by Bella Andre
"Take the wheel," he said, standing up and heading out to the bow.
"Dude, that's illegal," Ben said.
Sure, Josh thought, his mom would shit a brick if she saw him bow riding, but she was always holed up in her diner on the other side of the lake.
"When was the last time a ranger went out on the lake and busted someone?" He looked at Hannah and shook his head as if to say, "We should have left this loser on shore."
Crawling across the white fiberglass, he made it to the metal rails on the very tip of the boat. Hooking his legs under them, he yelled back at Matt, "Hit it!"
An evil grin was on Matt's face as his friend punched the engine into overdrive, fast enough that Josh's eyes watered and the skin on his face blew back like he was a basset hound.
Hell yeah, this was more like it.
Adrenaline.
Speed.
Danger.
They whipped in a tight circle to avoid a sailboat and were turning back toward the bay when Matt practically cut the engine cold.
"What the hell--"
The word stalled in his throat when he looked up.
His mom was standing on their beach. And she was clearly yelling.
Fuck. What were the odds? She never left the diner in the middle of the day.
Lucky him, she had to pick the one time he actually had a girl in the boat. Bending his head down so that his hair flopped over his face, he avoided eye contact with Hannah.
He didn't want to see her laughing at him. How the hell was he ever going to live this down?
Feeling suddenly clumsy, he untangled his limbs from the rail and crawled back across the bow. "Give me the wheel," he grunted and Matt jumped out of the way.
"I'm so fucked if my mom finds out I was driving your boat," his friend said. Matt chewed his nails, barely a step up from the thumb sucking he'd done until he was six.
"It was my idea," Josh said. "I'll take all the flack."
Still, even though he didn't want his friends or Hannah to think otherwise, his stomach was twisting and he was fighting the urge to throw up. At the beginning of the summer, his mom had made it really clear to him that driving her boat came with responsibilities. He was pretty sure breaking the law wasn't one of them.
He took extra care to bring the boat into the dock without bumping it, and as soon as he started tying it up, his friends bolted. Getting out last, Hannah stopped beside him.
"Do you need some help?"
Not lifting his face to look at her, he shook his head. "Nope. I'll see you later."
He could see Hannah's feet in her black sandals, her toes painted purple. For a long moment, she stood there silently, almost as if she was waiting for him to say something else. Or, maybe, to look at her again.
He wished she'd leave already and let him die of humiliation alone.
"Um, your mom's coming, so I guess I'd better go now. I'll see you around."
He swallowed hard past the huge lump in his throat. Why had he decided to go bow riding today? Why couldn't he have just taken everyone out for a cruise on the lake, played it cool?
His mother's footsteps were loud and fast as she walked down the long wooden dock to chew his ass out. Blocking the sun with her shadow as she stood over him, her first words were, "You could have died."
He looked up at his mother, noted the way her voice shook, knew instantly how afraid she'd been of something happening to him. But didn't she get it? He wasn't a little kid anymore. There was no way he would have fallen out, and even if he had, he knew to swim deep to avoid getting chewed up by the propeller.
"I didn't die. I'm fine."
Her expression changed from fear to anger in a heartbeat. "That's all you've got to say to me? No, 'I'm sorry, Mom, I won't do it again.' No, 'Oh gee, I don't know what I was thinking.' Just that you lived through it?"
Knowing he'd better start acting sorry, he said, "I don't know what I was thinking. It won't happen again."
"You scared the shit out of me, kid."
"I know."
She looked at him for a long moment. "Seems like just yesterday you were a little boy."
He stepped away from her and picked up the towels he'd left on the end of the dock. This was exactly what he wanted her to get. Needed her to understand.
"I'm not a kid anymore."
She took a deep breath, then sighed. "I know. And that's why I'm going to have to treat you like a young man instead of a boy." She held out her hand. "Give me the keys."
He stilled, his fingers instinctively closing over the keys.
