Ignite (21 page)

“Okay,” he said softly.

I sighed in relief as he pulled me against his chest.

THE NEXT MORNING, I woke to knocking on my door.

“Come in,” I said groggily, frustrated at whoever had disturbed my slumber.

Callie edged her way in.

“You might want to get dressed,” she said, pulling up the blind on the window.

“Why?” I shut my eyes to keep out the light.

“Because Dean’s here. Get up, Sleeping Beauty!”

I groaned both because I was tired and because she was making fun of me. Although we had made progress, she still wasn’t my favorite person in the world.

I obviously didn’t have time to shower. Callie left promptly, and I shoved on a pair of jeans and a sweater. I brushed my hair with my fingers and didn’t bother with makeup. He’d seen me look worse.

I ran quickly into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and then took a deep breath and walked out of the room. I found him sitting at the kitchen table with Callie and Emma.

“Where’s Chase?” I asked.

“Still sleeping,” Callie said, taking a bite of toast.

Dean turned around.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, standing up. “I wanted to show you something. Do you have time?”

He was concerned with whether I was busy or not?

I looked down at my wrist where my watch usually sat, but I’d forgotten it in my haste.

“Well, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check my schedule,” I joked.

“Oh,” he said, obviously too nervous to catch my sarcasm. Either that, or I wasn’t clear enough.

“No,” I corrected him. “I’m kidding. I’m free. In fact, all I’ve got is time right now.”

He smiled, looking relieved.

“Let’s go then.”

I grabbed my boots and shoved them on, leaning on the wall for support. My jacket hung on the peg by the door next to Callie’s.

“Be back in a little bit!” I shouted to her, even though I wasn’t sure exactly when we’d be back.

Dean held my door open as we got into the Range Rover.

We sat in silence for a few minutes until I finally got up the nerve to ask where we were going.

“It’s a surprise,” he said. “Ask me something else.”

“Fine. Why do you have so much money?”

He laughed. “You’re about to find out.”

I was surprisingly satisfied with that answer, but my frown turned upside down when he turned on the road that led up to Palmer Lake.

“Dean, if this is some creepy seduction thing, I’m not buying it. Isn’t Palmer Lake haunted?”

He laughed but kept his eyes on the road.

“Haunted? No. That’s just an old wives tale to keep people away.”

“To keep them away from what?”

“You’ll see.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“You’re kind of creeping me out.”

He turned to look at me.

“Do you trust me?” he asked earnestly, and I could tell he wasn’t hiding anything in his expression.

“Yes,” I said slowly, wondering what was about to happen.

He didn’t say anything else, but drove up to the big house that sat on the edge of the lake. As he was driving up the rocky path, I almost felt déjà vu, but I wasn’t sure why. I couldn’t remember ever being here before.

He parked the car and walked down to the boat that was anchored at the dock.

I stood next to the car, biting my lip.

“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Do you promise you’re not going to drown me?”

He walked back toward me and extended his hand again.

“I promise.”

I gingerly took his hand and followed him over to the boat.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I told him. “What if they get mad that we’re trespassing?”

“We aren’t trespassing,” he said calmly.

He hopped onto the boat and held out his hand once more. I reluctantly climbed on, and he unhooked it from the dock.

I didn’t say anything as he pushed it off and navigated to the middle of the lake. This was the weirdest thing anyone had ever tried to show me by far.

It got even stranger when he started stripping.

He draped his jacket over my shoulders and pulled his shirt off.

“Seriously Dean, what are you doing?” I cut in when he took off his belt.

“You’ll see,” he said, winking as he ducked below deck.

Not that I was complaining about the show, but I wished he would be a little more transparent.

He climbed back up the stairway minutes later in a wetsuit.

“You’re going in?” I exclaimed. “You’re going to die! It’s freezing down there!”

“Not freezing,” he said. “There’s no ice. Yet.”

“Still!” I said incredulously. “What could possibly be down there?”

“You’ll see.”

I really wished he would stop saying that. He was fitting a mask over his face and flipped a switch to a machine to my right. I could barely hear anything over the humming, but I didn’t have a chance to protest when he abruptly flipped backward off the side of the boat.

I immediately jumped up to look over the side, but I couldn’t see anything except the tube where his airline was connected. There were other tubes too, but I wasn’t sure what they were for.

My heart was pounding. He was calm about it, but I wished he wouldn’t dive off of boats without telling me what was going on. Especially in the middle of Palmer Lake. The fog made it harder to see the shore, and I felt like I was in a horror movie. All I needed next was for Dean to pop up out of the lake as a zombie.

Several minutes or an eternity later, he surfaced.

“Oh my god,” I exclaimed. “Finally!”

He climbed onto the boat and shoved his mask off. Then he held his hand out to me, and dropped something into my hand. It was heavy.

I looked at it closer and gasped. “Is this what I think it is?”

I turned it over in my hand.

“Gold,” he said, panting.

“This is amazing.”

“No one knows about this,” he said seriously.

“Not even Jenny?”

“Not even Jenny. Just you.”

“Why?” I asked, trying to drop it back into his hand.

He pulled his hand away, forcing me to keep it.

“Because, friends tell each other things.”

He grinned at me, and couldn’t help but return it. His smile was infectious.

“How much is down there?” I said, turning the small nugget around in my hand.

“A lot.”

“How much?”

“Millions of dollars worth.”

“And you’re the only one that knows about it?”

“Yes, and now you know too.”

I sighed.

“But isn’t it illegal? Whoever owns this land technically owns it all.”

He nodded. “He does.”

Oh my god. I couldn’t believe how stupid I was being.

“You own Lake Palmer?”

He nodded uneasily.

I needed to sit down.

“How did you know this was here?”

“A friend showed me. I had no idea what gold dredging was until he brought me here.”

“But you said I was the only one other than you who knew.”

“You are.”

He wasn’t making any sense, but I couldn’t comprehend it. He was far better off monetarily than I could have ever imagined.

“So it isn’t haunted?” I asked.

He shook his and unzipped the wetsuit.

“Nope. I just like my privacy,” he said.

I was still in shock when he left, changed, and then came back up on deck.

“This is amazing,” I said. “How much is this piece worth?”

He took it from me and sized it up.

“Probably three or four.”

“Hundred?”

“Thousand.”

He dropped into back in my hand and I tried to give it back to him, but he wouldn’t let me.

“It’s yours,” he said, steering the boat back toward shore.

I couldn’t stop staring at the piece of gold. I couldn’t believe that so much of this was right beneath the surface, and Dean owned it all.

THE KIDS HAD to go back to school much sooner than Dean and Kenzie did. I had yet to make the call to my university telling them that I would not be back for the spring semester, but I didn’t know if that’s what I wanted yet. Or more that I didn’t want to make it official. It was a big life change.

I drove Chase and Emma to school every morning, and Callie was much more cordial. I made them breakfast; I made them dinner; I washed their clothes and their dishes. It was all becoming very domestic, and it made me uneasy. That wasn’t the life I had planned for myself. I wasn’t sure what the exact details were, but this wasn’t it. I wasn’t supposed to be a mom at twenty-one, even to kids who weren’t mine.

On the third day of school, my phone rang and an unknown number popped up on my screen.

“Hello?” I answered uneasily. I really hated unknown numbers.

“Hello, I’m calling for Lauren Lindsay,” a stern, female voice came over the receiver.

I took a deep breath.

“This is she.”

“Ah, Miss Lindsay. I’m calling on behalf of your sister, Callie Barlow. I’ll need you to come to the school right away.”

Panic rose in my stomach.

“Is everything okay?”

She laughed curtly.

“Callie is fine, we’ll discuss the details when you arrive.”

The line clicked dead. Had this woman been a CIA agent in another life? I was not the person with whom she should be so cryptic. Not after the phone calls I had received in my life.

I got in my car and drove to Callie’s school. I had never been there before since she had her own car and didn’t need me to take her, so I parked in what appeared to be the guest lot and walked into the building. I followed the signs to the office.

“Name?” The receptionist barely looked up from the phone.

“Lauren Lindsay,” I supplied. “I’m here for Callie.”

She held up a hand and pressed a button on the receiver, then pointed to a chair.

I didn’t have the chance to sit down when I was greeted by a woman who looked like a more stern version of Susan Boyle. She held out a hand.

“I’m Jennifer Langston,” she said. “Callie’s principal.”

I shook her hand.

“Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked, still concerned.

“Oh, I’m sure Callie can tell you exactly what happened, Miss Lindsay,” she said as she led me to a back corner office before shutting the door so we were trapped in the tiny, stuffy, box.

Callie was sitting with her arms crossed in one of the two chairs across from a large desk. I sat down next to her and Mrs. Langston took her seat.

“Miss Barlow?” Mrs. Langston prompted her when she didn’t speak up.

“This is so stupid,” Callie sighed, clearly exasperated.

“Just tell me,” I urged her, glancing at the principal.

“Fine,” she said quietly. I could tell she was on the verge of tears. “There’s this girl in my class who wears a wig. She has Trichotillomania. You know, that disease where people pull their hair out? Anyway, she has these bald patches on her scalp, so she wears a wig. We were in Ethics class, and she was doing a presentation on her disease. Before she could start, Shayna Perkins was like ‘I don’t want to be forced to sit here and listen to a psycho talk about her head case problem. It’s her own fault that she’s crazy and has no hair.’”

Callie took a breath and looked at Mrs. Langston.

“Tell her what happened next, Miss Barlow.”

I nodded for her to continue.

“So, I took my scissors and cut her ponytail off.”

I laughed and immediately clapped my hand over my mouth and cleared my throat.

Callie smirked.

“How much hair did you cut off, Callie?”

She sat back in her chair and re-crossed her arms proudly.

“I would say, seventy-five percent of it.”

I kept a straight face and turned to Mrs. Langston.

“What is her punishment?”

“She’s suspended,” she told me. “For three days. She can come back next Tuesday so long as she doesn’t use scissors on anything else other than paper from now on.”

I nodded.

“Callie, do you understand?”

She rolled her eyes and nodded, then got up from her seat to leave. As Callie left the room, Mrs. Langston called my name.

“Miss Lindsay, you should really teach your sister right from wrong.”

I smiled.

“Mrs. Langston, with all due respect, I think she already knows right from wrong.”