“You’re going to love this place,” Allie told her. “Wait until you see the view from the loft.”
“The loft is off-limits,” Riggs exclaimed as he passed them.
“Oh, come on . . .”
“You girls have the whole rest of the house. The loft is The Man Zone.”
“The Man Zone,” Allie muttered to Jessie with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “Please.”
Jessie couldn’t help chuckling at the teen’s dramatic flair.
She came to a wobbly stop just inside the front door, clutching her bags, mouth gaping. From the large planks of distressed maple on the floors to the rough beams across the twenty feet of ceiling—and everything in between—the home broadcast an unmistakably advanced design aesthetic she never would have associated with Danny. His laid-back Santa Monica surfer persona hardly fit with the picture before her.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, and she snapped to attention, surprised to find him standing next to her. “It’s pretty great, right?”
Jessie turned her head and gazed at him for a moment. “Great?” she repeated with the shake of her head. “Yeah. It’s pretty great.”
“Hey, Danny,” Allie called out.
Jessie spotted her on the other side of an oversized rustic table centered beneath a rubbed bronze oval chandelier.
“I’m gonna make a sandwich, okay?”
“Sometimes I forget,” he muttered as if he hadn’t heard Allie.
Jessie watched after him as he wandered away, leaving her standing there alone.
“Hey, Callahan.” Riggs thundered down the circular staircase in the corner of the great room. “Our bags are stowed upstairs. What did Brunswick bring us to eat?”
Jessie inched past two light-green leather sofas, which faced each other over a low, square coffee table like a couple of amiable visitors. The high hearth of the stacked stone fireplace balanced one pristine pile of chopped wood with a display of heavy iron utensils beneath a mantle that matched the overhead beams. She left her handbag and cosmetics case on the table before rounding the corner and stopping, breathless, beneath the wide arched entrance to the kitchen.
Oversized squares of Mediterranean travertine led the way into the most magnificent and inviting kitchen Jessie thought she had ever seen. Stainless steel appliances and brushed nickel accents and fixtures set off two walls of cabinetry, light beige and green granite counters, and an enormous farmhouse sink. By the time Jessie found her breath again, her three companions had kicked into full gear handing off packages of cold cuts, cheese, sandwich rolls, condiments, bottled drinks . . .
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“You can grab plates and stuff,” Riggs said. He headed through the open glass French doors that led to a massive redwood deck overlooking a large blue lake and surrounded on three sides by a bench broken up at each corner with planters of colorful flowers.
“Over there,” Allie said on her way out the door behind him.
Jessie headed toward where Danny stood at the counter slicing tomatoes. “Here?” she asked him.
He tugged open the cabinet door to his left. “Plates up here. Glasses to the right. Silverware is in the drawer on the other side of me.”
As she navigated about collecting four of everything, she nudged him with her elbow. “Danny, did you grow up spending time here?”
“Yeah, my folks bought the place when I was about ten.”
She smiled, trying to imagine her grandfather standing in the middle of the cavernous kitchen, “stirrin’ up slop,” as he used to call dinner preparation.
Jessie gazed at the stretch of blue beyond the trees. “Is that Big Bear Lake out there?”
“Our little piece of it, yes.” He picked up the plate he’d prepared and nodded toward the door. “Let’s eat outside.”
She followed him. “Where did all this food come from?”
“Brunswick,” Riggs chimed in as they reached the outdoor dining table at the edge of the deck. “He’s the all-knowing Giles.”
“The what?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Len Brunswick,” Danny clarified. “He opens and closes the place for us, stocks the fridge, that kind of thing.”
“All-knowing Giles?”
“Ah.” Danny waved his hand in dismissal.
Allie giggled. “Dad likes to think of Mr. Brunswick like one of those English butlers on TV. He says they’re always named Giles. And he’s psychic because he always seems to bring our favorite foods.” Without missing a beat, she turned to her father. “Did you bring out the chips?”
“Forgot ’em,” Riggs said over a full mouth.
“Chew your food,” she remarked, hopping up and heading inside. “Were you raised in a barn?”
Riggs cackled and shook his head at Jessie. “She’s a clone of her mother.”
Allie reappeared with two bags of chips, and she tossed one to her father before taking her place at the table. “Can we go paddleboarding after supper?”
“Let’s save all that rigamarole for tomorrow. We’ll get an early start.”
“Early, as in early for you? Or early for the rest of the world?” his daughter teased.
“Hilarious.”
“Then can we go swimming?”
Riggs took another large bite from his sandwich before nodding and talking over it. “Yeah. I guess.”
* * *
Riggs and Allie raced down the dock and, without even the slightest hesitation, both of them catapulted off the end of it into the water. Danny shook his head and chuckled.
“Two pieces of the same cloth,” he remarked. “He thinks she’s just like Charlotte, but Allie’s so much like him it scares me a little.”
“She’s beautiful,” Jessie commented.
Danny held back from returning that observation back to her. She looked almost ethereal sitting there, sideways on the bench, in cropped cotton pants and a short, loose gauze blouse, the breeze from the lake toying with her hair. As she leaned against the planter, she raised her knees and wrapped her arms around them. The afternoon sun illuminated her, gave her hair the appearance of spun glass. When she lowered her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose and looked at him over top of them, his heartbeat picked up the pace to a full-on hammering against his chest.
“I’m glad you invited me along, Danny. And I especially appreciate you all shifting things to Sunday.”
“I knew you couldn’t be away from the store on a Saturday. It worked out fine. I’m just glad you wanted to come. I wasn’t sure.”
“No?”
“No,” he admitted. “The air between us has gotten a little thick since that night at your place.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you feel like telling me what that’s about?” he broached. “What is it about him and what he’s done that makes you think you can’t trust me?”
She clucked out a chuckle and pushed her sunglasses back into place. “I