Never Too Hot (18 page)

Sure, the drive was mostly the same. The camps were still just as they always were. The lake was full of boats. But all of Andrew’s dreams were buried down so deep that he could no longer say what it was that nineteen-year-old boy he’d once been had really wanted.

All he knew was that he hadn’t gotten it.

A car honked behind him and he put his foot on the gas pedal, the gravel lot behind Poplar Cove finally coming into view. Pulling in, he saw a car and a truck. During the short chat he’d had with his parents, they’d told him they were renting the cabin out to a young woman. He assumed the truck belonged to Connor who, evidently, was working on the cabin for Sam’s wedding.

Getting out of the car, he took the stairs to the screened porch and knocked on the door. When he looked in he could see a pretty young woman standing in front of an easel. She seemed to be dancing along to something, but he couldn’t hear any music.

“Excuse me,” he said, but she didn’t look over, didn’t seem to have heard him. “Excuse me,” he said again, louder this time, and this time, she turned just as Connor walked out onto the porch.

“Dad,” he said, not exactly looking pleased to see him.

But Andrew couldn’t help smiling. To go from where his son had been, lying there under a thin white sheet hooked up to machines to this strong, young man … it was a miracle.

“Connor, you’re looking great,” he said, still standing on the other side of the screen door.

The woman moved past Connor and opened the door. “Hi, I’m Ginger. Why don’t you come in?”

He stepped inside and shook her outstretched hand. He thought about walking over to his son and hugging him, but they hadn’t hugged since Connor was a little boy. Andrew quickly dismissed the idea as a bad one.

“How was your flight?” Ginger asked him as the silence drew on several beats too long.

“Good.” He cleared his throat. “Great.”

She shot a glance at Connor, and even from this distance, Andrew could feel a strong connection between the two of them.

“You must be exhausted.”

“No, I’m fine. Managed a couple of hours on the plane.”

Ginger’s wristwatch beeped and she looked down at it in obvious consternation. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to head into work.” Another quick look at his son. “If you’d like something to eat, Connor knows where all the food is. I’m sure he could heat something up for you.”

She turned to head into the house, brushing against Connor as she walked past. Andrew saw his son’s reaction, the way his fingers stretched out to brush against hers.

Andrew remembered what it felt like to be with a girl that could take him down with nothing more than a glance, with the soft touch of her fingers on his skin. It had been the greatest feeling in the world.

“Want a Coke?” Connor asked.

“I’ve had enough caffeine already to last me the week.”

Connor raised both eyebrows. “Okay. I’m going to get one.”

Had he already put his foot in it, over nothing more than a soda? He should have taken whatever his son offered.

While Connor walked to the kitchen, Andrew looked around the old log cabin. It looked almost identical to the way it had when he was a kid. Some new furniture, a lighter shade of green on the porch, but otherwise like time was standing still.

Ginger came down the stairs, went into the kitchen, said something to Connor that he couldn’t make out. Not wanting to be a peeping Tom, he moved back, but not before he caught a glimpse of her going up on her toes to kiss his son.

“I hope to see you later,” she said to Andrew as she walked out the screen door.

Connor sat down with his Coke and Andrew dearly wished he had something to do with his hands, even if it was just opening the pop tab.

He’d been like this the day Connor had been born, his hands trembling as he went to pick him up. Newborns scared him. They were so small, so helpless, and every moment they depended on you. And although Connor was a couple of inches taller than him now, Andrew felt just as awkward, just as unsure of himself.

“How’s the work on the cabin going?”

“The wiring was a mess. The logs are rotting. The roof is shot.”

Andrew nodded, tried to think of what to say next. “Are you staying in town or—”

“Here. I’m staying here.”

“That’s great. Ginger seems like a beautiful girl.”

Shit, another hard stare from his son. He was a lawyer, he should know how to lead a conversation in the direction he wanted it to go.

“Have you run into any of your old friends?”

