Isle of Hope

by Julie Lessman

  When the show ended, she hopped up and gathered their dishes, striding into the kitchen to clean up he supposed, making so much racket he could barely hear Gibb’s monotone voice. Not that he was listening …

  “I’ll take Beau out before I go,” she called, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the kitchen door close. Thank God she’s leaving soon.

  A few minutes later, the door squealed open and he immediately shut his eyes, head tipped to the side on the back of the chair. He heard the pantry door open and shut and knew she was giving Beau his treat just like she used to after letting him out. Her footsteps padded across the wooden floor along with the click of Beau’s claws, and Ben feigned exhaustion, his breathing quiet and even to mimic the rhythm of sleep.

  “I’m leaving, Daddy,” she whispered, but he only continued to doze, snorting an exhale he hoped would convince her he was out. His heart seized at the touch of her lips to his brow, but he never moved a muscle, certain she would hear the wild clip of his heart. He couldn’t be sure because his eyes were closed, but he could have sworn a hint of a smile colored her tone. “I love you, Daddy, and I’ll be back.”

  He waited till long after her footsteps receded down the hall and the front door closed with a quiet click. Only when he heard the rumble of a car engine did he finally open his eyes, staring at the TV screen without seeing a thing.

  “I love you, Daddy, and I’ll be back.”

  He grunted and rose to his feet, not comfortable at all with the unsettled feelings roiling inside, especially the notion that she intended to try this again. He shook his head, an odd mix of annoyance and humor twisting his lips at the thought of her final line, obviously stolen on purpose from one of his favorite movies.

  “I’ll be back.”

  He scowled. The Terminator or his daughter. Which one would he rather face? He pressed the “system off” button of his remote and tossed it in the chair before heading down the hall, lips in a slant as he cut loose with a yawn.

  No contest.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Lacey? Lacey Carmichael?”

  Lacey spun around on the weathered dock of Camp Hope, hand shielding her eyes from the sunlight to focus on the tall cowboy at the top of the hill. Her lips instantly curved in a smile brimming with affection at the sight of the camp’s seasoned cowboy and all-around coach/handyman, Will Hogan. Nudging his Stetson up, he meandered down the rolling lawn dotted with wildflower gardens and oaks older than the Civil War that once raged all around.

  She waved a hand, her grin as wide as Will’s. “Why, Will Hogan,” she called, hand to mouth, “I thought you’d be long gone by now, rustling cattle on that dream ranch of yours in Wyoming.”

  His hearty chuckle carried down the lawn and across the freshwater lake where cheers and shrieks sounded behind her from a noisy canoe race on Blue Heron Lake. “What can I say—that woman refuses to let me go,” he groused. His good-natured teasing lured a chuckle to Lacey’s lips over the longstanding head-—and heart-—butting relationship between Will and Miss Myra Lee. A relative of Robert E. Lee, Miss Myra was the camp’s spunky director, a widow with a law degree who’d transformed her family’s plantation into a camp for orphans with illnesses, disabilities, and other challenges. It had been Will and Miss Myra and a host of employees and volunteers who’d filled Lacey’s high school summers with laughter and joy, producing a sharp twinge of homesickness she’d never experienced at home.

  Thumbs hooked in the dusty pockets of his jeans, Will halted before her, back-dropped by the lush slope he kept manicured as if it were Wormsloe Plantation rather than a year-long camp for kids. “When in tarnation did you get back, Lacey Lou?” he said, swallowing her up in a hug that smelled fondly of hay and horses and the leather soap he used on every saddle in the stable. “’Cause if it was before yesterday, you got some explaining to do, girl.”

  She laughed and squeezed back before pulling away. “No comment on the grounds you might make me muck the stables again.” Head in a tilt, she smiled up at his commanding six-foot-two stature, his ruggedly handsome air and Tom Selleck moustache always reminding her of the Marlboro Man, no matter his near-sixty age. “I came home to help with my cousin’s wedding, but I need something else to do with my summer, so you think you could put a good word in for me with Miss Myra?”

  “Ha! You’d get further with that woman on your own merit than mine,” he said with a puckish wink, “but I do seem to recall her moaning and groaning about the pitiful lack of volunteers of late, so who knows—I may just get that stable mucked yet.”

  Lacey held her hands up with a chuckle. “Mucking stables, cleaning cabins, cooking chow—makes no difference to me as long as I can help out.”

