The Cottage at Firefly Lake

by Jen Gilroy

  He took her hands and, together with amazement, his face radiated joy. “A baby.” He pulled her in to his chest, and she let the tears fall against his jacket. “When?”

  “Early September. I’ve never been clockwork regular, so I didn’t guess. I thought I’d eaten something bad on the flight over because I got sick the first morning. When I wasn’t better the next day, I saw a doctor, and she did a test. Linnie said being sick is normal, maybe even a good sign.”

  Sean’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “What does Linnie have to do with this?”

  “I told her I was asking for a friend. When I called her. Two days ago.” Charlie’s face and voice were solemn. “I didn’t tell her it was me. I wouldn’t tell anyone before I told you.”

  “A friend? Linnie would never believe that, but she didn’t say a word.” Sean’s laugh rumbled.

  “Even though I won’t ski, maybe our trip’s not such a good idea.” She’d spend the next seven months covering Firefly Lake news for the Kincaid Examiner, not budging more than twenty miles from home, if that was what she had to do to keep this baby safe.

  “We’ll get you checked here, but the trip should be fine.” His mouth quirked into the teasing smile she loved. “Maybe for the first time in your life you’ll put your feet up and relax. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  “I still can’t believe it’s a baby. It was only once we…” Her face heated.

  “Once is all it takes, Sunshine. I didn’t complain, did I?”

  “No, but I’m scared.” She already loved this baby with a fierce protectiveness and wanted it to the very core of her being.

  “Scared of another miscarriage?” Sean’s voice softened.

  She gave a jerky nod. “Even though the doctor said everything looks fine.” She rummaged in her purse for a precious white envelope. “I was so worried she did a scan.” She drew out a piece of paper and showed him. “See?”

  “Our baby.” Sean’s voice caught and he traced the edge of the image.

  “You’re okay with this? Really and truly?”

  “I couldn’t be more okay. Trust me, the two of us having a family is great.” His eyes went misty blue.

  A family. Charlie tasted the words on her tongue. Her family. And because she did trust him, she knew, beyond a doubt, he was right.

  She took his hand and put it over hers to cradle where their baby grew. “Let’s go home.”

  Sean’s hand trembled as he traced the soft curve of her stomach. He cupped her face with his other hand and looked deep into her eyes. Then he pulled Charlie into his arms and his voice was soft and low. “Let’s take our family home.”

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  Summer on

  Firefly Lake

  Chapter One

  You want to hire me?” Mia Connell laced her fingers together, and the pad of her thumb lingered on the bare space where her wedding and engagement rings had once nestled.

  “Why not? Friends help each other out.” Nick McGuire’s smile had a sexy edge, and Mia’s breathing quickened. “In this part of Vermont we all depend on one another.”

  That sense of community was one of the reasons she’d moved to Firefly Lake last month. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve already got a job. Two jobs. When school starts, I’ll have substitute teaching and some private music students. Besides, you’ve helped me out so much already.”

  And Mia had a plan. To be independent and stand on her own two feet. To take control of the life that had gotten stuck on hold when she’d married young and given everything to her family.

  Nick’s smile broadened. “Why can’t my hiring you to help my mother be part of your new start? It’d only be for a few weeks.”

  The new start, part of the new life she was determined to build out of the rubble of the old one. Mia glanced around the gracious hall that led to a country-style kitchen where July sunlight flooded through French doors at the back of the house. “I’m surprised your mom wants to sell Harbor House.”

  “This place is way too big for her.” Nick scrubbed a hand across his face. “We’ve made an offer on a new bungalow in the development by the lake. She’s thrilled. She won’t have to go up and down two flights of stairs every day, and the house has a small yard, so it’ll be easy to maintain.”

  “She’s lived here so long.” Mia held his mom’s dry cleaning over one arm and backed toward the kitchen.

  “Too long.” Nick took the dry-cleaning bag, hung it on a hook behind the kitchen door, and followed Mia.