“Let’s cut the bull. Why are you here?”

Andrew bristled at his son’s tone, forgot his intention to be the nice guy. “Poplar Cove isn’t yours, it’s your grandparents’. Which makes it mine too. I have every right to be here.”

“Wrong.” Connor stood, looked down on him. “This is Ginger’s house now. You’re only here because she let you in. And that’s just because she doesn’t know a damn thing about you.”

Andrew stood up too, faced off with his son. He wasn’t as broad from years of grueling physicality, but they had the same basic build. Apart from the twenty years between them, they were fairly evenly matched.

“How about we cut right to it, then?”

Andrew had thought he needed to tread gently. Fuck that. If Connor was going to come at him full speed ahead, he was going to see that his old man was tough enough to block him.

“Your brother called me. He told me what happened. That the Forest Service had turned down your final appeal. That’s why I’m here. To take care of my own.”

“I’m fine.”

For the first time in a very long time, Andrew saw himself in his rugged son. He’d done that same thing once, worked like hell to convince everyone—but mostly himself—that the abrupt shift his life had taken was what he’d wanted.

“All my life I’ve worked on facts and facts alone,” he told his son. “Here are the facts. You have always wanted to be a firefighter and nothing else. And now your future has been fucked over by a bunch of suits.”

From a legal perspective, Andrew understood why the Forest Service couldn’t risk having an injured man in the field who might freeze in a crucial moment.

“That’s a brutal blow, Connor. One you’re going to have to deal with sooner or later.”

“I told you. I’m fine.”

“I didn’t just fly here on a godforsaken red-eye to hear you spout that denial crap.”

Connor’s mouth twisted up on one side. “Now that’s real suffering. A red-eye flight.”

A sound of frustration rippled out from Andrew’s throat, two years of rejected invitations to connect with his son all coming at him at once.

“Your IQ tests were off the charts. You could have been anything you wanted to. You’re only thirty. It’s not too late to go back to school, to become a doctor or professor. Heck, I’ve heard you’ve been a hell of a teacher to the rookie hotshots these past couple of years.”

“Think how much easier it would have been to tell me that over the phone instead of coming all this way.”

“Damn it, Connor, I’m your father. I put aside everything else in my life to come here. To help you.”

“Bullshit. You never wanted me and Sam to be firefighters, never got tired of saying it was a dead-end job. Must feel damn good to finally be right.”

Andrew needed to call a break, reassess, approach Connor from a different angle, but before he could do any of that, Connor was saying, “Did you cheat on Mom?”

What the hell?

“Cheat on your mom? What are you talking about? I might have done a lot of things, but I never did that.”

“I already know about Isabel.”

Andrew opened his mouth, closed it hard enough that his teeth clacked together. Now it made sense why Connor had been so pissed off from the moment he’d set foot on the porch.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “I knew Isabel before—”

It was all so intertwined. Andrew was tempted to lie, but something told him that would only come back to bite him in the ass harder.

“We dated before your mom.” And he’d desperately wanted Isabel back after. Even though it had been impossible.

“Was Isabel the reason you couldn’t make your marriage work?”

“Yes.” He shook his head. “No. It was all so long ago. We tried, Connor. I swear it. Your mother and I tried to make it work.”

“She tried.” Connor stood up. “You didn’t.”

Contrition slammed into Andrew as his son moved away, the rewind button in his head taking him through the last several minutes, highlighting every way he’d played it wrong.

Something told him that if he let his son go now, they’d be done. Completely. Which meant he’d have to play his final card. Connor’s love for his brother.

“Please, Connor,” he said, reaching out to grip his son’s scarred arm. “I get that I’m not your favorite person in the world, that you’d love to shove me onto the next plane back to San Francisco. But Sam and Dianna asked if I’d walk her down the aisle and I want to be part of Sam’s wedding, do whatever I can to help them get ready for it.”

