Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish (7 page)

She felt something sag within her, and told herself it was not disappointment. It was pragmatic: the people refusing to come were the ones who could make the best donations to her cause.

But, of course, her cause was at odds with their vision for life around the lake.

Lucy forced herself to think of something else. She went into a spare room that had become the book room, retrieved the book orders and began to package them.

Later, she would review her rezoning proposal for Caleb’s House, the documents lying out on her dining room table where she hadn’t wanted Mac to see them.

As the day warmed, Lucy moved out onto her deck to work, as she often did. She told herself it was a beautiful day, but was annoyed at herself for sneaking peeks at Mama’s house.

She could hear enormous activity—saws and hammers—but she didn’t see Mac.

She wanted to go see what he was doing over there, but pride made her stay at home.

When she had finally succeeded in putting him out of her mind, the radio was on and she heard the ad about the donation of the Wild Side clothing in thanks for the donation of the yacht club for the Mother’s Day Gala.

Within an hour she had been phoned by several representatives of the yacht club—notably not Claudia—falling all over themselves to make sure she knew she was most welcome to the space for the Mother’s Day Gala, and that the regular charge had been waived.

Now, as evening fell, Lucy was once again cozy in her pajamas, trying to concentrate on a movie. She found herself resentful that he was next door. She and Mama often watched a movie or a television show together in the evenings.

She hated it that she felt lonely. She hated it that she was suddenly looking at her life differently.

When had she allowed herself to become so boring? Her phone rang.

“Hello, Lucy.”

“Mac,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to call and thank you. The yacht club has confirmed.”

He snickered. So did she.

“You didn’t tell me Mama’s car isn’t even insured.”

“Why would she insure a car she can’t drive?”

“I took it to town three times for building materials before she remembered to tell me, ever so casually, that the insurance had lapsed. I could have been arrested!”

From loneliness to this: laughter bubbling up inside her.

“Anyway, Mama would like to see a movie tonight. Can you drive me to town so I can get one for her?”

“You’re welcome to borrow my car anytime you need one.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thanks, but Mama says I’m not allowed to pick a movie without you there. She says I’ll bring home something awful. A man movie, she called it. You know. Lots of action. Blood. Swearing.”

“Yuck.”

“Just what Mama said. On the other hand, if we send you to get a movie without me, it’ll probably be a two-hanky special, heavy on the violin music.”

“Why don’t you and Mama go get the movie?”

“She’s making
apfelstrudel.
” He sighed happily. “She says it’s at the delicate stage. It’ll be ready by the time we bring the movie back. She says you have to come have some.”

It was one of Mama’s orders. Unlike an invitation, you could not say no. As if anyone could say no to Mama’s strudel, anyway. Still, it was not as if Lucy was agreeing to spend time with him. Or plotting to spend time with him. It was just happening.

“She hasn’t stopped cooking since you got there, has she?”

“No, because I also made a grocery run before I found out I was driving illegally. She made schnitzel
for supper,” he said happily. “You know something? Mama’s schnitzel would be worth risking arrest for. She’s already started a new grocery list. Would you mind if we picked up a few things while we’re in for the movie?”

Lucy did mind. She minded terribly that she had been feeling sorry for herself and lonely, and that now she wasn’t. That life suddenly seemed to tingle with possibility.

From going for a movie and to the grocery store.

Her life
had
become too boring.

Of course, she wasn’t kidding herself. The tingle of possibility had nothing to do with the movie or groceries.

Sternly, Lucy reminded herself she was not a teenager anymore. Back then, being around Mac had seemed like pure magic. But she’d been innocent. As he had pointed out earlier, she had believed in fairy tales. She’d been a hopeless romantic and a dreamer and an optimist.

It would be good to see how Mac fared with her adult self! It would be good to do a few ordinary things with him. Certainly that would knock him down off the pedestal she had put him on when she was nothing more than a kid. It would be good to see how her adult self fared around Mac.

It was like a test of all her new intentions, and Lucy planned on passing it!

“Meet me in the driveway,” she said. “In ten minutes.”

Did she take extra care in choosing what to wear? Of course she did. It was only human that while she wanted to break her fascination with Mac, it would be entirely satisfying to see his with her increase.

She wanted to be the one in the power position for a change.

If she looked at her life that was the whole problem. She had always given away too much power to others. Fallen all over herself trying to win approval.

If she had a fatal flaw, it was that she had mistaken approval for love.

“You know,” Mac said, a few minutes later, “they say that people’s choice of cars says a lot about them.”

Lucy looked at her car, a six-year-old compact in an almost indistinguishable color of gray.

