Her Best Bet

by Pamela Ford

  “That’s what your grandmother said. But I’m sure she’s staying here. I just talked to Izzy a couple of days ago.”

  Izzy? The world seemed to stop, as if it had been freeze-framed.

  “Izzy?” his grandmother asked.

  “Her nickname. You sure she’s not here? She’s making a movie about gangsters.”

  The guy kept talking, but Gib didn’t hear anything else for several seconds. He had to force himself to concentrate so his brain would begin functioning again.

  “Trying to make a movie, more like it,” the man was saying. “Even though she doesn’t have the first notion what she’s doing.”

  Gib had the irrational urge to smash his fist into the guy’s face.

  “Izzy Stuart,” his grandmother choked out. “We have an Izzy Stuart. Making a documentary.”

  The man’s face brightened. “That’s my Izzy. Stuart’s her middle name. Can you steer me toward her cottage? I’m her fiancé.”

  IZZY HURRIED TOWARD THE LODGE, her strides lengthening to a light jog. She couldn’t wait to find Gib and clear the air about yesterday’s discussion. Couldn’t wait to get everything in the open, for him to know she was Elizabeth Gordon. She spied him on the front lawn with his grandmother and another man, and slowed her steps so she didn’t interrupt their conversation. Gib didn’t seem to be paying attention, his head turned like he was listening, but distracted.

  Seconds later, Catherine spotted her and said something and both men immediately turned in her direction.

  Her heart stopped and her thoughts began to race. No. It couldn’t be Andrew. He couldn’t possibly have come here. She’d told him not to. He said he wouldn’t. Didn’t he have to work? What day was it? The days were all running together here. Oh, God, it was Sunday. He didn’t anchor on Sunday.

  “Izzy,” he called. He took several steps toward her, mouth curved in that dazzlingly perfect white smile.

  Every muscle froze, her breath lodged in her throat. This wasn’t how today was supposed to happen. She threw a panicked look at Gib and could see the accusation in his expression, the anger in the set of his jaw. As she started toward them, Andrew misunderstood and opened his arms wide.

  She sidestepped him and focused on Gib. “I can explain.”

  He held up a palm, the muscles in his arm tense beneath the shimmer of perspiration. Yesterday that hand had welcomed her to him—today it held her back.

  “No need. Your fiancé pretty much explained everything. I get it,” he said.

  “No, you don’t.” She controlled the urge to slap Andrew’s tanning-booth-bronzed face. “He’s not my fiancé.”

  “Elizabeth Gordon.” Gib stepped so close she could smell the gasoline on his hands and the sweat on his skin, and for a second she had the absurd thought that he was going to take her in his arms and kiss away this massive misunderstanding.

  And then he strode past her across the lawn, up the steps to the veranda and into the lodge. Her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak. She stood there, rooted to the ground, feeling her face grow hot and her heart heavy. All she wanted to do was to get away from here. Tears pricked at her eyes and she turned to his grandmother. The woman hadn’t moved a muscle in minutes. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Best to let it go. The damage is done.” Catherine followed Gib to the house.

  “Izzy,” Andrew said.

  She glared at him, the man whose appearance had been no less destructive than a grenade launched into a crowd. At least he’d had the intelligence to keep his mouth shut through the rest of the exchange. “Andrew,” she said with barely restrained hostility as she struggled to find the right words. “I hate—I hate French manicures. In fact, when you’re not around, I bite my nails.” She vigorously bobbed her head. “Uh-huh. And that plaid skirt you bought me just like the one your mother has? I didn’t lose it—I gave it to Goodwill. I haven’t worn lipstick since I got here a week ago and I love it.”

  “Izzy, get control of yourself.”

  Too late, she thought. The cows have left the barn. “Not only that, but I adore wearing flip-flops and making that flapping noise. In public. Especially with the cheap rubber ones that cost a dollar at the discount store.”

  He pulled his back ramrod straight and said, “It has become infinitely clear that we don’t suit. I think it best if we considered this relationship…finished.” He marched toward the silver Lexus parked in front of the lodge, and with one backward glance after Gib, Izzy headed in the direction of her cottage.