He swallowed everything else. I want to be a part of your life. Get to finally know the man you’ve become. Maybe stand up for you one day at your wedding. Connor didn’t want to hear any of that.

The silence dragged on long enough for Andrew to feel rivulets of sweat begin to run down his chest. And then, finally, Connor shrugged.

“Do whatever floats your boat. Doesn’t make any difference to me.” Connor grabbed his running shoes from the porch. “I’m going to head out for a run.”

Andrew stood alone on the cabin’s porch, watching his son sprint across the sand, desperate to get away from him.

THE SKY was brilliant blue, the lake like glass as Josh untied his mom’s speedboat from the dock in front of their house. Five friends—including Hannah Smiley—were already on board, popping soda cans open and talking about the huge flames at last night’s bonfire. He’d known all of them, except Hannah, since he was five. Some of them were full-timers like him, others only came during the summer.

Getting behind the wheel, he ignored the five-mile-per-hour courtesy speed in the bay and shot away from the dock, his huge wake quickly washing up on the shore and knocking his neighbor’s boats into their docks.

Hannah was the only reason this past week hadn’t completely blown. Were it not for her, he would have much rather been back in his father’s loft in the city, going to loud, busy restaurants, playing the latest video games on his father’s sick gaming system, drinking beer with his father’s friends on poker night while betting—and losing—real money on his shitty hands.

Returning to Blue Mountain Lake was like stepping into quicksand. Small. Boring. Could his mother’s diner be any more different from his father’s buzzing architecture design office downtown? Red and white fifties decor versus glass and steel.

How in hell had his parents ever gotten together? Sure, he loved his mom and everything, but she was so small-town. Whereas his dad had the sharpest suits, the coolest jeans and shoes, even several pairs of funky glasses that he changed throughout the week to match his moods.

He looked back over his shoulder at Hannah in a casual way, not so she’d notice he was checking her out, even though he definitely was. She looked good in her white shorts and yellow T-shirt. Better than good actually. He still couldn’t believe she’d wanted to come out on his boat. Not that he was the town loser or anything, but he didn’t hang with the partying crowd either. Hannah had the looks to fit in with that crew, but somehow, she’d chosen to hang with him instead.

Cool.

“Man, your boat is sweet,” his friend Matt said. “I can’t believe your mom lets you take it out without her.”

Josh shrugged. Yeah, the boat was fine, but he’d been riding around this lake since he was five. He was almost sixteen. Not a kid anymore.

He was ready for a change, and for the chance to show Hannah what a badass he really was. Especially after that dude on the beach had freaked about their fireworks.

“Take the wheel,” he said, standing up and heading out to the bow.

“Dude, that’s illegal,” Ben said.

Sure, Josh thought, his mom would shit a brick if she saw him bow riding, but she was always holed up in her diner on the other side of the lake.

“When was the last time a ranger went out on the lake and busted someone?” He looked at Hannah and shook his head as if to say, “We should have left this loser on shore.”

Crawling across the white fiberglass, he made it to the metal rails on the very tip of the boat. Hooking his legs under them, he yelled back at Matt, “Hit it!”

An evil grin was on Matt’s face as his friend punched the engine into overdrive, fast enough that Josh’s eyes watered and the skin on his face blew back like he was a basset hound.

Hell yeah, this was more like it.

Adrenaline.

Speed.

Danger.

They whipped in a tight circle to avoid a sailboat and were turning back toward the bay when Matt practically cut the engine cold.

“What the hell—”

The word stalled in his throat when he looked up.

His mom was standing on their beach. And she was clearly yelling.

Fuck. What were the odds? She never left the diner in the middle of the day.

Lucky him, she had to pick the one time he actually had a girl in the boat. Bending his head down so that his hair flopped over his face, he avoided eye contact with Hannah.

He didn’t want to see her laughing at him. How the hell was he ever going to live this down?

Feeling suddenly clumsy, he untangled his limbs from the rail and crawled back across the bow. “Give me the wheel,” he grunted and Matt jumped out of the way.