She frowned. The car was almost a perfect reflection of the life she seemed to be newly reassessing. “It’s reliable,” she said defensively.

“I can cross driving off the list of things you do for fun.”

“What do you drive?”

“What do you think?” he said.

“I’m guessing something sporty that guzzles up more than your fair share of the world’s resources!”

“You’d be guessing right, then. I have two vehicles. One a sports car and the other an SUV great for hauling equipment around.”

“Both bright red?” she asked, not approvingly.

“Of course. One’s a convertible. You’d like it.”

“Flashy,” she said.

“I don’t enjoy being flashy,” he said without an ounce of sincerity. “I just want to find my vehicle in the parking lot. It’s crowded in the big city.”

They got in the car. She did not offer to let him drive. It wasn’t that her car would be a disappointment after what he was accustomed to. It was that she was not letting him take charge. It was a small thing, but she hoped that it said something about her, too.

“I’m glad you came with me,” he said after her disapproving silence about his flashy car lengthened between them.

Something in her softened. What was the point of being annoyed at him? He wanted to be with her. She ordered her heart to stop. She glanced at him, and he was frowning at the list.

“I didn’t want to have to ask a clerk where to find this.” He held the list under her nose.

“Hey! I’m trying to drive.”

It was a good reminder that the point of being annoyed with him was to protect herself.

“It’s after seven. There’s no traffic on this road.” Still he withdrew the list. “C-u-m-i-n.”

“Cumin?”

“I wouldn’t have pronounced it like that. What is it, anyway?

“A spice.”

He rapped himself on the forehead. “See? I thought it had something to do with feminine hygiene.”

“Mac. You’re incorrigible! What an awful thing to say!”

“Why are you smiling then?”

“My teeth are gritted. Do not mistake that for a smile! I do not find off-color remarks funny.”

“Now you sound like you’ve been at finishing school with Miss Claudia. Don’t take life so seriously, Lucy. It’s over in a blink.”

That was twice as annoying because she had said almost the very same thing to herself earlier. Lucy simmered in silence.

CHAPTER SIX

“S
AME
OLD
PLACE
,”
Mac said, as they entered the town on Lakeshore Drive, wound around the edge of the lake, through a fringe of stately Victorian houses, and then passed under the wooden arch that pronounced it Main Street.

Lucy’s house was two miles—and a world—away from downtown Lindstrom Beach. Main Street had businesses on one side, quaint shops that sold antiques and ice cream and rented bicycles and mopeds. Bright planters, overflowing with petunias, hung from old-fashioned light standards.

On the other side of the street mature cottonwoods formed a boundary to the park. Picnic tables underneath them provided a shaded sitting area in the acres of white-sand beach that went to the water’s edge.

“Charming,” she insisted.

“Sleepy,” he said. “No. Make that exhausted.”

The shops would be open evenings in the peak of the summer season, but now they were closed, their bright awnings rolled up, outdoor tables and chairs put away against the buildings. There were two teenagers sitting at one of the picnic tables. She was pretty sure they were both wearing Wild
Side shirts.

They left downtown and the main road bisected a residential area. Lucy Lindstrom loved her little town, founded by her grandfather. This part of it had wide tree-shaded boulevards, a mix of year-round houses and enchanting summer cottages.

Under the canopy of huge trees, in the dying light, kids had set up nets and were playing street hockey. They heard the cry of “car!”
as the kids raced to get their nets out of the way.

“I bet you don’t see that in the big city.”

“See?” he said. “You still believe in the fairy tale.”

“I don’t really think it’s so much a fairy tale,” she said, a trifle defensively. “This town, my house, the lake, they give me a sense of sanctuary. Of safety. Of the things that don’t change.”

In a few weeks, as spring melted into summer, the lake would come alive. Main Street Beach, which Lucy could see from her dock, would be spotted with bright umbrellas, generations enjoying it together.

There would be plump babies in sun hats filling buckets with sand, mothers slathering sunscreen on their offspring and passing out sandy potato chips and drinks, grandmothers and grandfathers snoozing in the shade or lazily turning the pages of books.

Along Lakeshore Drive, boards would come off the windows of the summer houses. Power boats, canoes and the occasional plane would be tied up to the docks. The floats would be launched and quickly taken over by rowdy teenagers pushing and shoving and shouting. There would be the smell of barbecues and, later, sparks from bonfires would drift into a star-filled sky.

“I’m unchanging. As incorrigible as ever.”

“Can you ever be serious?”

“I don’t see the point.”

“I love this town,” she said, stubbornly staying on the topic of the town, instead of the topic of
him.
“How could anyone not love it?”

