Lakeside Cottage

by Susan Wiggs

  Takes all kinds, she thought. And lately, there was a strong incentive for him to stay put, right here at the lake. Whenever he came around, Callie could see the chemistry between him and Kate getting stronger. And the weird thing was, Kate didn’t know. She liked him as plain old JD, without even realizing he was Captain America, pride of the U.S. Army, winner of the Presidential Medal of Honor.

  She had found some information about the medal in an ancient set of encyclopedias that Kate said had been in the family for years. It was an extremely rare honor, the highest military decoration in the United States of America. It was awarded “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.”

  No shit, Sherlock, she thought, flashing on horrific images that had played on the TV news, over and over again last Christmas. She totally couldn’t believe no one had figured out he was Jordan Donovan Harris. She’d been just as fooled, though, she reminded herself. What was it JD had said? People saw what they expected to see. That sure as hell was true in her case.

  Take Luke Newman, for example. Luke of the dark hair and dreamy eyes. What did he see when he looked at her? A fat chick or a girl just trying to get by? A friend or something else, something romantic?

  “Yo, earth to Callie,” Aaron said. “Let’s read some more.”

  “I already read you two chapters of Soup and Me.”

  “Fine. Pick something else.”

  She took in a deep breath, for patience. “One more,” she told him. “One more, and you’re reading it to me.”

  “Aw, Callie.” He squirmed restlessly in bed.

  “Nope, that’s the deal. Take it or leave it.” She knew he had trouble with his reading. Kate had explained that he had trouble with pretty much everything having to do with school. Browsing a painted bookcase, she looked for something short and simple so as not to put him on the spot. “I’ll go easy on you and pick something short.

  “You’ve got quite a collection here,” she said.

  “It’s not mine. It belongs to the lake house.”

  Everything here belonged, Callie thought. She would never admit it to anyone, but sometimes she pretended she belonged here, too, part of a family that handed quilts and picture albums down through generations, and upheld traditions that made everyone feel happy and included. It was a lame fantasy, but sometimes she couldn’t help wondering what it would really be like.

  The bookcase held everything from Peter Pan to Nancy Drew to Harry Potter, but she didn’t want to make him struggle with a novel. “This one,” she said, selecting a glossy picture book. “The Little Red Hen.” It featured a drawing of a plump, happy-looking chicken dressed like a housewife in an apron and kerchief.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s a baby book.”

  “Then you’ll get through it quick. Or would you rather read something longer?” She showed him the Harry Potter tome.

  “Forget that.” He pushed it away, and she handed him The Little Red Hen.

  “It’s a dumb story,” he said.

  “Why not let me be the judge of that?” She flipped open the book.

  He gaped at her. “You don’t know the story?”

  “Nope.” As a kid, she had missed out on all of Mother Goose because Brother Timothy had found talking animals and wish-fulfillment stories objectionable. Pedophilia, he had no problem with, but Old Mother Hubbard was a deviant. “Go ahead,” she said to Aaron. “Humor me.”

  “Fine,” he said in a long-suffering tone. He scooted up in bed and began reading. The story turned out to be a good choice for him, with simple words and repeated phrases: “Who will help me?” the Little Red Hen kept asking everyone in sight.

  And the answer was always the same: “Not I. Not I. Not I.”

  Callie could totally relate. When the commune finally got busted, the caseworkers tried to place her with relatives, but they all took one look at Callie—overweight, with bad skin and a worse attitude—and said, “Not I,” until she had to go into foster care.

  She thought about Kate, and what an unexpected gift she was, like an angel. Asking only very few questions, Kate had let her stay, treating her first like a guest and then like a friend, or maybe even a niece or something. Kate was the first person Callie had ever met who had refused to say, “Not I.” She did just the opposite, saying “I will. I’ll help,” and actually meaning it.

  And Callie tried to repay her by being a good houseguest, but there was no denying that she was a big fat phony.

  She found herself actually getting tense as the Little Red Hen was forced to do everything all by herself—cutting the wheat, threshing it (whatever that was), grinding it into flour, making the dough, baking the bread. It was work, work, work, all day every day and her loser friends didn’t lift a finger—or a hoof—to help.

  And as if she didn’t have enough to do, the Little Red Hen had some eggs to hatch. She wound up with six babies and, not surprisingly, no rooster in sight to help with all those mouths to feed.

  The hen wasn’t daunted, though. She soldiered on, making the bread, hatching the eggs, facing the world with bold defiance. Callie was delighted when the bread turned out perfect. Drawn by its fragrance, the barnyard animals gathered around, now eager for a taste, of course.

  The Little Red Hen’s triumph was sweet when she turned them all away, letting them know in no uncertain terms that since they weren’t there for her when she had so much work to do, she wouldn’t share the finished product with them. There she was, a single mother doing all the work, and no one would give her a break when she needed help. She showed them.

  “…aaand she did,” Aaron concluded, reading the last line with a dramatic flourish.

  “Cool,” said Callie. “I like that story.”

  Aaron made a face. “You do?”

  “Sure. It’s a story of personal triumph over adversity, don’t you think? She did everything her way, and by the end, she made it on her own. Good for her.”