“I’m so fucked if my mom finds out I was driving your boat,” his friend said. Matt chewed his nails, barely a step up from the thumb sucking he’d done until he was six.

“It was my idea,” Josh said. “I’ll take all the flack.”

Still, even though he didn’t want his friends or Hannah to think otherwise, his stomach was twisting and he was fighting the urge to throw up. At the beginning of the summer, his mom had made it really clear to him that driving her boat came with responsibilities. He was pretty sure breaking the law wasn’t one of them.

He took extra care to bring the boat into the dock without bumping it, and as soon as he started tying it up, his friends bolted. Getting out last, Hannah stopped beside him.

“Do you need some help?”

Not lifting his face to look at her, he shook his head. “Nope. I’ll see you later.”

He could see Hannah’s feet in her black sandals, her toes painted purple. For a long moment, she stood there silently, almost as if she was waiting for him to say something else. Or, maybe, to look at her again.

He wished she’d leave already and let him die of humiliation alone.

“Um, your mom’s coming, so I guess I’d better go now. I’ll see you around.”

He swallowed hard past the huge lump in his throat. Why had he decided to go bow riding today? Why couldn’t he have just taken everyone out for a cruise on the lake, played it cool?

His mother’s footsteps were loud and fast as she walked down the long wooden dock to chew his ass out. Blocking the sun with her shadow as she stood over him, her first words were, “You could have died.”

He looked up at his mother, noted the way her voice shook, knew instantly how afraid she’d been of something happening to him. But didn’t she get it? He wasn’t a little kid anymore. There was no way he would have fallen out, and even if he had, he knew to swim deep to avoid getting chewed up by the propeller.

“I didn’t die. I’m fine.”

Her expression changed from fear to anger in a heartbeat. “That’s all you’ve got to say to me? No, ‘I’m sorry, Mom, I won’t do it again.’ No, ‘Oh gee, I don’t know what I was thinking.’ Just that you lived through it?”

Knowing he’d better start acting sorry, he said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. It won’t happen again.”

“You scared the shit out of me, kid.”

“I know.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Seems like just yesterday you were a little boy.”

He stepped away from her and picked up the towels he’d left on the end of the dock. This was exactly what he wanted her to get. Needed her to understand.

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

She took a deep breath, then sighed. “I know. And that’s why I’m going to have to treat you like a young man instead of a boy.” She held out her hand. “Give me the keys.”

He stilled, his fingers instinctively closing over the keys.

“I told you, I’m not going to do it again.”

“I believe you. But you need to learn a lesson. And since I’m your mom, I’m the one who’s going to have to teach it to you.” She plucked the keys out of his hand. “The boat is off limits for one week.”

Outrage shot through him. “What the hell am I supposed to do in this stupid town without my boat?”

“My boat,” she countered. “And now it’s two weeks.”

First she’d embarrassed the hell out of him in front of Hannah. Now, she was punishing him for one stupid little transgression?

“You suck.”

She took a step forward, pushed her index finger into his chest. “Right now, so do you.”

Anger caught him, pushed out the words, “I wish I were still in the city with Dad.” He wanted her to feel as bad as he did. “No wonder he didn’t want to stick around with you. No wonder he divorced you.”

But when he finally got what he’d been going for, saw the hurt in his mother’s eyes, instead of victory there was only a twisted emptiness. Not knowing how to say he was sorry—not really wanting to either—he ran off the dock.

It would be better for all of them if he started planning his escape to New York City. Only this time, he’d be staying there. For good.

Andrew intended to go back to his rental car, drive into town, find a room at the Inn. Sit down and make a plan to get his son to trust him. But when he got down to the grass at the end of the porch stairs and looked out into the woods that separated his camp from Isabel’s, as if pulled by a magnet, his feet started heading that way.