  His brows pinched in thought. “Hear tell you’re a teacher now—that true?”

  She saluted, shoulders squaring in pride. “Yes, sir, major in communication arts and minor in special education, so I can whip any student into shape bar none, male or female.”

  He nodded slowly. “Too bad. I was kinda hopin’ for the Lacey-Lou touch on those nasty horse stalls, but sounds like Miss Myra might steal you away for more important things.” Will glanced toward the lake where hoots and hollers of the older kids echoed across the water when the second leg of the canoe race sped toward the dock. He nodded uphill. “Let’s you and me mosey up to the house before the rowdies come ashore, ’cause I’m pretty sure Miss Myra has a job with your name on it, darlin’.”

  Anticipation coursed through Lacey’s veins as they made their way up to the stately plantation house that now served as the gathering rooms, kitchen, and office for Camp Hope as well as Miss Myra’s home. On the way, Will filled her in on all the improvements Miss Myra and her board of directors made since Lacey had left—a new log-cabin dorm, volleyball pit, log-cabin rec center, tennis court, bike and hike trails through the woods, fire pit, and a bona fide regulation-size swimming pool. She, in turn, filled him in on the highs and lows of her last eight years, from her master’s degree and Nicki’s wedding, to her mother’s passing and her broken engagement.

  Will halted on the first step of the freshly painted white wooden steps that flared down from a pillared wraparound porch, worry lines creasing his stubbled face. “We were sure sorry to hear about your mama, Lace, and riles me but good that some no-count city boy left you at the altar.” He hooked an arm over her should to press a fatherly kiss to her head as they continued up to a mammoth black door. “But to be honest, darlin’, it don’t sound like he’s got all that much upstairs, and you sure don’t want that in the gene pool, you know?”

  She grinned. Poor Tim—everybody was ready to nail him to the wall when it had been me who changed, not him. She patted Will’s arm as he held open the door, knowing her next statement would make him smile. “Well, actually, Will, he was at the top of his law class, but I guess you could say he got spooked when his devil-may-care fiancée got a little too chummy with God.”

  He paused at the door, hand on the knob as he studied her with a gleam of pride in his eyes. “No kidding? Well it’s about time, darlin’, ’cause He’s been awaitin’ on you a long, long while.”

  Her smile faded to soft. “I know, Will,” she whispered, “and I would have never gotten there without the prayers of my grandmother, you, and Miss Myra.”

  With a stiff nod and a pat of her arm, he opened the door and put two fingers to his teeth, all but glazing Lacey’s eyes with his trademark whistle.

  “Mr. Will, Mr. Will—is it time for the trail ride yet?” A flash of lime green blasted out of a door at the back of the hall like a bullet, cross-hairs on Will’s denim legs. A tiny girl, surely no older than six, streaked down the polished wood hall in tattered blue jean overalls, dirty T-shirt, and a dusty Atlanta Braves ball cap, her freckled face little more than a blur.

  With a gaping smile, Lacey quickly stepped out of the way as the rascal crashed into Will’s legs with a slam that jolted both her and Lacey far more than it did Will. He promptly
swooped her high in the air, unleashing little-girl squeals that brought a grin to Lacey’s face.

  “Deborah Lynne Holbrook!” Lips pursed in a mock scowl, Miss Myra Penelope Lee glided down the mahogany staircase like a queen about to hold court, her bisque-colored tailored silk dress flowing in the breeze with every regal step she took. “We do not run in the house like wild Indians, young lady.” Barely five foot one, what Miss Myra lacked in height, she made up for with an air of authority that kept a camp full of orphans, several employees, tons of volunteers, and one ornery cowboy in line. “And for the love of civility, Wilson Hodges, when are you going to learn I am not a cocker spaniel to be beckoned by the primitive shriek of a whistle?”

  “Uh-ohhhhhh …” the little imp said with a giggle, clutching tightly to Will’s rolled-up chambray shirt as she bounced on his hip.

  Will hooked his free arm around Lacey’s shoulders, his grin a flash of white in a well-weathered face bronzed by the sun. “Aw, shucks, Miss Myra,” he said in a lazy drawl that Lacey knew was mostly for tease, “I was thinking more along the lines of one of those highfalutin’ French poodles, you know the testy kind with all that champagne hair in a poof just like yours? What d’ya think, Lacey-Lou?”

