Lakeside Cottage (17 page)

O
n the drive back to the lake, Kate could not get her mind to form a coherent thought. Raging, unrequited lust tended to do that to a person. She stumbled through some sort of conversation with JD but it must have been inane, practically meaningless. Maybe his conversation was idiotic, too; she couldn’t judge. Her hormone-crazed, infatuated self hung on his every word as though he was telling her every secret of the universe.

Like the surface temperature of Venus. It didn’t matter. She’d lost all power to judge. She felt a burning inside, and sensed her pulse speeding up. This all felt new to her. After all these years, she had finally met a man who surprised her and defied all her expectations. In addition to turning her on, he confused and challenged her. There seemed to be so much about him to discover. Turning slightly sideways on the seat of the truck, she drew up one knee, knowing her pose was provocative.

And clearly not lost on him. In the very faint glow of the panel light, she caught a glint in his eye. “What are you thinking?” he asked her.

“Hmm. About a matrioshka doll.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, one of those painted Russian dolls that comes apart, and inside there’s a smaller one, and inside that a smaller one, and so on. You keep opening them until you get to the prize in the middle.”

“And the point of that is…?”

“Human nature. How can you not keep opening them up until you get to the middle? The final doll is pretty anti-climactic, though.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever given that much thought.” He turned on to East Beach Road. Though it was nearly ten o’clock at night, the sky still glowed with the deepest colors of twilight—pink and orange layered across stripes of amber, beautifully reflected by the glassy surface of the lake.

“And here,” he said, slowing the truck down to a crawl, “is where I ask you if you’d like to come to my place for coffee or a nightcap.”

She bit her lip.
Easy, girl.
Did he really want the evening to go on, or was he just being polite?

He looked completely relaxed except for one telltale sign. He had one arm draped easily across the back of the seat. With his other hand, he gripped the steering wheel so hard that the skin stretched taut across his knuckles.

Somehow it gratified her that he appeared so nervous.

In just a few hundred yards, they would pass the driveway to his place. A quarter-mile after that, they would reach hers. She had only a few seconds to make up her mind.

“Whenever a man offers coffee or a nightcap, it never actually means coffee or a nightcap,” she commented.

“You sound like an authority.”

“
Not.
I’m a single mother. Invitations like this don’t come along every day.”

“That’s hard to believe.” He turned into his driveway. The headlamps washed over the snug cabin and outbuildings, the placid surface of the water.

She felt a flutter of alarm in her chest. “I didn’t say I’d come over,” she protested.

“Executive decision.” He parked and got out, came around to her side of the truck. He opened the door and shocked her by reaching across her lap, unbuckling her seat belt. The way his hand brushed her hip was unsettling in the extreme, both briskly professional and knowingly sexy.

“You’re like an expert at this,” she said.

“At what?”

“I’m not sure what it’s called. Extraction and seduction?”

“You could say that.” He took her hand and drew her to her feet. Then he held her pinned between him and the truck, and she felt such a surge of need that she couldn’t speak, could not even move.

He touched her hair, a tender and intimate brush of his hand. Then he cupped her cheek, his thumb tracing the outline of her cheekbone, her jaw.

She needed his kiss with an urgency that burned. Now, she thought. Please, now.

As though he knew exactly what she was thinking, he smiled a little bit and stepped back. “I want to show you something,” he said.

“Don’t tell me. You have a collection of etchings.”

“Even better.” He helped her down the bank, lighting the way with a flashlight he’d taken from the truck.

She spotted a strange silhouette and realized it was
the hull of a boat, upended on sawhorses. The smell of fresh-cut lumber and varnish hung in the air.

“It’s a project I started,” he said. “I’m restoring Sam’s boat.”

Kate wasn’t sure why this moved her—the careful layout of the tools, sketches covered in hand-written notes, the lovingly crafted repairs. She reached out and put her hand on the smooth mahogany hull. “I remember this boat. Sam and I used to take it out when we were little.”

“Which makes me insanely jealous of Sam.”

