“Yeah,” I sigh. “We should go pay him a visit soon.”
“Yeah,” Jake nods, agreeing with me. “Maybe we can swing by after we go fishing on Friday.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I nod and then wave at Jake as he finally rolls up his window in favor of the air conditioning before backing up out of our driveway.
Instead of going immediately into the house, I walk across our yard over to the old barbed wire fence serving as the boundary between our property and Mr. McEwen’s.
I deftly swing my leg through the gap between the middle and third wire and then follow through with my torso to pass through the fence without a scratch in a practiced move I’ve been doing my whole life.
I make my way over to the edge of the pond and slip off my flip-flops. Although it’s not as hot as it was earlier today, the heat this evening is still oppressive. I can feel my curls sticking to my neck, and the water is calling to me like a siren.
I don’t even glance around me before shucking down to my bra and panties and diving in. Nobody ever comes out here but Jake and me. I can’t count how many midnight swims I’ve taken in this pond over the years. It’s like my own natural swimming pool.
I float on my back for a bit and look up at the clouds streaked with pink, purple, and amber as the sun begins to go down. I can just hear my gran warning me about cottonmouths if she could see me now. She’d freak if she knew just how much I go swimming in this pond. While I know that cottonmouth snakes are a real danger around any body of water here in Tennessee, I’ve never seen one here at the pond. It’s like the universe knows this pond is my getaway and is expressly protecting me from the poisonous vipers.
I swim and float around until I can see the first flicker of light from the fireflies. Gran calls them lightning bugs, but I like fireflies. It makes them sound more mystical that way.
The cicadas are starting to hum their summertime song by the time I climb out of the pond and lay in the grass while I dry off. This is something else Gran would reprimand me for. She’d say I’ll be covered in ticks from laying in the grass like this, but I’ve pulled hundreds of ticks off me in my lifetime whether I lay in the grass or not. The fact is just walking outside this time of year is enough to get one on you. So far, I’ve been lucky and haven’t come down with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Lyme disease, though I knew people people who had.
Plus, there was no keeping Jake and me out of the woods. When we were little, we’d practically lived in them, seeing who could climb the highest in the trees. I always won. Jake said I was a regular monkey. I quirk a grin remembering our childhood antics. He was always just jealous I could out-climb him any day.
Still can.
I give a tiny laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
My eyes fly open and I jump to a sitting position, my hands coming up to cross over my chest and try to hide my bra-and-panty-clad form from the deep voice that I instantly recognize.
As soon as I look up, I see him.
The man from the side of the road. A lock of dark hair falls onto his forehead as he gazes down at me. He looks even taller towering over me like this, his golden eyes glowing in the dusk.
I scramble back to my feet and hurry to pull on my shorts and tank, never mind that my bra and panties are still damp and are getting my clothes wet.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask him angrily.
He shrugs with a smirk and a vague, “Not long.”
I scowl at him while I run my fingers through my damp curls. “What are you? Some sort of peeping tom?”
He chuckles at that before saying, “How can I be a peeping tom if it’s my property?”
My eyes widen at that. “You bought Mr. McEwen’s place?” I ask, dumbfounded.
It suddenly makes sense why I’d never seen him before, why his clothing had looked so expensive. God, I was so stupid not to have put it together before.
“I guess so,” he answers nonchalantly, never taking his eyes off me. The way he trains them on me makes my skin prickle with awareness.
I try to ignore the feeling as I focus on what he said. I feel a sinking feeling as I realize my days of coming to this pond are over. It belongs to him now. This guy who looks too rich for this setting.
“That still doesn’t give you the right to stalk women,” I lash out at him in my frustration. He’s just unknowingly turned my entire world upside down, and I’m pissed that he’d been watching me in my underthings for god knows how long.
He laughs as if what I said was hilarious. The sound is deep and masculine, and it makes my toes curl where I still stand in the grass barefooted.
“If there’s any crime being committed here, Daisy, it’s trespassing.” The way he says my name makes my heart skip a beat. He says it like his tongue caresses over every syllable, and the way his eyes seem to darken to amber when he looks at me makes me wonder if he’s imagining his tongue caressing over more than just my name.
The thought makes my legs tremble, but I won’t allow myself to show any nerves around him.