“All right, all right. I’ll go and take a swim,” he assured her, laughter still shaping his mouth. He took several backward steps toward the lake and the fox came to a halt in its departure. “First time I’ve ever been beat out for a woman by a guy with four legs, though.”
“Three and a half, actually,” Sophie muttered, giving him a reproachful glance even though she was glad to see his smile.
CHAPTER TEN
She saw him swimming when she came out the side door a minute later with a dish of hamburger and a bowl of milk. He was past the Dolan’s dock, still moving in a direction away from her at a brisk pace. He stayed in a straight line forty or so feet from the shoreline, safely within the buoys where boats were required to proceed with caution due to swimmers.
“I was right about him being a swimmer, wasn’t I, Guy?” she murmured to the small fox once she’d placed the dish and bowl several feet away from where he still hovered anxiously at the edge of the woods. When she backed away, granting him ample room, he limped toward the food. Poor thing, Sophie thought when he left the cover of the woods and she saw how thin he really was. He finished the hamburger and milk in seconds, and then glanced up at her a little reproachfully, as if to say, Is that all? She laughed.
“That’s it for now. You come back in a few hours for more. You’ll get sick if you eat too much so quickly, starved as you were.”
She started coffee and showered quickly when she returned to the house, then put on her standard lake clothing—a bikini and shorts. Thomas had just risen out of the water when she walked out onto the dock carrying a towel and a tray ten minutes later.
“Thanks,” he murmured when she handed him the towel. He idly dried off his wet hair and face as he watched her set down the tray and sit cross-legged on the dock. Her skin prickled with awareness when his gaze trailed down over her bikini-clad torso. She was having difficulty not eating up the sight of him, as well, as he sat there with his long, well-formed legs hanging over the dock, his taut abdomen moving in and out slightly from the exertion of his exercise.
“Coffee?” she asked breathlessly, pulling her gaze off the vision of his succulent shoulder and upper arm muscles beaded with water. He nodded and she poured him a cup from the small carafe.
“Time for you to feed me now, huh?” he teased warmly as he accepted the coffee.
She arched an eyebrow. “I would imagine you’ve worked up a good appetite.”
His smile widened rakishly before he helped himself to a slice of buttered toast. “Tastes good,” he said appreciatively a moment later before he grabbed another slice.
“You sound surprised.”
“I haven’t had much of an appetite lately.”
“And haven’t been sleeping well, either, I’m willing to bet,” Sophie added evenly before she took a sip of coffee. She immediately regretted her words when a shadow fell across his features. She’d been facing his profile, so when he turned and glanced out at the calm lake, munching his toast more slowly now, she couldn’t observe his expression.
“Thomas—”
“I don’t want to talk about my brother right now,” he said quietly, but she heard the warning in his tone. He turned and gave her a brooding glance.
Maybe he’d read her mind. She had been planning to subtly encourage him to put his grief into words. The trauma of Rick’s and Abel’s deaths was festering inside of him, making him suffer. And Sophie suspected that was only part of what he grieved. If only he’d release some of the poison, the chances were his memories from that dark period of time would slowly start to come back to him. Trauma amnesias—both physical and psychological—were much more common than people realized, and they usually resolved given a supportive environment where the mind had a chance to heal.
But Sophie also knew he had to process his grief at his own pace. If she pushed him too hard, she’d pay for the error. He’d flee . . . or do something rash, given his volatile state.
“All right,” she said evenly.
He looked a little sheepish and relieved at once at her agreement. He leaned back on one arm and lifted his coffee, his large hand encircling the entire cup versus utilizing the handle.
“So . . . what do you like to do while you’re here, Dr. Gable?” he asked gruffly.
Sophie swallowed some toast. “Oh . . . a lot of this,” she glanced between them and out toward the lake.
“So you haven’t been working frenziedly on your research articles?”
“No, I told you I’d procrastinate. Once I get used to swimming any time of the day I want, taking long walks, reading until the wee hours of the morning, and creating awful paintings, I’ll get around to the articles.”
He smiled. “How long have you painted?”
“I just started a couple years ago. I was getting really stressed with my job, and I have a friend—a psychologist—who insisted I start doing something to unwind. I signed up for a couple classes at a community college—tai chi, sailing, painting, ceramics. Only the painting took. It relaxes me.”
“The psychologist who’s your friend—is he the one who works in your office?”
She examined him closely as she nodded her head, but she couldn’t decipher his expression.
“Andy Lancaster. We met during undergrad at the University of Chicago. We’d both volunteered to take part in a psych experiment for extra credit. It was about conformity and obedience, and we were supposed to shock a puppy when it did anything but sit still. Both Andy and I refused point blank, but Andy was so stressed out by the whole thing, he practically had a break down, even when they told him the puppy really wasn’t being harmed, that the subjects just needed to think it was for the purpose of the experiment. Andy doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, though, and it really shook him up. I took him for a beer afterwards to unwind and we’ve been friends ever since.”