“Because he had a boat?”

He slipped his arms around her from behind and drew her close to his body, bending down to inhale the scent of her hair. “Because he had you.”

She sank back against him. Surrendering. Good heavens, could he be any more sexy? “Did Sam tell you that?” she asked. “Did he say we were boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“He said he wanted to be, but you had other ideas. True or false?”

“True. I was such an idiot.” She remembered Sam so well, as loyal and strong as a Saint Bernard. She’d fooled around with him, probably led him on, but never crossed the line into a serious relationship. “When I was a kid, I always seemed to be dreaming of someone different, someone who didn’t exist except in my imagination, like Spider-Man or…some superhero.” She felt him tense with restraint. “Don’t laugh. I was sixteen years old. Every girl that age wants a superhero.”

“And now…?”

She laughed and turned in his arms. “Now my standards have relaxed. Sometimes I think I’d settle for someone who was breathing.”

“You’re one tough cookie.”

She looked up at him.
Let’s get this show on the road.
“Honestly, I’m happy simply to go out on a date.”

“Like we just did?”

“Exactly.”

“We’re still doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“The date. It’s not over yet. I haven’t taken you home and kissed you good-night.”

“You haven’t kissed me at all.”

“I’m painfully aware of that.”

And still he didn’t. Kate gritted her teeth against a moan of frustration as he stepped back. Keeping his arm around her, he walked her to the cabin. They stopped on the porch, turning to look at the lake. In high summer, the darkness took its time. The lake mirrored the purple color of the sky and the pinpoint stars, so thick and numerous they misted the surface of the water.

Oh, she wanted him. She wanted his mouth on hers, his bare skin next to hers, his hands in places that had been lonely for far too long. A soft sound slipped out of her before she could catch herself.

“You okay?” he asked. His arm felt lazily comfortable, yet unsettling at the same time.

“I’m not staying,” she whispered.

“Beg pardon?”

“Here. With you, tonight. I…can’t stay.” She knew she was blowing it with this guy, but she didn’t know what else to tell him.

A half smile curved his mouth. “You can’t stay.”

“That’s right. See, I’m a responsible mother. I can’t…I would never…”

“Then don’t,” he said easily, rescuing her from the fumbling explanation.

She nodded, feeling foolish and far more frustrated than relieved.

From one end of the porch, she could just make out the lights of her place. Only a couple of windows glowed— Callie’s room and the back porch.

“Checking on Aaron,” JD observed.

“Always.”

“He’s fine.”

“I know.” She hesitated and then decided to explain. “Aaron has…issues. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he’s an angel.”

“And the other one percent?”

“That’s where the issues come in. He’s impulsive, sometimes loses his temper. It makes him quite a challenge to raise.”

“Have you ever heard of a kid being easy to raise?”

“I have no basis for comparison, but according to teachers and counselors and doctors, Aaron’s needs are definitely special. According to men I’ve dated, he’s much too special for them.”

“Forget those guys, Kate, forget anybody who takes that attitude. Aaron’s a gift from God. Anyone who doesn’t see that isn’t looking. All these things they claim are wrong with him don’t add up to who he is.”

She leaned back against the porch railing, held on for support. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Why not?”

“It makes you too good to be true. And I don’t want that. I want you to be true.”

“Your boy is a blessing. Believe it. I bet you wish you had ten Aarons.”

“Well, maybe not ten…”

“But you do want more kids.”

Oh, dear. Now what? “I don’t know…Aaron wasn’t planned. He just happened.”

“Like a gift.”

Like you,
she thought, smiling up at him.

“G
o ahead and say I told you so,” Kate offered Mable Claire Newman as they sat over coffee at the First Street Haven Café.

“Refresh my memory. What did I tell you?”

“I’m seeing someone. He was your idea. The guy who is staying at the Schroeder place.”

Mable Claire beamed at her. “Good for you, Kate. He seems like a perfectly nice fellow. Not to mention he’s a hunk.”

