Page 209 of It Happened on the Lake

She actually laughed then. “You’re insane.” She struggled into her jeans and buttoned her blouse as the car idled.

“I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.”

“Oh, I get it. You don’t want to be drafted,” she said automatically.

“That’s not it,” he said confidently. “I’m not fit to join up. Asthma and bone spurs.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He slipped the car into gear and backed up. “This—you and me getting married—has nothing to do with that.”

“Then why?”

“Because I want to be with you. All the time. Not just in bits and pieces. Not under your parents’ thumb. Not with some stupid curfew dictating when we can see each other.” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.

Her throat closed at his tenderness.

“I’m serious,” he said quietly. “And face it, Harper, you’re miserable.”

“But the baby.”

He reversed, then put the car into drive. “What about the baby?”

“You . . . would want to—?”

“I want you, okay?” he cut in. “You and the baby, you’re a package deal. Don’t you get it?”

She leaned against the door and watched his profile as he drove. As often as she’d fantasized about being Mrs. Chase Hunt, she hadn’t gone there with Joel.

Joel had never once said that he loved her, nor had she uttered those fateful, fanciful words. And yet here he was driving into the night, seemingly dead serious. “Your baby needs a father,” he said as they turned onto the main road.

“Chase is—”

“Never coming back,” he said finally as the beams of an oncoming car washed over his face. A handsome face even in the harsh, moving light.

“You don’t know that,” she said, watching him as a worrisome thought came to mind. “Or do you?”

“Know what happened to him? Shit, no. Of course not. How would I?”

“You said you knew him.”

“A little. It’s not like we were all that tight,” he said as he drove onto the main road. “And it’s obvious, isn’t it? If he was coming back, he would have shown up by now. Right? He left, Harper. Whether he intended to or not. I mean, maybe something happened to him.”

“Like he’s dead,” she whispered.

“Whatever, the end result is he left you and the baby.”

“He didn’t know about the baby. I was going to tell him that night. The night he disappeared.” She swallowed hard and looked out the passenger side window to the darkness beyond. “I just never got the chance.” Then she turned to face Joel again. “And he didn’t leave me. Something happened to him. Something in the middle of the lake.” She eyed him closely, looking for any tiny sign that he might lie. “Do you know what it is?”

“No!” He was emphatic. “Geez, Harper, get real. I wasn’t even there when it happened.”

She’d heard all the theories that Chase had left the boat running and then hitchhiked away, that the boat had been a decoy to give him time to reach the border. Or that he had a friend pick him up in another boat and left Tom Hunt’s Triton to idle. Or that he’d swum to shore and found a ride or hopped a bus. Or whatever. But in her heart of hearts she couldn’t believe that he would just leave her.

He’d said they would be married . . .

But that was before Uncle Sam had come calling.

Then everything had changed.