  He nudged six-four and with his dark hair wind-ruffled, a white shirt open at the neck, and a tie hung loose, Nick was a lifetime away from the badass kid Mia remembered, the one who’d hung around the edges of her life during those endless vacations she’d spent at her family’s summer cottage on Firefly Lake outside town. He was the kid who’d become a man who never lost control and who, in the last year, had also become her friend, cheerleader, and steady compass in a world that had spun off its axis.

  “I’m not a professional organizer.” She tried to ignore the flutter in her chest that was new. It had nothing to do with friendship and everything to do with the way Nick’s shoulders filled out his shirt.

  “Mom doesn’t want a stranger in her house. She wants someone she already knows and trusts. With all the moves you’ve had, you’d be a natural.”

  “Surely your sisters want to be involved. They’re her family.”

  “They’d help if I asked them to, but…” A pulse ticked in Nick’s jaw. “Cat’s teaching summer school in Boston. As for Georgia, she couldn’t organize herself or anyone else. Besides, she’s at that yoga center in India until Christmas.”

  “My daughters…” Mia’s chest tightened and her throat got raw.

  “Are with their dad in Dallas for the next month.” Nick closed the distance between them.

  As if she needed a reminder of the custody and visitation agreement with her ex-husband. Sending her two girls thousands of miles away to stay with him and another woman had torn Mia apart. “My sister needs me to help get ready for the baby. Charlie’s an older mom and I’m the only family she has.”

  “Her husband and his whole family hover over Charlie twenty-four/seven.”

  Mia sucked in air as Nick moved even closer.

  “Besides, if Charlie needs you so much, why did I find her barricaded behind her laptop yesterday in the back booth of the diner? And why did she make me promise not to tell anybody, you included, where she was?”

  “She’s almost eight months’ pregnant. Pregnant women are hormonal.”

  A shadow flitted across Nick’s face and was gone almost before Mia registered it. “Charlie didn’t look hormonal. If you ask me, she looked pissed off.”

  “See, she’s hormonal.”

  Mia looked out the French doors at the terraced gardens surrounding the stately Victorian perched high above Firefly Lake. The small town was spread out below, and the spire of the Episcopal church rose out of the trees near the town green. A patchwork of rooftops sloped toward the gentle scoop in the lake from which Harbor House took its name. The whole scene was encircled by the rolling Vermont hills that made her feel safe and protected in this little corner of the Northeast Kingdom.

  “Please?” Nick’s breath warmed her cheek, and the scent of his aftershave enveloped her, cedarwood and amber topped with something crisp, confident, and suave. “While your girls are in Dallas, you could stay here. Mom could sure use the company.”

  His mellow baritone tugged at an almost-forgotten place inside her, and Mia smoothed a wayward strand of brown hair. She was being ridiculous. Why shouldn’t she help Gabrielle? The money Nick offered was more than generous, and it was money she needed as more security for the girls. Besides, staying in Harbor House would be perfect. She wouldn’t have to live in a construction zone while the new kitchen was installed at her place.

  It was time to stop the excuses. It was also time to stop th
e self-doubt, which had made her defer to others and ignore what she wanted and needed.

  “I’d have to have a contract.” She tried to sound competent and professional. “To get this house ready for sale is a bigger job than you might think.”

  “Of course.” Nick gave her an easy smile, all business. His eyes were dark blue with a hint of steel. “We can work on one together.”

  “I couldn’t work set hours.” She smiled in return. The kind of smile she’d perfected as the doctor’s daughter, the executive’s wife, and the queen of more beauty pageants than she could count.

  “Completely flexible. You’d be doing me a big favor.” Nick pulled at his tie, took it off, and stuffed it in the pocket of his suit jacket.

  “I can start today if you want.” Mia’s stomach churned.

  “Mom will be thrilled. I knew we could count on you.”

  Everyone had always counted on her. First her parents, then her husband and daughters and all the organizations where she’d volunteered in each new city her husband’s job had taken them. She was helpful Mia and dependable Mia. But she was also a thirty-nine-year-old woman, and it was more than time she learned to count on herself. Depend on herself.