“I noticed that right away.” Kate couldn’t suppress a smile. She had all the classic symptoms of pure infatuation. The light-headed moments of disorientation. The pounding heart and quickened breathing at the mere thought of him. The constant sense of hovering between laughter and tears. The heightened sensitivity to anything and everything, from the smell of coffee to the warmth of the sun on her skin. There was no denying it. Kate was in the staring-out-the-window, smiling-at-nothing stage of this relationship.

“So keep talking,” Mable Claire said. “Old widowed lady like me, I need all the romance I can get.”

“I don’t really know how to explain this. Our first date was dinner at C’est Si Bon. After that, we started spending most evenings together, sometimes with the kids, sometimes by ourselves. There’s this rhythm that we’ve started and it’s…I don’t know. Special.” Kate speared a piece of watermelon from the fruit plate she’d ordered. Another symptom—wild swings of appetite from voracious to nonexistent. “Isn’t that awful? Here I am, calling myself a writer and I can’t even find the words for—”

“Oh, stop,” Mable Claire said. “Of course you can’t. But the good news is, every person who’s ever been in love or even dreamed of it knows exactly what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not—” Kate nearly choked on her watermelon.

“You are, too. You’re moving in that direction, anyway. Let yourself, Kate. You deserve to fall in love.”

The words struck to the heart of Kate’s uncertainty.
You deserve to fall in love.
Did she? Why had she never allowed it to happen?

“There’s a huge gap between dating for the summer and falling in love.”

“So what? Let your heart go and see what happens.”

“That would be fine if I had only myself to think about, but there’s Aaron. He’s absolutely crazy about JD, and it will crush him when we go our separate ways.”

“Not when. If.”

Kate felt a welling of tears, yet another symptom of this bittersweet affliction. She wept at the drop of a hat. At the sound of a heart-tugging song on the radio or the sight of an old married couple holding hands in church. For Kate, falling in love was like being terminally ill. Painful to go through, with a predictably bad outcome.

“He’s not going to stay with us,” Kate said. “Why would he?”

“Oh, let me think. You’re a warm, wonderful, beautiful young woman with an adorable son. Whatever could a man see in you?” Mable Claire buttered a marionberry scone. “You’re already planning to let him go before you’ve explored all the possibilities.”

“I’m trying to be practical and keep Aaron from getting his hopes up,” Kate insisted. “These things never work out for me.”

“Just because ninety-nine percent of soufflés fall when taken out of the oven doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever bake a soufflé.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” She offered a grudging smile. “We have this unspoken agreement that we don’t talk about the end of summer. He’s from the East Coast, and he’s looking at going to UCLA for medical school. There’s no way I can leave Seattle, so—”

“Quit thinking about how this is going to end. Try thinking about how things are right now.”

“Things are amazing right now,” Kate admitted with a dreamy smile. JD seemed to be growing more and more at home in her company. With good-natured cooperation, he participated in some of the most ancient Livingston-family rituals—bike rides, cannonballs off the dock, hiking expeditions, games of lawn darts and badminton, ghost stories and marshmallow roasts around a lakeside bonfire. She had not told him so, but he was stepping into the breach left by her brother, bringing strength and laughter and that ineffably male jocularity to the family, the one thing she couldn’t replicate.

“All right,” she said, giving herself a mental shake. She indicated the folder on the table. “I’m returning your photographs. They’ve been converted into digital files
for the article on my grandfather. I made you a copy on a CD.”

“He was a lovely man, your grandfather,” she said. “Aaron takes after him, doesn’t he?”

Same red hair and twinkling eyes, thought Kate. But Walden had been a leader, some would say a visionary. She wondered if Aaron could possibly have those gifts. Your son is a gift, JD had told her. Believe it.

“Anyway, the article is being published next February.”

“Kate, that’s exciting.” Mable Claire beamed at her. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks.” Mable Claire made her miss her mother. “I was at such a low spot at the beginning of summer.”

“But you kept your chin up, and look at you now.”

