I continued my casual observations for the rest of the day. Not once did I see Hilarie and Shaker interact—no touching, no talking, nothing. Shaker didn’t seem to have any trouble talking to Reese or Ember, but he said little to nothing to me, and he only acknowledged the guys when they spoke to him first. What in the hell was going on? Surely, I wasn’t the only one who noticed the odd behavior.
Back at the lake house, Chase and I finally had a moment alone. “Did you notice anything odd about Shaker and Hilarie today?”
He carefully answered, “No, but I’m aware of what happened Thursday night, so their behavior made sense to me.”
“You mean Shaker’s behavior made sense to you. You don’t know Hilarie well enough to make that judgment call.”
He gave me an appraising once-over and stepped closer. “What’s this really about, Harper?”
I sighed, exasperated with the whole thing. “I wanted this weekend to be a fun getaway, not a weekend full of unspoken tension and awkwardness.”
“Okay, baby. I’ll take care of it. Let’s get showered and get dinner started. I’m starving.” He finished that with a quick slap to my ass before he sauntered into the bathroom. Cocky bastard. How did he think he was going to take care of it? I rolled my eyes and followed him to the shower.
After dinner, I was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher when I felt a presence behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see Shaker standing by the kitchen island. I arched a brow. “Did you need something?”
He cleared his throat and looked everywhere but directly at me. “Uh, yeah. I wanted to apologize for my attitude today. I can be pretty grumpy when I’m tired, plus I’m still pissed about what happened yesterday. But, none of that is anyone’s fault but my own, and I’m not going to let it ruin the rest of this awesome weekend you planned for us.” Then he went in for the kill with his puppy dog eyes and his killer grin. “Forgive me?”
“Of course, I will,” I said, opening my arms for a hug.
“Do you need any help?” he asked.
“No, I’m almost finished. Thank you for offering. I’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.”
It was obvious to me that Chase made Shaker apologize to me, and it was sweet of him to do it, but I wondered if his attitude would change. I wasn’t going to get my hopes up.
I found the whole group waiting for me downstairs. To my surprise, they were chatting with one another, and the tension from earlier seemed to have vanished. Chase noticed me first. “All right, ladies. Do any of you know how to fish?” Of course, Ember and Reese did. Me and Hilarie, not so much. With a promise to teach us, we followed the rest of the group down to the dock.
Chase magically produced fishing poles, tackle boxes, bait, and a host of other things that were apparently required to fish. He briefly explained how to cast and then handed me a pole with a hunk of something nasty dangling from the end of it. “Do I even want to know what that is?” I asked, pointing to the nastiness with a scrunched-up nose.
He laughed at my theatrics. “It’s Ember’s homemade bait. None of us have ever used it, but she said the people on some fishing forum swear by it.”
Shrugging, I followed his instructions and tossed the dangling chunk of yuck into the water. I flopped into my chair and watched everyone else toss their lines in and get situated. “Now what?” I asked.
“Now you wait,” Chase said.
“Wait for what exactly?”
“You’ll know when it happens.”
“I love your vague answers.”
I have to admit. He wasn’t wrong. When it happened, there was no question. The end of my rod started bouncing and bending, so I did what anyone else who was new at fishing would do. I jumped to my feet squealing, “Help! What do I do?”
Four male voices shouted, “Reel!”
I started reeling, and my pole just kept bending, to the point I thought it was going to break. It also felt like the thing was trying to pull me into the water with it. “Help me! It’s going to snap this rod in half or yank me in with it!”
“You need to adjust the drag,” my brother added.
“Like I know what the fuck that means.”
Duke reached in front of me and did something on the reel. Suddenly, the reel started making a strange noise, and the pole wasn’t bent nearly in half anymore. “Keep reeling,” he instructed.
I was starting to get excited. This fish had to be huge if it was this much trouble to bring in. Grinning from ear to ear, I reeled my heart out. When it got close, Chase used a net to scoop my fish out of the water. “What is that little thing? Where is my big fish?” I asked.
Chase chuckled as he removed the hook and held up my fish. “This is your fish, baby. It’s a decent sized catfish, maybe two or three pounds.”
“That little thing was what I had so much trouble trying to reel in?” I asked, not believing a word he was saying.