by Cara Colter
“I’ll have lemonade. Lucy?”
“The same.”
She grinned at Mac. He had Claudia fetching her a drink!
He winked at her.
And suddenly, in this crowd of people who had once been her friends, she felt lighthearted. Had she bumped her head on the bike?
Because all these people had once been her friends. The girls she had known and chummed with since kindergarten. They had stopped calling her. Looked the other way when she came into a room.
And suddenly, she really didn’t care. Wasn’t that more about them than her? Why hadn’t she picked up the phone? When had she forgotten who she was?
They all seemed so stuffy! The atmosphere in this room seemed subdued and stifling. Mac’s question came back to her. What do you do for fun?
“Why are we all inside?” Lucy asked. “It’s a gorgeous day. And Mac and I brought a bicycle built for two!”
People were looking at her! Good!
“Anyone want to try the bike?” she asked.
Silence. It was obvious no one here was dressed for this. But even so, how could they be so young and still so set in their ways? Where were their kids, for heaven’s sake? Didn’t they like being with their kids? That made her feel almost sorry for them.
Lucy felt determination bubbling up in her. Not to change who they were. No, not that at all. But not to hide who she was, either. Not anymore.
“There will be a prize,” she said, “It’s trickier than it looks!”
Still, silence. They were going to reject her. She didn’t care! She was stunned by the freedom of not caring!
“The prize is complimentary tickets to the Mother’s Day Gala. I have a few left.”
Some of them looked uncomfortable then!
“I might throw in a free canoe rental for an afternoon. Much more romantic than those power boats tied up at the dock. That’s if I’m still in business.”
She was throwing their snubs back in their faces, and loving it.
“Don’t pass up on this! Mac is going to serenade you with that famous song about a bicycle built for two while you ride.”
She was aware of Mac giving her a sidelong look, but also of a little smile tickling the edges of his mouth that was quite different from his devil-may-care smile.
“Well, that I can’t resist!” And then quiet little Beth Adams, whom she had always liked, stepped forward. “I’ll try it.” She gave Lucy a quick, hard hug, and said quietly, “It is so good to see you.”
It was so sincere that Lucy felt tears sting her eyes.
After that it was as if a dam had burst. People coming and hugging her, shaking Mac’s hand, saying how good it was to see them both.
The party moved out onto the lawn as everyone lined up to watch Beth try the bike. Beth hitched up her skirt and kicked off her shoes. Lucy got on the backseat. There was laughter and encouragement as they wobbled down the path.
“Sing,” Lucy ordered Mac.
He was a good sport.
“Ring the bell,” Lucy called as they turned around at the parking lot and came back, the assembled crowd scattering off the walkway. “Don’t get going too fast, the brakes are faulty.”
Beth rang the bell, as Mac sang.
The way his eyes rested on her, it almost felt as if he was singing to her. He looked so proud of her!
Then Beth called her sister, Prue, to try it with her. Prue gamely hitched up her dress and tossed her shoes on the grass.
Mac started the song all over. Lucy sang with him.
And then to her amazement, everyone was singing.
Laughter flowed as others tried the bike, first some of the women together, and then couples.
It seemed everyone had to have a turn.
* * *
Mac nursed his lemonade, delivered to him and Lucy on the lawn by a very sulky Claudia. He was glad to be out of the clubhouse and back into the sunshine.
The yacht club had surprised him. Once, it had seemed like the place that meant you’d arrived, the exclusive enclave of the old and wealthy Lindstrom Beach families. He’d never been invited here when he lived here, nor had he attended the functions that had been open to the public, a kind of reverse snub.
Now, all these years later he’d been to places that were truly exclusive. Many of them.
And in comparison the Lindstrom Beach Yacht Club seemed like a three trying to be a nine. It had a “clubhouse” feel to it, but not in a good way. There was carpet, which was always a bad idea in a place close to water. The paneling was too dark and the paintings too somber.
He smiled as Lucy got everyone moving to the deck and then down on the lawn.
There was quite a gathering of people he’d gone to school with, some of them relatively unchanged, some changed for the worse. Most had arrived in the powerboats that were tied to the dock, and most of the women, at least, were “dressed,” their opportunity to haul out the expensive cocktail dresses they normally wouldn’t get a chance to wear.
Billy Johnson had aged poorly and had a tortured comb-over hairdo, and a potbelly.
Lucy was as he remembered her, finally. At the heart of it all. Encouraging them to laugh and have fun. Just as in the old days, they thought they were so cool, but they were chirping along to that hokey old song.
In her smudged pants and sleeveless top, with her knee bashed up, he thought she did look like queen.
He loved how she was getting everyone on that bicycle.
He loved how they were all singing that song, Lucy waving her arms around like a bandleader.
He noticed Claudia simmering beside him.
“You and Billy should try it,” he said.
“Why would I?” she snapped.
“Come on, Claudia,” Billy said. “Everybody but us has tried it. We could win the prize!”
