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Hands in his jacket pockets, Duncan approached the little bobbing dock with a carefree kink at the corner of his mouth.
I fluttered my lips. Well, that worked about as well as tripping on a spiderweb.
“Pretty astounding, isn’t it?” he said, gesturing to the lake with his elbow.
With his hair messy and wet, implying he’d just showered, and his jeans ending at a pair of black sneakers, he was the picture of casual. My heart rattled off a few traitorous, erraticbeats, and I slapped a hand to my chest as though that would make it slow back down.
“You scared me,” I said.
“Sorry. I saw you turn off after talking to that woman and decided to see what caught your interest.”
My suspicion rose. “You were stalking me, you mean.”
One of his rare smiles made an appearance. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
The words were easily cast, but I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Please tell me you’re not serious.”
He said nothing. The dock bobbed beneath his weight. He crossed to my side and faced the lake, resting his elbows on the railing that prevented an unsuspecting admirer from plunging into the gleaming water.
That was good because I wouldn’t put it past him to do just that to me. Just for the laugh of throwing me off.
I couldn’t move on quite as easily. He’d been watching me run? I hadn’t made much distance from his house, I supposed, so the idea wasn’t that odd, but still. Why would he care where I went?
“This was the same view that impressed me the first time I came here when I was a kid,” he said.
Apparently, he wasn’t going to give.
“Whatdidbring you here?” I asked, deciding to keep the conversation light instead of pestering him like I wanted to.
Secrets shrouded his eyes. I suspected there was something, a definite reason, and one he wasn’t willing to admit.
“The seclusion,” he finally said. “And the fishing.”
“You’re lying.”
He released a laugh. Duncan waslaughing? “I’m not. I love to fish.”
My shoulders relaxed only slightly. Treading carefully as if tiptoeing through a Lego spill, I rested my weight against therailing behind me and folded my arms. I waited for him to let this façade go. To revert to the uptight jerk I was used to.
“I don’t buy that at all,” I said. “When have you ever liked doing anything besides work?”
He faked a hurt expression and placed a hand on his heart. “How little you know me.”
“How little I do,” I agreed, fully serious—unlike him. “Okay, then. You like to fish. So you bought a whole hunk of house in the middle of nowhere just to fish?”
“You make it sound like that’s an odd thing, but a man needs his space.”
“And if you can afford to, why not take as much space as you can get?”
“Exactly.”
I scoffed. “That wasn’t a compliment.”
He placed his palms on the railing and straightened. “Why not enjoy a place like this? I love Vermont, but my life is busy. So busy, Rose. I just needed to get away, and I’m not about to stay with my family. I grew up in Arkansas. I’ve been to these mountains before; I used to fish here when I was a kid, and I knew this was a well-hidden area that didn’t get much traffic.”
The thought pinched unexpectedly in my chest. “Why do you avoid them so much?”
