“I guess this was why it was time for us to retire,” Dad said. “We just weren’t up on the trends. I never would have remodeled the bathrooms in those colors!”
“But they look great,” Mom said quickly. “So don’t keep saying it, Marshall. You’ve seen the new bathroom colors about five times since they were done.”
Today they planned on driving up to Jay to see the house that Lee had told them she and Mac were going to make an offer on. They were staying up there for a home-cooked meal in the evening. “Home-cooked by me!” Mom had said. “Lee looks as if she needs to start putting her feet up more.” Daisy had given them the addresses of the two places she and Tucker were considering, also, and they intended to drive by those and sneak a look on their way.
Mary Jane’s own plan to do a big redecoration of the master bedroom and claim it as hers seemed small-scale by comparison, but she’d decided to take herself in hand on that front, and once Mom and Dad had left for their house-appreciation drive, she spent her spare moments during the day browsing the internet for bedroom decor that she liked…as well as looking at those damned travel brochures. She was leaning toward Portugal in March.
At five-thirty in the afternoon, Nickie was staffing the office for the evening, so Mary Jane went out into the fresh summer air to make her daily—sometimes it was twice-daily—inspection of the boats, checking that no one had left life jackets inside them, or puddles of water, making sure there were no oars missing, damaged sections that might spring a leak, or boats missing altogether.
It was a beautiful day, so quite a few people had taken the boats out, and she wasn’t sorry to have a good reason to come down to the dock. The lake was so pristine and peaceful on this part of its long shoreline. A scattering of islands meant that the big tourist boats didn’t come too close, and no matter what the weather or the time of day, the play of light from sky to water to rock to trees held something magical.
Mary Jane took deep breaths of the pine-scented air and told herself she was content. Happy. Fulfilled. Going to be an auntie soon. Lucky enough to live in this beautiful spot. Sensible enough to have said no to Joe two weeks ago. He must have thought so, too, because he hadn’t called or reached out. There’d only been that exchange over the towels, and those increasingly awkward talks whenever they accidentally met.
You couldn’t grab at something just because it looked like the thing you wanted. What was that thing Dad so often said? “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
True, Dad could sometimes be a bit of a gloomy-guts and a worrier—witness his reaction to coffee cake for breakfast, and his oft-repeated skepticism about the new colors in the bathrooms.
It’s beautiful. I’m happy. I’m doing the boats. I always like doing the boats.
There were clear instructions sign-posted about the boats in four places on or near the dock. “Please leave dinghies and canoes upside down, with oars and paddles inside. Please return life jackets to the office.”
Still, almost every day somebody didn’t read the signs, or couldn’t be bothered. You had the choice of enforcing such a strict policy with taking the boats out that no one ever did it at all, or mentally shrugging and accepting that you needed to check them. Today, Mary Jane found one boat with four oars while another had none, and there were two canoes sitting on their bottoms with a slosh of water inside, and soggy life jackets floating in the slosh.
Meanwhile, dinghy number three wasn’t even back yet. She looked out at the lake and saw it coming round the point of one of the islands, only just close enough for her to make out that it was indeed a sky-blue-hulled Spruce Bay boat. The occupants were just three tiny blobs of life-jacket orange.
She lifted the sopping jackets out of the two canoes in front of her, keeping them as far from her body as she could, so that the water would stream onto the ground and not on her skirt, top or sandals. Really, the outfits she wore in the office were never the right clothes for checking boats, but it was too much trouble to change.
Flipping the boats was worse than lifting the life jackets, in terms of mess, especially when the water was three-inches deep. Fortunately, as always, she’d brought a bucket for bailing. This made the boats lighter to flip, but tended to result in getting water all over her. She bailed anyhow. Scoop, splash. Scoop, splash. It was still sunny and warm. The splashes down her clothing would soon dry.
But it was amazing how much water one boat could hold.
Scoop, splash. Scoop, splash.