  “She lost all her friends.” Aaron shut the book and handed it over. “What’s good about that?”

  “They weren’t friends. They were users,” said Callie. Even though it was a fairy tale, she felt the truth of it in her bones. “Her babies sure did like her, though.”

  Sixteen

  On the drive back to the lake, Kate could not get her mind to form a coherent thought. Raging, unrequited lust tended to do that to a person. She stumbled through some sort of conversation with JD but it must have been inane, practically meaningless. Maybe his conversation was idiotic, too; she couldn’t judge. Her hormone-crazed, infatuated self hung on his every word as though he was telling her every secret of the universe.

  Like the surface temperature of Venus. It didn’t matter. She’d lost all power to judge. She felt a burning inside, and sensed her pulse speeding up. This all felt new to her. After all these years, she had finally met a man who surprised her and defied all her expectations. In addition to turning her on, he confused and challenged her. There seemed to be so much about him to discover. Turning slightly sideways on the seat of the truck, she drew up one knee, knowing her pose was provocative.

  And clearly not lost on him. In the very faint glow of the panel light, she caught a glint in his eye. “What are you thinking?” he asked her.

  “Hmm. About a matrioshka doll.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know, one of those painted Russian dolls that comes apart, and inside there’s a smaller one, and inside that a smaller one, and so on. You keep opening them until you get to the prize in the middle.”

  “And the point of that is…?”

  “Human nature. How can you not keep opening them up until you get to the middle? The final doll is pretty anti-climactic, though.”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever given that much thought.” He turned on to East Beach Road. Though it was nearly ten o’clock at night, the sky still glowed with the deepest colors of twilight—pink and orange layered across stripes of amber,
beautifully reflected by the glassy surface of the lake.

  “And here,” he said, slowing the truck down to a crawl, “is where I ask you if you’d like to come to my place for coffee or a nightcap.”

  She bit her lip. Easy, girl. Did he really want the evening to go on, or was he just being polite?

  He looked completely relaxed except for one telltale sign. He had one arm draped easily across the back of the seat. With his other hand, he gripped the steering wheel so hard that the skin stretched taut across his knuckles.

  Somehow it gratified her that he appeared so nervous.

  In just a few hundred yards, they would pass the driveway to his place. A quarter-mile after that, they would reach hers. She had only a few seconds to make up her mind.

  “Whenever a man offers coffee or a nightcap, it never actually means coffee or a nightcap,” she commented.

  “You sound like an authority.”

  “Not. I’m a single mother. Invitations like this don’t come along every day.”

  “That’s hard to believe.” He turned into his driveway. The headlamps washed over the snug cabin and outbuildings, the placid surface of the water.

  She felt a flutter of alarm in her chest. “I didn’t say I’d come over,” she protested.

  “Executive decision.” He parked and got out, came around to her side of the truck. He opened the door and shocked her by reaching across her lap, unbuckling her seat belt. The way his hand brushed her hip was unsettling in the extreme, both briskly professional and knowingly sexy.

  “You’re like an expert at this,” she said.

  “At what?”

  “I’m not sure what it’s called. Extraction and seduction?”

  “You could say that.” He took her hand and drew her to her feet. Then he held her pinned between him and the truck, and she felt such a surge of need that she couldn’t speak, could not even move.

  He touched her hair, a tender and intimate brush of his hand. Then he cupped her cheek, his thumb tracing the outline of her cheekbone, her jaw.

  She needed his kiss with an urgency that burned. Now, she thought. Please, now.

  As though he knew exactly what she was thinking, he smiled a little bit and stepped back. “I want to show you something,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me. You have a collection of etchings.”

  “Even better.” He helped her down the bank, lighting the way with a flashlight he’d taken from the truck.

  She spotted a strange silhouette and realized it was the hull of a boat, upended on sawhorses. The smell of fresh-cut lumber and varnish hung in the air.

  “It’s a project I started,” he said. “I’m restoring Sam’s boat.”

  Kate wasn’t sure why this moved her—the careful layout of the tools, sketches covered in hand-written notes, the lovingly crafted repairs. She reached out and put her hand on the smooth mahogany hull. “I remember this boat. Sam and I used to take it out when we were little.”

  “Which makes me insanely jealous of Sam.”

  “Because he had a boat?”

  He slipped his arms around her from behind and drew her close to his body, bending down to inhale the scent of her hair. “Because he had you.”

  She sank back against him. Surrendering. Good heavens, could he be any more sexy? “Did Sam tell you that?” she asked. “Did he say we were boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  “He said he wanted to be, but you had other ideas. True or false?”

  “True. I was such an idiot.” She remembered Sam so well, as loyal and strong as a Saint Bernard. She’d fooled around with him, probably led him on, but never crossed the line into a serious relationship. “When I was a kid, I always seemed to be dreaming of someone different, someone who didn’t exist except in my imagination, like Spider-Man or…some superhero.” She felt him tense with restraint. “Don’t laugh. I was sixteen years old. Every girl that age wants a superhero.”

  “And now…?”

  She laughed and turned in his arms. “Now my standards have relaxed. Sometimes I think I’d settle for someone who was breathing.”

