Manhunting (3 page)

“Yeah, well, I think that problem’s about to be solved,” Will said. “In the meantime, there’s Mom. She’s worried about you. And me,” he added when Jake started to speak. “But mostly you. Because of your advanced age.”

“Oh, hell,” Jake said. “What’s she want?”

“She wants us to get married. She wants grandkids.”

Jake shrugged. “So, you give her some.”

“I’m not married,” Will said firmly. “And I’m not going to be.”

Jake raised his eyebrows. “Valerie may have a different idea.”

Will shook his head. “Valerie has plans for her future that do not include me, thank God.” He sipped some coffee and thought before he went on. “One of those big chains has been scouting her. They’re going to be offering her big bucks any day now to be social director of the East Coast or something, and she will be gone.”

Jake looked at his brother curiously. “And you’re not concerned about this?”

“I’m relieved. Valerie really is a terrific woman, and I appreciate everything she’s done for the resort, but she’s getting on my nerves. You know, I’m not even sure how we ended up living together.”

“I am,” Jake said, turning back to the lake. “Sex. It’s a powerful force, my boy, and women use it.”

“Is that why you gave them up?” Will asked, sympathetically. “Did paranoia drive you to celibacy?”

“It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you,” Jake said. “And frankly, I think Valerie’s got you. And I’ll bet Valerie thinks so, too.”

“Nobody’s got me,” Will said. “I’m married to my job.”

Jake looked at him as if he were demented.

“Hey, some of us have careers,” Will protested. “Besides, I’m not ready for anything serious.”

“Three years sharing a hotel suite isn’t serious?”

“See, this is the kind of stuff I get from Mom.” Will narrowed his eyes at his brother. “Which brings me back to my point. I think Valerie and Mom are right.”

“I hate this,” Jake said. “You feel guilty, so I get to suffer.”

“You need some focus to your life, some goals, something to look forward to besides a sunrise.” Will looked stern. “If you don’t want to move back to the city, fine. But I think you should get married.”

“I did,” Jake said, looking back at the lake. “I didn’t like it. It’s your turn to screw up your life. I did mine already.”

“So you’re happy in your lonely little cabin at the end of that lonely little lane,” Will said. “All by yourself in that big cold bed.”

“Don’t ever go into psychology,” Jake said. “You have the subtlety of a rock.”

“Don’t you ever think about the perfect woman?” Will said.

“Sure,” Jake said. “She’s about five foot two, somewhere between eighteen and twenty, dumb as a coot, and she thinks I’m God.”

Will looked disgusted. “She’d have to be dumb as a coot to pull that last one off. I’m serious, here.”

“The thing about women,” Jake said, “is that they got liberated too fast. They never learned to be straightforward about life because they had to sneak around for about a thousand years tricking men into doing things they wanted. So they manipulate you instead of telling you what they want, so you never know where the hell you are. And then they get mad at you and bitch.” He swallowed a mouthful of coffee and shook his head. “I have had it up to here with smart-mouthed, overly brainy, manipulative women.”

“So don’t get married to Tiffany again,” Will said reasonably. “Find your moronic midget and marry her. And then get your life moving before you turn into a potted plant and the help starts watering you.”

Jake ignored him and went on. “If I ever do hook up with anybody again—and I sincerely doubt that I will, so wipe that hopeful look off your face—it will be with someone who thinks that being with somebody who mows lawns is her idea of heaven on earth and who will do exactly what I tell her to do and love it.”

“I think Donna Reed is dead,” Will said.

Jake slid down farther in his chair. “Well, then, I’m not getting married again. Over to you, bro.”

“Now wait a minute,” Will began, but he stopped when he heard the reservations phone ringing inside the office.

“Another sucker who wants to pay too much money to play vertical golf.” Jake shook his head. “I thought you were nuts when you had that course built on the hillside, but they do come running.”

The phone rang again.

“Concentrate on getting married and resuming your regularly scheduled life,” Will said on his way back inside. “Who knows? Maybe this is your future bride calling right now.”

“Like hell,” Jake said and went back to the sunrise.

