Leave a Mark (21 page)

“As I was saying when you hung up on me…”

His voice was languid but sure.

“You spook just like a bird. Just when I think I’m getting close, you take flight, beautiful Wren. Would you believe me if I told you I’m not going to hurt you?”

Just like that, her heart started pounding again. Her skin prickled as she broke into a sweat. This she couldn’t believe. Of course he was going to hurt her. What was worse than this certainty was the feeling that she had no choice in the matter, no way to avoid it. He was going to hurt her, and she could do nothing about it.

“I work a twenty-four-hour shift starting tonight, but then I have Monday off. And I know you do too. Google says Studio Ink is closed on Mondays… so hear me out…"

He said it as though she would interrupt him, as though she weren’t hanging on his every word.

“Come kayaking with me and Victor on Monday. I’ll pack a lunch. Victor loves it. We’ve gone twice already. Come with us… I’ll be too busy paddling to chase you.
”

At this, his voice softened.

“But I’d love to spend the day on the water with you…”

A whole day with Lee Hawthorne? She tried to call him Dr. Leland Hawthorne, but it was hard to picture Dr. Leland Hawthorne kayaking with a labradoodle puppy.

“Don’t think,”
he told her, as if he could read her mind.
“Just come with me.”

He hung up then, leaving Wren cut off from that voice. Her first impulse was to call him right back, but she stopped herself. She’d never felt such a compulsion before. It was ridiculous. But as crazy as she knew it was, Wren also knew that come Monday, she would be on a kayak with Lee Hawthorne.

She tapped the message icon on her phone and typed.

Okay. Yes.

LEE LOADED UP
the Jeep with Victor at his heels. The pup already knew what it meant when he strapped the single-person kayak to the roof of the Jeep, but when Lee hoisted the two-man Trident Ultra over his head and carried it across the yard, Victor began to bark with excitement.

And maybe it wasn’t the sight of the bigger water vessel that set him off. Maybe it was Lee’s own anticipation. The prospect of spending the whole day with Wren made the seventy-pound kayak seem weightless in his grip.

It was not yet eleven o’clock, and Lee had spent the morning getting ready. He’d packed a cooler with drinks, dark red grapes, and strawberries, and he had a bag of fried chicken from Albertsons’ deli. Lee knew it wouldn’t come close to anything like her fried peach pies, but he hoped it would be enough.

With the kayak secured and his Jeep loaded, he scooped up Victor, and they set off. Lee’s fingertips drummed against the steering wheel in a blur. If today didn’t go well, he might not get another shot. But, at least in his kayak, Wren couldn’t run away. Or hang up on him. Or send him packing.

Pulling onto the curb in front of her apartment, he remembered his first visit. He’d wanted to carry her up the stairs in his arms. He should have known then what that meant. In a year with Marcelle, he’d never felt that same urge — that need — to protect her. Marcelle just didn’t need protecting.

Wren doesn’t either
, he told himself. And even if he knew this was true, it didn’t stop him from wanting the job to be his.

“C’mon, boy.” Lee stepped out of the Jeep and set Victor down by his feet. The pup sniffed the ground with intense attention, but he stayed even with Lee’s heels as they crossed Wren’s drive. When they reached the foot of her stairs, Victor sniffed the air and whined.

“You can do it,” Lee encouraged, pointing up to the landing. Victor whined again and sat. Lee mounted the first step. “C’mon, Victor."

The pup stood and wagged nervously, but he didn’t follow. Lee had weighed the little guy the day before, and he still hadn’t hit twenty pounds. The staircase loomed above him. Lee took another step, squatted down, and patted his thigh. “C’mon, Victor. Come up the stairs.”

Victor gave a distressed grumble and clawed at the bottom stair. He looked up at Lee, backed up a step, and to Lee’s surprise, he barked sharply.

