Gabe took the stick from his dog and handed it to Melanie. “You give it a toss.”

Her toss was more like a flop. Lady looked bored as she swam the three feet from the boat to retrieve it.

“Ah, I definitely recognize that you’re a girl now,” Gabe said.

“So maybe I should leave the hurling to you,” Melanie said. “Since you’re such an expert at handling a stick.”

“But I think you need practice.” He grinned at her and lowered his head to kiss the tip of her nose, the brim of his hat beaning her in the forehead.

“And I think you need practice kissing girls while wearing a cowboy hat.”

He swept a hand to the side. “The line starts here.”

She swatted him. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, look at all these beauties lining up for a go at me.”

She peered to the empty spot to her left. “It seems you have a line of one.”

“Luckily, it’s the best one.”

He leaned in to kiss her again, tilting his head to close in on her lips. Lady’s insistent whining shortened his promising kiss as he went to tend to her again. After several additional fetches, Lady scrambled back onto the boat, shook out her drenched coat and climbed on top of Beau for a rest. Beau grunted in protest as Lady wriggled around to find a more comfortable position on his large body—which apparently had to include her forepaw under his chin. Beau didn’t move from the spot he’d claimed, though he looked rather annoyed to be considered Lady’s personal doggie bed.

“The calm should last at least thirty minutes,” Gabe said with a chuckle. “Maybe I should have left the dogs at home.”

Melanie shook her head. “They’re having a great time.”

“Yeah, but are you?”

“Of course I am. I always have a great time when I’m with you.”

Fishing pole in hand, Gabe handed her a surprisingly light Styrofoam container that he’d bought at the marina when she’d procured her fishing license.

She gave it a little shake and found it wasn’t empty. “What’s in here? Coleslaw?”

“I don’t think you want to eat that,” he said. He pinched his hook between two fingers and held out his other hand in Melanie’s direction. “Hand me one,” he said.

“One what?”

“Bait.”

She shook her head in incomprehension.

“It’s in the cup.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t been playing coy when she said she’d never been fishing; she was totally clueless. She pried the lid of the cup and peered into it. Something small and white squirmed in a bed of what appeared to be sawdust. On closer inspection, she saw what appeared to be hundreds of plump maggots writhing about in the cup. She screamed and tossed the cup in the air, scrambling away from the spill.

Gabe stared at her. “What are you so freaked out about?”

“Your bait is infested with maggots.”

He chuckled. “My bait is maggots.”

She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, her stomach heaving. She should have said no to the sausage gravy.

“You are such a girl,” Gabe said.

“I thought we’d already established that,” she mumbled against her hand.

He stooped down to scoop the escaped maggots back into the cup with his bare hand.

“Oh my God,” she said, swallowing hard to keep her breakfast where it belonged. “You are never touching me with that hand again.”

“Oh, please,” he said, piercing the body of a wriggling maggot with his hook. “You aren’t afraid of a baby fly are you?”

“Afraid of? No.” She turned her head, unable to watch him add a second creature to his hook. “Disgusted by? Very much so.”

“I guess I should have gone with the fish heads,” he said. “You have to jab the hook right through the eyes, otherwise you hit bone.”

Melanie shuddered at the image his words conjured. “Are you trying to make me throw up?”

“Of course not. What kind of asshole would describe poking a hook into a slimy worm’s ass and threading the metal all the way through the center of the squirmy thing’s body?”

“You, obviously, would never be that kind of asshole,” she said.

He chuckled and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. “Ah well, it wouldn’t bother you if you weren’t such a girl.”

She glared at him, but couldn’t stay perturbed at someone so obviously trying to get a rise out of her.

He cast his line into the water with practiced ease, turned a little crank until something clicked inside the reel, and then placed the handle of the pole into a holder on the edge of the boat.

“Your turn,” he said, holding a rod in her direction.

“My turn to what?”

“Bait your hook.”

She licked her lips nervously and took a step closer to the container of squirmy things. As soon as they were in view, she averted her gaze and squeezed her eyes shut. “Will you do it for me?” she asked. “Please.”

“And I thought you once wanted to be an entomologist. Do baby butterflies freak you out too?

“No, but caterpillars are vegetarians. They don’t devour rotting flesh.”

“But these are clean maggots,” he tried reasoning with her.

There was no way in hell that she was touching a maggot, much less impaling it on a sharp spike of metal.

“I’ll just watch you fish,” she said.

Gabe sighed and taking pity on her, he baited her hook. He then showed her how to cast and reel in her line. She found she was really bad at casting—her bobbing thingy never landed more than a few feet from the side of the boat—and she didn’t have the patience to just let the line sit without reeling. So she cast and reeled and cast and reeled and cast and reeled, lost her bait, and waited for Gabe to resupply it before casting and reeling some more.

Gabe eventually took her pole, cast her line dozens of yards across the lake, and then stuck the handle in a holder rather than giving the pole back to her.

“Now for the most important part of fishing,” he said, sitting on a front-facing bench seat and extending his arm across its back. He patted the empty space beside him and she sat.

“What’s the most important part?”

“Sitting quietly and letting your mind wander.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her upper arm a squeeze. The scenery was breathtaking, but she only lasted about three minutes before she felt compelled to break the silence.

“Have you been fishing a lot?” she asked.

“Mmm hmm, now quiet. You’ll scare the fish away.”

“They can’t possibly hear me all the way underwater,” she whispered.

“You’d be surprised.”

Determined to be quiet, she stared at her orange and yellow bobber, watching it jerk underwater, rise to the surface, and disappear underwater again.

“Why is it doing that?” She whispered so she wouldn’t scare the fish.

“Probably because you have a bite,” Gabe said calmly.

She leaped for her pole, jerking it out of the holder and reeling as fast as she could. The tip of the pole bent in arc and the faster she reeled, the harder the fish pulled in the opposite direction. Her heart pounded with excitement, which didn’t make a lick of sense to her—she had a fish at the end of a string, not a shark launching itself into their boat.

When the small greenish fish rose from the surface of the water, she turned toward Gabe.

“Nice bass,” he said and nodded toward her butt.

“What do I do with it?” Melanie cringed and held one hand in front of her face to prevent the flailing fish from flicking slimy water in her eyes as it struggled for freedom.

A scraping of claws came from the rear of the boat. Before Melanie could comprehend that Lady was after her fish, a pair of paws landed on her chest, sending her staggering backward. The backs of her calves hit something solid. Unbalanced, she toppled over the side of the boat and landed in the lake with a stupendous splash.

Chapter Thirteen

Heart in his throat, Gabe rushed to the bow and was poised to leap into the water to rescue Melanie when she surfaced. She treaded water with one hand and pushed her mass of curls from her face with her other.