"I told you, I'm not going to do it again."
"I believe you. But you need to learn a lesson. And since I'm your mom, I'm the one who's going to have to teach it to you." She plucked the keys out of his hand. "The boat is off limits for one week."
Outrage shot through him. "What the hell am I supposed to do in this stupid town without my boat?"
"My boat," she countered. "And now it's two weeks."
First she'd embarrassed the hell out of him in front of Hannah. Now, she was punishing him for one stupid little transgression?
"You suck."
She took a step forward, pushed her index finger into his chest. "Right now, so do you."
Anger caught him, pushed out the words, "I wish I were still in the city with Dad." He wanted her to feel as bad as he did. "No wonder he didn't want to stick around with you. No wonder he divorced you."
But when he finally got what he'd been going for, saw the hurt in his mother's eyes, instead of victory there was only a twisted emptiness. Not knowing how to say he was sorry--not really wanting to either--he ran off the dock.
It would be better for all of them if he started planning his escape to New York City. Only this time, he'd be staying there. For good.
Andrew intended to go back to his rental car, drive into town, find a room at the Inn. Sit down and make a plan to get his son to trust him. But when he got down to the grass at the end of the porch stairs and looked out into the woods that separated his camp from Isabel's, as if pulled by a magnet, his feet started heading that way.
The well-worn path between Poplar Cove and Sunday Morning Camp had grown over and stray branches scratched him through his slacks and long-sleeved button-down shirt. He was dressed all wrong for the lake. As a kid he'd never worn anything other than shorts and T-shirts. He felt like a stuffy old person as he slowly made his way through the woods, the kind of guy he would have made fun of as a kid, a total greenhorn.
He stumbled over a thick dead log and cursed out loud as he caught himself on one of the many poplars his grandparents had named their camp for. His words didn't make much of an impression in the forest, not like they had for three decades in the courtroom.
He thought back two months, when young Douglas Wellings, thirty-five and cocky, called him into the boardroom. There sat the rest of the new guard, a whole host of kids who thought all they needed to win cases was flash and connections. There were a few old guys like him sitting there too, but none of them would meet his eyes. And that's when he'd known. Twenty-five years he'd given to the firm. And it was all gone in an instant.
We all know how bad the economy is. That we've got to make some cuts somewhere. So hard to make this choice. Thanks for your service. Now say good-bye, Grandpa.
For days he made his plans. He'd sue for ageism. For firing him just so they could turn around and hire someone cheaper. He stayed up all night on the Internet, pored through his books, and was just about ready to serve the papers when Sam and Dianna had asked him to meet up in the city.
They were getting married. They wanted him to give Dianna away.
He'd awkwardly blinked back tears on the couch in their living room. Thanked them so profusely for the honor, he knew he'd made them all uncomfortable.
Leaving their house, he realized he wasn't fighting his dismissal so hard because he really wanted his job back. It was simply that he wante
d to prove that he was worth something. To someone. To anyone.
He tightened his grip on the tree trunk, not realizing that the bark was digging into his flesh until a moment too late. Another curse left his lips as he saw a streak of blood across his palm. Thirty years away from this place had made him a greenhorn with soft hands. First thing tomorrow he'd head up to the general store to get himself a new set of lakeworthy clothes.
Sucking his palm into his mouth, he continued making his way through the trees. The flickers of blue between trunks and branches grew larger and larger until the forest gave way to sand.
The sun was glinting off the water and he was momentarily blinded. And then he saw her.
Isabel.
She was sitting on the edge of her dock, her legs dangling in the water, and his heart stopped in his chest. From where he was standing, time had stood still, and he could have sworn he was looking at the fifteen-year-old girl he'd fallen head over heels in love with.
Her straight blond hair still brushed the edge of her shoulders and her frame was as slim as it had been as a teenager. Without thinking, his feet took him toward her.
A speedboat flew by in the bay and it's sleekly modern lines abruptly catapulted him into the present.