“Victor, really? It’s just a step.” Above him, Lee heard a door open. He glanced up, and there she stood. Cut-off jean shorts showed him sights he’d never imagined, and he knew at once he’d need hours to take it all in. Wildflowers. Birds. Branches. Every color in nature. He’d fall into them if he didn’t look away, so he pulled his eyes up. Above the shorts, she wore a long-sleeved madras in faded plaid oranges and blues. It was buttoned low, and Lee thought he caught the hint of a bikini top beneath it. A vivid flash of red peeked out behind her open collar, but, from the bottom of the stairs, he couldn’t make out what was there.

“Hey, Victor!” she squealed. Before his eyes, Wren dropped to her knees, and Victor flew up the stairs. He crashed into Wren, paws flailing, tail whipping. Wren went backward and caught herself, laughing as Victor licked her face in with uncontained joy. He watched as she sat back and took the puppy into her lap, looking just as elated.

Yes. This.

The sight of them filled his happiness quota for the week, and still Lee wanted more. He climbed the stairs slowly… slowly to take in the sight and slowly not to disturb the moment.

“Victor, you’ve gotten so big!” Wren scrubbed the dog as she tried to dodge his kisses. In spite of himself, Lee envied Victor his proximity.

“He wouldn’t go up the stairs until he saw you,” Lee said, reaching the top step and catching her eyes. She wore a tiny butterfly barbell in her left brow. It had blue wings that matched her hair. He noticed that her blue streaks were sharper, her black layers darker. She’d touched up her color. He knew better than to think it was for him, but he wanted her to know he’d noticed. “Your hair looks great. And I love that butterfly.”

Her cheeks colored, and she reached a hand up to him. “Help me up.”

Lee gladly took her hand and pulled Wren to her feet while she cradled Victor with her other arm. He kept nuzzling her in his excitement, so she drew her hand out of Lee’s grasp to steady the puppy.

“He’s excited to see you,” Lee said needlessly. “He’s not alone.”

She fought her smile and looked away. “Let me just get my stuff, and we can go." Wren moved toward the door and set Victor down. The puppy had no intention of being left behind, and when she opened the door to her apartment, Victor stepped inside. Lee followed just in time to see Agnes arch her back and hiss at the canine intruder.

“Whoa,” Lee called, and Victor froze in his tracks, his tail tucked.

“Agnes, shoo!” Wren scolded, and the cat darted out of the room.

At the sight of her retreat, Victor broke his stay and was about to tear after her when Lee reached down and caught him.

“Oh, no, you don’t. She’d cut you to ribbons.”

“Sorry,” Wren said, picking up a floppy blue hat and what looked like a beach bag from her coffee table. “I didn’t think about that.”

“No problem,” Lee said, eyeing her bag and hat. “You… uh… you know we’re not spending the day at the beach, right?”

Wren crossed her arms and cocked a hip. Her brows lowered over her eyes. The closest beach was three hours away.

“I burn easily,” she said. “You, of all people, should support healthy skin,
Dr. Leland Hawthorne.”

That name — and the way she said it — stabbed like a knife.

“Please don’t call me that.”

Her brows bunched, and her look morphed from censure to confusion.

“Call you what?” she asked, blinking at him.

“Leland,” he said, swallowing the bile that crept up his throat.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?”

Lee sighed. Would she understand if he tried to explain it to her? The name — his father’s choice — had always chafed. And despite his wishes, Thomas Hawthorne
always
called him Leland.
“It’s a refined name,”
he said whenever Lee had protested. Marcelle, too, had preferred it, once telling him that Lee was
“the name of a barrel racer at the parish rodeo.”

Looking back, Lee realized that should have told him something.

“I just… have always hated it,” he said, shaking his head. “Call me Lee. Please.”

Wren watched him for a moment before nodding. “Lee it is.” And then she wrinkled her nose. “Leland’s kind of pretentious.”

Lee chuckled in relief. “I’ve always thought so.”

“He sounds like a tool.”

At this, Lee threw back his head and laughed. How come she got him when no one else did? “He’s a tool who wears an ascot and talks through his nose.”

Wren giggled. “And he has a trust fund to go with his yacht.”