  The two-inch heels of Miss Myra’s buff-colored pumps skidded to a dead stop on the landing of the curved mahogany staircase, both her brown eyes and wispy skirt flaring with the motion. One thin, pale hand fluttered to the single strand of pearls at her throat while her fair cheeks faded even more, a near match to the shoulder-length ash blonde hair always worn up in a classic French twist. “Lacey? Oh, good heavens—is that you?”

  Laughing, Lacey rushed to swallow her former boss and mentor up in a hug at the base of the steps, breathing in the calming scent of Chanel No. 5. “Yes, ma’am, it is, alive and well and reporting for duty.”

  Will cleared his throat. “And toting a teaching degree in communication arts, Your Highness Boss, with …” he said with great drama, giving a wink that shot color right back into Miss Myra’s cheeks, “a minor in special ed, no less.”

  “Hey, who are you anyway?” the ragamuffin demanded with a pert thrust of her chin, brown eyes assessing Lacey in a narrow-eyed squint that implied she wasn’t impressed.

  “This, young lady,” Miss Myra said with an arm to Lacey’s waist and a lift of her head, “is the ray of sunshine I’ve been praying for to help fine-tune you and your three classmates in your reading skills.” She turned to Lacey, manicured brows arched in question. “That is, if she’ll say ‘yes’ to a job for the summer?”

  “Do little Debbie here and me a favor, Lacey-Lou, please,” Will said with a polite tip of his Stetson, giving Miss Myra a lazy smile while he shifted Debbie in his arms. “The woman is so understaffed now, it’s like working for a she-bear with a burr in her paw.”

  Miss Myra arched a pale brow. “Oh, now there’s a grizzly calling the cub a crank if ever there was.” She reached to tweak Debbie’s waist. “He’s just mad because I can’t spare any of my counselors to muck his silly stalls, right, Debbie?”

  “Right!” The little dickens giggled, her squeals bouncing off the magnolia-papered walls when Will retaliated with a monster tickle to her neck.

  “So, Miss Carmichael …” Miss Myra faced Lacey again, the professional jut of her chin at odds with the hope in her eyes, “will you consider joining my sparse ranks of volunteers? The pay is great—all meals free and s’mores by firelight whenever you work late.”

  Will tossed Debbie over his shoulder like a sack of feed. “And trail rides with handsome cowboys and rowdy kids if you dare,” he added with a cock of his hip, allowing the wiggly tomboy to possum-hang down his back.

  Lacey laughed. “Goodness—what more could a girl ask?”

  “Excellent! Then I suppose you and I ought to discuss this further in my office while Will returns to muck the stables and Miss Debbie, to her class.”

  Will swung Debbie off his shoulder onto the floor with great fanfare while the little monkey giggled and kicked. “Okay, Sweet Pea, you heard the lady—scoot!”

  Lacey grinned over Debbie’s shenanigans, and then her heart crashed to the floor faster than the little scamp’s high-tops, feeling a lot like one of Debbie’s kicks had landed right in her gut. The girl’s ball cap had apparently dropped while she was draped over Will’s shoulder, revealing a head that resembled a baby bald eagle’s, round and bare except for a layer of fuzz.

  A gulp lodged in Lacey’s throat. Oh, Lord, please—not cancer …

  With a quick snatch of her ball cap, Debbie started to bolt down the hall, but not before Miss Myra hooked the back of her overalls, springing her back like a paddleball on an elastic string. “Excuse me, Miss Holbrook, but what do you have say to your new reading teacher?”

  Lips flattened in a scowl, the sprite of a girl studied Lacey through slatted eyes. “I don’t like to read,” she muttered with a tight fold of arms.

  “Deborah Lynne …?” Miss Myra pinched the back of the girl’s neck, and the little spitfire hunched her shoulders with an impish grin. “But I’ll try, Miss Lacey-Lou, I promise, so it’s nice to meet ya.”

  Smiling, Lacey stooped before her, hands on her knees. “I’ll tell you what, Debbie, if you still don’t like to read when I’m done with you, I’ll jump in the lake fully clothed while I quack like a duck—deal?”