“Need some help?” said a male voice.
It was Joe, wearing bare legs and puffy orange on top, standing two yards away and looking down at her. There was a half smile on his face that she couldn’t read. Pleasure, and uncertainty, and awkwardness, and…
She gulped down her gasp of surprise and blurted, “Oh, that was you and the girls out in the last boat?” It was pulled up onto the sand about fifteen yards away, but they were still sitting in it, trying to work the heavy oars with lots of giggles and not much success.
They were too cute!
And Mary Jane hadn’t let them have any hot chocolate. She looked quickly away.
Flustered.
Emotional.
Breathing turned shallow just because Joe was here. Would she manage to hide it? This was a much more private place than any of their other recent meetings.
“Sorry, are we late back?” Joe’s smile hovered and flickered, and made her heart do stupid things that she didn’t want. It made her smile back at him, too, and there was this fuzzy moment…long moment…when all that mattered was that he was here, robbing her of breath.
“It’s fine,” she said unsteadily.
“Lucy took Jess and Simon in from the beach a while ago, so they could help pack. It was our last day.” He began to unfasten the garish life jacket, and soon had it dangling from one hand. Beneath it, he wore a striped polo shirt, with wet patches all over it.
“I know,” Mary Jane said. “I bet the girls are disappointed.”
Somehow the content of this conversation seemed totally unimportant. They were both looking at each other as if they couldn’t drag their gazes away.
If their chance conversations over the past couple of weeks had been awkward, this was worse. It was already intense, despite the outwardly casual words.
“They would be sad,” he was saying, “but Penelope says they’ve learned so much that they’re good enough riders to take part in another camp she’s running in August for two weeks. Meanwhile, they’ll have a riding lesson with her twice a week, and I’ve found another day camp they can do until the August one starts.”
“So your dad won’t get too tired, and you’ll have study time, and the girls have more ponies to look forward to. That’s great!”
“Yeah, it is.” He gave a brief grin, but then it faded and the atmosphere grew thick and uncertain again. “Uh, I got here early and the girls asked if they could have a boat ride for our last day. I hope that’s okay. We’re not guests, after all.”
The girls had scrambled out of the boat now. They arrived and stood beside him, wearing smaller versions of the orange that Joe had worn, their chins almost buried inside the bulky life jackets. They were in swim gear, and only now did Mary Jane see the pink-and-blue backpacks and bright beach towels the girls had left in a heap at the foot of a tree twenty yards from the dock and beach.
She would have recognized those backpacks if she’d noticed them before. She would have been prepared. As it was, she felt caught on the hop to a stupid extent, not calming down at all, and had a horrible awareness of how little she was managing to hide. The girls weren’t smiling. They weren’t at all sure about her, anymore.
“No, it’s fine,” she repeated. “Of course it is.”
“Fine, we’re not late back, fine, it’s okay that we’re not guests, or fine, you don’t need help?”
“Either. Both. I mean, all three.”
“I definitely think you need help. Look at you!”
&n
bsp; She stood up and looked. Enough water splashed on her cream top to make it semitransparent, telling Joe and anyone else that she was wearing a pink bra. She should have changed. “Um, yes,” she said, and positioned the bucket so that it shielded her damp chest from his quite unapologetic gaze. She knew she was blushing.
“Don’t do that,” he said softly.
So she gave him the bucket, without a word. Even though it might not have been the water bailing he was talking about. Their hands met, clumsy and cold and wet and perfect. She snatched hers away. The girls were looking on with interest, now. “Are you embarrassed because your underwear is showing?” Holly asked with a child’s bluntness and disregard for tact.
“A bit.”
“Girls…” Joe said. The breeze took his protest and floated it away.
“Can we help, too, Daddy?”
He seemed harried at this idea. “No, why don’t you take the life jackets off and dry yourselves and play in the sand? Over there.” He pointed to a spot farther away than it needed to be.
“Are we staying?” Holly asked.
