Chapter 1: The Unexpected Encounter
The floorboard groaned like a living thing under Bianca’s foot, the sound impossibly loud in the sleepy upstairs hall of the lake house. Chloe’s voice, faint and sing-song from the kitchen below, echoed up the stairs. “Just grab one from the linen closet, Bee! Top shelf!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bianca muttered to herself, pushing a curl of auburn hair behind her ear. The hallway was narrow, walls clad in peeling wallpaper patterned with faded pinecones. The air smelled of old wood, pine needles tracked in from outside, and a faint, sharp hint of whiskey. A single bulb flickered at the far end, casting long, wavering shadows.
She counted the doors. Bedroom, bathroom… this one. The linen closet. Her hand closed around the cool glass knob.
It turned too easily. The door wasn’t latched.
She pushed it open.
It wasn’t the closet.
Steam billowed out, warm and damp, carrying the clean, sharp scent of soap and something else, something inherently male. Her brain, moving with the slow-motion dread of a car crash, processed the scene in shattered fragments.
The white tile of the bathroom floor. A damp towel puddled near the sink. The gleaming curves of the shower stall.
And him.
Jay. Chloe’s uncle. Standing by the sink, completely naked, his back momentarily to her as he reached for something on the counter.
Her breath hitched, caught in her throat. Every thought dissolved into static.
He turned. Not startled, but slow, as if sensing the shift in the air.
Her gaze, traitorous and wide, swept over him. Water droplets clung to the defined muscles of his shoulders, tracing paths down the intricate ink that coiled around his bicep and over his pectoral. A trail of dark hair led from his navel down, past the sharp V of his hips, to where he was—
Oh, god.
He was half-hard, thick and heavy against his thigh, and the sight was so profoundly shocking, so viscerally real, that it short-circuited any polite reflex to look away.
Time stretched, thin and silent.
Then his eyes met hers. Deep-set, a shade of hazel that looked almost gold in the bathroom’s weak light. There was no anger there. No embarrassment. A slow, knowing smile touched his lips, crinkling the corners of his eyes. He didn’t move to cover himself. He just… stood there, letting her look.
“See something you like, Bianca?”
His voice was a low rumble, amused and intimate, carving through the fog in her head.
Heat exploded across her cheeks, a wildfire of blush that raced down her neck and across her chest. She could feel every freckle on her face burning. Her mouth opened, but only a choked, airless sound came out.
“I—the… the towel. Closet. Wrong door,” she stammered, the words tangling on her tongue. Her eyes finally ripped away, fixing on the dreadful pinecone wallpaper over his shoulder. “Sorry. So sorry. I’ll just—”
“Top shelf,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. He shifted, and from the corner of her eye she saw him reach for the towel puddled on the floor. The movement was casual, unashamed. “You found me instead.”
She didn’t wait. She spun on her heel, the old floorboards shrieking in protest, and fled.
Her socked feet slid on the polished wood as she careened down the hallway, her heart hammering a brutal rhythm against her ribs. The image was seared onto the back of her eyelids: the water on his skin, the dark ink, the solid, unforgiving lines of his body. That amused, low voice. See something you like?
“No, no, no, no, no,” she chanted under her breath, a frantic whisper lost in the thump of her own pulse in her ears.
She hit the door to the guest room at a near-run, fumbled the knob, and spilled inside, slamming it shut behind her. The solid thud of wood connecting with the frame felt like a safety seal. She slid down the length of the door until she was a heap on the floor, her back pressed against the cool wood, as if she could physically barricade herself from the mortification now flooding every cell of her body.
The only light came from the late afternoon sun filtering through the gauzy curtains, painting the braided rug in soft gold. She pressed her burning face into her knees, the rough denim of her jeans a faint anchor to reality. Her entire body felt like a live wire, buzzing with a strange, terrified energy.
What was wrong with her? She’d seen a naked man. Big deal. It was an accident. A stupid, humiliating, world-ending accident.
But it wasn’t just any man. It was Jay.
Chloe’s cool, effortlessly charismatic uncle. The one who showed up to family barbecues with a six-pack of local IPA and told stories about restoring old barns that made everyone lean in and listen. The one whose laugh was a low, warm sound that seemed to vibrate in your own chest. The one who’d ruffled her hair two summers ago and called her “Firecracker” for the way she’d argued about movie trivia, and the nickname had stuck in her head for weeks.
And now she knew what he looked like. All of him.
A fresh wave of heat washed over her. It wasn’t just embarrassment. That was there, a sharp, acidic sting. But underneath it, coiling low in her stomach, was something else. A thrilling, terrifying awareness. He hadn’t been angry. He’d been… amused. Intrigued, even.
See something you like?
Her traitorous mind replayed the question, his tone. It hadn’t been leering. It had been confident. Playful. A challenge.
“Stop it,” she whispered to the empty room.
She needed to get a grip. She had to go back downstairs. Chloe was probably wondering what happened to the towels. She’d have to walk past the bathroom again. What if he was out there? What would she say? Could she even look at him?
She dragged in a shaky breath, the air tasting of dust and old linen from the closet she’d meant to open. She forced herself to stand, her legs unsteady. In the dim mirror above the dresser, she saw a wild-eyed stranger with flaming cheeks and disastrous curls. She looked exactly how she felt: completely unraveled.
A soft knock at the door sent her jumping a foot in the air.
“Bianca?” It was Chloe’s voice. “You okay in there? You ran through the kitchen like a bat out of hell.”
“Fine!” she called, her voice an octave too high. She cleared her throat. “I’m fine! Just… stubbed my toe. Really hard.”
“Okay, weirdo.” Chloe’s footsteps retreated down the hall.
Bianca squeezed her eyes shut. Safe. For now.
But the problem wasn’t just the seeing. It was the wanting to see it again. That was the truly awful, electrifying part. The crush she’d secretly nursed from a safe, distant admiration had just been doused in gasoline and lit on fire. It was no longer a quiet, silly daydream. It was a living, breathing, physical thing in the hallway, smelling of soap and steam.
She crept to the door, her hand hovering over the knob. The house was quiet now, save for the distant murmur of the TV downstairs. She pressed her ear to the cool wood, listening.
Nothing.
Then, the distinct, heavy creak of a floorboard right outside her room. Someone was standing there. Waiting.
Her breath froze.
A moment later, she heard it. The faintest scratch of paper sliding under the door. She looked down. A single, folded square of notebook paper lay on the braided rug.
With trembling fingers, she picked it up and unfolded it.
The handwriting was bold, masculine, and slanted.
> Door number 3. Top shelf. This time, I promise it’s towels. -J
A laugh, choked and hysterical, bubbled up in her throat. He was teasing her. Actually, deliberately teasing her. The mortification flared again, but it was tangled now with a giddy, unbearable thread of excitement.
She didn’t move. She stayed hidden, listening as his footsteps, quiet and deliberate, finally walked away. She held the note until the paper grew warm from her hand, the words branding themselves into her palm.
She hides in the room, but she knows, with a certainty that terrified and thrilled her, that hiding wouldn’t be an option for long.