“Oh, wonderful idea,” she says, clapping her hands once. “The one behind your cottage is the nicest. Everything should already be set, but the temperature controls are easy if you want to make it hotter or cooler.”
“Thanks, Caroline,” I say.
Noah gives her a quick smile. “Thanks, Mom.” Then he reaches for my hand. “Come on.”
The touch catches me off guard, but I close my fingers around his and let him lead me back toward the cottage barefoot, leaving the others by the lake. Noah is quiet beside me, but not in the way he was before. The silence feels easy, almost intimate. I glance over at him, watching drops of lake water slide down the back of his neck and disappear into the towel around his shoulders.
“That was fun,” he says after a moment, looking back at me with a small smile. “I almost never won chicken fights before.”
“You were good up there,” I tell him. “Natural fighter.”
He laughs. “Or maybe I just had a better base than Maya.”
“Obviously,” I say, flexing my bicep at him for effect.
Noah giggles and gives my shoulder a light punch, his laugh softening into something almost shy. “Seriously, though. Thanks. It felt good to win.”
“Anytime,” I say.
The hot tub sits on a wooden deck behind our cottage, steam curling off the surface in the cool air. A couple of deck chairs sit off to one side. Noah drops his towel onto one of them and fiddles with the control panel until the water starts bubbling.
“I don’t know what I just did,” he admits, eyeing the water like it might turn on him. “I’ve never actually used one of these before. But it’s bubbling, which seems right.”
“Yeah,” I say, leaning in to look over his shoulder. “That’s usually what you want from a hot tub and not, say, a cursed swamp.”
Noah huffs a laugh, then dips a hand into the water and jerks it back out. “Oh, shit. That’s really hot.”
“That is sort of the hot part of the whole hot tub thing, yeah,” I say.
He rolls his eyes at me, but he’s smiling. “Shut up.”
I glance down at my boxer briefs, dripping onto the deck. “Is it even acceptable to get in wearing your underwear?” I ask, thinking about my swim shorts hanging in our bathroom.
Noah’s brows lift, and a surprised smirk tugs at his mouth. “You want to do it naked?”
Heat shoots straight into my face. “What? No. I meant instead of actual swimwear. I didn’t—”
Noah breaks into laughter, bright and helpless. “Your face,” he says between breaths. “Oh my God, your face.”
I shake my head, still smiling despite my embarrassment. “You’re the worst.”
“I am,” he says, grinning as he steps into the tub. “Oh, shit. That is hot.”
He lowers himself in slowly, wincing as the water climbs over his thighs and up to his waist. I get in after him, the heat almost startling after the lake. It takes a second to adjust, but then it starts to feel incredible, sinking into my muscles and chasing out the cold.
Noah settles across from me and tips his head back against the edge of the tub with a contented sigh. “This was definitely a good idea.”
I nod, trying not to stare at the water beading on his collarbone or the wet curls stuck to his temples. The jets keep the water moving, nudging us closer now and then before drifting us apart again.
“Your skin’s already turning red,” Noah says, watching me with amusement. “It’s been, like, a minute.”
I glance down at my chest, where my pale skin is already flushing pink from the heat. “I’m Irish,” I remind him. “My ancestors preferred freezing to death in stone huts to anything remotely comfortable.”
Noah laughs again, the sound carrying through the cool air. “They’d be horrified to see you now, luxuriating in a hot tub.”
“Deeply ashamed,” I agree. “They’re probably rolling in their cold, damp graves as we speak.”
Noah smiles at me over the water. “And yet here you are. Pink and happy. Like a cute little piglet.”