Jesus, what was he thinking? That he could come back to Blue Mountain Lake and rewind thirty years? That he could have everything the way he wished it had been, rather than the way it had actually turned out?
Just then, Isabel shifted on the dock, pushing her feet beneath her to stand up. Andrew worked like hell to find an escape route.
Just turn the fuck around and run, you idiot!
But his feet wouldn't move. Instead, all he could do was stand still as a statue and watch as Isabel turned around.
And saw him.
Isabel closed her eyes hard, forced herself to take a breath. Between last night and this morning, her head had grown fuzzier and fuzzier. And then when Ginger had arrived to work the lunch shift, said she'd just met Andrew, Isabel had been hit by an intense headache.
She would have never dreamed of leaving the diner in the middle of the lunch rush if she hadn't been about to throw up all over the sauteing onions. Scott had assured her again and again that he had the situation well in hand. Ginger had walked her out to her car, told her she'd check in on her later that afternoon, see if she needed anything.
And now, as if things weren't already bad as Isabel reeled from her confrontation with Josh, Andrew had decided to pay her a visit. She still felt nauseous, but dizzy now too.
She'd tried to convince herself that seeing him again wouldn't hurt, that it wouldn't matter.
But when she opened her eyes again and looked at Andrew MacKenzie, the first boy she'd ever loved, the pain was so intense it took her breath away.
Thirty years she'd spent telling herself she was over him. But now ... now she knew the truth. Knew it as well as she knew her own face in the mirror. As well as she knew the shape of Josh's head beneath her hand as she'd stroked his hair as a child so that he could fall back to sleep in the middle of the night after a bad dream.
She'd never gotten over Andrew MacKenzie. And now, here he was, standing on her beach, staring at her as if he'd seen a ghost.
Her hands went to her throat as she tried to remember how to breathe, a thousand insecurities popping up to the surface at once. The ten pounds she'd put on, mostly from her stomach down after having Josh. The lines on her forehead, beside her eyes, around her mouth and on her neck. The gray hairs that had been waging a war with the blond ones and winning without a fight. The wrinkled jeans and old T-shirt she wore in the kitchen, stained from the farmer's market pesto and tomato sauces she'd made early that morning.
She was tempted to jump into the lake and swim away, but she was going to have to deal with Andrew sometime. Better just to get it over with.
She didn't hurry down the dock, didn't put a smile on her face, didn't have the will for anything so false. But she wouldn't let herself scowl either, opting for no expression whatsoever, a blank face that she hoped told the man on her beach he meant nothing more to her than any stranger.
Just as slowly, he came toward her, his expensive pressed button-down shirt and slacks suiting him to a T, even as they looked ridiculously out of place on the shore.
Thirty years had taken their toll on him too. His light brown hair was mostly gray and he looked like he hadn't slept a full night in a decade, but that was all surface stuff. As much as she wished otherwise, Isabel could see the magnificent young man he'd once been. Clearly, he was still in good shape and she guessed he put in the hours in the gym to keep up his physique. His hands were still big, his shoulders still broad.
"Isabel."
Hearing her name from his lips again made her feet falter beneath her and she had to dig down deep to keep moving.
She lifted her chin, met his gaze straight on. "Andrew."
"My God, you're still so beautiful."
Her breath left her lungs in shock, her mouth opening, closing with the shock of his words.
"You look exactly the same, Isabel."
"Stop." She held up both hands, saw they were shaking, shoved them into her pockets. "Don't."
She needed to cut him off at the pass before he said anything else, needed to make it clear where the boundaries were.
And that he had no right to any part of her heart.
"I take it you're here to get Poplar Cove ready for your son's wedding."
He didn't answer for a long moment, his gaze growing even more intense. Finally, he nodded. "Yes. And to help Connor too." He cleared his throat. "He's going through a rough patch right now. I need to be here for him."