  “There’s one more thing.” She plumped a stray cushion and slid it back onto a chair in the breakfast nook, a sunny alcove that overlooked a pond thick with water lilies.

  “Anything.” Nick gave her the smile again that almost made her forget he was her friend—the only male friend she’d ever had who didn’t want something she couldn’t give.

  She nudged a dog basket aside with one shoe, and the red kitten heels gave her a confidence she didn’t feel. “I agree your mom needs help. She hasn’t gotten her strength back after being sick. You work all the time and your sisters aren’t around much, so she’s here alone.”

  “I gave her Pixie.”

  At the sound of her name a tiny whirlwind barreled past them with its tail up. It had fluffy white fur and short legs. It also had a bark at odds with the dog’s small size.

  A laugh bubbled inside Mia and rippled out before she could stop it. “Your mom needs more in her life than a dog.”

  The Maltese gave her a bright-eyed stare.

  “But—”

  Mia lifted a hand as she glimpsed a flash of orange under the weeping willow by the pond. Nick’s mom in her garden smock. “You think your mom needs to move, but I’m not so sure. This house has been in her family for generations. She’s rooted here.”

  And she had the kind of roots Mia longed for.

  “It’s not like she has to leave Firefly Lake. She’ll still have friends nearby and all her clubs.” Nick avoided Mia’s gaze.

  “Harbor House is her home. To leave it, even if she’s as excited about the new bungalow as you say, is bound to be a wrench.” Mia stepped around Pixie and gestured toward the window. “Look at those beautiful gardens. Those plants mean the world to her.”

  It wasn’t only the plants. It was the memories of children who’d toddled on chubby legs around the garden paths, and the pencil scratches on the kitchen door to mark how they’d grown. The memories of Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays that, when put together, made the fabric of a life and a house a home.

  Mia swallowed. This wasn’t her house or her garden. She had to focus on her daughters. To provide for them and be a mother they could be proud of.

  “I’m looking out for Mom.” Nick’s expression hardened. “That’s my job.”

  “Of course it is.” One of Mia’s heels snagged Pixie’s basket and she grabbed a kitchen chair to keep her balance. “But if I help your mom like you want, looking out for her becomes my job too. It means more than dropping off her dry cleaning and popping in every few days with cookies or a casserole.” She took a deep breath and straightened to her full height, which even in the shoes only brought her to Nick’s collar, stiff, white, and unyielding.

  “That’s what I’d pay you for.”

  Mia channeled the woman she wanted to be instead of the one everyone expected. “If your mom changes her mind about selling Harbor House, will you accept her decision and not stand in her way?”

  “Why would she change her mind?” Nick picked up the dog, who eyed Mia unblinking. “I want you to help Mom, but I don’t want—”

  “You can’t have it both ways. I’ll help your mom and live here with her for the next few weeks, but I won’t let you push her into anything.”

  Or let him push her into anything, either.

  “I’m only doing what’s best for Mom.” Nick’s features were a careful blank.

  “Best for her or best for you?”

  Nick opened his mouth, closed it, and fiddled with his watch strap.

  Before she lost her nerve, Mia turned and walked out of the kitchen, her heels a comforting staccato on the tiled floor.

  Nick set a wiggling Pixie in her basket and pressed his fingers to his temples in a vain effort to erase the image of the little sway to Mia’s hips as she walked away from him in those sexy red shoes. How her hair, fastened away from her face with a clip, was like a sleek, dark pelt, except for one rogue curl that had escaped to brush the perfect curve of her cheek.

  He fisted his hands and looked out the window. On the upper terrace, a breeze off Firefly Lake stirred the patio umbrella, and his mom walked up the gravel path to the old summer kitchen. His breath caught as she wrestled the light screen door open. She didn’t welcome his help, but illness had made her vulnerable.

  Mia was vulnerable, too. It was in the tight set of her jaw and the stiff way she held herself. It was in the tension that radiated off her and the pain that lurked in the depths of her beautiful brown eyes.