Now, added to that abundance of charm that was Lindstrom Beach, Lucy had her dream, and it was woven into the peace and beauty and values of her town. The dream belonged here, even if Claudia Johnson didn’t think so!

And so did she. Even if Claudia Johnson disapproved of her.

“How could anyone not like it here?” She could have kicked herself as soon as it slipped out. It sounded suspiciously like she cared that he didn’t like it here.

“How much you like Lindstrom Beach depends on your pedigree.” Suddenly he sounded very serious, indeed.

She glanced at him. His mouth had a firm line to it, and he took a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. She was pretty sure those sunglasses had been in the lake yesterday.

“It does not.”

“Spoken by the one with the pedigree. You have no idea what it was like to be a kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Lindstrom Beach.”

This time the chill in the voice was hers. “That may be true, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.”

Suddenly, the pain felt fresh between them, like fragile skin that had been burned only an hour or two before. He had been right. There was no point being so serious.

If she could, she would have left things as they were, lived contentedly in the lie that she was all over that, the summer she had spent loving Mac nothing more than the foolish crush of a woman barely more than a girl. She’d only been seventeen, after all.

He had teased her about it then. The perfect doctor’s daughter having her walk on the wild side. When she had first heard the name of his company, she had wondered if he was taunting her for what she had missed. But he had never asked her to go on that journey with him. And besides, that brief walk on the wild side had been a mistake.

The repercussions had torn her oh-so-stable family apart. And then, there was the little place on a knoll behind the house, deeply shaded by hundred-year-old pines, that she went to, that reminded her what a mistake it had been.

Leave it,
a voice inside her ordered. But she was not at all sure that she could.

“Macintyre Hudson,” Lucy said, her voice deliberately reprimanding, “you lived next door to me, not on the wrong side of the tracks.”

But underneath the reprimand, was she still hoping she could draw something out of him? That she could do today what she had not been able to do all those years ago?

Find out who he really was, what was just beneath the surface of the incorrigible facade he put on for the world?

He snorted. “The wrong side of the tracks is not a physical division. Your father hated Mama’s old cottage, hardly more than a fishing shack, being right next door to his mansion. He hated it more that she brought children of questionable background there. His failures in life: he failed to have Mama’s place shut down, and he failed to bully her in to moving.”

Mac didn’t know that, in the end, her father had considered
her
one of his failures, too.

“But it looks like Claudia Johnson née Mitchell-Franks has taken over where he left off,” he said drily. And then he grinned, as if he didn’t care about any of it. “I think we should attend her little shindig on Friday night at the yacht club.”

The grin back, she knew her efforts to get below the surface had been thwarted. Again. She should have known better than to try.

“I wouldn’t go there on Friday night if my life depended on it,” she said.

“Really? Why?”

“First of all, I wasn’t invited.”

“You need an invitation?”

A little shock rippled through her. All those years ago, was it possible that he had never thought to invite her to go with him when he left Lindstrom Beach? That he had just thought if she wanted to go, she would have taken the initiative?

Lucy did not want to be thinking about ancient history. She was not allowing herself to dwell on what might have been.

But still, she said, “Yes, I need an invitation.”

“Your grandfather built the damned place.”

“I never renewed my membership when I came back.”

“You’re going to allow Claudia to snub you? I’d go just to tick her off. It could be fun.”

But Lucy felt something dive in the bottom of her stomach at the thought of going somewhere where she wasn’t wanted, all that old crowd looking at her as if she was the one who had most surprised them all, and not in a good way.

Fun. His diversionary tactic when anything got too serious, when anything threatened the fortress that was him.

“Well, showing up where I’m not wanted is not exactly my idea of a good time.”

“I have a lot to teach you,” he said, then, “And here we are at the grocery store. Which is open at—” he glanced at his watch “—half past seven. Good grief.” He widened his eyes at her in pretended horror and whispered, “Lucy! Are they open Sunday?”

“Since I’ve moved back, yes.”

“I’ll bet there was a petition trying to make it close at five, claiming it would be a detriment to the town to have late-night and Sunday shopping. Ruin the other businesses, shut down the churches, corrupt the children.”

She sighed. “Of course there was a petition.”

The tense moment between them evaporated as he got out of the car and waited for her. “Come on, Lucy Lin, let’s go find the cumin. And just for fun, we have to buy one thing that neither of us has ever heard of before.”

“Would you quit saying the word
fun
over and over as if you don’t think I know what it is? Besides, this is Lindstrom Beach, I don’t think you’ll find anything in this whole store that you’ve never heard of before.”