  THE MUSIC THROUGH HIS HEADSET was so loud, Gib couldn’t hear the lawn mower. Once Izzy and her fiancé had disappeared, he came out to finish cutting the grass, purposely jacking up the sound on his MP3 player so it blocked out the rest of the world.

  As if, somehow, the din could prevent what had just happened from hurting him.

  Izzy Stuart was Elizabeth Gordon. Her family owned the land. She’d been lying to him since the day she got here.

  What had the past week been all about? Was the documentary a front so she could snoop around? Or was she really trying to break into the film business? Why did she cancel her original reservation and lie about who she was?

  Who the hell cared?

  As he pushed the mower, he felt a hint of fall in the air, a touch of coolness in the breeze, like a caution, a warning not to get caught unprepared by the change.

  No, he would never be caught unprepared again. This afternoon had shown him how much he’d let his guard down this past week. His gaze drifted upward and locked on two hawks soaring high above. A tap on his arm jerked him back to reality and he turned around, startled. Izzy.

  What did she want now? He killed the engine and pulled out his earbuds.

  IZZY SWALLOWED HARD. She’d come back determined to make things right with Gib. But now, facing him, seeing the coldness in his eyes, she was filled with fear that nothing she said would make a difference. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you who I am, but…” How could she say she’d been coming here to tell him everything half an hour ago; it would sound like the worst kind of self-serving lie. Even she didn’t believe it and she knew it was true.

  “Why’d you come to White Bear?” he asked, his voice glacial.

  “To make the documentary.”

  “So that’s real?”

  “Yes. We’re finalists in an amateur film contest. I really am hoping to get a career in film.”

  “So why Izzy Stuart? Why not use your real name?”

  “The day we arrived, we overheard you at the beach talking about my family selling the land. You sounded like you despised us—despised me.” She drew a shaky breath. “I didn’t plan to lie. But, after hearing you, I wondered what would happen once you learned who I was. And then, suddenly, Shelly was booking a cottage in her name and, honestly, it seemed like it made sense, that things would be less stressful if none of you knew who I was.”

  “Thanks.” He reached for the starter on the mower.

  “That’s it?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  Something about how he understood and it was okay and they’d still be…friends. That everyone makes mistakes and this wasn’t such a big deal. Disappointment landed in her stomach like a rock. “I don’t know.”

  She thought she saw his expression soften, but the warmth was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I don’t know, either.” He pulled the starter and the engine roared to life, the harsh sound like a wall between them.

  She felt tears spring to her eyes. It was time to go home.

  GIB SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY doing yard work, avoiding his family and embracing his anger until even he was sick of it. Late that night he wandered into his brother’s room. Matt lay on his bed reading the latest Ski magazine, his downhill equipment propped in the corner. “Getting pumped about Montana?” Gib asked.

  “You bet.”

  Gib ran a hand over the top of the ski. “I remember feeling like that. Maybe it’s my age, getting clos
er to thirty, that made me think I wanted to stay here. You were probably right—if I stayed, I’d end up regretting it.”

  Matt looked up. “Grandma told me what happened. I’m no expert, but I’m thinking you might want to put off any life decisions for a couple of days.”

  “What I want shouldn’t be the deciding factor here. Grandma’s dreaming of retiring to Arizona. And I selfishly decided I wanted the resort. But every way I look at it, it doesn’t work. If, by some miracle, the bank agrees to lend me the money to buy the land, I keep the resort, but Grandma and Grampa don’t get any money to retire on.”

  Matt set the open magazine upside down on the bed. “What about working with that developer? It sounded like a decent option before.”

  Gib sat on the end of the bed. “If we cut a deal and I keep the resort and the property it’s on, and he gets the rest—”

  “Still no money for Grandma and Grampa.”

  “Right. And then White Bear would fail, anyway. Once he surrounds us with condos, we’ll lose our rustic appeal. If I’m selling tranquility as part of retreats and corporate team-building programs, I can’t be delivering a bustling metropolis in the woods.”