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Kate didn’t notice how lovely the little town was until she’d driven halfway through it. The four-hour drive down to the resort had been filled with thoughts of dread, panic, and the fancy underwear that Jessie had talked her into buying as inspiration. She was still trying to decide whether the best plan was to do a dignified sulk for the next two weeks or to wear the underwear and develop a better attitude, when she realized how charming everything around her was.

The shady old streets were lined with thick-trunked trees and the antique storefronts were painted in faded roses and blues and yellows with gold-edged lettering in the windows. Cline’s Dry Goods. Dickerson’s Snack Shop. Beamis Hardware. Stores with family names that had probably been there for generations. The whole town of Toby’s Corners smelled of dust and honeysuckle, and Kate drove through it all and thought of Mary Jane shoes and ice-cream cones and football games and all the things she’d read about but never known.

This would have been a lovely place to grow up,
she thought.
This would have felt like a home. Maybe my life would have been different if I’d started out in a place like Toby’s Corners—a place full of dusty sunlight and trees and possibilities.

And then she shook her head.
Pull yourself together, Kate,
she told herself.
You have a goal and a plan. Concentrate.

She turned right at a low slung white building that said
Nancy’s Place
in pink neon over the double wood doors and slowed to look at it. It had to be a bar or a restaurant—the parking lot was the biggest she’d seen in the town so far—but it was the most low-key bar she’d ever seen, no signs for beer or ads for Wet-T-shirt Wednesdays, just an ancient handpainted “Welcome” sign in white on the knotty-pine doors. Even the bars in this town were clean and cute. She’d landed in Disneyland Kentucky.

Past
Nancy’s Place,
the road began to wind into the woods. The subtle light felt cool, almost sensuous as she drove slowly under the trees, savoring the woodsy smell. The woods were dim and secret, and when she shivered, it wasn’t just from the chill of leaving the sun.
There’s something...exciting about the woods,
she thought.
Maybe something will happen here. Maybe I’ll fall in love. Maybe everything will work out here. Jessie said all I have to do is choose. Well, I choose to be happy and successful and...and unafraid. I’ll be like Jessie. Absolutely fearless. I’ll even get up early tomorrow and find the lake, and I’ll swim in the nude. I really will.

Then she rounded the last turn, and thought,
Oh, maybe not.

The resort stood before her looking like a log cabin with a thyroid problem. Much larger than it had seemed in the brochure, it rose up in ranks of clustered cabins, carefully stacked like children’s blocks at slight angles to one another, each with a private natural-wood deck. Abraham Lincoln’s place crossed with Tara, midwifed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Oh, no,
Kate thought.
It’s too big.

Even worse, there seemed to be at least a thousand people milling around. If she went skinny-dipping in the morning, she’d probably turn up in vacation slides all over the Midwest—“And here’s a shot of that crazy woman who used to go swimming buck naked every morning. Notice how her breasts are startin‘ to droop?”

She sighed and pulled up next to the hotel entrance.

I hate this!
Kate thought. She steeled herself and walked through the big carved double doors into the lobby, looking cool and efficient in her silk suit, detached from everyone around her. One of the generic distinguished-looking men Jessie had promised her held the door for her as she went in, but she was concentrating so hard on maintaining her image that she noticed him as a possibility only in passing. Later. One thing at a time. Where had all these people come from?

The desk manager smiled at her as she signed the register card. “Welcome to The Cabins, Miss Swanson.”

“Svenson.”

“Of course. I’m Will Templeton. We’re really glad you’re here.”

Kate repressed the impulse to ask why. Will Templeton was tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome, and he was glad to see her. It would take a woman with an extremely bad attitude to assume that what this man was truly glad to see was her Visa card.

“You’ll want to see my Visa card,” Kate said.

“No, no, that was all taken care of when you reserved by phone. You’re in cabin 9A. Up past the tennis courts there and beyond the croquet lawn. You can park your car right behind the cabin.”

The croquet lawn. Well, it could be worse. They’d have to stop knocking balls around when the sun went down. And at least she wasn’t staying in that rabbit warren of a hotel with God-knows-who....

From behind her, a lilting soprano bubbled, “Was that cabin 9A, you said?”

The manager said, “I certainly did, Miss Craft,” and Kate turned.

