Cabin by the Lake (9 page)

And that was how they left it. Vivian always regretted her own words, spoken in anger. She didn’t really mean them. She saw the hurt in Lydia’s eyes when she spoke but, like her niece, she couldn’t take it back. She had no real intention of shutting her out of her life permanently, and had no idea how that day could have ended so badly.

Lydia fled the fiasco with Rocco. He was angry and made it known that her family had disrespected him. She was devastated at the turn of events, but when she was arrested just days later, her opinion of Rocco changed. And the most hurtful thing of the whole ordeal was the fact that she and Vivian had not spoken to each other until she showed up on her aunt’s doorstep a few days ago.

Now, she sat up irritably and punched her pillow to plump it. She hated it when she couldn’t turn her mind off, when thoughts kept circling around and around. I should have done this. I should have said that. I wish… I wish... Lord, she had beaten herself up enough over the years for the wrongs she had done. At least she and Vivian had put the past to rest, and she was extremely thankful for that. She and her mother had developed an uneasy truce, which she could live with.

It was just the Rocco thing that brought it all back, and she was exhausted from mentally rehashing unpleasant memories. She fell into a uneasy sleep and dreamed terrible things, which she would not remember in the morning.

As Lydia was drifting into sleep, Mike stood on the path to the cabin and watched the house long after the lights were turned off. He had not intended to kiss her. Chalk it up to getting carried away in the moment. What with the moon rising above the water, the chill in the air, and the firelight—not to mention the beautiful woman next to him whom he found almost irresistible—who could blame him for his impulsive actions? He was only human.

He shook his head and expelled a disgusted sigh. What was he thinking, getting involved with someone at this point in his life? It wasn’t fair to her. He was a grown man, and should be capable of holding his feelings in check.

But everything about her was appealing to him. He found her sense of humor childlike in its simplicity, and enchanting. She could hold her own in conversation and her wit was refreshing. He felt more alive in the last few days than he’d felt in a long time. The feeling of her lips on his lingered in his mind, and it had been with a will of steel that he ended that last kiss. He’d had to. He could not afford to complicate his life right now. And he sure couldn’t—wouldn’t!—play with her feelings. He’d acted the fool and toyed with a sweet spirit that didn’t deserve to be led on, when he wasn’t sure what the future held for him.

He wondered at how his life had gone off the rails. And if he’d ever get back on track; back to responsibilities that were overwhelming at times. But did he want that? Since he’d been on this walkabout, especially since being here with Vivian and Lydia, he’d come to feel a calmness within that felt so good, so invigorating. He hadn’t felt the need for a glass of aged Scotch to take the edge off a stressful day since he left North Carolina.

Thinking of bad habits, he was reminded of his ex-girlfriend, Kendall. She had called multiple times, despite his warning that he wouldn’t be taking any calls for a while, and left sweet, concerned messages at first. Then the messages began sounding strident to his ears and he started to wonder more and more what he ever saw in her. Finally, she left hysterical messages, exaggerated threats of suicide—which he found amusing, because Kendall loved no one more than herself—and vowed to never speak to him again.

He felt a sense of relief with that message. Maybe that one problem would just resolve itself.

He could see the glowing embers of the fire as he approached the cabin and thought he should get a container from the kitchen to douse the coals. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw movement by the cabin porch. He crouched quietly and watched the area, keeping his eyes focused away from the fire light to protect his night vision. He heard movement crashing through the undergrowth behind the cabin. A bear, maybe? He was beginning to think it was some night creature when he heard a car engine start up on the road above the cabin.

There was a boat landing a couple hundred yards up the road. Maybe some boaters had lost their direction in the dark and come through. Maybe. He wondered about Lydia’s feeling of being watched. He retrieved his flashlight from the cabin, but could see nothing much amid the leafy groundcover. He’d have a closer look in the morning.

Meanwhile, he resolved to keep an eye out for any strange characters around. He had been correct about Vivian being armed and dangerous. She informed him during their first private conversation, when they were both putting all their cards on the table, that she kept a shotgun handy—a gift from her mother, she’d said—and she knew how to use it. He was amused at the time, but now it seemed prudent.

He didn’t know what was going on with Lydia, but if she was in any danger, he felt confident that between Vivian’s shotgun and his watchful eye, they could keep her safe. He also had the feeling that Lydia just might be the kind of woman who could take care of herself pretty well. Paranoid? He didn’t think so. Cautious? He thought that was a spot-on assessment.

Rocco cursed savagely as he clawed his way through briars and bushes on his way back up to the road. He cursed himself for not preparing properly. He had not meant to be caught out in the woods after dark without a flashlight, but that nauseating scene around the campfire had mesmerized him, and now he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. It wasn’t like him to be unprepared.

