by Cara Colter
She went in her house and closed the door, and forced herself not to look back to see him crossing the lawn in the moonlight.
“Stay on your own side of the fence!” she ordered herself grimly.
* * *
When Mac got back in, Mama was up, watching the end of the movie.
“I thought you were tired,” he said.
“Ach, at my age, being tired doesn’t mean you get to sleep. I thought the movie might redeem itself.”
“Has it?”
“No. Why is this funny, people treating each other so badly?”
“I don’t know, Mama.” He sat down beside her, and she turned off the movie.
“What’s wrong, schatz?”
“Mama, have I ever told you that I love you?”
“Of course,” she said, with no hesitation. “Just not with words. You take time from your busy work and come to help me. What is that, if not love?”
“Too bad all women aren’t as wise as you.”
“When you look like me, you develop wisdom.”
“I think you’re beautiful,” he said.
“See? What is that, if not love?”
“I’m worried about you, Mama. Living here by yourself. The house getting to be too much for you. I’m worried you’re sick and not telling anyone.”
“This is a good thing, my boy. To worry about someone else, hmm? It means you are not thinking of yourself all the time.”
It was hard to be offended when it was true. He lived a hedonistic lifestyle. Self-indulgent. His business had allowed him to travel the world. Collect every toy. Seek increasing levels of adventure to fill himself, for a while. His lack of commitment made him responsible to no one but himself.
When he started feeling vaguely empty, he raced to the next rush, hoping it would be the thing that would fill him.
“When you feel pain, you have to do something for another.”
“I can build you a new house.”
“Would that make you feel better?”
“Wouldn’t you like it?”
“I consider having more than what I need a form of stealing.”
Hmm. Hadn’t Lucy said something almost the same? About his vehicles. Taking more than his share of the world’s resources?
“Everybody filling up their lives full, full, full with stuff,” Mama said. “What is it they don’t want to feel?”
“Lonely, I guess,” he surprised himself by saying. “Less than.”
“Do something for someone else.”
“I am. I’m doing something for you.”
“You should do something nice for Lucy.”
Wasn’t that what he’d already decided? But now, that kiss changed everything. He felt as if he was floundering.
“She seems angry at me.”
“So, that stops you? You can only offer kindness if there is something in it for you? Why is she angry at you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, you know we had a little thing that summer before I left. I knew she couldn’t come with me. She loved it here. The little bit of time that she was with me put her at odds with her friends and family. Her dad threatened to have me arrested he was so put out by the whole thing. We were both stupidly young. How could that have worked?”
Mama was silent, and then she said, “You left her to the only life she’d ever known. Maybe that was love, also, hmm, schatz?”
He was suddenly nearly blinded with a memory of how it had felt being with Lucy. Waking up with a smile on his face, needing to be with her. Practically on fire with the sensation of being alive.
He shook it off and sighed. “I’m not sure I’m capable of such nobility,” he said. “She wanted more of me than I could give her.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe,” he said hopefully, “it’s not me that she’s angry with. Her recent fiancé took a pretty good run at her self-esteem by the sounds of it. And something is going on with her old crowd. I hate it that Claudia Stupid-Johnson feels better than her.”
“No,” Mama said softly. “What you hate is that Lucy lets her.”
He felt like he was getting a headache. This was all way too deep and complicated for a guy as dedicated to the rush as he was. But while he was tackling the hard stuff, there was no sense stopping halfway.
“You didn’t answer me, Mama. Are you sick?” He hesitated, and said softly, feeling the anguish of it, “Are you going to die?”
“Yes, schatz, sooner or later. We are all dying. From the very minute we are born, we are marching toward the other end. Why does everybody act surprised when it comes? Why does everyone waste so much time, as if time is endless, when it is the most finite of all things?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do something nice for Lucy. It will make you feel better. And send a card to your mother.”
Mama patted his cheek, got up and went up the stairs.
Well, since he wasn’t sending a card to his mother, that left doing something nice for Lucy. And he knew exactly what that was. She’d somehow lost sight of who she was. She was uncomfortable going to the yacht club! Hell, she should walk in there like the queen that she was!
He thought about her lips on his.
And wondered if Mama had any idea how complicated things could get.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUCY WAS SITTING on her deck with her laptop. Her mother had sent her an email from Africa with a picture attached. Her mother looked happy. Her hair wasn’t done, and she had a sunburn. It was odd, because Lucy didn’t really recall her mother not having her hair done. And she was not what she would have ever called a happy person.
Her inbox had more RSVPs, two more from her old high-school crowd, saying no, they would not be able to attend the gala.
It didn’t have quite the sting it had had previously. Of course, it was a beautiful mild spring day, the sun on the lake and her skin and in her hair. How could you feel bad on a day like this?
Was there a possibility she was able to dismiss negative things more easily and feel beautiful things more intensely since that kiss?
