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Privacy and cookie detailsAt Cedar Lake, she wants him without giving up the life she built beyond it.
June returns to Cedar Lake for the summer and finds the man who kept his distance ready to let her close.
Completed · 15 chapters · 1h 40m
WarmSensual tension; intimacy fades to black.Heat guideYearning · Tender · Witty
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Dear Maeve,
I came home prepared to argue about winter hours. I hadn’t prepared for Nate Cole moving his knee away from mine as if six inches could make us sensible.
June Alcott returns to Cedar Lake determined to keep her winter work and her say in the family marina. She doesn't expect to confront Nate Cole about the careful inches he keeps between them. Nate is her equal business partner, her brother's closest friend, and the one person who notices when she turns wanting something into another job. An old promise to Jonah once kept Nate at a distance. As Jonah prepares to leave, June and Nate find that choosing each other is easier than agreeing on what comes next. Between a borrowed shirt, an ill-advised painted bird and an ordinary evening they do not want to end, they learn to disagree without retreating. She wants a life large enough for work away and love at home. He wants to be more than somebody's summer. Neither wants a yes given only to keep the peace.
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He’s my brother’s best friend. He’s also my equal partner in the marina, which ought to mean we can tell each other the truth. It took me forty minutes back in Cedar Lake to ask why he kept moving away, and considerably longer to admit that I wanted him closer.
Since then I’ve painted a loon which looks qualified to refuse planning permission, borrowed a shirt I didn’t want to give back, and learned that a man can make rolling up a sleeve feel like an invitation.
The alarming part isn’t that I want him. It’s that he notices when I turn wanting something into a useful task. He asks what I need, and then waits long enough that I have to answer.
I’m very good at coming home when somebody needs help. I don’t yet know how to come home because I want to be wanted there.
June
From A Place to Return To
Read this if you want a gentler lakeside romance where love does not settle the business vote.