“You’re already wrong, because I’d never heard of cumin. Would you like to make a bet?”

Don’t let him suck you into his world of irreverence,
she ordered herself sternly.

“If I find something neither of us has ever heard of, you have to eat it, whatever it is,” he challenged her.

“And if you don’t?”

“You can pick something I have to eat.”

It was utterly childish, of course. But, reluctantly she thought, it did seem like it might be fun. “Oh, goody. Pickled eggs for you.”

“You remember that? That I hate those?”

Unfortunately, she remembered everything.

And suddenly it was there between them again, a history. An afternoon of canoeing, a picnic on an undeveloped beach on the far shore. Her laying out the picnic lunch she had packed with a kind of shy pride: basket, blanket, plates, cold chicken, drinks. And then the jar of eggs. Quail eggs, snitched from her mother’s always well-stocked party pantry.

She had made him try one. He had made a big deal out of how awful it was. In fact, he had done a pantomime of gagging that surpassed the one she had done of Claudia yesterday. But, at that moment that he had started gagging on the egg, they had probably been going deeper, talking about something that mattered.

“I’m not worried about having to eat pickled eggs,” he said. “I’m far too competitive to worry. I’ll find something you’ve never heard of before. Unlike you, who are somewhat vertically challenged, I am tall enough to see what they tuck away on the top shelves.”

As he grabbed a grocery cart, Lucy desperately wanted to snatch the list from him and just do it the way she had always done it. Inserting playfulness into everyday chores seemed like the type of thing that could make one look at one’s life afterwards and find it very mundane.

And with Mac? There was going to be an afterward, because he was restless and he would never be content in a place like this.

“Here’s something now,” he said, at the very first aisle. “Sasquatch Bread. I mean, really?”

“It’s from a local bakery. It’s Mama’s favorite.”

“We’ll get some, then. How about this?” He picked up a container.
“Chapelure de blé?”

“What?”

“I knew it. Here less than thirty seconds, and I’ve already won.”

She looked at what he was holding. “You’re reading the French side. It’s bread crumbs.”

“Trust the French to make bread crumbs sound romantic. We’ll take some of these, too. You never know when you might need romantic bread crumbs.”

She was not sure she wanted to be discussing romance with Mac, not even lightly, but the truth was he was hard to resist. Even complete strangers could see how irresistible he was. She did not miss the sidelong glance of a mother with a baby in her buggy or the cheeky smile of leggy woman in short shorts.

But it seemed as if his world was only about her. He didn’t even seem to notice those other women, his focus so intent she could be giddy with it.

If she didn’t know better than to steel herself.

But even with steeling herself against his considerable charm, just like that the most ordinary of things, shopping for groceries, was fun! He scoured the store for oddities, blowing dust from obscure items on the top shelves.

He thought he had her at quinoa, but when she said she made a really good salad with it, that went in the cart, too.

The strangest thing was that she was in a grocery store that she had been in thousands of times. And it felt as if she was discovering a brand-new world.

“Got it,” he finally said. He held out a large jar to her. “You have never heard of this!”

“Rolliepops,” she read. “Pickled herring wrapped around a savory filling. Ugh!”

“Gotcha!”

He bought the largest size he could find, and they found the rest of the things on the list, plus items he deemed essential for movie night: popcorn, red licorice and chocolate-covered raisins.

“You are really going to enjoy snacking on your Rolliepops during the movie,” he told her as they strolled out of the store with their laden cart.

“I’d rather eat the bread crumbs.”

“Then you shouldn’t have admitted you knew what they were. Retribution for the quail eggs all those years ago,” he said happily as he stowed all the things he had bought—most of them not on the list and completely impractical—in the trunk of her car.

The video store was also fun as they wrangled over movies. This was the part of being with him that she had forgotten: it was easy.

It had always astonished both of them what good friends they became and how quickly. They had thought they would be opposites. Instead, they made each other laugh. They thought their worlds would be miles apart, instead they were comfortable in the new world they created.

And now it was as if seven years didn’t separate them at all. She felt as if she had seen him just yesterday.

Finally, after much haggling, they settled on a romantic comedy.

By the time they got back, it never even occurred to Lucy not to join him at Mama’s house for the movie and fresh strudel. They parked the car back in her driveway and walked over with the groceries.

The strudel was excellent, the movie abysmal, Mama got up halfway through it and went to bed.

Suddenly, they were alone. Too late, Lucy remembered what else had come so easily and naturally to them.

When they were alone, an awareness of each other tingled in the air between them.

Back then, they had explored it. She with guilt, he with hunger, both of them with a sense of incredible discovery. The memory of that made her ache with wanting.