“Of course I’m not!” It was days ago! She hadn’t, thank goodness, seen Mac since.
But think of the devil, and he will appear!
“Hey, Lucy Lin!” Mac was on the other side of her deck, peering through the slats of the deck railing at her. “Are you talking to yourself?”
Which would seem pathetic. Thankfully, she was not in her pajamas. It felt as if she was experiencing his sudden appearance intensely, too.
Her heart began to beat a little faster, her cheeks felt suddenly flushed. She was so aware of how incredibly handsome he was. And sexy. She was a little too aware of how his lips tasted.
He didn’t wait for an answer.
“It doesn’t look like you’ve made much progress on that paint.”
“I’m not sure about the color anymore,” she admitted a bit grumpily.
“Come and see what I found in Mama’s shed.”
She needed to pretend he wasn’t there, go in her house and follow his suggestion of locking her doors.
But, of course, if she reacted like that, he would know he was affecting her way too deeply.
She set her laptop aside, got up and reluctantly padded over and looked over the railing, bracing herself. With Mac it could be anything, from a snake to an antique washboard.
He grinned up at her, and she knew that was what she really needed to brace herself against.
That, and the fact Mac was holding the handlebars of a bicycle built for two. It might have been gold once, now it was mostly rust. The leather seats were cracked.
“If you promise to keep your lips off of me, I’ll take you for a ride.”
“Look, let�
�s get something straight. I didn’t kiss you because I find you in any way attractive.”
“Hey! That was just plain mean.”
“Not that you aren’t.” Oh! This was going sideways. “I kissed you as a way of saying thank you for caring so deeply about Mama.”
“Well, I’m glad you cleared that up. Let’s go for a ride.”
She looked at him. She looked at the bike. She had cleared up the lip thing. Well, she hadn’t really, but he had accepted her explanation. It was a beautiful day. An unexpected gift was being offered to her.
You are giving in to temptation, she told herself. “No,” she told Mac.
“Look, princess, it’s a bike ride or the Rolliepop. You owe me.”
Her lips twitched. Once, for a few weeks, it had felt as if Macintyre Hudson was her best friend. She could tell him anything, be totally herself around him. In many ways, it felt as if she had found out what that meant—to be totally herself—around him.
She was aware of missing that.
Could they be friends? Without the complication of becoming lovers? What would it hurt to find out?
“You’re even dressed for it,” he said, sensing her weakening. “Aren’t those things called pedal pushers?”
Those things were a pair of eighty-dollar trousers she had ordered well before her self-imposed austerity program. “It said capris when I ordered them online.”
“Ah, well, you know, one born every minute.”
And even though she had practiced saying no to him over and over again in her mind, she might as well not have practiced at all.
Because he was in possession of a bicycle built for two, and she wasn’t in the mood to eat a Rolliepop. Plus, she was wearing an eighty-dollar pair of pedal pushers. It seemed like it would be something of a waste not to try them out!
She came down off her deck, and they pushed the bike, which was amazingly heavy, up her steep driveway to the relative flatness of Lakeshore Drive above it.
“Hop on.” He took the front.
She folded her arms over her chest. “Why would you automatically get the front?”
“I assumed it would be harder.”
“I think you want control. That’s where the brakes are. And the steering.”
“Maybe you want control!”
“Maybe I do,” she admitted.
He sighed as if she was really trying his patience. “If you want the front, you can have it. Look, you even have the bell.” He rang a rusty old bell.
He surrendered the front, and she got on the bike. He got on the back. After a few false starts, they were off.
It felt as if she was pulling him. It was really the most awful experience. Because even though his handlebars were stationary and didn’t move, he acted as if they did, and every time he wrenched on them the whole bicycle shook precariously.
“Quit trying to steer!”
“I can’t help myself.”
“Are you pedaling?” she gasped.
“With all my might. Ring the bell and wave, we’re going by your neighbor gardening.”
She giggled, rang the bell and waved. The bike veered, and he tried to correct it with his handlebars that didn’t work. He nearly threw them both off the bicycle. Mrs. Feldman looked up, startled, and then smiled, unaware of the problems they were having, and waved back.
They rode by the houses with name plaques at the tops of the driveways. Her father had disapproved of naming the lake properties, saying he found it corny. But Lucy liked the names, ranging from whimsical: Bide Awhile, Pair-a-Dice, Casa Costallota, to the imposing: The Cliff House, Eagle’s Rest, Thunder Mountain Manor. Sometimes you could catch a glimpse of the house from the road, other times lawns, gardens, trees, lake, the odd tennis court or swimming pool.
Had she been asked, Lucy would have said Lakeshore Drive was perfectly flat. Now, it was obvious that from her house toward town, it sloped substantially upward.
She was gasping for air. “Don’t run over my tongue.”
“Ready to trade places?”