The well-worn path between Poplar Cove and Sunday Morning Camp had grown over and stray branches scratched him through his slacks and long-sleeved button-down shirt. He was dressed all wrong for the lake. As a kid he’d never worn anything other than shorts and T-shirts. He felt like a stuffy old person as he slowly made his way through the woods, the kind of guy he would have made fun of as a kid, a total greenhorn.

He stumbled over a thick dead log and cursed out loud as he caught himself on one of the many poplars his grandparents had named their camp for. His words didn’t make much of an impression in the forest, not like they had for three decades in the courtroom.

He thought back two months, when young Douglas Wellings, thirty-five and cocky, called him into the boardroom. There sat the rest of the new guard, a whole host of kids who thought all they needed to win cases was flash and connections. There were a few old guys like him sitting there too, but none of them would meet his eyes. And that’s when he’d known. Twenty-five years he’d given to the firm. And it was all gone in an instant.

We all know how bad the economy is. That we’ve got to make some cuts somewhere. So hard to make this choice. Thanks for your service. Now say good-bye, Grandpa.

For days he made his plans. He’d sue for ageism. For firing him just so they could turn around and hire someone cheaper. He stayed up all night on the Internet, pored through his books, and was just about ready to serve the papers when Sam and Dianna had asked him to meet up in the city.

They were getting married. They wanted him to give Dianna away.

He’d awkwardly blinked back tears on the couch in their living room. Thanked them so profusely for the honor, he knew he’d made them all uncomfortable.

Leaving their house, he realized he wasn’t fighting his dismissal so hard because he really wanted his job back. It was simply that he wanted to prove that he was worth something. To someone. To anyone.

He tightened his grip on the tree trunk, not realizing that the bark was digging into his flesh until a moment too late. Another curse left his lips as he saw a streak of blood across his palm. Thirty years away from this place had made him a greenhorn with soft hands. First thing tomorrow he’d head up to the general store to get himself a new set of lakeworthy clothes.

Sucking his palm into his mouth, he continued making his way through the trees. The flickers of blue between trunks and branches grew larger and larger until the forest gave way to sand.

The sun was glinting off the water and he was momentarily blinded. And then he saw her.

Isabel.

She was sitting on the edge of her dock, her legs dangling in the water, and his heart stopped in his chest. From where he was standing, time had stood still, and he could have sworn he was looking at the fifteen-year-old girl he’d fallen head over heels in love with.

Her straight blond hair still brushed the edge of her shoulders and her frame was as slim as it had been as a teenager. Without thinking, his feet took him toward her.

A speedboat flew by in the bay and it’s sleekly modern lines abruptly catapulted him into the present.

Jesus, what was he thinking? That he could come back to Blue Mountain Lake and rewind thirty years? That he could have everything the way he wished it had been, rather than the way it had actually turned out?

Just then, Isabel shifted on the dock, pushing her feet beneath her to stand up. Andrew worked like hell to find an escape route.

Just turn the fuck around and run, you idiot!

But his feet wouldn’t move. Instead, all he could do was stand still as a statue and watch as Isabel turned around.

And saw him.

Isabel closed her eyes hard, forced herself to take a breath. Between last night and this morning, her head had grown fuzzier and fuzzier. And then when Ginger had arrived to work the lunch shift, said she’d just met Andrew, Isabel had been hit by an intense headache.

She would have never dreamed of leaving the diner in the middle of the lunch rush if she hadn’t been about to throw up all over the sautéing onions. Scott had assured her again and again that he had the situation well in hand. Ginger had walked her out to her car, told her she’d check in on her later that afternoon, see if she needed anything.

And now, as if things weren’t already bad as Isabel reeled from her confrontation with Josh, Andrew had decided to pay her a visit. She still felt nauseous, but dizzy now too.

She’d tried to convince herself that seeing him again wouldn’t hurt, that it wouldn’t matter.

But when she opened her eyes again and looked at Andrew MacKenzie, the first boy she’d ever loved, the pain was so intense it took her breath away.