They both laughed, Lee’s shoulders relaxing at the sight of her amusement. Remembering Marcelle’s rodeo comment, he had to ask. “What about Lee?”

She put a knuckle to her mouth and studied him. “Lee… takes his puppy kayaking and knows all the words to ‘Bad Horse.’”

The words he liked, but it was the approval in her face that made him want to pull her into his arms. He mastered the urge and reached for her hat instead. “And for the record, Lee’s very much in support of healthy skin." He smiled at her. “Especially yours.”

This made her blush again, and he liked that even more. “Let’s go.”

Victor wasted no time flopping onto Wren’s lap as soon as they settled into the Jeep. She brushed her hands over Victor’s coat, and his tail thumped against Lee’s thigh.

“Mmm,” Wren hummed, petting him with both hands. “He’s so soft. I missed this.”

As they pulled away from Wren’s place, Lee seized the opportunity. “You can visit him whenever you want,” he offered, glancing over at her. She rewarded him with an eye roll.

“Nice try,” she said, her tone wry, but her eyes smiled. “So, where exactly are we going?”

Lee pulled onto St. Julien and then into the turning lane. “We are going to Lake Martin. Have you ever been there in the spring?”

Wren gave a dry laugh. “I’ve never been there at all.”

“Never?” Lee’s eyes went wide. Lake Martin was the biggest body of water in a twenty-mile radius. “And you’re from
here?”

“Born and raised.”

In the back of his mind, Lee wondered how many times their paths had crossed over the years. Lafayette, a city of about 200,000 people, often felt like a small town. He couldn’t go to Downtown Alive or Albertsons without seeing someone who had either graduated from Episcopal School of Acadiana with him or knew his parents. If he’d seen Wren somewhere in town, he couldn’t imagine not noticing her.

“It’s a crime you’ve never been to Lake Martin.”

“Why’s that?”

“Do you know what’s out there?” As he asked, he hoped she’d say no. If she said no, his luck was about to change for the better.

“No, what’s out there?”

A grin split Lee’s face, and he bit his lip to keep it under control. “You’re going to love it.”

THEY CROSSED THE
Vermilion River, and Lee slowed the Jeep to make the turn. Wren didn’t miss the sign.

“Rookery Road?”

Lee didn’t respond. He just drove them through the woods and past the Welcome Center until the gravel road angled to the right, and the cypress trees began to thin. When the lake came into view, Wren gasped beside him.

“Oh my God… are those
birds?
” She pointed to the puffs of white that dotted the cypress branches.

In every tree — on nearly every branch — Great Egrets perched, their downy heads fanned out like asters. They numbered in the hundreds.

“They’re egrets. Lake Martin is a wild bird preserve, and every year, thousands of birds migrate here to make their nests,” he said, slowing the Jeep so she could get a better look. “The egrets stay year round and so do other marsh birds.”

He glanced over to find Wren transfixed. Her eyes lit with wonder, and her pretty lips parted. She leaned closer to him to peer out his window, and her delicious scent filled his head. Lee brought the Jeep to a stop and pressed the button to lower his window. As soon as he did, Victor stood between them and sniffed the air.

“We’ll be able to see a lot better from the kayak.”

Wren tore her eyes from the scenery and locked them with his. “We can get close?” As she asked, she was closer to him than she had been since Friday, and he couldn’t help his smile.

“We can paddle right between the trees, right under their nests if you want.”

Wren nodded. “Let’s go.”

Lee didn’t wait to be told twice. He drove the last half-mile stretch of road and parked his Jeep across the lot from the boat launch.

“I’ll get the kayak down and load it up if you walk Victor,” Lee said, stepping out of the Jeep to untether the straps that held the Trident. “Just don’t take him by the water.”

“Why?” Wren asked, taking Victor in her arms and scooting out of the Jeep. “Is he scared?”

“Well, he should be. There are alligators.”

Wren's brows shot up. "Right. No walking by the water," she said, settling Victor on the ground by her feet. “Let’s go, Victor. Walk away from the monsters.”