  “You’re one tough cookie.”

  She looked up at him. Let’s get this show on the road. “Honestly, I’m happy simply to go out on a date.”

  “Like we just did?”

  “Exactly.”

  “We’re still doing it.”

  “Doing what?”

  “The date. It’s not over yet. I haven’t taken you home and kissed you good-night.”

  “You haven’t kissed me at all.”

  “I’m painfully aware of that.”

  And still he didn’t. Kate gritted her teeth against a moan of frustration as he stepped back. Keeping his arm around her, he walked her to the cabin. They stopped on the porch, turning to look at the lake. In high summer, the darkness took its time. The lake mirrored the purple color of the sky and the pinpoint stars, so thick and numerous they misted the surface of the water.

  Oh, she wanted him. She wanted his mouth on hers, his bare skin next to hers, his hands in places that had been lonely for far too long. A soft sound slipped out of her before she could catch herself.

  “You okay?” he asked. His arm felt lazily comfortable, yet unsettling at the same time.

  “I’m not staying,” she whispered.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Here. With you, tonight. I…can’t stay.” She knew she was blowing it with this guy, but she didn’t know what else to tell him.

  A half smile curved his mouth. “You can’t stay.”

  “That’s right. See, I’m a responsible mother. I can’t…I would never…”

  “Then don’t,” he said easily, rescuing her from the fumbling explanation.

  She nodded, feeling foolish and far more frustrated than relieved.

  From one end of the porch, she could just make out the lights of her place. Only a couple of windows glowed— Callie’s room and the back porch.

  “Checking on Aaron,” JD observed.

  “Always.”

  “He’s fine.”

  “I know.” She hesitated and then decided to explain. “Aaron has…issues. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he’s an angel.”

  “And the other one percent?”

  “That’s where the issues come in. He’s impulsive, sometimes loses his temper. It makes him quite a challenge to raise.”

  “Have you ever heard of a kid being easy to raise?”

  “I have no basis for comparison, but according to teachers and counselors and doctors, Aaron’s needs are definitely special. According to men I’ve dated, he’s much too special for them.”

  “Forget those guys, Kate, forget anybody who takes that attitude. Aaron’s a gift from God. Anyone who doesn’t see that isn’t looking. All these things they claim are wrong with him don’t add up to who he is.”

  She leaned back against the porch railing, held on for support. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It makes you too good to be true. And I don’t want that. I want you to be true.”

  “Your boy is a blessing. Believe it. I bet you wish you had ten Aarons.”

  “Well, maybe not ten…”

  “But you do want more kids.”

  Oh, dear. Now what? “I don’t know…Aaron wasn’t planned. He just happened.”

  “Like a gift.”

  Like you, she thought, smiling up at him.

  Seventeen

  “Go ahead and say I told you so,” Kate offered Mable Claire Newman as they sat over coffee at the First Street Haven Café.

  “Refresh my memory. What did I tell you?”

  “I’m seeing someone. He was your idea. The guy who is staying at the Schroeder place.”

  Mable Claire beamed at her. “Good for you, Kate. He seems like a perfectly nice fellow. Not to mention he’s a hunk.”

  “I noticed that right away.” Kate couldn’t suppress a smile. She had all the classic symptoms of pure infatuation. T
he light-headed moments of disorientation. The pounding heart and quickened breathing at the mere thought of him. The constant sense of hovering between laughter and tears. The heightened sensitivity to anything and everything, from the smell of coffee to the warmth of the sun on her skin. There was no denying it. Kate was in the staring-out-the-window, smiling-at-nothing stage of this relationship.

  “So keep talking,” Mable Claire said. “Old widowed lady like me, I need all the romance I can get.”

  “I don’t really know how to explain this. Our first date was dinner at C’est Si Bon. After that, we started spending most evenings together, sometimes with the kids, sometimes by ourselves. There’s this rhythm that we’ve started and it’s…I don’t know. Special.” Kate speared a piece of watermelon from the fruit plate she’d ordered. Another symptom—wild swings of appetite from voracious to nonexistent. “Isn’t that awful? Here I am, calling myself a writer and I can’t even find the words for—”

  “Oh, stop,” Mable Claire said. “Of course you can’t. But the good news is, every person who’s ever been in love or even dreamed of it knows exactly what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not—” Kate nearly choked on her watermelon.

  “You are, too. You’re moving in that direction, anyway. Let yourself, Kate. You deserve to fall in love.”

  The words struck to the heart of Kate’s uncertainty. You deserve to fall in love. Did she? Why had she never allowed it to happen?

  “There’s a huge gap between dating for the summer and falling in love.”

  “So what? Let your heart go and see what happens.”

  “That would be fine if I had only myself to think about, but there’s Aaron. He’s absolutely crazy about JD, and it will crush him when we go our separate ways.”

  “Not when. If.”

  Kate felt a welling of tears, yet another symptom of this bittersweet affliction. She wept at the drop of a hat. At the sound of a heart-tugging song on the radio or the sight of an old married couple holding hands in church. For Kate, falling in love was like being terminally ill. Painful to go through, with a predictably bad outcome.