Listening to Andrew talk about his son with such love mucked around with her insides. He was too close, close enough to set off a thousand butterflies from their cocoons. And, stupidly, she couldn't help but note the absence of a wedding ring on his left hand. As if it mattered whether or not he was married.
"But Sam and Connor aren't the only reason I came back, Izzy."
She hadn't heard that nickname in thirty years. Wouldn't have dreamed of letting anyone call her Izzy. Her ears started ringing, a high-pitched whine. She couldn't listen to any more of this, not now, not on the dock in front of her house, not in the very place he'd told her he loved her for the very first time.
"Don't call me that," she said, but the clouds were drawing a curtain on the sun, turning daylight to night. She felt herself falling, wanted it to be anywhere but into his arms.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ANDREW LIFTED Isabel up and rushed up the beach to her house. Seeing her black out like that had scared him and even though her eyelids were already blinking open, her eyes working to focus on his face, he was still shaken.
"I'm fine," she tried, but the words sounded weak, utterly unlike her.
"Shh," he said, instinctively pressing his lips against her forehead. "I've got you," he said as he took the steps up to where he remembered the old master bedroom being as a kid. Pushing the door open with one knee, he saw that Isabel had indeed taken over the room from her parents, had transformed it as her own.
Gently laying her down on the bed, he moved across the room, picked up a blanket from a chest in the corner. He took it back to the bed, covered her with it, sat down on the edge of the mattress and stroked her hair. A thousand emotions rushed through him as he took her in, lying on the bed, her blond hair fanned out on the pillow. There was no point wishing he could have woken up to her like this a thousand times in the past thirty years. But he wished it anyway.
And then she was shifting beneath the blanket, kicking it off to push away from him and sit up against the thick wood headboard, holding her head in her hands.
"What do you want, Andrew?"
He remembered now, she'd never been a shrinking violet, had never been scared to tell him exactly what she thought. But he was worried about the way she'd dropped on the beach, had to make
sure she wasn't ill.
"Are you sick?"
"No." The word was a sharp bullet from her lips.
"You fainted."
She massaged her temples. "I have a headache. I didn't sleep well." She dropped her hands, glared at him. "Why the hell are you here?"
"Izzy--"
"I already told you not to call me that."
He took a breath, found his lungs didn't want to take in--or give--any air.
"I came to say I'm sorry."
She blinked once, twice, almost as if she were trying to figure out just what game he was playing. "Okay."
He was stunned by her response. There had to be more there, didn't there?
But she was already swinging her legs around the opposite side of the bed. He reached out a hand to stop her from leaving.
"No, wait."
He looked down at where they were touching, felt the same strong surge of electricity that had always been between them. He knew he should pull his hand away, but he just couldn't let go of her. Not when he'd waited so long to touch her again.
"Please. I need to say these things."
Her chest was rising and falling fast as she shook off his hand.
"Fine." She shifted farther from him on the bed. "Go ahead."
He hadn't had time to rehearse this, hated trying to win her over without a plan.
"I screwed up, Isabel. I know you already know that, but I've wanted you to hear me say it for so long. I don't know what happened thirty years ago, why I got drunk that night and ..."
"And slept with someone else," she said, quickly finishing his sentence. "Knocked her up and got married."
He went completely rigid. "You were the one I loved. Always."
"You should have thought of that before you had sex with her."
"I was a stupid kid. Full of hormones. I didn't know what to do with them."
"Really?" she challenged. "You couldn't find any new excuses in the past thirty years? Couldn't think of anything more interesting than how hard up you were because I wouldn't put out? That's sad, Andrew. Really sad."
"I swear to you, if I had known the way it was going to turn our lives upside down, if I could have seen how it was all going to turn out, I never would have done it."
"You still don't get it, do you? You think we ended because you got her pregnant, don't you? Because you had to do the right thing and marry her? You think if it had just been that one night with no consequences, then I would have eventually forgiven you."