Was he talking about Ty or was he talking about himself? Zac wasn’t sure and the last thing he needed was the sympathy shining out of Lacey’s eyes. He increased his pace, marching through the snow. Three baking contests, a few more weeks of work, and he could get out of here, no looking back. Return to small cities, big cities, motels, and the anonymity he craved. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? But with Lacey’s hand still warm in his, it was hard to remember why.
Chapter Seven
The path leading to the lake had been quiet, just the two of them in an enchanted snowy wood, the way lit by the occasional lantern, the bright winter moon, and the stars; but as they neared the lake Lacey could hear the shouts and laughter of a busy evening’s skating. The lake was usually frozen solid over the winter and the people of Marietta took full advantage of the natural rink.
As Lacey and Zac walked around the last bend in the path, the lake opened up before them. Ringed by trees and mountains, with fairy lights threaded through the nearest trees and wooden stalls set up on the nearest bank offering skate hire, hot chocolate, and snacks, the lake was buzzing. Teens in groups of friends or on dates, older children attending their weekly lessons, families with small children holding their parents’ hands or pushing penguin skate aids—it seemed that half of Marietta had decided to take advantage of the dry, clear night.
Lacey stopped at the edge of the trees and subtly tugged her hand out of Zac’s, not wanting anyone to see them and draw the wrong conclusion. “Do you skate?”
“A little. You?”
“A little.” She couldn’t keep the wistfulness from her voice. “Traveling around we got to try lots and lots of things for a lesson or two, but we didn’t get the chance to do anything properly except music. On a good year we would come back to Grandpop’s ranch for Christmas and then we’d come here or skate on the pond outside the house, but I never got the chance to be really good.”
“Did you want to be really good?”
“I wanted the glittery costumes and to be able to leap and spin and make people gasp,” she admitted feeling a little foolish as she confided her cherished childhood dream. “I don’t know if I would have ever got to that level but it’s nice to imagine.”
“You’re musical though?”
Lacey pulled a face. “Proficient. I had to be with my parents and Nat. If you didn’t play there wasn’t much for you to do. I play the violin and the piano, sing a bit. But I don’t do it much, not anymore. Music is meant to make you feel free but music was the reason I never settled down, why I was always dragged from one place to another.”
“So you don’t use the talents you do have and hanker after the ones you don’t?”
“That makes me sound a little pathetic,” she said, startled by the harsh assessment. “I wouldn’t say I’m madly talented at any instrument. I don’t have the passion to move from technically okay to really good but nor do I spend my time oiling skates I’ll never use and sewing sequins onto costumes I’ll never wear. I love what I do. I’m content with my life.”
“Content?” He raised an eyebrow. “Twenty-five is young to settle for content.”
“This from a man who spends his life on the run?” As soon as the words left her mouth Lacey knew she had gone too far. She barely knew Zac after all. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“You did and you’re right. But it works for me. Does settling work for you?”
She stared at him, surprised by his clinical assessment. “I haven’t settled. I love my job, my home—how is that settling?”
“Sitting in alone on a Saturday night while your great-aunts are out gallivanting, just a cat for company?”
Lacey kicked a piece of snow back and forth. Put like that her life did seem somewhat lacking. “It’s a very nice cat.” Although Patchwork wasn’t even hers; he belonged to Aunt Priscilla.
“You don’t want your own place? To work for a bigger network? I know you’ve seen the world but you might find there’s other places that you’d be happy in. Staying still can be just as effective a way to hide as always moving.”
“This is all I ever wanted, Zac. To live here, in Marietta, to belong. Why would I give that up? How would I be happier chasing dreams elsewhere?”
“Only you know the answer to that, Lacey.” He began to walk again, heading toward the wooden stalls. “That hot chocolate smells good. Want one?”
“Sure.” She followed him but his words echoed round and round in her head. She hadn’t settled! She chose this life. She liked living with the aunts, loved her room at Crooked Corner in the turret with its window seat and odd hexagonal shape. So what she didn’t go out much? She was busy and fulfilled. She didn’t have time for anything much outside work and the community affairs she helped with.
The chocolate Zac handed her was hot, rich, and sweet and the comforting taste and smell restored some of Lacey’s equilibrium. She leaned against a tree and watched the skate school, kids of around nine and ten earnestly practicing their steps. They all looked adorable with their colorful hats and scarves and mittens and big coats bulking them out so they looked like small roly-poly snow children. She hadn’t made it to the lake this year. Hadn’t been skating since Nat visited two Christmases ago.
“You want to have a go, don’t you?” Zac’s voice made her jump and she swallowed the chocolate abruptly, almost scalding her throat.
“A little,” she admitted.
“A lot. Why don’t you?”
“I don’t like skating alone.” As soon as she said the words she felt the truth of them and her shiver wasn’t just from the cold. “Come on, let’s walk back. I told the aunts I’d be home for dinner.”
Zac fell into step beside her. It wasn’t the comfortable comradeship of the walk to the lake. The air crackled with tension and Lacey knew it was because Zac had made her confront a few unpalatable truths about the life she cherished so much. She was lonely. Not unbearably, but she still hadn’t quite found her place, her people.