  Matt’s forehead wrinkled.

  “The only way to get money for their retirement is to get out entirely. Sell the buildings to Jack Taylor and close the doors on White Bear Lodge.”

  “Shit on your dreams.”

  Yeah, well, he was getting pretty used to shit. “Like I said, it shouldn’t be about what I want. Grampa and Grandma have been working a long time. For once they deserve to have their dreams come true.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “NOT THAT I WANT TO PRESSURE you or anything, but it’s been three days since we got back. We need to get going on the documentary again.” Shelly power-walked beside Izzy during their lunch break. “Have you heard anything from Gib?”

  “After that fiasco?” Izzy swung her arms in rhythm with her long strides. She didn’t expect to hear from Gib Murphy ever again. “Gib and I are heading in about as opposite directions as two people can go. He wants to stay in a sleepy town in northern Wisconsin, while I want to be in a city that never sleeps like L.A. or New York. He’ll be having cookouts on the beach and giving sailing lessons, while I’ll be meeting with famous producers and actors.”

  “Good. Because I’m ready to break out of weathergirling.”

  They stopped at a traffic light and waited for a steady stream of cars to pass through the intersection. The light changed, and they stepped into the crosswalk.

  Izzy gestured at a restaurant as they passed by. “You and I will be hobnobbing at fashionable eateries, while Gib will be hanging out around that big stone hearth in the lodge. He’ll have a wife—” She felt a little queasy. “And kids, who’ll help him run White Bear Lodge and, of course, are proud of how successful he’s made the business. And, I’ll have a husband, too—” her stomach churned a bit more “—and children who’ll…stop by my latest movie set to…wave at me…and are so proud of my career.”

  She stared down the street, at the cars taking people back and forth in their lives, from home to work to family and back again. “But Gib will struggle to get by. And I’ll make so much money that I’ll be able to buy a place in the country, lots of acres on a lake, and my kids will spend their weekends building tree forts in the woods and swimming and riding their bikes with friends.”

  She smiled at the mental image. “And at the end of the day, they’ll throw their arms around my husband and me, so tired that we have to carry them to bed. And then we’ll go outside and collapse on the porch swing together and listen to the crickets chirp and realize that…realize that…we’re so happy…and so lucky to live—”

  “Yes?” Shelly prodded.

  “In the country,” she whispered.

  “Sounds an awful lot like White Bear Lodge.”

  Izzy stared at her friend. “It is White Bear Lodge,” she said, dumbfounded. “Oh, my God, I’m chasing a dream I don’t even want.”

  “I kind of wondered about that. Especially since you haven’t had even five minutes to work on the documentary since we got back.”

  “I think I fell in love with White Bear Lodge,” Izzy said. She looked up at the sliver of blue sky between the tall buildings of downtown St. Louis and thought of the sky framed by majestic pines at Menkesoq Lake.

  “I think you fell in love with more than just the lodge.”

  “That’s a bit of a leap,” Izzy said defensively. “I only knew him a week.” Remembering Gib and what they’d begun, what they could have had, made her heart hurt.

  “Sometimes that’s all it takes.”

  “Yeah, well, unrequited love only turns out wonderful in fairy tales.”

  Shelly let her head fall back as she threw her arms dramatically out to either side. “If you believe this is unrequited love, I have a bridge to sell you.”

  A truck passed them by, engine rumbling like an upset stomach as it exhaled stinky exhaust. Izzy wrinkled her nose and waited until it was gone. “I apologized to him. He didn’t want anything to do with me. And to be honest, I can hardly blame him.”

  Shelly took Izzy’s arm to make her stop walking. “Let me cut to the chase here.”

  “Sure,” Izzy said hesitantly.

  “You miss Gib.”

  She opened her mouth to disagree.

  “You miss Gib,” Shelly repeated. “You miss the resort. You miss who you became at the resort. I miss who you became at the resort. The family needs a new lease—or a new partner. Your parents own the land…Come on, figure this out yourself.”

  Izzy squinted at her friend. “You think I should offer to become their partner?”