He arrived in Franklin early yesterday afternoon and had driven around town wondering why anyone would willingly move to a Podunk place like this. It didn’t take long today to spot Lydia’s yellow VW parked on Main Street, and then it had been as simple as waiting. The nondescript Toyota Corolla he’d stolen when he left Tennessee blended in nicely with the other vehicles coming and going, but he did miss his Porsche. Those were the days, he thought, remembering when everyone’s heads turned to watch as he drove by. And he’d still be driving his sweet Porsche if it wasn’t for Lydia.

He saw her come out of the lawyer’s office, get into her car and drive away. He followed at a discreet distance, and it was as easy as that. Now he knew exactly where she was. It was just a matter of time now before he carried out his plan. He hadn’t counted on the big dumb hippie who seemed to show up everywhere she went, but Rocco knew—when the time came—he could handle him.

Earlier this afternoon he’d parked at the boat landing down the road and cut through the woods on foot, watching the house. When he saw Lydia and the hippie leave, he followed them to the cabin. He wished he had a gun; he could have finished up his business here this evening. That isolated cabin would have been the perfect place. But instead he’d been forced to watch a sickening display equivalent to an adolescent beach movie.

When they disappeared up the trail, he’d followed for a few yards, just to make sure they were leaving, and that’s when Lydia turned and looked back, straight into his eyes. It was full dark by then, and he stood motionless behind a tree, but it had been unsettling how quickly she zeroed in on him. He’d closed his eyes, not daring to breathe, and they’d moved on.

He quickly returned to the cabin and scoped it out, getting the lay of the inside. He’d just come back out when he heard the hippie coming back. He hadn’t expected him so soon. He froze in the shadows at the corner of the cabin, watching as Mike approached. That’s when he snagged his foot on a vine and tripped, making noise that he hadn’t intended to make.

Unexpectedly, a sudden fear washed over him that made him feel like little Denny Howe again, someone he thought was long gone, and he jumped up and ran, ignoring the branches that hit him in the face as he crashed headlong through the woods. When he got back to his stolen car, a white hot rage filled him. He’d never run from anybody in his life—well, not since he was a kid—and he certainly wasn’t afraid of that long-haired mountain man.

He needed to regroup. He needed to find a place to lick his wounds and get his mojo back. The fact that he tripped and panicked shook him up more than he wanted to admit. He hadn’t felt fear like that since he was ten years old and the High Pointe boys had chased him back across the pasture howling like wolves made crazy by a full moon.

Now he knew he would kill that hippie, too. It would be icing on the cake. But first things first; he had to stay focused on Lydia. He couldn’t let himself get side-tracked. He wanted to stay in control and savor this experience.

He cranked the car and drove around the lake, passing by the homes with obvious year-round residents, and inspecting the houses that looked to be weekend retreats of the wealthy. On his third stop, he found the perfect one. It was set far back from the road with only a dusk-to-dawn light in the yard. He parked and knocked on the door, just to make sure, but this house had the look of a seldom used place. Leaves covered the driveway and gutters. The sun porch, which he broke into easily, still had protective winter covering over the furniture.

Inside he found canned goods—not great, but enough to sustain him through the next few days—flashlights, and a gun with ammunition. He got his mojo back. He felt that God was with him. He could relax now, pick his time and place, and dole out his revenge at his leisure.

He was powerful again. Denny Howe was dead, and Rocco was back.

Lydia found that day two of work was much like the day before. Ace came in around ten and leaned over the reception desk, causing her to roll back her chair a few inches to protect her personal space. Once again, she felt his eyes roaming over her and she wished she’d worn a sweater. She turned him down for lunch, citing the fact that she’d brought hers this morning.

“How about you and me Friday night?” Ace asked, undeterred. “I can take you someplace real nice; dining and dancing.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

“No, I’m actually seeing someone,” she said. “But thank you.”

“Seeing someone?” Disbelief was etched on his face. “You move fast for someone new in town. Anyone I know?”

It was a busy morning, and she was relieved when the phone rang. “Oh, sorry, excuse me.” She picked up the receiver and Ace finally sauntered away.

The rest of the day consisted of answering the phones, filing, and dodging Ace. That could get monotonous in a hurry. She hoped she wouldn’t have to speak to Mr. Lincoln about him. She needed this job and she sure didn’t want to cause any trouble.

After a seemingly endless day, her watch finally showed five o’clock. She could hardly wait to get home. She wanted to play it cool with Mike, but he was all she could think about. As soon as she changed into some jeans and a tank top she walked down to the cabin, reminding herself to not appear too eager. She had to check on what was happening at the cabin, though, didn’t she? It was practically her duty to keep an eye on things. Aunt Vi would be counting on her.

The cabin door was standing open when she arrived, and she skirted a large pile of debris in the yard to get to the steps. “There you are,” said Vivian. “I thought you’d never get here. This guy has been working me to the bone.”