“I wanted to talk to you about Callie. Her birthday is coming up and I’m planning a surprise party for her. Can you and Luke join us Saturday night?”

“Sure, I’d love to come. Luke, too, probably. He was so bored at the beginning of summer. Fortunately, he found a group of other teenagers to pal around with.”

“He’s always by himself when he visits Callie. Maybe he could invite the others, too.”

“I’ll ask him. This is awfully nice of you, Kate.”

“I like doing things for Callie. Aaron’s in on the surprise. He’s beside himself.”

“It sounds like fun. She doesn’t seem to be a girl who’s had a lot of birthday parties.”

“I agree. That’s about to change.”

The evening before the party, Kate left Callie to watch Aaron while she and JD went out—on a date, they said. Beforehand, they had some stops to make, choosing gifts for Callie’s birthday. Music, of course—a Jimi Hendrix
collection and some new electronica that JD swore she loved, even though it made Kate cringe. She selected four new colors of nail polish, something she knew Callie liked, and then she lingered over the displays at the clothing store. “She only ever wears jeans, sweats and T-shirts,” she told JD. “I don’t want her to think I disapprove of that.” In the end, she settled on a gift card. It was uninspired but practical, she decided. Finally, at the stationery shop, she found a stock of notebooks and creamy writing paper, faintly lined, and pens in beautiful colors.

“She’s starting to matter so much to me,” Kate told JD.

“Lucky girl,” he said.

“You think so?”

“I know so. Let’s go get dinner.”

The plan was to catch a new movie at the local cinema, but halfway through the peach pie à la mode, Kate noticed him staring at her with unmistakable intensity. She fancied she could feel actual heat from his gaze.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“I’m not in the mood for a movie.” Simple words, but they were spoken in a tone that was taut with an undercurrent she recognized, because she felt it, too.

“Me neither. What would you like to do?” she asked.

“Let’s go to my place.”

Hardly a radical suggestion. But it was different now; and they both knew that. “All right,” she said.

They didn’t speak much on the ride to the lake. A soft, slow love song drifted from the radio speakers. He helped her out of the truck and they walked together to the front porch. “You’re quiet,” he said, taking out his keys.

She took a deep breath and decided to say it. “You haven’t kissed me yet and I want to know why. What have you got against it?”

He fell still, his features shrouded in darkness. “Kissing in general or kissing you?”

“You’re opposed to kissing me?”

“Those are your words, not mine.”

She wanted to scream in frustration. “Look, maybe I should go—”

“Kate,” he whispered, taking her arm and pulling her around to face him. “You…” He was like an actor who had forgotten his lines, yet there was nothing gradual or tentative about his kiss. He pulled her against him and kissed her without further preamble or ceremony, his mouth open and searching. Her nerves hummed with a fine edge of desire, and she sank against him, wanting and fearing, knowing she was ready and refusing, for now, to let herself worry about tomorrow.

He was new and exciting, yet she fit perfectly into his arms, into his kiss. The dizzily romantic thought struck her that she had been waiting for him all her life.

“Better?” he asked, his mouth hovering over hers.

“You get an A+.” She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “But maybe we shouldn’t…I can’t…”

“Come on, Kate. I know you’re a responsible mother, like you once told me. But you’re also responsible for your own happiness.”

“And you think…” She paused, tried to organize her thoughts. “You think making love with you would make me happy.”

“I don’t think that. I
know
it.” He grinned. “I promise.”

And then he picked her up as though she weighed nothing and pushed open the door with his shoulder.
When he set her down, she felt the edge of the bed pressing against the backs of her legs.

He still didn’t stop kissing her, not until he stepped back to turn her, gently lifting her hair away from the nape of her neck. He unzipped her dress, skimming it from her shoulders. Drowning in sensation, Kate kept her eyes shut, though she tried to picture what she’d worn tonight for underwear, because she had some real doozies from Ooh-La-La. It was all right, she recalled. Basic tasteful cherry red was always appropriate. Even if it was a thong.

