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“Not really.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m sure some of it isn’t.”
Kendall’s eyes widened. “Are you serious with this?”
Lily shrugged. “I’m here to talk if you need to.”
Relieved that her mother didn’t seem to have anything else to add, she brought up the site. The entire top of the site was transformed into a winter landscape that would do a Hallmark card proud. The angle of the picture invited a visitor into the Web site, and the gallery showed all the new things Shane had added as well as updated photos that were a helluva lot more high quality than she’d been able to take with her camera.
The rest of the information lay untouched, but the few changes were perfect. He really had come in and taken over in tiny ways. Not enough for her or her mother to take notice, but on the whole he’d done nothing but improve the Heron.
He’d also added links to travel sites that now had them listed on their registries. That must have been how the Simmonses had found them.
“Can I check my e-mail?”
Kendall nodded at her mother’s request and stood. “I’m going to go find Shane.”
“Okay. I’m going to run a couple loads of laundry and relax. We’ve got time before we have to pull all the rooms apart.”
Kendall went out the back door and across the lawn before she noticed his truck was gone. Instead of returning inside, she brewed a mug of coffee from his Keurig, touched to see her flavored coffees in his stack of K-Cups, and brought it out to sit on the Adirondack chair.
She curled into an oversize blanket from the small chest he’d built next to the pergola. The lake was too large to fully ice over, but this part of the inlet was good for fishing. Petey, ever the opportunist, swooped in and perched at the end of the dock. His blue and silvery feathers ruffled a few times before he folded his massive wings against his back.
She wasn’t sure how long she was out there when she heard booted footfalls.
Shane crouched next to her. “Nice to see you actually sitting for a change.” He leaned in, and it felt natural to lose herself in his sweet kiss. “At least the flavored crap you like tastes good this way.”
Chuckling, she held out her empty mug. “It would taste even better with a refill.”
“Only because I want a cup too.”
She looked over her shoulder at his truly excellent backside, then cuddled back into her blanket. He returned a few minutes later and scooped her out of the chair. “Hey! I was all comfy.”
He sat back down with her on his lap, and she situated herself, noticing the chair was indeed a little bigger than the average Adirondack chair. Not quite big enough for two, but he must have had this in mind when building it.
The warm glow she’d been riding since last night grew.
He set her mug in her hands, and both of them sat quietly. She didn’t realize she’d been looking for this all her life.
TWENTY
Kendall draggedthe two winterized loungers in next to the swing and her favorite chair to tarp against the wind coming off the lake. The forecast called for a hammer of a nor’easter, and she didn’t want them damaged in the icy mix that was headed their way.
She heard thepopof tires over gravel and snapped her last bungee cord around the chairs, securing them to the pergola. The truck wasn’t one she recognized. Shane was out of town delivering the huge koa dining set he’d finally finished and wouldn’t be back until morning.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” Kendall jogged to the end of the dock. “Can I help you?”
The man held out his hand. Kind brown eyes smiled down at her. “I’m Andrew Clark. A Shane Justice asked me to come out and survey the land for an appraisal.”
The shock of his statement had her hand falling limply from his grasp. The wind picked up, slapping a gust along her back. “Of course. I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I actually wasn’t due to come until next week, but I was in the area and hoped to get it out of the way if that was okay with you.”
“Sure.” It felt like she was talking through half-frozen molasses. “Let me grab my jacket.” She walked woodenly to the main house. She and Shane had been getting along so well. The last week had been a dream—loving Shane through the night, both of them working on individual projects during the day.