She had been getting drinks when Lucy had announced the prize so Mac had to bite back a shout of laughter.
Annoyed, Claudia nonetheless did not want to seem like the only spoilsport on the lawn.
And Billy still had a bit of the captain of the football team in him. Or a few too many drinks. Because where everyone else had gone up the path and around the parking lot a few times, Billy began to go up the long steep driveway that people used to get their boats into the water.
At the top, he and Claudia disappeared onto Lakeshore Drive.
“Riding to town,” someone guessed.
“Had a wreck,” someone else said. “Impaired driving!”
“Oh, here they come!”
They had just turned around somewhere on the road. Claudia had obviously missed the part about the brakes, Billy had possibly already had too many drinks to get it.
As they whirred down the hill on the ancient bicycle, the little crowd burst into song.
The bike was wobbling but picking up speed. Billy was yelling, happily, “Faster! Faster!” He put his head down, pedaled with fury.
Claudia, her cocktail dress flying in the wind behind her was shrieking to him to slow down.
The crowd sang boisterously, saluting the couple with their wineglasses.
The bike careened down the hill and past the crowd. It went down the cement ramp that allowed boats to be backed gently into the lake.
Mac wasn’t sure that Billy even tried the brake.
In fact, he seemed to be yelling “Ta-da” as they entered the water in a great spray of foam.
Claudia, on the backseat, flew off and into him, just as he and Lucy had done earlier.
It was spectacular! They both plunged into the water with a great splash.
Claudia floundered and squealed until Billy picked her up and hauled her out of the water. People swarmed around them. Claudia’s dress looked as if it was made out of
soggy toilet paper. Her hair hung in horrible ropes. Her makeup was running.
Her husband whirled her around. “Now, honey, that was fun! Hey, Lucy, did we win the prize?”
“Oh, you sure did,” Lucy said. She was doubled over with laughter.
“What prize?” Claudia sputtered.
Mac could not take his eyes from Lucy. This is what he remembered. At the very center of it all. Only, there was something about it that was even better.
Because before, there had been no shadows in her.
And now that there were, it was twice as gratifying to see them go away. And now that there were, it was like seeing the sun after weeks of rain.
Beautiful.
The most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I’VE GOT TO make some changes to the gala,” Lucy panted. She was on the front of the bike, pedaling with all her might. They had left the yacht club and were on the final hill before her house. “I had it all wrong. It was like, when I was planning it, I was trying to win their approval. And none of them were even coming!”
“Well, they’re all coming now,” he said.
“That remains to be seen. They could all come to their senses before then.”
“I think they just did come to their senses.”
“I don’t want it to be stuffy.”
“Like cocktail hour was before you arrived?”
“Exactly. We need something more fun for the gala. I mean, still a dinner, and obviously it’s too late to change the black-tie part, but what would you think of a comedian?”
“Lucy, please be quiet and pedal the bike!” She didn’t even seem to be tired, bursting with a new energy. Mac wondered what the heck he had unleashed.
Since they knew the bike had no brakes, they walked the final decline in the road. Now that he had seen her light flicker back on, Mac felt honor bound to fan it to life, to keep it going, and it didn’t take much.
Over the next few days, he did simple things. He brought a pack of hot dogs and some sticks to her place, and they roasted wieners over an open fire. And then cooked marshmallows, and ate them until their hands and faces were sticky.
He had the bike fixed and they rode it into town for ice cream.
He had one of his double kayaks sent up, and they began to explore the lake in the afternoons.
All this wholesome fun was great, but he wanted to show her more. He wanted to show her a bigger world than Lindstrom Beach. He wanted to show her he was more than the boy he had once been. That he had succeeded in a different place and moved in that place with comfort and confidence.
It occurred to him that his need to show her something more of himself was not strictly within the goal he had set for himself of showing Lucy some fun.
But since he already knew just how he would do it, he refused to ask the question whether he was going deeper than he had ever intended to go.
* * *
“Miss Lindstrom?” a deep voice, faintly muffled voice said.
“Yes?” Lucy shook herself awake, played along. She was still in bed. She looked at the clock. It was 6:00 a.m. A girl could live to wake up to the sound of his voice, even when he was trying to disguise it.
“You have won an all-expense-paid trip to Vancouver, B.C. Your flight is departing from the Freda dock in ten minutes.”
That sounded so fun. And exciting. Lucy marveled at this woman she had become. But maybe they’d better set some limits.
“Mac!”
His voice became normal. “How did you guess?”
“You’re the only one I know with a plane tied up at Mama’s dock. I can’t come—for goodness’ sake, the gala is days away. This is no time to be taking off.”
“Literally, taking off.”
“Ha-ha.”
“I’m coming over.”
Something in her sighed. Mac coming over, them passing back and forth between houses as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
The truth was she couldn’t wait to see him. Seeing him for the first time in a day always felt so wonderful. She told herself she had to stop this. She told herself she was playing with fire.
