Page 4 of Silent Heart

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why this stranger affected me so strongly. Maybe it was the lack of social convention, the fact that he simply stared at me, unwavering in his focus. Guys—hell, mosthumans—didn’t do that. Only some of the more wild animals I treated ever watched me like this.

Lucas must have recognized me, because he began waving wildly. “Hey! Harley! How’s it going?”

The silent one slid a death glare toward his brother. I shivered for Lucas’s sake.

“How do they know you?” Susanna hissed, thankfully keeping her voice quiet.

I shrugged. “They came for dinner at the Landing last night.”

“You know everybody,” Sarah said enviously.

Kayla snorted. “Not hard when you work at the local watering hole where the rich lake folk think they’re normal by eating burgers from a basket, even though they aren’t fooling anyone.”

“Shut up, Kayla,” I snapped. “Just because I make more than you in one night of tips doesn’t give you the right to be nasty.”

Kayla sniffed, but I ignored my cousin because Lucas was shouting at me again.

“Do you know anything about small engines?” he called out.

“I do, as a matter of fact.” Pushing to my feet, I braced myself on the pontoon’s canopy frame. “For starters,thatisn’t a small engine. There’s enough power in there to go on the ocean if you wanted.”

Lucas looked between me and the monster on the back of the boat. He shrugged. “Come take a look?”

“I’m not stopping to helpthem,” Kayla sneered.

“Smart,” Susanna agreed.

“I’d love to!” I called, arching a brow and daring the girls to fight me on it.

“They don’t deserve our help,” Laney protested.

“She’s right, you have no business associating with their kind,” Kayla huffed. “I’m not going over there.”

“Harley, don’t you dare,” Grace warned as I weighed my options. “We don’t know those men and they look like thugs with all that ink.”

I glanced at my own tattoos. “It would be unneighborly not to.”

“The cidiots aren’t our neighbors,” Kayla snapped.

But I hopped onto the top of the padded bench seat, and as my cousins yelled at me not to jump from a moving boat, I dove. My tank top and cut-offs weighed me down, but I wasn’t quite bold enough to make the dive in my bikini. Green water surged around me, filled with little flecks and bubbles of lake stuff. It was a magical kingdom under here, the weeds swaying in friendly greeting, hiding their secrets on the murky bottom of the lake.

Moving my body in one tight, long wave, I swam through the water until the algae-coated dock leg came into view. Water blew out my nostrils as I surfaced. Clambering out of the lake was awkward as self-consciousness flared inside me.

A strong, ring-free hand shot out just as I began to slip.

I clasped him, prepared to use the contact as a balance to help climb the ladder. Instead, the silent brother simply lifted me from the water in one strong pull. Launching across the composite wood surface, I stumbled to find my footing on the dock.

“Thanks,” I gasped.

The man said nothing. But he didn’t release his hold on me. Not until I was steady, and then he still held on for five more heartbeats. Five overpowering moments where a raw current of energy sizzled between us. When he walked away, his fingerscurled into a fist, but I couldn’t read his face to know what he was thinking.

Lucas swooped in front of me, a blistering smile filling my field of vision. “That was an impressive dive! You a swimmer?”

I blinked, suddenly dizzy from his focused attention. “Uh, yeah. I was on the competitive team and had a scholarship.”

“Cool! My wife is a swimmer as well. She would love it up here—can’t wait to bring her,” he rambled. “Anyhow, so the engine does this weird thing when we try to turn it over.”

“Let me take a look,” I said, tossing a quick look at my family.

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