Free Let Me Fly by Hazel St. James Page B

bandage. Not allowed to even dip her toes in the water, a rogue wave could come up and splash her ankle. The only thing he would allow her to do was lay in the sun, after he slathered her with SPF 30 sunblock. She giggled as she thought back to the restraint it took Charlie as he touched every inch of her body with the lotion, spending extra time to get plenty on her rear-end. Telling him that she didn’t plan on taking off her suit to sunbathe, Charlie just shrugged and said, yes, but you can’t be too careful.
    He had yet to come back from Mr. Denhart’s house. The aging man just lived across the lake from Charlie, but it took twenty minutes to get to his house by road. They could see him waving to them across the lake, for the past half hour. Charlie had tried to ignore him, giving Bryn a short tour of the property, and eating a delicious picnic lunch together. He finally gave in, waving back to Mr. Denhart now that he was coming over. Bryn started to worry if Charlie had any time to himself at all. Even here, at home, he had to continue to be Dr. Glynn. “He really is a nice old man, but he is a borderline hypochondriac,” Charlie had told her as he climbed into his boat.
    So for the past hour, Bryn watched across the lake as Charlie stood patiently next to Mr. Denhart, assessing every part of his body that he pointed to. Finally, Charlie threw his hands in the air, stomping about on the front lawn of the lake home, near the beach.
    Bryn decided that maybe Charlie needed a distraction when he got back. It was obvious that Mr. Denhart was stretching every bit of patience that Charlie had. It would be fun for both of them to get rid of some of this tension that had built up between them today. Plus, she wanted to show him that he could be just “Charlie” with her, not “Dr. Glynn.”
    Quickly, Bryn jumped off her lounge chair, racing for the long set of stairs to the cabin. She stopped on the second landing to catch her breath, and to check the burn on her ankle. Charlie was right, her ankle was extremely sore today, but he’d shoved some over-the-counter pain meds in her mouth when they were eating lunch. The skin pulled as she climbed the stairs, but not bad enough to cause any concern.
    Charlie’s cabin was at the top of a very steep hill that ended shortly before the beach to Lake Manitowoc. The entire lower level of the cabin was hidden from the other side of the property because it was embedded into the side of the hill. The basement was only visible on the lakeside of his property. Charlie had told her that when he first bought the property, it was in shambles. The walls of the lower level were wearing out from age and the brick was crumbling. He recently hired a local eco-friendly contractor to make the cabin more energy efficient, adding solar panels, and geothermal heating and cooling as well as replacing the wall on the lower level with glass. Charlie was so proud when he told her all the schematics from the build, including telling her that the glass was the same kind used on the Sears Tower balconies.
    Bryn could hear Charlie’s boat as it sped back across the water, inching closer to the dock. It didn’t take her long to reach the sliding door to the cabin, stepping into the cool air. She quickly tried to catch her breath, as she watched Charlie tie the boat against the dock. Bryn gasped when Charlie fumbled with the bumper in his hands, the boat slamming against his fingers, pinching them against the fiberglass dock. Shaking his hand out in pain, Charlie shook his head as he turned to walk back to the beach. There was a stern set about his jaw that had her wondering what had happened across the lake.
    I had better get his attention before he blows a gasket when he can’t find me on the beach. I need to give him a distraction. Without thinking too much about what she was doing, Bryn slipped out of her swimsuit, grabbing one of Charlie’s clean white t-shirts in the laundry room, pulling it back