“You said we had to go home,” Maddie reminded him.
“We’re staying a little while.”
“Yay-y-y!”
“And didn’t you say you were hungry? Maybe we’ll eat your snacks in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” They scampered off, and Joe looked relieved.
“You don’t have to bail water for me,” Mary Jane told him.
“What if I want to?”
“Then…then…okay.”
He got down on his hands and knees beside the most water-logged of the boats and began to bail, scooping and tossing the water in one continuous figure-eight movement. Mary Jane wanted to tell him again that he didn’t have to do this, but no words came. It was too good. The way he worked so efficiently to help her. Had any man ever done this for her?
He was showing off a little, she could tell, and so help her, she loved it.
Loved what it said.
That in some way he still cared. He hadn’t dropped out of her life or turned his back or lost interest completely just because they’d gone too far, too fast with their involvement and overshot the whole thing, only to have it come crashing down.
Maybe he doesn’t think we messed up for good, after all.
Or else he was just a good, decent guy, still grateful to her for what she’d done to help his girls, and prepared to show it.
Well, that wasn’t quite so good, not quite so personal and intimate and important, but she valued it anyhow. She’d learned that in life. So you can’t have the big things you want? Value the small things. Value what you’re sure of.
“Thanks so much, Joe,” she finally managed to say.
“No problem. This one, too?”
“And then they need to be flipped.”
“You do this every day?” he said as he bailed.
“The guests are supposed to do it, but often they don’t.”
“So you do, instead? On your own?” He bailed some more.
“When there’s no one else. Dad always used to do it before he and Mom retired to South Carolina. Daisy and Lee aren’t in a fit state to help with this stuff because they’re both pregnant.”
“You don’t have to tell me! Lee has a basketball in there!”
“She’s due sooner. Daisy still insists she can flip boats with me, but I won’t let her. When Rick, our maintenance man, is around, I get him to do it, but he only works part-time and he often finishes too early. People take them out late when it’s this light and warm.”
“You need someone full-time for that kind of stuff, not part-time.” He finished and stood up. There was only a half inch in the bottom of the boat now, so it would be easy to flip.
“This is our first summer since Mom and Dad left,” she told him. “We’re still working things out.”
“You need someone,” he repeated, and his glance flicked down at her chest again. Looking at the wetness, possibly.
Or possibly not.
She blushed once more, a happy, uncomfortable blush that she didn’t know what to do with.
Keep it together, Mary Jane. Breathe. Be sensible. Don’t read too much into this. Don’t read anything.
Don’t give too much.
Want too much.
Expect anything.
Together they flipped the two boats. She moved on to the one he’d just brought back, but he wouldn’t let her. It was surprisingly dry inside, and she guessed he’d been fairly strict about the girls rocking and splashing. He called them. “Holly, Maddie, we need to flip the dinghy.”
“It’s okay, Joe, we can—”
“Hey, I can read, even if some of your guests can’t. We take a boat out, we’re supposed to leave it flipped and return the life jackets. Girls?”
They came running back from the swimming beach, and he got them to stand at one end and lift on the count of three. Mary Jane suspected he could have done it more easily by himself, but he was strict about things like that, she’d noticed—tidying toys when they’d finished playing, bringing empty plates into the kitchen when they’d eaten their meal.
“Can we play more?” they asked when the dinghy was lying facedown on the sand.
“Yes, go on.” He dropped his voice. “If you have time, Mary Jane?”
“If I have time?”
“I want to talk a bit.” His eyes seemed so dark with feeling that she could have drowned in them, and his voice was pitched so low that she had to step closer to hear. “There’s something I need to ask you about what happened two weeks ago.”
“About—”
“You know what about.” One flick of his gaze made his meaning clearer than words could have done, but he spelled it out anyhow. “Why you said no. I have to ask. Was it because of the girls? I can’t let this go. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The three of you seemed so good together. They talk about you. They like you.”
