Page 46 of Serenity Harbor

“I’ve seen the Killy. It is a thing of art.”

“If Ben is too busy, I have plenty of other friends who have boats. I knew it was nervy to offer him a ride, but it seemed to motivate him. He tried pretty hard after I suggested we could do it, though he didn’t speak until later in the evening.”

“He really said my name?”

“Wait until morning and I’ll see if I can get him to say it directly to you. By this time tomorrow, you just might be as sick ofBu-oas you are ofno.”

“Impossible,” he declared.

She smiled. Oh, he was a tough man to resist. “You’re a nice man and a good brother, Bowie Callahan. Milo is very lucky.”

He made a disbelieving sound low in his throat.

“It’s true! You have the resources and the connections to help him reach his highest potential. If he had been sucked into the foster care system, his situation might have ended up very differently.”

“Yeah. But he also might have ended up with a decent family—a mother and father who know what the hell to do with him. Who don’t lose their tempers when he dumps his cereal on the kitchen floor.”

At the bleak frustration in his voice, she reached a hand out and rested her fingers on his forearm. His skin was warm, covered in crisp hair, and she had to resist caressing her hand up and down. Instead, she gave a reassuring squeeze and quickly withdrew her fingers. “You’re doing great with him. Get off your own back. Milo can sense you care about him. That might be one of the reasons he tests you so much, to make sure you’re really going to stick.”

“I’m sticking,” he said. “But I have no idea how to reinforce that to him.”

“Just continue loving him,” she said simply. “That’s the only thing you can do until he begins to believe it for himself.”

Had she really once thought he was an arrogant jerk? Katrina couldn’t help thinking back to that first day in the store and her initial impression of him. Bowie was about as far from that image as she could imagine.

She would have to tread carefully here or she might be in danger of losing her heart to Bowie as easily as she had to his little brother.

She was living in his house, sleeping in the bed he had used until that very morning. The scent of him still clung to the room, a masculine, woodsy soap, laundry detergent and something else that seemed essential Bowie.

While in his house, his presence seemed to surround her all day long—as if his shadow walked beside her. After their heated kiss the night before, it would be entirely too easy to surrender to the attraction along with the soft tenderness beginning to take root.

She let out a breath and shifted the conversation to something safer than his insecurities about his brother. “While we’re speaking of boats and water, I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“That sounds ominous.”

She made a face. “It’s not, I promise. What do you think about swimming lessons?”

“I think I’m too old and the little plastic floaty things won’t fit on my arms,” he said instantly.

She couldn’t hold back her laughter. “Ha ha. For Milo,” she said, wondering if anyone else had the chance to see this lighthearted side of him. Maybe he could relax his tight control only here, amid the peace of the lake and the intimacy of the night.

“Given his fascination with the water, he should really have some basic survival skills,” she went on. “You live on a lake and you have a hot tub. It’s disaster waiting to happen—and you can’t keep him under twenty-four-hour surveillance, try as you might.”

“I agree. It’s a great idea. I had it on my list, along with a dozen other things. Every kid should learn how to swim.”

She again felt the sting of being the weird one out. “I wish you had been here to tell my mother that. She never let me have lessons, and it’s still one of my deepest regrets.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re right. Everybody should know how to keep themselves afloat and at least do the dog paddle. Like many things, it’s easier to pick up that skill when you’re a child. I took lessons later in life but still don’t feel like the greatest swimmer.”

“I meant, why didn’t your mother let you have lessons.”

With that simple question, she flashed back to summers when she was around Milo’s age, watching Wyatt and Wynona splash around with Elliot and Marshall while she was forced to sit on the bank—or, worse, in the house, where she couldn’t even feel the warm sunshine or smell the pines or listen to the laughter of her siblings.

Oh, how she had envied them their freedom.

“It was for my own safety,” she finally said.

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