  A smile inched across the little girl’s face till she was grinning ear-to-ear, the gold fuzz glimmering in the sunlight that streamed from the transom windows over the front door. Without hair, her bald head made her brown eyes all the larger, all the more impish, complementing a tiny upturned nose that gave her a pixie air. She seemed undaunted by her plight, gaze sparkling with the dare of adventure as she tugged on her ball cap and extended a tiny hand. “Deal.”

  “But … if you do end up liking to read and do well on your test, then I will bring pizza, soda, and your choice of ice cream from Coldstone Creamery for a special movie night just for you and your class, plus choice of a favorite book.” She glanced up at Miss Myra. “If Miss Myra says it’s okay …”

  Debbie’s gaze darted to Miss Myra, who dipped her head in a short nod, a smile twitching behind her stern demeanor. “Agreed.”

  “Thank you, Miss Myra.” Lacey held out her hand to Debbie. “So … double deal?”

  The little girl gave Lacey’s hand a firm shake. “Double deal!”

  “Okay then, young lady,” Miss Myra said with a tweak of Debbie’s shoulder, prodding her in the direction of the classroom. “Go back to your class before Mrs. Bunch thinks you’ve fallen in, all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She tore down the hall, only to grind to a halt halfway, whirling around to place sassy hands on her little hips. “S’pose it’s best to tell you right here and now, Miss Lacey-Lou.” She tossed them a pixie smile, and Lacey swore she saw a bit of the devil in those twinkling brown eyes. “I like butter pecan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “So … hear tell you signed up to volunteer at Camp Hope.” Resting against the base of one of Mamaw’s gnarled oaks, Jack accepted a frosty iced tea from Lacey during a break from building the wedding gazebo. Across the yard, Matt and Nicki bantered with Justin to the ping of hammers and country music from Matt’s iPad, ironically blasting Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You while Lacey smiled down. Nodding his thanks, he took a swig, drinking in the heady scent of Coppertone and sawdust along with his lemon-flavored tea. An odd sense of pride warmed him inside that Lacey hadn’t lost her passion for a cause near and dear to his family’s heart. Swiping sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his paint-stained T-shirt, he peered up through sun-squinted eyes. “Just to be safe, though, you might want to keep an extra change of clothes in the car.” He grinned over the rim of his Dixie cup, remembering all the times Lacey had jumped in the lake fully clothed over a dare or lost bet, delighting the kids to no end.

  And him.

  Her mouth dropped a full inch as she slacked a leg, hands
perched on the hips of her blue-jean cutoffs. “Are you clairvoyant or something, O’Bryen? For heaven’s sake, I just committed to Miss Myra this morning—how on earth did you find out already?”

  Chucking an ice cube into his mouth, he arched a brow. “Besides the fact you’re completely predictable?” He crunched on the ice, a grin surfacing while it crushed and crackled against his molars. “Camp Hope is still a top priority for my family, Lace, so we all volunteer during the summer when we can, even Mom.” He winked. “I was there after you left today, treating a couple of the kids in sick bay when Miss Myra gave me the good news.”

  Her gaping mouth edged into a smile while she shook her head, plopping down on the lawn to sit beside him, body butted to the base of the tree just like him. “No kidding? I knew your sisters still volunteered, but I didn’t know you were involved too.” Knees cocked, she snatched a handful of clover stems from the lawn and started tying them into necklaces like she and his sisters used to do when they were kids. “I ran into Cat and Shan at the archery range while Will gave me the grand tour.” Her mouth twisted as she bent to focus on tying a knot in two stems. “Shan gave me a hug, of course, but I swear the temperature dropped twenty degrees from the ice in Cat’s eyes.” She grunted. “She sliced the bull’s-eye clean through, but something tells me she was aiming for a whole ’nother target in her mind.”

  He chuckled. “Knowing Cat, I’d say that’s a pretty safe bet, but she’ll come around. Trust me—up to a month ago I would’ve been taking target practice right beside her.”

  She peered up in a sideways glance, a cross between a smile and a smirk hovering on her lips. “But not anymore?”

  He assessed her for several seconds, suddenly aware that most of the bitterness he’d harbored toward Lacey had somehow ebbed like the tide, leaving behind the rich and fertile ground of a prior friendship he’d treasured. “Nope.” He emptied his drink straight up, then set the glass aside while he propped hands behind his neck, absently studying the smattering of holes and stains in his work jeans. “I never thought seeing you again would be a good thing,” he said quietly, “but I was wrong.”