Miss Craft, young, blond, and built like a Barbie doll, had eyes of cornflower blue, a tilted-up nose, and a genuinely sweet smile on her lovely full lips. She looked about nineteen.

Great,
Kate thought.
My competition. I bet nothing on her droops. I bet she doesn’t even wear underwear.

“I’m Penny Craft,” the Barbie doll said, holding out her hand to Kate. “I’ll be right next door in 9B.”

“Oh, good,” Kate said.

“And I was wondering, if you’d mind, could you possibly give me a lift to the cabin? With my luggage? The bellboys here are real busy....”

“No problem,” Kate said. “I’d be happy to.” She took her key from Will and tried hard to ignore him when he called after them. “Don’t you ladies forget the luau tonight.”

“Oh, we sure won’t,” Penny Craft squealed back.

Luggage said a lot about a person, Kate realized as she walked Penny to the car. She herself had one charcoal-gray suitcase and a briefcase. Penny had three pieces of pink luggage.
Guess which one of us has more fun,
Kate thought as she helped Penny load her bags into the car. Then she began the drive to the cabin, going slowly to avoid all the people who dodged in front of her on the way, evidently having such a good time that they wanted to die where they stood.

Kate glared at one of them. “This place has too many people.”

“Oh, no.” Penny waved to someone. “I
love
people.”

“I sensed that.”

Penny smiled at her. “They say it’s a lot quieter near the cabins.”

Kate looked at her curiously. “I’d think you’d prefer the hotel.”

“No.” Penny waved to someone else. “I’m planning on seeing all the guys I can while I’m here, and you know how nosy people in hotels are.”

“What do you mean, ‘seeing’?”

“Oh, you know—dance, talk, laugh... Have as much fun as possible,” Penny said cheerfully. “I’m getting married next month. This is my last chance.”

“Oh,” Kate said after a pause. “Well, good luck.”

“Thank you.” Penny turned and looked at her. “Why did you come here?”

Good question. She was going to strangle Jessie. “Oh, you know—to dance, talk, laugh.” Kate glared at all the people swarming around her car. “Maybe swim naked in the pool.”

“Are you allowed to do that?”

Kate closed her eyes. Penny really was as dumb as a rock. “If you get up very early,” she said.

“Oh. I thought maybe you were writing a travel article or something.”

“A travel article? Why?”

“Well, why else would somebody all businesslike like you be up here?”

“To meet men?” Kate suggested.

“Oh, sure,” Penny said and giggled.

* * *

Cabin 9, when they found it after two wrong turns, was several yards from the croquet field, and Kate cheered up when she saw how private it was. She was even happier when she took her briefcase inside. The bedroom, paneled in knotty pine, was compact but cozy, and Kate dropped her briefcase on the patchwork-covered double bed with a sigh of relief. This was going to be fine. She needed a rest, and this was lovely. Even if she didn’t meet anyone...

She stopped. Of course, she was going to meet someone. She had a plan. She squared her shoulders and went outside to unload the luggage.

Kate was putting the last of Penny’s suitcases on the ground when a man strolled down the path with his hands in his pockets.

“Need any help?” he asked lazily as he came near her, and she was forced to turn and look at him. He was big, broad, and slow-moving, dressed in plaid flannel and denim. His hair was thick, dark and untrimmed, his black-brown eyes were lazy, and his nose had definitely been broken at least once in the past; it lurched slightly to the left over his full, neat mustache. But the finishing touch for Kate was his generous, cream-colored Stetson hat. A cowboy hat. Unbelievable.

Then he smiled at her—a friendly, no-come-on smile—and she almost smiled back before she caught herself.
Absolutely not,
she told herself.
You are not going to fall for some dumb, macho, good-looking good old boy. You have a plan. He is not part of your plan. Besides, he looks like a cowboy, and you’re not interested in cowboys. Especially not this far north of the Rio Grande.

“I think I can manage.” She turned to pull her suitcase out of the car. “Thank you.”

“Well,
hello.”
They both turned at the sound of Penny’s voice to see her standing at the top of the porch steps, slender and lovely, vibrating with pleasure at seeing a man.

“Penny, this is...?” Kate faced him.