Oh, she had friends; she was friends with the whole town. Top of everyone’s list when they needed a favor, a helping hand, someone to man a stall or help behind the scenes at a kids’ production or collect Christmas boxes for needy families. She was invited to parties and openings and weddings. If she bumped into any one of a myriad people they’d suggest a coffee or lunch.
But she didn’t have anyone who really got her. No one, apart from the aunts, to confide in, to really laugh with. She didn’t have a group to meet up with at Grey’s to play pool with or gossip with. She belonged to a book group at the library and was on a couple of committees and that was pretty much her social whirl. Her great-aunts, on the other hand, seemed to be out every other night.
Nor did she really date. Not because she wasn’t interested in meeting someone or because she was too busy but because her relationships rarely progressed beyond a few dates, hardly ever past the coffee or a movie stage. Sometimes she thought she was fated to always be the outsider looking in at a world she yearned to be part of. Not that anyone knew. She hid her loneliness with her work and her laughter and a nonstop stream of conversation and a microphone and camera. She interviewed people, she told their stories, but somehow, where it mattered most, she didn’t connect with them.
But things seemed different with Zac; she was different. Her chest tightened. She’d worked so hard to make a life here and in less than two weeks Zac Malone had pulled back the curtain and shown it up for the illusion it was.
Zac slowed his pace. “You’re surprisingly quiet. You okay?”
“Yes, of course.” She covered the truth up with a smile and a light tone, just like she always did. “Just hungry. I think it’s pot roast tonight. I’m hoping for Aunt Patty’s patented creamed potatoes and her fried green beans to go with it. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried her green beans. I don’t know what she does to them but they are ambrosial.”
“You don’t have to pretend, Lacey, not with me.”
She couldn’t l
ook at him. “Yes, I do. Especially with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you make me nervous. Because you challenge me; you make me think.” She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know why. I hardly know you…”
His laugh was short. “I think you know me better than anyone else alive.”
The truth of his words hit her hard and she stopped. “Maybe it’s because we’re both lonely. That’s all this is.”
“This?”
“This connection.” She looked up at him. He was half shadowed in the moonlight, the silvery light making him seem otherworldly. “There is a connection, isn’t there? I’m not imagining it?”
“Beyond being equally bad at baking?” He blew out a long breath, digging his hands into his pockets. “Yes. There’s something.”
“It scares me,” she said honestly. “I know what I want, what I’m looking for, and I don’t know how you fit in.”
“I don’t. I’m just passing through.”
Lacey stared up at the hooded gaze. It would be so easy to reach up and touch him. So easy to stand on her tiptoes, to lean in, to kiss him. What would his kiss be like? Hard and demanding? Tender? Sweet and sensual?
But what then? He said it himself. He was just passing through. What good would getting any closer do? All it would achieve would be too remind her of what she was missing.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Zac said hoarsely.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re Little Red Riding Hood and I’m the big bad wolf.”
She took a step back. “Hey, if I’m anything I’m the woodcutter.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Is that right?”
“You’d better believe it.”
“Oh I do,” he assured her. “If you wanted to, I think you’d be quite capable of felling any wolf.”
Lacey’s mouth was dry, her heart hammering so loudly it seemed to reverberate off the trees. “Zac, I don’t casually date.”
He stilled. “No?”
“No. I’m not good at getting close to people, not without my camera or a microphone or an activity. I don’t know what to say or how to be when it’s just me.”
“You seem to do just fine from what I can see.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re not going to stay. You’re safe. If you find me lacking in any way it doesn’t matter because you were never going to be a long-term prospect anyway.”
“I don’t find you lacking.” The softness in his voice sent trembles down her spine and she took another step back to safety.
“I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want you to hurt me. I don’t know how to play these games.”
“I didn’t know we were playing games.”
“But that’s all we could ever do because you don’t want what I do.”
“What do you want, Lacey?”
“I want the life I didn’t have. Stability. I want a house on a nice street with a swing in the yard and an attic stuffed full of boxes of seasonal decorations that we use year after year. I want wipe-clean walls so it doesn’t matter if the kids make a mess. I want a dog, from a rescue somewhere, a dog that isn’t much to look at and is somewhat of a mutt but has loads of character. And I want kids. Kids who know every inch of their neighborhood and have memories around every corner.”
“I won’t stop you having any of that. We’ve only known each other two weeks and I’ll be out of here before winter’s through.”
He was right. It was just two weeks and yet if felt far longer. “If I knew how to flirt and just have fun then maybe things would be different. But I don’t. If we…if we take this connection any further, then it might be too hard for me when you walk out of my life. I know it sounds ridiculous, on two weeks’ acquaintance, but you deserve to know the truth. You deserve to know why I really, really want you to kiss me right now and why I really, really can’t.”
“You’re overthinking this.”
“Maybe. But that’s how I feel.”
A smile softened his face. “Message received loud and clear. Come on, woodcutter. Escort this wolf safely through the wood.”
