Page 22 of Anchored

Maple cringes. “Huh. Well, that’s…sad, I guess.”

Gracie rolls her lips inward and tries not to laugh.

I clap my hands and stand, eager not to be in the hot seat any longer when Gracie is intent on asking hard-to-answer questions. “We bought all the supplies for grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Maple tells me that was one of your favorites to make when she was here for the summer.”

“Oh, it was. I’d love some!” Gracie reaches out and holds my hand, patting the back of it with her other hand. “You’re a good boy, Holt. I can see why Maple is in love with you.”

Maple and I both shift awkwardly, refusing to look at each other. Gently extracting my hand, I head to the kitchen to make us all lunch.

“Can you put the cookies in the oven?” Maple calls out.

“Sure thing, my little moonbeam!” I call back.

The responding snort makes me smile as I get everything out and get to work. We end up eating lunch at the kitchen table after Gracie insisted on walking over on her own. Maple hovers the whole time, which is probably a good thing. Gracie still looks a little unstable on her feet, which she blames on the general soreness from falling.

The ladies keep up a steady chatter about their memories here in the cabin. I listen, soaking in the information about Maple. She lights up talking about her summers here. Curiously, she never mentions her parents or her brother. I guess they never came out to Anchor Lake for the summer with her.

“I hate to be a party pooper, but I need a nap,” Gracie exclaims after Maple and I clear our plates from the old scarred table.

Maple walks her back to the living room and gets her settled on the couch with a pillow and blanket. I pull a second batch of cookies out of the oven, mouth watering at the smell of oatmeal and sugar. I stop and frown at the cookies, thinking that cowboy cookies always involve chocolate, if I’m not mistaken.

“Hey,” Maple whispers from behind me.

I turn, pointing at the cookies, trying to keep my voice low so Gracie can snooze. “Aren’t these supposed to have chocolate chips?”

Maple shrugs, picking up one of the ones that had been cooling while we ate. She takes a huge bite. Her eyes nearly roll back in her head. I swallow hard, watching her thoroughly enjoy the cookie.

“I wanted you to be able to eat them,” she finally answers, licking her fingers.

Trying to ignore the action of her tongue for the moment, I pull her into a rough hug. She barks out a laugh and then tries to muffle it in my chest. Her simple kindness touches me. Macy didn’t give a fuck that I couldn’t eat chocolate. In fact, I think her comment was always, “more for me!”

I let Maple go and snatch up a cookie to have something else to do with my hands. My own eyes roll back in my head as the flavors hit my tongue. These cookies are orgasm-worthy.

“Oh, fuck,” I whisper.

Maple giggles. “Come on. Let’s get our suits on and go swimming. Purposely, this time.”

I lunge like I’m about to chase her for that comment, but she turns and runs out of the kitchen with a muffled shriek, her steps light and almost silent. I sneak out too—but only after I shove another cookie in my mouth—and head for my room, slipping into a pair of swim trunks and then sitting on my bed, giving Maple enough time to get on a swimsuit in the guest bathroom before I come charging out. Even so, I’m the first one outside. I drape two towels over the Adirondack chairs that face out to offer a stunning view of the lake.

Maple sneaks up behind me as I’m waving to three kids cruising by on inner tubes. They’re splashing each other more than they’re actually paddling, but that’s the kind of fun kids have here in Anchor Lake. A memory of splashing my sister in this very lake is what’s on my mind as I feel two hands shove me in the back. I do a quick step to slow my forward motion into the lake, but the mossy rocks under foot bungle my attempt. I go flying into the water, arms and legs flailing, the sound of Maple’s laughter echoing in my ears before the water blots out everything.

My head surfaces only long enough for me to glare at the woman cackling with her bare feet in the dirt. She’s got on a tie-dye swimsuit, the kind where the top is two dinky triangles and strings are supposed to hold everything together. Spoiler alert: mere strings have no hope of containing Maple’s ample breasts. I dip down under the water again to touch the bottom of the lake just to get my shit together.

She splashes her way into the lake. Just as I come up to suck in a lungful of air, she dives under the water, and I get a flash of her ass. If I thought the triangles over her breasts were small, I clearly didn’t contemplate the back side of women’s swimsuits these days. Calling it a triangle of material is being generous. Thank God the water is just murky enough to hide the erection that tries to float out of my swim trunks.

Maple breaks the surface of the water, head back, hair slicked like a swimsuit model emerging from the ocean. Fuck my life, she’s prettier than any women I’ve ever seen. And I have a condo in Miami that has a killer view of the beach and all the women that have had the best plastic surgeons in the world work on them.

She spins, finding me gaping at her. She lifts her hands and sends a wave of water in my direction. I sputter, belatedly remembering to close my goddamn mouth. Instincts from summers spent on the lake with friends and my sister hit full force and I return the splash. Tenfold. Maple screams and blinks the water out of her eyes. Instead of calling a truce, she ducks under the water. I try to see her below the surface, but it’s no use. That is, until she resurfaces right in front of me and nearly drowns me with a splash right to the face.

I grab her shoulders and dunk her under the water. She retaliates by snaking her long legs around my waist and trying to climb me like a tree. I go under too, but fuck, she’s wrapped around me like a koala on her favorite tree. I don’t mind one bit if this is the way I end up leaving this life. We both break the surface of the water, gasping for breath and trying to clear water out of our eyes. Her legs are still around my waist and her breasts are pressed against my chest, spilling between us.

We both freeze. Me, because her lips are just inches from me and I want nothing more than to reenact our first kiss. She probably freezes because there’s no way in hell she can’t feel my erection with her pressed so tightly to me. Except going still in deep water is dangerous, and we both sink under the surface. We break apart, kicking our feet and remembering to tread water.

“I’ll race you to the buoy,” I manage to rasp.

She glances at the buoy thirty feet from us and takes off.

“Hey!” I shout after her, but it’s no use.

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