!”
He did the logical thing. Or what his brain screamed was the logical thing. If the canoe was tipping, the obvious way to fix that was simple physics. Redistribute weight.
He instinctively reacted, and he had 0.5 seconds to be very proud of that before the bottom slid under his feet as the canoe tipped the other way. He didn’t have time to recover. He’d jumped backward, and so when his feet slid, he also tumbled backward, flipping the entire canoe with him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DAPHNE
Daphne hit the water. Her first thought was no thought at all. The shock of the cold slammed everything from her brain. That lasted only a moment. Then water closed over her head, and she was five again, shoved into the deep end, the water closing over her head.
I can’t swim!
That was what she’d screamed then, water filling her mouth and lungs. It was what her brain screamed now.
I can’t swim.
No, it was okay. She was wearing a life vest. She always wore one, even in this calm lake, because she couldn’t swim.
Then a memory flashed. Climbing onto the canoe without a vest, too embarrassed to say anything. It was just the lake. She’d be fine.
She was not fine.
She told Chris that she’d steer near the shore for a better view. That was a lie. She’d wanted to stick to the edge because it was shallow. Yet she hadn’t reached that yet, and her kicking feet touched nothing below.
Go up.
That was what the swim instructor taught her, the private one her mom hired trying to at least teach her water safety, but Daphne had been so terrified she hadn’t made it past the second lesson. Still she remembered this much: get her head up and tread water. She could tread water.
Chris was there, somewhere, and the film crew was watching. She wasn’t going to drown. Just get her head up—
Her head struck something hard. Panic flared. She must have gotten turned around, gone down instead of up—
No, she had gone up. She knew that. Something was over her head, pinning her down. She reached up and her hands whacked into something smooth and curved.
The canoe. She was under the canoe.
She smacked her fists up. The canoe was fiberglass. It wouldn’t sink. She should be able to breathe under it. But if there was a gap of air, she couldn’t find it and her lungs burned, her brain screaming that she needed oxygen, needed it now.
She punched again, as if she could propel the canoe up, but her hands only smacked against the fiberglass. If she couldn’t touch down, then she couldn’t get the leverage to push the canoe up.
Swim out from under it.
How?
She tried to corral her thoughts, but they ran wild, her lungs ready to explode. She was five again, under the water, screaming, the world going black—
Something grabbed her. The current, weeds, something pulled her under. She screamed then for real, water filling her mouth and then—
Light. It was suddenly light, and she could breathe, gasping in mouthfuls of air.
“I’ve got you,” a voice said.
Warm arms tightened around her.
“I’ve got you.”
Chris.
I’ve got you. Her eyes filled, tears scorching hot against her freezing skin.
“You’re okay,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
Something brushed under her kicking feet. She could barely feel her feet, numbed from the cold, but she knew she was touching sand and rock as her body lifted from the water. Then wet moss and more sand against her back as Chris set her on the shore.
She was lying on her back, looking up, and when Chris leaned over her, the setting sun haloed his head, turning his dark blond hair to the bright gold of an angel. Her gaze settled on his wide lips.
Couldn’t she have drowned just a little more? Enough to require mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?
Really? That was what she was thinking after nearly dying?
She blamed oxygen deprivation.
“I… I can’t swim,” she said. “In case… case you didn’t… figure that out.”
Those wide lips curved, the smile not reaching his worried eyes. “I’m so sorry, D.”
“I should—should have mentioned it.”
“And I should have asked.”
He reached down to hug her, the heat of him coming through his drenched shirt, like a blazing fire after a long night of snowshoeing, and she fell into his arms, shivering.
“That was great,” came Sofia’s voice from the distance. “At first, I was like, mmm, a bit much, staging the canoe capsizing, dramatic rescue, but that end part? You coming out, soaking wet, with Dana over your arms? That was…”
Sofia trailed off, as if she’d drawn close enough for a better look.
Daphne choked and sputtered, turning her head to one side as she retched up lake water. Then she started shivering again, this time convulsively.
“Oh my God!” Sofia said. “You didn’t stage—”
Chris scooped Daphne up. “We need to get her in the house. Now.”
CHRIS
“Alone at last,” Chris said.
Daphne looked over at him from the deck chair—where she was completely cocooned in blankets, propane heater blazing at her feet, mug of cocoa in one hand, towel wrapped around her wet hair—and she laughed. At first, it was a choked half laugh. Then it got louder and she started snorting. Her hand flew over her mouth in that adorable way it did when she thought—incorrectly—that her snorting laughs were less than adorable.
Daphne was fine. Thank God. He didn’t even want to think about what could have happened. When he’d dumped a shot of Irish whiskey into her cocoa, he might have added some to his as well, to banish the memory of that moment when he’d surfaced, looked for her, and seen an empty lake. That moment when he realized he’d turned down life vests for both of them.
“Chris?” she said.
He took a burning gulp of booze-laced chocolate. “Never thought we’d get rid of them. Sure, staging a drowning might have gone too far, but they just weren’t leaving. Film crews.”
This time, she didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile.
“You saved my life,” she said.
He started to make a joke about her saving his life, this job having rescued his professional career, but it’d be as poor a joke as the film crew one.
He wanted to joke. Make light. Make her laugh. Especially make her laugh.
Instead, he said, “I wouldn’t have needed to if I hadn’t agreed to skip the life vests.”