*
Somehow over the last week, Zac had lost the habit of eating quietly in his room. The aunts set a place at the kitchen table for him, always the same place, with the same cheerful, polka dot crockery, a neatly rolled napkin, and a tall glass with etched leaves on it. Somehow Zac had got into the habit of clearing the table, rinsing the dishes, and stacking the dishwasher. Almost as if he were one of the family. Usually Lacey helped, talking incessantly or dancing round the kitchen to the radio—set to Radio KMCM of course—singing along in her rich, tuneful voice.
But tonight she had been quiet through dinner and excused herself as soon as Zac began to clear. He couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t been able to give her the reassurances she had wanted, the reassurances she had needed, and now she knew she was safer keeping her distance from him. It was probably for the best.
He turned the hot water faucet on and let it run to scalding. Truth was he admired her for being so clear about what she wanted. For calling out the tension that had been slowly building between them and letting him know she wanted no part of it. She was right. If she was the kind of girl who was happy with a brief flirtation, maybe a fling, then they could have acted on the attraction between them.
But Lacey Hathaway wasn’t that kind of girl. She wasn’t the kind of girl to settle for anything short of her dreams. But really. What were the men of Marietta thinking? Why weren’t they forming an orderly line around the block desperate to win her heart? If he was the kind of man capable of wooing and winning a girl like Lacey he would make darned sure he was at the front of that line.
There should be a line.
Over the last week he hadn’t returned to his room to work. Instead he had retreated into the aunts’ second kitchen, instructions and measurements and spreadsheets in hand to practice making the cookies, but tonight he had no appetite for the rich smell of baking cookie dough. Tomorrow he would be the focus of attention. People would be watching him, judging him, and just because it was all in fun and for a good cause didn’t make it any easier.
The sound of a piano drifted into the kitchen. Someone was picking out a tune, hesitantly at first then slowly with more confidence. After five minutes or so the bass line began to add depth. He didn’t recognize the jaunty music although the folk elements to it made him suspect it was probably one of Lacey’s parents’ original numbers. Zac still hadn’t visited any room in the rambling old Victorian except the kitchens or his own quarters despite a standing invite to come and join the family any time he wanted, but the piano pulled him along the corridor and into the den, which sat directly off the hallway at the front of the house.
It was a warm cozy room, a fire leaping in the grate, books lining one wall and a welcoming window seat overlooking the front lawn, drapes pulled to keep out the chilly night sky. The piano was on the far wall, an antique-looking affair in a rich cherry wood, the keys yellow with age and slightly dented with use. Lacey sat on the stool, head bowed as she worked her way through the tune. Zac pulled a second stool over and sat down next to her, watching her fingers as they flew over the keys, deftly pulling music out of the old instrument.
“You’re pretty good,” he said as she finally lifted her hands, pushing back the silky blonde hair that had fallen over her face as she played.
“I’m out of practice. Dad would be really disappointed. But I just don’t have the time to spend an hour a day keeping up—or any real reason to.”
“Don’t you want to play for fun? There must be loads of amateur bands round here. I’m sure they’d snap you up.”
Lacey pressed the middle C, the rich tone echoing around the room, before walking her fingers up the keyboard in a rapid scale. “Amateur? In my family it’s professional or not at all. Which means not at all for me. I haven’t played in public since I was fifteen. Mom and Dad used to love to make us come on and sing b
acking vocals, or Nat would play his guitar and I’d do the fiddle refrain. He loved it, obviously; I always wanted to be back in the hotel doing my homework or in the crowd photographing it—not being center stage.”
“But you’re center stage when you’re on the radio or if you’re putting a documentary together. You’re planning to film yourself tomorrow morning when we have our mini bake-off aren’t you? How’s that different?”
She blew a frustrated breath. “I don’t know but it is. Mom and Dad would say playing music is just telling a story, like putting a documentary together or writing an article. I don’t mind my work being out there for all to see and judge but I just hate singing or playing in public. I know that I spend three hours a day talking to all of Marietta but it’s different to standing on a stage. Less revealing.”
Zac looked down at her long, graceful fingers still caressing the keys. “Lacey. Can we be friends? I don’t have many, and that’s been fine with me. But I like you, I like your company, and I’d hate to think that our moment of honesty by the lake has spoiled that. I agree, dating is a bad idea. But friendship would be nice. If you’ll have me.”
She crashed a discordant chord and then another. “You want to be friends? Is that something people decide or something that just is?”
“I don’t know. I told you I don’t have many and that’s an exaggeration. I think my college roommate counts me as a friend; he’s a persistent type. I get on well with a few of my colleagues and there’s a couple of guys I play racquetball with…”
“A veritable Jay Gatsby.”
“Maybe I am. He didn’t really have anyone did he? Not when the music stopped.” The emptiness inside shocked him. He had chosen this path, preferred it. But right now the safe way felt very much like a cop-out. A cop-out from life and the opportunities it offered.
Lacey slid a glance his way. “So what will it entail? Being friends? Braiding each other’s hair and talking about boys?”
“You can try and braid my hair if it makes you happy.” Zac ran a hand through his close-cropped hair with a grin. “I’ll pass if that’s okay. I never was good with the knots in Scouts. But we could talk about boys if you want. In fact let’s do that.”
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