Page 131 of The Woman By the Lake

On the one hand, I wanted to meet his buds.

On the other hand, I wasn’t a partier.

“Maribeth will be here. She’s coming on Wednesday and staying the weekend,” as a hedge, I reminded him of something I’d already told him.

“All the better,” he replied.

In the Maribeth department, it was, seeing as she was a partier, even if she was now a married lady with two kids.

“Murphy’s also coming out,” he shared. “That’s another of the texts I got. Looks like Mom also got to him, and he’s not gonna waste time checking you out.”

I didn’t know if this elated or terrified me.

Riggs pulled me tighter to his side. “He’ll like you.”

If he was like Riggs, and I huddled in a chair, sipping a gin martini, while other women were throwing their bras into the pines, I wasn’t sure about that.

“I don’t want to change a hair on your head, honey,” Riggs remarked. “But I do wanna have a go at teaching you how to let it down. Your girl and my boy in town, that says party.”

He was right.

It did.

“Okay. I’m in.”

He shot me a big, happy smile.

It was only then I was truly in.

“Well, not a chill day, but an interesting one,” I noted.

“I wanted to hang with you and my kid before dropping my boy off at Dustin’s at four, then spend the rest of the day in your bed at the cabin. Now, due to the Cade and Stormy parts of this shit, Jace and Jess are gonna take him to do something, so I lost the Ledger part of that.”

“We deal, then we get on with it,” I reminded him.

He looked down at me. “Yeah, honey. And another reminder, on other important fronts, you’re not doing much of that.”

Hmm.

It was occurring to me that Riggs thought he was sitting on the emotional ticking time bomb of me.

Truth.

He was.

So he was right.

I had to deal with that.

But first I needed to learn how to party.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Eternity

Nadia

The Riggs boys owned a lake.

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