She was on fire when she opened her eyes to face him, and she was gratified by the speed with which he shed his jacket and shirt. The only light in the room came from the moon, a clear pale glow highlighting a physique that, she strongly suspected, would cause women’s jaws to drop.

Deep shadows dappled his chest, and with a shock, she realized he was scarred—and not just a little. Thick, shiny tissue scored his chest and lower rib cage. “What happened to you?” she asked.

“I was in the service.”

“What, last week?”

“I signed up right out of high school, and stayed in until last spring.”

“And you were a medic,” she said, “like Sam.”

“That’s right.”

She gently traced a scar with her finger. “I thought medics
helped
the wounded.”

“Sometimes you put yourself in harm’s way to do that.”

“You act like it’s such a simple thing, putting yourself in harm’s way.”

“In the service, that’s your job, whether you’re a truck
driver, a cafeteria worker or a sniper. It’s not simple. It’s the job.”

“Where were you in harm’s way?”

“Konar Province in Afghanistan. That’s where I first met Sam.”

“I’m waiting for you to elaborate.”

“Honey, you’re standing there in a thong. The only thing I want to elaborate on is what I’m going to do to you.”

His words melted her resolve to take this slowly. Yet, while a part of her was ready to jump into bed with him, another part held on to caution. With an almost painful reluctance, she pulled her dress back up.

He groaned as though she’d wounded him.

“I told myself I need to get to know you,” she explained, though she felt his pain.

“You know me, Kate,” he said. “You know what’s important.”

“You never talk about your life. Your family. Your past—”

“I have a crappy apartment in D.C. and I’m a paramedic. Growing up, I just had my mother. Closest thing I have to family is Sam.”

“What were you doing in Afghanistan?”

His jaw tightened with a slight tic, but she held her ground. Finally, he gave a sigh of resignation. “We were medics in two different units. There was a sort of rough brotherhood made up of Northern Alliance Uzbeks and Tajiks, and a handful of U.S. Special Forces soldiers. They sent us down one night into a valley where a recon unit had been ambushed. Our job was to evacuate the wounded.”

It sounded surreal to her, particularly rendered in his
matter-of-fact tone. “I have a feeling you’re making this sound easier than it was,” she said.

“I never said it was easy. That night, we hit the UXO jackpot.”

“UXO…”

“Unexploded ordnance. There was a world of it littering the field.”

“Is that how you got those scars?” she asked, feeling a bit queasy.

“No, but it sure as hell made things interesting. And I met my best friend that night, so it wasn’t a total loss. And now…” He slid the dress off her shoulder, bent to kiss her there. “About that thong…”

She considered struggling, but his mouth on her just felt too good. “Finish the story,” she said weakly.

“It’s over. Tell me about you.” He bared the other shoulder and kissed her there, too.

“Oh, right. Like I can top yours. I wish I’d done something more with my life.”

“You’ve done plenty.”

She rested her forehead against his chest. Having a nine-year-old made her feel so ancient compared to her childless girlfriends. “It’s a conundrum. Nathan was a huge mistake, but if I hadn’t met him, I wouldn’t have Aaron.”

He touched her hair. “Did you love him?”

“I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t love him.”

“Does that mean you don’t sleep with anyone unless you love him?”

“Are you trying to get me to say I love you?”

“Only if you mean it.”

Oh, she was close. He had no idea how close she was to letting the dam burst. “I know what love is,” she said.
“And what it isn’t.” She smiled up at him but remembered the old Kate, pregnant and abandoned by a boy she had adored and trusted. “These things happen in their own time.”

He nodded, and very deliberately reached around and unhooked her bra. She reveled in the fire of his touch, all her reservations receding to a far corner.

“This is going to change everything,” she whispered in a voice she didn’t recognize.

“I sure as hell hope so.”

“You do?”

He traced his finger around the band of the thong. “Hell, yes.”

She was mesmerized by the movement of his finger. “What was wrong with the way things were before?”

“Nothing, but…we weren’t like this.”