But she had set it off, all those days ago when he had shown up with the bicycle to see if they could be friends.
And it seemed as if they could.
Okay, so she yearned to taste him. To hold him. To kiss him. But no, that had ruined everything last time.
This time she was going to be satisfied with friendship.
She wrapped her housecoat around her and went to the door. Mac looked incredible, of course, in a nice shirt and khakis.
“You spend an awful lot of time in that housecoat, Lucy Lin.”
“It’s six in the morning.”
He grinned wickedly. “So, what do you say? You want to come play?”
“One of us has to be a responsible adult! The gala—”
“Part of the reason for the trip,” he said with sincerity.
She folded her hands over her chest, waiting to see how he was going to pull this off.
“Mama found out it’s not just about Mother’s Day. That it’s in her honor. She’s quite impressed that something at the yacht club is being held in her honor. She considers it swanky.”
“But it’s supposed to be a surprise!”
“Come on. There are no secrets in Lindstrom Beach.”
That, Lucy knew firsthand. “Did you tell her?”
He looked hurt. “No. Agnes Butterfield. It slipped out, apparently. Mama thinks it’s a good thing she found out, because, according to her, she has nothing suitable to wear to such a swanky venue.”
“Could you quit saying swanky like that? As if we’re a bunch of small town hicks putting on airs?”
“Consider swanky banned from my vocabulary. If you’ll come.”
Really? A fly-in shopping trip to the big city? How on earth could she refuse that? Apparently he still thought she was resisting, and it was fun to make him try and convince her to do something she’d already decided she wanted to do.
“Mama says a galoot-head like myself cannot be trusted to help her pick a dress.”
He was pushing all the right buttons. “Mac, she has more dresses and matching hats than the queen.” But she said it weakly.
The carefree look melted from his face. He turned from her and looked over the inky darkness of the lake. His voice was low when he spoke. “She told me nothing she owns fits, that she lost a lot of weight last winter.”
Lucy felt that ripple of fear. “I never noticed that,” she said, biting a nail.
“I didn’t, either. I thought it was because I hadn’t seen her for a while. She said it’s because she walks more, now that she doesn’t have a driver’s license.”
Lucy closed her eyes, tried to swallow the fear and think rationally. She realized she was really dealing with two kinds of fear.
One, that something was wrong with Mama that had her losing weight and planning her own funeral.
And two, that Mac Hudson was standing on her back deck, and he still made her feel as though she was melting.
There was something quintessentially sexy about a man who could fly an airplane.
As if he knew she had given in, he said, “I told her I’d get her a new dress for her birthday. Lucy, we’ll leave in a few minutes, shop, have a nice private birthday lunch with Mama and be home by early evening. It will be fun.”
Oh, more fun. Didn’t it seem like she was setting herself up for a heartbreak? Because he would leave and all the fun she was becoming so accustomed to would stop.
It was only a heartbreak if there was love involved she told herself. They were just friends. Besides, when was the last time she had just had a lighthearted shopp
ing trip?
Come to think of it, Lucy realized, she was going to need a dress, too.
And come to think of it, she needed a dress that would show Mac she was not quite the stick-in-the-mud, fun-free creature he seemed to believe she was.
And maybe that she had come to believe she was, too!
Besides, wouldn’t it be the best of exercises to prove that not only was she capable of embracing a spontaneous day of pure fun, but that she didn’t have anything to fear from her reactions to Mac anymore?
She was a grown-up. So was he.
They could be friends. They had been proving that all week, with their strongest bond being their mutual caring for Mama Freda.
Still, this felt different than hanging out over a bonfire, eating marshmallows until they were sticky and sick.
Lucy found herself choosing what to wear very carefully. Finally, she settled on jeans, high heels, a white tailored shirt and a leather jacket. She’d finished with a dusting of makeup, a few curls in her too-short hair, and big gold hoop earrings. The look she was hoping for was casual but stunning.
And from the almost surprised male appreciation in his eyes, she had achieved it.
Mac helped Mama into the plane. Then it was her turn, and his hand closed around hers to hand her up. Given that the plane was bobbing on water, and they were stepping from the dock, this took more physical contact than Lucy had prepared herself for, but at least she didn’t end up with his hand on her backside!
Her reaction to it, she told herself, was only evidence that it was time for her to stop being such a hermit.
Mama insisted on sitting in the back.
Apparently she was terrified of flying, a small detail that she was not going to allow to get in the way of a shopping trip and a new dress.
Mac leaned into the back to help her with her seat belt, but she refused the headset Mac passed to her. Instead, out of a gargantuan red handbag, she pulled a bulky eight-track tape player. After checking batteries, she plugged in an eight-track cassette. Then, she fished through the enormous purse, pulled out a book of word searches and a pencil and hunkered down in her seat.
“Mama, there’s nothing to be worried about,” Mac told her.