He glanced at her. The red flush on her skin worried him slightly. He decided to watch her more closely. “Usually.” He slipped his fillet knife out of its sheath. “At night, the bugs get a little loud. There’s a family of hoot owls that lives up in those trees.” He pointed in the direction of a copse of pines with the fillet knife. “But after the first night, I barely hear them until the next time I come back.”
Daisy watched him quickly kill and begin to clean the smaller fish. “You like quiet, don’t you?”
Naturally, Ken didn’t bother to respond, making the answer to her question even more self-evident. His silence agreed with her and answered her at once. “Do you stay here a lot?”
“I buy bank foreclosures, refurbish them myself, and flip them. I do the work in the evenings and early mornings in-between my day job.” He looked up from the fish and took a long, hard look at the property. He went back to scaling the fish. “I stay here when I need to stop work all the way. Biblically, that means at least once a week. There are occasions I’m here more often, but that’s rare lately.”
She looked around, and he tried to see the place through her eyes. She took in the little cabin with the foldout bed, the boathouse twice the cabin’s size, the dock that stretched out far into the lake, the rope swing they used during summer parties. He considered this place his sanctuary from the world. For some reason, it felt terribly important that she see its beauty the way he did.
“Have you ever thought about living out here full time? Making this your home?”
How did he verbalize the depths of pondering he had dedicated to that concept? The emotions and the prayers? He thought about his desire to build a home on the adjacent acre where he would move when he retired, where his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren could escape from the city’s noise and lights and find peace beneath a blanket of stars. He’d build big enough to always have room for his brothers and their families. Did he give her the full rundown or keep it simple?
“Maybe someday. Not right now. It’s an hour or more into the city on a good traffic day.” He slit the belly of the bass in one smooth stroke. “But, one day.” He glanced at her as he pulled the innards out of the fish and tossed them into the lake. She wrinkled her nose, and he chuckled. “Ever clean a fish before?”
“No.”
He held out the knife. “I’ll teach you.”
With some hesitation, she stepped forward and took the knife from him. He stepped aside and positioned her in front of the wooden cutting board. He stood slightly behind her and to her side so he could guide her hand with the knife. As he leaned in, he could smell the sun in her hair and feel the warmth of her skin. He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out before he spoke.
“Put the blade here. Yes. Right there. Now, run the knife around the head. Careful. That knife is really sharp. Ease up. Not so much elbow grease. Just let the knife do the work. Yes, like that.” He put a hand over hers. The slight tremble in her hand made him curious. “Now press along until you feel the backbone. And go down. You hear that? You want that clicking sound as the knife touches the backbone.”
“I’m sorry.” Daisy dropped the knife and stepped to the side. “I think I got too much sun, but this is making my stomach upset.”
The color fled her face as if someone had pulled the drain. He pumped water with the pedal at his foot and rinsed his hands. “Hang tight.”
He rushed into the boathouse and onto his boat and grabbed a bottle of water out of the cooler. On his way back outside, he poured some water onto a clean towel. He found her leaning against the boathouse with her hands on her knees, and her head bowed. “This is gonna be cold,” he said as he draped the towel over the back of her neck.
She raised her head and looked at him. “How bad is it for our future that cleaning a fish made me sick?”
He held out the bottle of water and crouched until he was eye level with her. “Every relationship has its challenges.”
Something flashed in her eyes he didn’t understand, then she accepted the water from him and took a small sip. “They make counselors for things like this, right?”
With a grin, he kissed her temple and straightened. “Feeling better?” She nodded, took the towel from around her neck, and wiped her face with it. “Good. Why don’t you get on up to the cabin? Get the air conditioning going. I’ll finish the fish. Just a minute or two.”
Ken watched Daisy as she walked slowly up the hill toward the cabin. Once she crested the hill, and he couldn’t see her anymore, he turned back to the fish. It took him three minutes to finish filleting them and discarding the carcasses. He set the fish into the container he had left out, then scrubbed the cutting board and knife, cleaned out the sink, and rinsed out the cooler. He stored the cooler back in the boathouse and carried everything else up to the cabin. He found Daisy curled up into the corner of the couch with the towel over the back of her neck again. “You still feeling puny?”
“I’m feeling a lot better.” She looked up and smiled. “The cool wet just felt better.”
He held the container of fish up. “You gonna be able to eat this?”
“Are you kidding? I love bass. And this fresh? It’s going to be amazing.” She took a sip of her water. “But I am terribly embarrassed. I don’t normally get queasy over things like that.”
“No need to be embarrassed. It’s really hot out there.” He set the container in the refrigerator. “I shouldn’t have kept us out so long.”
“Gotta love Georgia in July.” She looked around the room. “Why do you have a kitchen that’s bigger than the living area? Hardly a single guy’s sanctuary.”
He examined the space. The kitchen had long counters, a double refrigerator, a big gas stove, and an oven built into the wall. The wide and deep double sink could accommodate restaurant-sized pots. By contrast, a couch and a chair crowded the small living space. Before he pulled the bed out of the wall, he had to move the chair into the kitchen.
“Easier to host parties when the kitchen can accommodate it. After the first big thing we had here, I redid the kitchen. Made it as big as I could and still have room to bring out the bed.”
He moved to sit on the other side of the couch and turned to face her. Much to Ken’s amusement, Daisy stretched out like a kitten. She spread her arms out and said, “I think if I had this, I would have a hard time going back to the city.” She smiled. “Have you thought about putting in a screened-in porch to overlook the water?”
He had. He just hadn’t taken the time to do it yet. “It’s on the list.” He smiled. “You up to a walk? Cooled off? I can show you the whole property.”
He wanted to show her everything. He wanted to take her to the acre next door and explain his dream house. He wanted to hike up the back trail that went around an inlet of the lake, let her see all the boundaries of his eight acres. She smiled, and her eyes lit up. “I would love to walk with you.”
