Bearing the Ruthless Alpha's Twins novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Lake House

We came to the lake house on a Monday, a week before the twins turned seven.

The girl at my counter had the shop, and the baker next door had the girl, and I had six days with nothing to bake.

It was the first time I had been on that road in seven years.

I did not look at the house when we drove up to it.

I looked at Hazel in the back seat with her nose against the window, saying "Water, water, water," and at Orin, who was reading and had not looked up once.

Torin drove with both hands on the wheel and said nothing the whole way.

I knew he had been planning what to say for a week and had thrown it all out.

The house was a long low place of grey timber with a porch that faced the water.

The lawn went down to the lake in a green slope.

At the bottom of it, past the dock, stood the boathouse.

I did not look at that either.

Hazel was out of the car before it had stopped.

By noon she had been in the lake twice and out of it twice, and she had lost one sock and acquired a frog.

"His name is Dinner," she told me.

"That is not a good name for a frog," I said.

"That's what I said," said Orin, without raising his eyes from the book.

I sat on the porch steps with a mug of tea.

The sun was warm on the boards, and the wind off the lake smelled of cedar.

The smell went through me.

It was a clean smell and an old one, and I held onto the mug and let it pass.

Down on the lawn Torin was on his hands and knees.

Hazel had climbed onto his back and was holding two fistfuls of his shirt.

Orin stood in front of them with his book closed over one finger.

"You don't kick a horse," Orin said.

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