Indeed, it looked as if a bomb had gone off in the kitchen. Demo was in full progress. The kitchen peninsula was missing and the refrigerator was pulled out into the middle of the floor. It appeared they were in the process of removing all the cabinet doors.

“Here,” said Vivian, slipping a mask from her face. She handed Lydia a screwdriver and stepped down off a stool. “Take over. I’ve got to start supper, and I’m going to have to shower first.” With that, she was out the door.

Mike looked at her for the first time, his face neutral. “Are you here to help or just look pretty?”

She couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not; he seemed a little distant. It wasn’t exactly the reception she was expecting. Maybe a warm hug in greeting, maybe a kiss?

“I’ve been known to loosen a few screws,” she said lightly, but she felt that something had changed since the night before.

He grinned then, crinkling his eyes, and she thought she must have been imagining his cool demeanor.

“Good. Glad to see you’re dressed to get dirty. This place is filthy, and we’re stirring up tons of dust.”

“What? I’ll have you know these are my good jeans,” she protested, hands on her hips.

He gave her an amused look of mock sympathy and handed her a respiratory mask. “Here, put this on.”

“I’m okay,” she said, waving it away.

“Put it on,” he insisted, and held it out until she took it.

“Fine! But you’re pretty bossy, you know.”

“I’ve been told that before.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Hold this.” He passed her the crowbar so he could use both hands wrenching off a board.

“Where did all these tools come from?” she asked, looking around.

“Your uncle’s garage. He had a little bit of everything in there. Pretty much everything we’ll need. Vivian gave me the grand tour this morning and said to make myself at home. So I did.”

“It looks like you know what you’re doing,” she said, handing the crowbar back.

“I hope so.” He yanked a tape out of his pocket, took a quick measurement and jotted it down in a spiral-bound notebook on the counter.

“Of course, because you work construction, right?”

“Right.”

“What kind of construction?” She pictured him with a tool belt hanging low on his hips, balancing on a steel girder as he drove home nails with a power tool. Maybe sweat glistening off his chest in the hot sun. Maybe…

“I started when I was a kid, helping my dad build houses in the summer. During college I worked as an apprentice for a man who rehabbed historical houses.”

“You went to college?” She had him pegged as a blue-collar construction guy. So he went to college. No big deal. A college education didn’t guarantee a high-paying job. It just hadn’t worked out for him the way he’d planned. It was just one more enigmatic factoid in her quest to learn about Mike Rodgers.

“Sure. Then when I graduated, my dad had gotten into bigger projects, office buildings, stuff like that, and I followed in his footsteps.”

She thought she detected a note of bitterness in his voice. “And?”

“And what?”

And why aren’t you still doing that, working with your dad?”

“He died,” he said in a clipped tone.

“I’m so sorry.” By the look on his face, she realized she’d stepped into forbidden territory. “I didn’t know.”

“Watch out!” he warned, ripping off another piece of molding. She thought his warning had less to do with the molding and more to do with details about the death of his father. She’d have to tread carefully to gain any information from this man. And she found herself wanting to know everything.

An uncomfortable silence followed, and she climbed the stool that Vivian had vacated. She began to unscrew hardware and drop the screws and hinges into a bowl next to the hopelessly stained sink.

“You’re not ripping down the cabinet boxes, I see,” she said, trying for a lighter note. “I assume Aunt Vi wants to keep them?”

He nodded. “New cabinets are not in the budget. But these are in really good shape; they’re just gunked up with decades of grease. So, we’ll sand them down and decide whether we should stain them or paint. What do you think?”

She was pleased that he was interested in her opinion. “I don’t know. I hate the idea of painting over wood. These might be pretty when we get down to the real color of the wood.”

He grinned his approval. “I like how you think,” he said, eliciting a shy smile from her. His insides did a little jump at the sparkle in her green eyes as she tried to hide the fact that his praise meant something to her.

She immediately began the job of removing another cabinet door, and he wondered why she was so humble when she obviously had so much input to give. He wanted to move across the kitchen and scoop her up off of that stool and kiss her until her toes curled, but he knew that couldn’t happen again. She was far too vulnerable. He felt down to his very core that she was the real deal, and that he had no right dragging her into his messed-up life.

He knew she was twenty-eight, but she seemed so much younger. So much more naïve and open than anyone he had ever met before. He recognized that their attraction had been immediate and intense, but both of them had baggage. And if he did go back to his old life—his real life, he thought with a pang of regret—it would not be a place where someone as sweet as Lydia would fit in. It would be like taking a sheep to slaughter.

He thought of her meeting Kendall and barely suppressed a shudder.

Lydia could feel his eyes on her.
Be interesting!
she told herself. She cleared her throat, conscious of the extended silences in the room, desperate to get back to their easy banter from the night before. “So, how does fixing up this cabin compare to the rehab work you did in college?”