  “Brilliant! I only wish I had thought of it myself!”

  Even though the idea was ridiculous, she loved Shelly for coming up with it. “Just one problem—it’s the teeniest thing.” She held her thumb and index finger an inch apart. “The Murphys would run me off the property before the word hello even passed my lips.”

  Shelly set out again. “I seriously doubt that. Not the way Gib took to you. Not the way you took to him. Besides, they can’t run you off the property. Your parents own the land. You’re the landlord, remember?”

  Izzy’s spirits began to rise. Maybe this wasn’t such a ridiculous plan, after all. “If I’m a partner, I can go up there whenever I want.”

  “You can even live there, if that’s your inclination. Walk with Gib in the morning, make love with him on the beach in the afternoon, kiss him good-night under the stars every night…”

  “Romantic delusions,” Izzy said with a delicious shiver. She let herself consider what it would be like to call White Bear Lodge home, to have a stake in whether the resort succeeded or failed, to be a business partner with the Murphys, to be with Gib every day. “I don’t know if it will work. Not with both Gib and me there, this thing hanging between us—”

  A horn blared and they both jumped.

  “That’s only cloud cover,” Shelly said. “Once it blows off, you’ll have beautiful weather—plenty of sunshine, low humidity and pleasant temperatures. Izzy, a partnership with you would give Gib’s family exactly what they need. It would give you what you need, too.” She frowned. “Unless, that is, your parents already signed a contract to sell.”

  “They couldn’t have. The Murphys have another nine or ten days to match the offer. Until they officially say no, my folks can’t do anything.”

  They stopped outside the door to the cable station. “I need to think about this. I don’t want to make an impulsive decision that I regret later.” Izzy reached into her slacks pocket for her cell phone. “Maybe it’s time for a call to dear old dad.”

  “No rush decisions here.”

  “I merely want to remind him the entire country is in a real estate downturn. And he and Mom don’t need the money. Why rush to sell?” Her mind was already racing ahead, planning her trip back to White Bear Lodge.

  GIB JERKED AWAKE AS HE HIT
the bedroom floor. Pain shot though his shoulder. Breathing hard, he lay still in the darkness, reliving his latest nightmare, a new version of the one he’d come to know so well. The café, the guys, it was the same…and not. Izzy had been there, and she’d held him back from following his friends into the street.

  With an exhausted sigh, he pulled himself back onto the bed. He’d thought that once Izzy was gone from the resort, he’d be able to put her out of his thoughts, as well. Obviously, his subconscious had other ideas. He’d had exactly one decent night’s sleep since coming home to White Bear—the night Izzy had stayed with him. Now that she was gone, he could only expect more nights like this. He lay back and tried to rest, dozing fitfully as the rising sun brightened the edges of his bedroom shade.

  Finally giving up, he sat up and looked around the room, still filled with the pieces of his life from when he last lived here. A poster of Bob Marley on the wall, old baseball caps on the bedpost, pens and pencils in a holder he’d made in middle school shop class, a framed picture on the desk of his parents with him and Matt when they were boys. And on the chair in the corner, an important part of his current life, the black case holding his camera—a case he hadn’t opened since the explosion.

  He got off the bed and picked up the picture, touched the image of his parents’ smiling faces with his index finger. This had been shot right before they’d left for the airport, for the flight that had gone down. They were all so happy, none of them suspecting tragedy lay ahead. His throat tightened and tears pressed into his eyes as memories of earlier years mingled with the new, painful ones that came later. If only they hadn’t taken that trip.

  He set the picture back on his desk. His mother used to say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. He’d practically reached adulthood before he fully understood what it meant.

  There was no going back; there never was. It would have to be enough that he knew how much they’d loved him and Matt. Izzy’s words slipped into his mind: They’d done the best they could. That they had. His gaze landed on the black camera case again. He glanced away and pulled the shade to reveal a morning still foggy and mysterious, even as the sun was rising and burning away the shroud of mist. There would be photos out there, striking photos with lighting like this. Peaceful, calming, powerfully beautiful.