She did, gladly.
Though the back position was slightly more relaxing than the front, the feeling of being out of control was terrible. She had to trust him.
“Hey, you got the easy part,” she complained. The road that had been sloping upward crested, and began a gradual incline down.
“Woo-hoo! Look, no hands!”
“Put your hands back down.”
“No, you put yours up. Come on, Lucy, fly!”
And so she did, and found herself shrieking with laughter as they catapulted down the hill, arms widespread, chins lifted.
His hands went back to the handlebars and so did hers.
“I think we need to slow down,” she said. They were approaching the bottom of the rise, the road banked sharply to the right.
“You think I’m not trying?”
In horror, she leaned by him to see he was squeezing the handbrakes with all his might. Nothing was happening.
“Try pushing backwards on the pedals.”
He did. She did. The bike did not slow. They were coming up to the last curve into Lindstrom Beach.
He put his feet down to slow them. She was afraid he would break his leg. What his feet did was alter the course of the bike. It veered sharply left as the road went right. Her yanking away on her handlebars did nothing for their perilous balance.
They flew off the road and into a patch of thick bracken fern. She flew over her handlebars into him, and together they tumbled through the ferns. She landed on top of him, and the bike landed on top of her.
He reached up, and with one hand tenderly cupped the side of her face.
“Are you okay, Lucy Lin?” he asked with such gentleness it made her ache.
“I am,” she heard herself saying. “I am okay. I haven’t been for a long, long time, but I am right now.”
“That’s good. That’s perfect. Did I mention where we were going before we were so rudely interrupted?” Mac asked her.
“I didn’t think we were going anywhere. For a bike ride.”
He reached around and shoved the bike off them. She sat up, then got up. The capris were probably ruined, a dark oily-looking smudge across the front leg, a grass stain on the other side.
“Ah, actually, no. We were going to cocktail hour at the yacht club.”
She glanced at him, realized he must be kidding. “You have to dress,” she reminded him, joking.
He was picking up the bike, inspecting it for damage. “We are dressed.”
“That’s not what she meant.”
“Claudia had her opportunity to clarify and she didn’t. So, we’re dressed or we’re naked. You pick.”
She suddenly saw he was serious.
“I’m not going. I’ve scraped my knee. I think there are leaves in my hair.”
He wheeled the bike over, picked the leaves out of her hair, bent down and inspected her knee. Then he kissed it.
“You’re going,” he said.
“There are smudges on the front of my pants.”
“Well, there’s one on your derriere, too.”
“I am not going to the yacht club all disheveled and smudged, with leaves in my hair! What would they think of me?”
“Why do you care what they think of you?” he asked softly.
“I wish I didn’t care, but I do, okay? So far, not one of them is coming to the Mother’s Day Gala.”
“Why not?”
“No one in this set has ever liked Mama. My father set the tone for that years ago. They’re all for doing good on paper, but they don’t do it in their backyard.”
“That makes me all the more committed to attending their little cocktail hour.”
“Not me,” she
said with a shiver.
“We are going,” he said, firmly. “And you’re walking into that room like a queen. Do you understand me?”
She looked at him. He wasn’t kidding.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Life’s about doing lots of things you don’t want to do. You’re going.”
And suddenly Lucy knew, with him beside her, she could do just what he had said. She could go. And she could hold her head high, too.
Suddenly, she knew he was absolutely right. She had to go.
She sighed. “I love it when you’re masterful.”
“Really? I’ll have to try that more often. Back on the bike, wench.”
And just like that she was riding toward what she had feared the most for a long, long time. Only, she didn’t feel at all afraid.
They rode up on their now quite wobbly bicycle built for two. She would have left it at the back door, but Mac was in the control position, and he rode along the pathway that twisted to the front of the club, where it faced the lake. Some of the cocktail crowd were out on the deck.
There was a notable pause in the conversation as they parked the bike.
Mac threw his arm over her shoulder as they went up the steps, and she glanced at his face.
He had that smile on.
If you didn’t know him, you might be charmed by it.
She said quiet hellos to people on the deck, sucked in her breath and, with Mac at her side, entered the yacht club.
“Macintyre Hudson!” Claudia squealed, just in case anyone hadn’t recognized him, “I’m so glad you came. Look, folks—” she looped her arm through his “—Mac is back!”
If he cared that he was in shorts when every other man was in a sports jacket and slacks, you couldn’t tell.
As always, he carried himself like a king.
And she took her cue from him. Claudia was pointedly ignoring her, so she pointedly ignored Claudia.
“Ellen!” she said, finding a familiar face, “I haven’t seen you for ages. What’s this I hear that you don’t like my paint color on my house?”
“Don’t you, Ellen?” Her husband, Norman, turned and looked at her. “I like it.”
Claudia’s mouth puckered and pointed down. “Let me get you a drink, Mac.”