: Chapter 9

It was early. It was way too fucking early for me.

I’d left the house at three thirty to get here by five, and I felt dead on my feet. After spending most of the weekend taking care of my mom, who’d caught the flu, reading up on carpentry, and finishing Brisingr, I’d already gotten to bed late on both Saturday and Sunday nights, but waking up at three in the fucking morning was what was going to lay me flat.

When I reached the gate at the end of the drive, I almost wept, ready to curl up on the ground and sleep for a couple decades. Except I’d told Isobel I’d run with her this morning.

Run.

Right.

I could barely make my feet keep walking.

Since about my third trip to Porter Hall, I’d stopped ringing the intercom at the gate to ask for permission to enter. There wasn’t a fence around the property; it seemed bothersome and time-consuming to call someone to open the gate when I could just walk around it. And since I was beginning to feel as if I was actually welcome here, I walked around it now and trudged up the long lane.

I wore sweats and running shoes instead of my usual blue jeans and work boots, but I’d tucked my work clothes away in the book bag I carried as well as a change of T-shirts.

The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was thinking about it. Shapes and shadows were beginning to become distinct. When I reached the end of the drive, I could make out someone there, stretching and pulling her leg back so far that her toe was nearly touching the center of her spine.

“Isobel?” I asked, just to make certain it was her.

She yelped and dropped her foot, before gasping. “Oh. You’re here.” Then she glanced around me. “Wait, did you walk?”

“Yeah.” I approached her, suddenly not so tired anymore. “Have you been waiting long? I’m not late, am I?”

“No…no. You’re five minutes early, actually.” I swear I heard embarrassment in her voice before she cleared her throat. “I decided to meet you out here in case you didn’t know how to get to the running trail.”

“Oh,” I said before laughing. “You’re right. I would’ve had no idea how to get back there.”

She nodded. “Then follow me.”

I did. We walked behind the house and under a couple large trees, past a few outbuildings and onto a narrow gravel path lined with trees. But she continued to walk, so I figured we hadn’t reached the “trail” yet. I hadn’t seen the lake she’d mentioned either.

Crickets chirped around us, an owl hooted overhead, and gravel crunched under our feet. For as warm as the days were, it was still chilly this early in the day. I swiped my hands up and down my arms, wishing for about the fiftieth time in the past hour and a half since I left home that I’d brought a jacket with me. Isobel was smart; she wore a long-sleeved running hoodie.

“How far do you walk to get here every day?” she asked, breaking the silence.

I shrugged. “Oh…not that far.”

“Couldn’t be that close,” she argued. “Most of the houses out here, for a good five-mile stretch, belong to the…”

Rich, she didn’t finish.

“I live near Pestle.” Pestle had been the name of the shoe factory I’d worked at that had gone out of business. But it had been well-known enough for people to still call that part of town Pestle.

She made an audible gasp. “But that’s in the middle of town. God almighty, Shaw, you must walk over an hour just to get here every day.”

“Barely over an hour,” I said, as my body clanged out of control over the fact she’d used my first name for the first time. I liked how she said Shaw. It sounded good on her tongue, coming from her mouth. Sweet. Genuine. Intimate.

Isobel stopped walking and turned to face me. “Why in the world would you want to run after walking over an hour to get here?”

I faltered, not sure how to answer that without lying or giving away the truth. “I just…yeah. I don’t know.”

A spot started to itch directly behind my ear. I ripped off my hat to scratch it, then slammed the hat back on, feeling even more exposed by Isobel’s penetrating stare. So I cleared my throat and started walking up the path without her.

“I checked out all these books from the library this weekend about building bookcases, but the most useful tips I found were actually on Pinterest. And what do you think of this…a hidden passage bookshelf door?”

When she didn’t answer soon enough, I rushed to argue my point, because seriously, nothing on earth could be cooler than a hidden passage bookshelf door. Right? “I don’t know where that doorway on the south wall in the library leads, but that would be an awesome place to put a bookshelf door. Don’t you think?”

“I…” Catching up to me, Isobel shook her head. “Yeah. Sure. That would be okay.”

My abrupt change in subject might’ve thrown her or she just wasn’t as enthused about the idea as I was, but her indifferent answer made me rush to add, “Of course, we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

“No, I do. The idea sounds fun.”

“But…?” I pressed, my stomach churning with unease. It was pathetic how much I wanted her to love all my ideas.

She merely shook her head. “No buts. I like the idea. I’m just worried about how difficult it’s going to be for you to make.”

“Ugh. That’s the last thing you should even think about. The how is for me to worry about, and besides,” I threw her what I hoped was a contagious grin, “the bigger the challenge the better the adventure, right?”

I shrugged off my backpack and dropped it to the ground, then flipped my ball cap around so I was wearing it backward, before I started to jog. We’d just reached the edge of the lake, and this looked like the point where I had to guess she began her morning run.