“And, being an adult, I should have insisted on one for myself.”
He understood why she didn’t. For the same reason he’d pretended he knew how to chop wood. No one wants to admit to what they perceive—or worry others might perceive—as a failing. A guy not knowing how to chop firewood. An outdoor enthusiast who can’t swim.
“We need a signal,” he said.
“For…?”
“‘Ack! I need to talk to you! Now!’ Which you did try to give me. So a signal plus a pact that we’ll listen and not presume we know what the other person means, like me thinking you were just concerned I couldn’t fish, when you were trying to tell me there were no fish.”
“And a pact that we will signal, even if it means admitting to something embarrassing, like not knowing how to swim.”
“I—” he began, and then made a face. “I was going to say I could teach you, but then I realized that if you live on a lake and don’t swim, there’s probably a reason.”
She shrugged. “No huge trauma. Just something when I was a kid. First day of swimming lessons I got pushed in, and no one noticed until I passed out.”
“Oh, is that all?” he said. “Nearly dying? Not traumatic at all.”
“It wasn’t like that. Not really.” She pulled up her knees, hugging them with one arm. “Okay, a little, but mostly because it happened a few days after my dad walked out.”
His breath caught, and when she glanced over, she was scrunching her nose in an expression that could seem like distaste, but he’d come to know was self-consciousness. She’d cracked open her door more than she intended to, revealing a vulnerability she’d rather keep hidden.
“It was fine,” she said. “He was an ass, and we were better off without him.”
Chris clamped back a reply. He wasn’t a therapist, but even he was sure having a shitty father walk out still left a lasting dent in your psyche. Pairing that with a near drowning would explain why she didn’t swim. In her place, he might not have even been able to live on a lake.
He sipped his hot chocolate, looked into the flames, and considered his next move. She’d opened up a little, and he really wanted to know more. Did he dare nudge that door? Zane would shove it open. Chris Ainsworth would just casually stroll in, as if he hadn’t noticed it’d been closed. Chris Stanton would hover on the other side, frozen in uncertainty.
Maybe it was time to borrow from Zane and Ainsworth. Just a smidgen.
“I think you said you grew up in BC, right?” he said as offhandedly as he could. This wasn’t exactly top secret data, he reminded himself. Just normal conversation between two people sitting on a deck, sharing cocoa and a fire and a setting sun. “Is your mom still there?”
A pause. Such a long pause. Okay, maybe it wasn’t top secret data for most people, but Daphne wasn’t most people. He’d overstepped.
He caught her expression, and his heart dropped.
“Oh,” he said. “She’s…” He struggled for a word. “Gone.”
“Four years ago. Cancer.” Daphne’s fingers kneaded the blanket. “We had some warning. Time to do everything she wanted. Not enough time, but…”
She shrugged. Then she abruptly stopped kneading the blanket, and he was ready for a quick change of subject, but she smiled and said, “She’s the one who convinced me to move up here after she was gone. I’d been in the Yukon on a project. I won the contract to design a government building. A small one. But still, I got to spend two seasons here and fell in love.”
“You’re an architect?”
She frowned at him. Then she made a face. “I never even mentioned that, did I? Sorry. I don’t mean to be all secretive. If it’s not something I have in common with Zane, it just wasn’t important for you to know it. Yes, I’m an architect by trade. I run my own business, and I haven’t taken on new projects since selling Edge, but I haven’t quit, either. Writing isn’t usually a forever job. Anyway, Mom knew I loved it here and encouraged me to buy property. I got lucky and found this.”
“Did you…” He looked at the house. “Did you design this house?”
That shrug, pushing off anything that might lead to a compliment.
“Wow,” he said. “That is—”
“Mom also encouraged me to write Theo’s story.”
Chris bit his cheek to keep from laughing at the way she dove into the topic change, like swerving to avoid an out-of-control eighteen-wheeler. If starting a compliment got her to switch tracks to other personal things, he was going to need to do that more often.
Still, the little she had revealed about the house told him something—that living up here was no temporary whim. The Yukon was her dream place, and she’d moved up here and built her dream home. That wasn’t temporary.
Shit. He didn’t want to think about what it meant for the hope of a committed relationship, and committed was the only way he was doing this. That wasn’t selfishness, either. It was the dawning acknowledgment that a fling with Daphne would leave a bigger hole than if he’d never scratched that itch, because it was an itch that went a whole lot higher than his boxers.
He shook off that thought. She’d given him a chance to pursue a personal conversation, and he wasn’t going to miss out on it.
“Your mom knew about Edge?” he said.
Daphne nodded. “It was a little different back then. The main character wasn’t named Theo. And I wasn’t writing it down. It was just a story I was telling Mom to get her through chemo. She made me promise to write it, which is why…”
Daphne turned away, looking over the lake.
“Why it’s so important to you,” he said softly.
“It is. Theodora was Mom’s middle name. I’ve written other things, stories I thought were more likely to get published. Young adult postapocalyptic zombie novel? No one buys those these days. But I kept coming back to Theo. Not just for Mom, but because this was the story that spoke to me.” Daphne lifted her mug. “How much booze did you put in this?”
“Why? You want more?”
She laughed and then said, “Actually, I might.”
She started to rise, and then he lifted a thermos from under his blanket and passed it over.
“You’re one step ahead of me,” she said. “Thank you.”