“They didn’t seem to like me last week when I told them they couldn’t have hot chocolate.”
“I wondered about that, too. I saw you hesitate.”
“You let me off the hook, saying I was busy.”
“And you grabbed the excuse,” he reminded her.
“I—I guess I did.”
“You have to tell me straight. Are they too much for you to think of taking on? Was that why?”
“No! No, Joe!” It shocked her that he needed to question this. “That’s not it at all!”
He barely seemed to hear. “I mean, it’s a deal-breaker for both of us. You must know that.”
“Of course I know it! Of course you wouldn’t want to be involved with a woman who wasn’t interested in your children! And how could any woman with any integrity take on someone else’s children if she didn’t find a way to care about them?”
“So if it’s not them that you don’t want…”
She made a desperate, last-ditch bid for honesty, because if she couldn’t be honest with this man, then what hope did she have? “Joe, it’s the opposite.”
“The opposite?”
“When I said no to you that day, it was because I was afraid I wanted them too much. Wanted a ready-made family too much. Want one, still. I was afraid about how easy it seemed when we came together. You have the life to offer that I’ve always wanted. I’m…greedy for it.”
“Is that bad?” He came closer and reached for her. “Surely that’s not bad?”
She folded her arms once more into their protective position and shook her head. “Greed is not a good basis for anything, is it?”
“You don’t strike me as a greedy person. Like you just said, the opposite.”
“There are different kinds of greed. Different ways to be needy.” She couldn’t meet the look in those dark eyes, now. Couldn’t unfold from her defensive posture, even though he was running his hands over her shoulders and down her arms. This was such a confession. That she was so needy and hungry, not just for a man, and lovemaking, bu
t for a family and a nest. “I can’t shoehorn you and your girls into my fantasy of a family life. And that’s my problem, not yours or the girls’. I want it too much.”
The oldest reason in the book for driving a man away, and yet she was saying it, admitting to it. He would run a mile.
So far, he wasn’t. “Hey… Is that really all it is? You don’t doubt me or the girls at all, you only doubt yourself?”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?”
“No! It’s nowhere near enough! It doesn’t count at all.”
“What does count, then? Help me, Joe, I’m so confused. It seems so complicated. I’m fighting so hard with myself—”
“I can feel that,” he said softly. “You’re fighting me, too, trying to stop me from kissing you.” He pressed his mouth to her hair. “And it’s not working—” to her temple “—at all.” She make a helpless sound of surrender and lifted her face so that he could find her mouth.
“What do I do, Joe?” she said between the soft, plummy, seductive touches of his lips.
“Just stop. There’s no need to fight. It’s not complicated. It’s simple. This is right. That’s why we’ve both been feeling so bad for the past two weeks. That’s why whenever we’ve seen each other we’ve just wanted to stall and stall so we could keep talking.”
“Oh, you too?”
“You didn’t notice? You did, but you were too busy making it difficult and impossible and wrong for yourself, in your head, which made me confused and I thought I had to pull back. Don’t do that, Mary Jane.”
“No?” she whispered.
“No. Please,” he whispered back. “Just love me, like I love you.”
“Just that?”
“Yes, that. It’s not greed for a dream. I can’t believe that. Not when I feel it so strongly. It’s real.”
Her heart began to fill. “I do love you. I love you so much. And the girls.”
“That’s everything, that’s all that counts, and we both need to trust it, and go where it leads, and if you don’t want me to talk about marriage, yet, if that still scares you, then I won’t.”
“No, Joe?” she whispered.
“We can leave that.” He smiled at her, held her, kissed her again. Were the girls watching? There’d be some explaining to do very soon… “You wait, Mary Jane Cherry. You just wait. I’m going to spring it on you, down the track, in some impossibly romantic setting that will blow any other guy’s proposal out of the water. You’ll never see it coming, and you’ll be powerless to resist.”
It Began with a Crush (The Cherry Sisters) Page 18