“Worlds of difference,” he said, also glad to fall back into easy conversation. “This cabin is a piece of cake. Here, there are no rules. You just do what feels right, and try to keep the things that make this place unique.

“Back then we were working on this old mansion that was historically important and everything had to be true to the original build. If a piece of molding was missing or damaged, it had to be hand-crafted to match the original piece. Every detail needed to be true to the era and the work had to be meticulous.”

“It sounds like you loved it.”

“Oh yeah, I loved every minute of it. If I could do that for the rest of my life, I’d die a happy man.”

She dropped a handful of screws into the bowl. “Why don’t you?”

He abandoned the baseboard he was working on and stood up. “Huh,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “Good question. I’ll have to think about that before I have an answer. I guess it’s like we were talking about; sometimes you just get caught up in things and your life takes a different path.”

She knew everything there was to know about taking another path—the wrong one.

“I haven’t thought about those days in years,” he continued, warming to his subject. “There was this guy named Whitey Boggs—his hair had turned stark white before he even got out of high school—and he climbed the scaffolding in that house like a monkey. One day—and I swear to you this is true—the scaffolding began to collapse and he leaped out into space, just in the nick of time, grabbed onto the chandelier, swung back and forth by his fingers with everybody scrambling around for ladders like crazy people. He never even let out a yelp, and I can tell you, I’d have been yelling like mad.”

She laughed, getting a kick out of the animation in his face as he told the story.

“When we finally found a ladder tall enough and got it under him, he just climbed down like it was nothing. When he stepped off that ladder, you could’ve heard a pin drop. He walked to the front door, turned around, calm as he could be, and said, ‘Ain’t it time for lunch?’”

“What?”

“Yeah, and that’s what I always think about when things get rough. If Whitey Boggs was cool enough to take that near-death experience in stride, like it was nothing, all I have to say to myself is ‘Ain’t it time for lunch?’ and everything seems to be put into perspective.”

She laughed. “You sure have set your standards high for coolness.”

He shook his head, smiling, caught up in old memories. “Those were good times. They were a great group of people that I admired and learned a lot from.”

Just then his phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket. “Hello? Okay, I’ll tell her.” He ended the call. “Vivian said to tell you that supper’s ready.”

“Great,” she said. “Wash up and I’ll walk with you.”

“I’m good,” he said, avoiding her questioning look. “Vivian brought so much stuff over for lunch, I’ve got plenty.”

“But—”

“You go on and eat,” he said. “I’m going to keep working here, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He wouldn’t look at her, and she knew then that he didn’t feel what she felt. There was nothing she could say, and she hoped she was able to mask the disappointment in her face. “Okay then. See you later.” Her back was stiff as she walked out the door.

He stood on the porch, watching as she disappeared up the path. He wanted to call her back. He wanted to go after her and say he’d changed his mind. But he knew it was best to let things cool off between them.

She walked as casually as she could, feeling his eyes on her back, but she felt like she was jerking like a puppet on a string. Tears stung her eyes as she finally stumbled around the bend out of his sight line. What happened? One minute they were sharing old stories, and the next minute he was shooing her out the door.
What a jerk!

How dare he kiss her passionately one night and then, the very next day, pretend that nothing had happened between them? What a slap in the face! She hugged her stomach and doubled over, the pain almost physical. She was so stupid. She could only assume that the kiss didn’t mean anything to him. He probably kissed every woman he ran across in that way. Just because she felt electricity course through her at his touch didn’t mean that he had felt anything at all. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it.

“Lydia, you’re such a fool,” she breathed through quivering lips. “Stupid!” She swiped her hands angrily across her cheeks as hot tears ran down her face. She stomped her foot. One little kiss and she’d let her imagination run wild.

But hadn’t she known better, that this was not the beginning of a love story for all ages? She’d known he wasn’t here to stay. And that’s why she let her guard down so fast. It felt like an off-the-charts romance at summer camp. Here today, gone tomorrow. He’d been clear that this was just a stopping off place, somewhere to rest up before moving on. Why hadn’t she listened?

But she’d
felt
it. She felt that deep-down cheesy soul-mate thing that she had thought she would never feel. Well, so much for going with your feelings, girl. Her instincts where men were concerned were obviously no better than they ever were. The old bad judgment thing once again reared its ugly head.

She was disgusted with herself. Was she that pliable that any good-looking man could just crook his finger and she’d come running? It appeared so. Except that Mike wasn’t just any good-looking man. Her anger was dissipating and the tears started to flow again. He had seemed perfect; too good to be true. And he was!  

Anger was good. Feeling angry was better than feeling sorry for herself. She dried her eyes on the bottom of her tank top and wished she had a tissue. She knew her nose was red; she’d never been a pretty crier.  She didn’t want Vivian to see her like this, and she couldn’t go back. She just wanted to fall in a hole and disappear.