The Lake House Had One Bed Left for Our Parents' Wedding Week, So I Shared It With My Soon-to-Be Stepbrother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: One Queen Bed
On the first night of her father's wedding week, Kate finds the room list assigns her the only bed left to the groom's son, and his hand closes around her wrist on the stairs.
My father's fiancée's son took my suitcase out of the trunk, looked at the room list on the porch fridge, and said, "Congratulations, we're sharing."
I laughed, because it had to be a joke.
Then I walked up the porch steps and read the list myself.
It was taped to the old avocado-green fridge where the beer lived, in purple marker, in handwriting I didn't know.
"BACK ROOM UPSTAIRS: KATE + JACK (one queen bed, sorry kids!!)"
Under it were eighteen other names, all in pairs or threes, and every pair was a married couple or a cousin.
Behind me, twenty relatives I had never met were hauling coolers across the gravel while a brown dog tried to eat a bag of hot dog buns.
My father, Jim Bauer, came down the steps with his arms already open.
"Katie! You made it!"
He smelled like sunscreen and sawdust, the way he had my whole life, and for a second I forgot about the list.
I hadn't been home to Michigan in two years, and he had never once said so on the phone.
"Dad, there's a mistake with the rooms."
"No mistake," he said. "Marlene did the whole chart. She's a genius with a clipboard."
Marlene Fogg came through the screen door with the clipboard pressed to her chest.
She was Judy's older sister, sixty-one, with frosted hair set and a smile she wore at the very front of her face.
"Kate, sweetheart. You look tired. Did you drive straight through?"
"Six hours," I said. "There's one bed."
"A queen," said Marlene. "Quilted. That mattress has never had a complaint."
Everybody on the porch laughed.
Jack Elam stood two steps above me with my suitcase in one hand, as calm as a man waiting for a bus.
He was taller than I remembered, with dark hair that needed cutting and forearms tanned to the elbow.
I had met him exactly once, for ten minutes, at the engagement dinner in April.
He had asked what I did for a living, listened to the answer, and said, "Billing. So you're the one hospitals are afraid of."
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about my job, and I had still gone home sure he was trouble.
"I'll take the floor," he said now.
"Nobody is taking the floor." Judy pushed out through the door with a tray of lemonade.
She was fifty-eight and five foot two, and she'd run an elementary school office for thirty years, which meant she could end an argument by handing you a cup.
She handed me a cup.
"The floor in that room creaks like a ship, honey. You'd wake the whole house."
"Then I'll find a motel."
"It's Cherry Festival week," Judy said kindly. "I called eleven places for Marlene's cousin. There isn't a bed between here and Interlochen."
I had already called nine from the car. She was right.
"I'll sleep in the Subaru."
"In front of your father?" Marlene put a hand on her heart. "The week of his wedding?"
My father looked from me to Jack and back again, and he looked so happy that I couldn't stand it.
"You two are about to be brother and sister," he said. "It's five nights, Katie-bug. Judy says Jack doesn't snore."
"I don't," said Jack.
"You'll get to know each other," said my father.
"Like family," said Marlene.
Everyone nodded. The dog sneezed.
Marlene steered me by the elbow to the far end of the porch, away from the coolers, and dropped her voice.
"I know it isn't ideal," she said. "I fought for that room because it's the only one with a lock. This way you can keep an eye on him, like we talked about."
Her voice was warm, and her fingers were not.
Three weeks ago she had called me in Minneapolis to say that Judy's son was a lovely boy who happened to be waiting for the lake house to come to him.
I'd told her that sounded unfair.
"Of course it does, honey," she'd said. "Just watch him."
Now I looked back down the porch.
Jack was reading the list again, and the corner of his mouth moved.
He glanced up and caught me staring.
He didn't look away.
I could make a scene in front of twenty strangers on the first night of my father's wedding week, or I could go upstairs.
So I went upstairs.
Jack followed me in with the suitcase.
The staircase was steep and narrow, with a turn at the top, and the walls smelled like cedar and old lake water.
"For the record," I said over my shoulder, "I'm not sleeping with you."
"You're going to sleep in the same bed," he said behind me. "That's different."
"Is it?"
"It's what the list says. It says sleeping."
I turned on the landing to glare at him, and my heel missed the top step.
I grabbed for the rail and caught the suitcase handle instead, right on top of his fingers.
The bag swung out over the stairwell, and so did I.
The back room was six feet away, its door standing open on a quilted bed.
His hand closed around my wrist to steady the bag on the stairs.
Neither of us let go until the door shut.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend