Page 18

Especially as Tom comes toward her. Not angry, exactly. It’s different from that. He looks, to use Marnie’s description, intense.
He says something to Katherine. She says something back. She slips the phone into her back pocket before raising her hands—a gesture of innocence.
“Enjoying the view?”
The sound of another person’s voice—at this hour, in this place—startles me so much I almost drop the binoculars for a second time that day. I manage to keep hold of them as I yank them away from my face and, still rattled, look for the source of the voice.
It’s a man unfamiliar to me.
A very good-looking man.
In his mid-thirties, he stands to the right of the porch in a patch of weedy grass that serves as a buffer between the house and rambling forest situated next to it. Appropriate, seeing how he’s dressed like a lumberjack. The pinup-calendar version. Tight jeans, work boots, flannel shirt wrapped around his narrow waist, broad chest pushing against a white T-shirt. The light of magic hour reflecting off the lake gives his skin a golden glow. It’s sexy and preposterous in equal measure.
Making the situation even weirder is that I’m dressed almost exactly the same way. Adidas sneakers instead of boots, and my jeans don’t lookpainted on. But it’s enough for me to realize how frumpily I always dress when I’m at the lake.
“Sorry?” I say.
“The view,” he says, gesturing to the binoculars still gripped in my hands. “See anything good?”
Suddenly—and rightfully—feeling guilty, I set the binoculars on the wobbly table beside the rocking chair. “Just trees.”
The man nods. “The foliage is beautiful this time of year.”
I stand, make my way to the end of the porch, and look down at him. He’s come closer to the house and now gazes up at me with a glint in his eyes, as if he knows exactly what I’ve been doing.
“I don’t mean to sound rude,” I say, “but who are you and where did you come from?”
The man takes a half step back. “Are yousureyou didn’t mean to sound rude?”
“Maybe I did,” I say. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m Boone. Boone Conrad.”
I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes. That cannot be his real name.
“And I came from over there.”
He jerks his head in the direction of the woods and the house slightly visible two hundred yards behind the thinning trees. The Mitchell place. An A-frame cabin built in the seventies, it sits tucked within a small bend of the lakeshore. In the summer, the only part of it visible from my family’s house is the long dock that juts into the lake.
“You’re a guest of the Mitchells?” I say.
“More like their temporary handyman,” Boone says. “Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell said I could stay for a couple of months if I did some work on the place while I’m here. Since we’re neighbors, I thought I’d stop by and introduce myself. I would have done it earlier, but I was too busy stuck inside refinishing their dining room floor.”
“Nice to meet you, Boone. Thanks for stopping by.”
He pauses a beat. “You’re not going to introduce yourself, Casey Fletcher?”
I’m not surprised he knows who I am. More people than not recognize me, even though sometimes they’re not sure how. “You just did it for me.”
“Sorry,” Boone says. “The Mitchells told me your family owned the house next door. I just didn’t think you’d be here.”
“Neither did I.”
“How long are you staying?”
“That’s up to my mother,” I say.
A sly grin plays across Boone’s lips. “Do you do everything your mother tells you to?”