“Hey,” she called after me, cupping her hands around her mouth. “You’re going counterclockwise. I always run clockwise around the lake.”

I laughed and turned to run backwards so I could face her while I kept going. “Adjust to change, Isobel. Adjust to change.”

She grumbled something I couldn’t hear, then she hurried to catch up with me. Grinning, I turned to watch where I was going, though it was still too dark to see all that much. The sky was beginning to change colors. Orange, yellow and pinks peeked over the horizon and reflected off the surface of the calm water. A bird called in the distance. I breathed deeply, taking in the scent of damp earth and pine from the evergreen trees.

“God, this is breathtaking. No wonder you run every morning.”

“It feels strange going this way,” she muttered.

I laughed. “Like running it for the first time?”

She shot me an odd glance before gazing around her as if, yeah, she were seeing the scenery for the first time. Lips parting, she turned her attention back to me. “Kind of. Yeah.”

With a wink, I offered, “Tomorrow we can run it clockwise and then toggle back and forth each day. Sound okay to you?”

“But…” I had a feeling she was worried about me hiking out here on foot every morning from three thirty to five, until she realized I didn’t care. So she murmured, “Yeah. Okay.”

It was the most satisfying feeling in the world whenever she stopped fighting and bickering with me to acquiesce or soften her tone. More rewarding than anything I could ever remember experiencing.

We didn’t talk much after that. The peace of the awakening morning, plus the whole out-of-breath thing from running, kept conversation limited. I asked her how long she typically ran, she answered eight laps, which made it approximately two miles, and that was about all we said.

Since I wasn’t used to running, she naturally kept pace with me. It made me wonder how fast she usually went and how much she had to slow herself to match my strides. I pushed myself as hard as I could, and yet I was still panting for breath and wanting to pass out right there on the path once we finished. But Isobel encouraged me to keep going, walk it off, until my heart rate settled.

Still, I had to clutch my chest and bend with my other hand on one knee for a good minute before I could straighten.

“Oh, damn,” I gasped. “That was…that was amazing.” Even as worn-out as I was, I don’t think I’d ever felt so alive and energized.

When I stood upright, she held out an opened bottle of water. No idea where she’d been storing it, but I didn’t care. I snagged it from her and gulped greedily.

“Thank you. You’re a saint.” I handed the bottle back, only for my mouth to go bone dry when she drank from the same spot I’d just put my lips against.

Tipping her head back, she closed her eyes and swallowed, her throat working through each gulp while a bead of sweat caressed her unmarred cheek before slipping down the side of her throat.

I went hard as stone, imaging myself licking the droplet away. Then she went and swiped her tongue over her bottom lip, catching some escaped water before lapping it back into her mouth. My skin prickled with such acute awareness I could already picture how it’d feel to push inside her and have the walls of her sex envelop me and contract from pleasure.

When a groan rumbled from my throat, Isobel turned my way.

Abruptly realizing I probably had the freaking Eiffel Tower poking out the front of my sweats, I bent and jerked my backpack from the ground where it had been waiting for my return and held it smartly over my lap area.

But the move only drew Isobel’s attention down, which made me feel more exposed. I jostled the pack, explaining, “Change of clothes.”

I’d only been trying to get her attention away from my crotch so she wouldn’t notice how aroused I was, but when her expression fell, I wondered if she thought I was trying to make an excuse to leave because I didn’t want to be around her any longer.

I opened my mouth to say…hell, I had no idea. I just knew I didn’t want her thinking I didn’t like her.

She beat me to the words, though. Turning her face slightly, so I couldn’t see her scars, she motioned a hand toward the house. “There’s a shower in the pool house if you want to use that to wash off before changing into your clothes.”

“Okay,” I started to agree, my mind still unable to stop picturing her flat on her back and opening herself to me. “Wait.” I shook my head. “You have a pool house? You have a pool?”

Then I nearly smacked myself in the forehead. Of course they had a pool and a pool house. Every house as grand and huge and expensive as this one must have a freaking pool and pool house. I was mostly shocked because I’d never seen either before.

My shock was a good thing, though. It seemed to amuse Isobel. She softened her edges until she forgot to hide her burn wounds from me. “One of these days, you’re going to need a full tour of the place.”

I grinned. “If you agree to be my guide, I accept.”

No idea why I said that. I realized how flirty it sounded as soon as the words left my mouth, but I couldn’t regret it. Isobel drew in a breath as her face flushed and her mouth tightened in an effort to keep her emotions at bay. Then she glanced at me, and those blue-blue eyes of hers reflected all the hope and yearning I’d been feeling in my own chest since the moment I’d met her.

“We’ll see,” she murmured evasively. And I was forced to keep my backpack positioned directly over my lap area for the rest of the walk to the pool house.