  Pain that caught him unaware and sparked feelings as unwelcome as they were unexpected. Mia was his friend and a single mother. Two good reasons, if he’d needed any, why he couldn’t let those feelings go anywhere.

  He shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over a kitchen chair. His mother had to move. That was the plan. Then he could go back to New York City, leave the apartment over the law office on Main Street behind, start his life over, and claw back the self-respect his ex-wife had yanked away.

  Nick moved into the hall. The formal dining room was to his right. The massive oak table where he’d eaten Christmas dinner for thirty of his thirty-nine years was piled high with art supplies, and an easel stood in front of the bay window. Sunbeams bounced off the crystal in the glass-fronted cabinets and gleamed on his great-grandmother’s silver tea service.

  “Mia?”

  Pixie bumped his leg and yipped, the click of her nails muffled by the thick carpet.

  He shook his head at the dog and crossed the hall again toward the living room at the front of the house. Pale sunlight filtered between heavy-patterned drapes. Decorated in faded gold and cream, it was an obstacle course of side tables, spindly chairs, two Victorian horsehair sofas, and a baby grand piano nobody ever played.

  “You don’t know what your help will mean to me, honey.” His mom’s voice came from the alcove off the living room. Connected to the summer kitchen by a short passage, the small room had once been his dad’s office.

  “I can stay here while my daughters are with their father.”

  Mia’s gentle voice comforted him like the liquid amber of single-malt Scotch whiskey. Except those days were long gone. He’d turned his life around. In all the ways that counted, he wasn’t the guy he’d once been.

  “Nick’s right. This house is too big for an old woman to rattle around in alone.” His mom’s trademark silver bracelets jingled.

  “You’re only sixty-two,” Mia said. “That’s not old.”

  “The cancer was a wake-up call.” His mom’s voice was low. “I thought I had all the time in the world, but it turns out I’m as mortal as anybody else. Besides, this house needs a family.”

  Nick’s body was heavy. It should have been his family here. Before he’d found out he couldn’t give his wife the children they both want
ed and he’d never be a family man.

  “I’m happy to help you, Gabrielle.” Mia said his mom’s name with the musical French intonation that was a legacy of her Montreal childhood. “Whatever you need, all you have to do is ask.”

  “Oh, honey.” His mom’s voice had a wobble Nick hated because it reminded him how close he’d come to losing her.

  He cleared his throat and stuck his head into the room. “Hey, Mom. Mia.”

  Perched on a low, blue love seat, his mom wore an orange smock that lit the room like a beacon and was in stark contrast with her cropped silver hair. She gave an elegant shrug and glanced at Mia beside her. Cool, confident, and still as out of reach as the glamorous girl who’d spent her summers in Firefly Lake and all the guys had wanted to date.

  Nick moved into the alcove. His dad’s law books were long gone, as was the big desk and the black chair Nick and his younger sisters used to spin around in until they got dizzy. They’d been loaded into the moving van with the clothes, the football trophies, the golf clubs, and the NUMBER 1 DAD mug Nick had given him for Father’s Day. As if his dad had never existed.

  “I told your mom I can help with whatever she needs to get ready for the move.” Mia’s voice was brisk and efficient, and that loose curl of hair still mocked Nick and made him want to yank out the clip and run his hands through the thick, dark strands.

  “I’ll miss my flowers.” His mom’s tone was wistful as she glanced out the half-open window, where white roses tumbled over a wooden trellis.

  “Think how much fun you’ll have this winter planning the garden at your new place,” Nick said. “Besides, you can take cuttings from here.”

  “I suppose so.” His mom sighed and set her sketchbook and watercolor pencils on a side table. “Some of those plants are irreplaceable, though. Like the trees I planted when you and your sisters were born, and when my parents died. To leave those behind, well…”

  Mia covered one of his mom’s hands with hers. Her chest rose and fell under her clingy top. From the top of her glossy, dark head to the tips of her designer shoes, Mia was a walking, talking reminder of the world he’d left behind. The woman who’d left him behind.