Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish (3 page)

Mac had been over on the wild side, camping, and he had seen her get into trouble. He’d already been in his canoe fighting the rough water to get to her before she hit the log.

He had picked her out of the water, somehow not capsizing his own canoe in the process, and taken her to his campsite to a fire, to wait until the lake calmed down to return her to her world.

But somehow she had never quite returned to her world. Lucy had been ripe for what he offered, an escape from a life that had all been laid out for her in a predictable pattern that there, on the side of the lake with her rescuer, had seemed like a form of death.

In all her life, it seemed everyone—her parents, her friends—only saw in her what they wanted her to be. And that was something that filled a need in them.

And then Mac had come along. And effortlessly he had seen through all that to what was real. Or so it had seemed.

And the truth was, soaking wet, gasping for air on a rotting dock, lying beside Mac, Lucy felt now exactly as she had felt then.

As if her whole world shivered to life.

As if black and white became color.

It had to be near-death experiences that did that: sharpened awareness to a razor’s edge. Because she was so aware of Mac. She could feel the warmth of the breath coming from his mouth in puffs. There was an aura of power around him that was palpable, and in her weakened state, reassuring.

With a groan, he put his hands on either side of his chest and lifted himself to kneeling, and then quickly to standing.

He held out his hand to her, and she reached for it and he pulled her, his strength as easy as it was electrifying, to her feet.

Mac scooped the blanket from the dock where she had dropped it, shook it out, looped it around her shoulders and then his own, and then his arms went around her waist and he pulled her against the freezing length of him.

“Don’t take this personally,” he said. “It’s a matter of survival, plain and simple.”

“Thank you for clarifying,” she said, with all the dignity her chattering teeth would allow. “You needn’t have worried. I had no intention of ravishing you. You are about as sexy as a frozen salmon at the moment.”

“Still getting in the last shot, aren’t you?”

“When I can.”

Cruelly, at that moment she realized a sliver of warmth radiated from him, and she pulled herself even closer to the rock-hard length of his body.

Their bodies, glued together by freezing, wet clothing, shook beneath the blanket. She pressed her cheek hard against his chest, and he loosed a hand and touched her soaking hair.

“You hate it,” she said, her voice quaking.

“It wasn’t my best entrance,” he agreed.

“I meant my hair.”

“I know you did,” he said softly. “Hello, Lucy.”

“Hello, Macintyre.”

Standing here against Mac, so close she could feel the pebbles of cold rising on his chilled skin, she could also feel his innate strength. Warmth was returning to his body and seeping into hers.

The physical sensation of closeness, of sharing spreading heat, was making her vulnerable to other feelings, the very ones she had hoped to steel herself against.

It was not just weak. The weakness could be assigned to the numbing cold that had seeped into every part of her. Even her tongue felt heavy and numb.

It was not just that she never wanted to move again. That could be assigned to the fact that her limbs felt slow and clumsy and paralyzed.

No, it was something worse than being weak.

Something worse than being paralyzed.

In Macintyre Hudson’s arms, soaked, her Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas providing as much protection against him as a wet paper towel, Lucy Lindstrom felt the worst weakness of all, the longing she had kept hidden from herself.

Not to be so alone.

Her trembling deepened, and a soblike sound escaped her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said as she admitted the full truth to herself. It was not the cold making her weak. It was him.

Lucy felt a terrible wave of self-loathing. Was life just one endless loop, playing the same things over and over again?

She was cursed at love. She needed to accept that about herself, and devote her considerable energy and talent to causes that would help others, and, as a bonus, couldn’t hurt her.

She pulled away from him, though it took all her strength, physical and mental. The blanket held her fast, so that mere inches separated them, but at least their bodies were no longer glued together.

History, she told herself sternly, was
not
repeating itself.

It was good he was here. She could face him, puncture any remaining illusions and get on with her wonderful life of doing good for others.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, putting her away from him, scanning her face.

She already missed the small warmth that had begun to radiate from him. Again, she had to pit what remained of her physical and mental strength to resist the desire to collapse against him.

“I’m fine,” she said tersely.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Well, I’m not hurt. Mortified.”

His expression was one of pure exasperation. “Who nearly drowns and is mortified by it?”

Whew. There was no sense him knowing she was mortified because of her reaction to him. By her sudden onslaught of uncertainty.

They had both been in perilous danger, and she was worried about the impression her hair made? Worried that she looked like a drowned rat? Worried about what pajamas she had on?

It was starting all over again!

This crippling need. He had seen her once, when it seemed no one else could. Hadn’t she longed for that ever since?

Had she pursued getting that message to him so incessantly because of Mama Freda? Or had it been for herself? To feel the way she had felt when his arms closed around her?

Trembling, trying to fight the part of her that wanted nothing more than to scoot back into his warmth, she reminded herself that feeling this way had nearly destroyed her. It had had far-reaching repercussions that had torn her family and her life asunder.

“This is all your fault,” she said. Thankfully, he took her literally.

“I’m not responsible for your bad catch.”

“It was a terrible throw!”

“Yes, it was. All the more reason you shouldn’t have reached for the rope. I could have thrown it again.”

“You shouldn’t have jumped back in the water after me. You could have been overcome by the cold. I’m surprised you weren’t. And then we both would have been in big trouble.”

“You have up to ten minutes in water that cold before you succumb. Plus, I don’t seem to feel cold water like other people. I white-water kayak. I think it has desensitized me. But under no circumstances would I have stood on the pontoon of my plane and watched anyone drown.”

Gee. He wasn’t sensitive, and his rescue of her wasn’t even personal. He would have done it for anyone.

“I wasn’t going to drown,” Lucy lied haughtily, since only moments ago she had been resigned to that very thing. He’d just said she had ten whole minutes. “I’ve lived on this lake my entire life.”

“Oh!” He smacked himself on the forehead with his fist. “How could I forget that? Not only have you lived on the lake your entire life, but so did three generations of your family before you. Lindstroms don’t drown. They die like they lived. Nice respectable deaths in the same beds that they were born in, in the same town they never took more than two steps away from.”

“I lived in Glen Oak for six years,” she said.

“Oh, Glen Oak. An hour away. Some consider Lindstrom Beach to be Glen Oak’s summer suburb.”

Lucy was aware of being furious with herself for the utter weakness of reacting to him. It felt much safer to transfer that fury to him.

He had walked away. Not just from this town. He had walked away from having to give anything of himself. How could he never have considered all the possibilities? They had played with fire all that summer.

She had gotten burned. And he had walked away.

And he had never even said he loved her. Not even once.

CHAPTER THREE

“Y
OU
KNOW
WHAT
,
Macintyre Hudson? You
were a jerk back then, and you’re still a jerk.”

“May I remind you that you begged me to come back here?”

“I did not beg. I appealed to your conscience. And I personally
did not care if you came back.”

“You were a snotty, stuck-up brat and you still are. Here’s a
novel concept,” Mac said, his voice threaded with annoyance, “why don’t you try
thanking me for my heroic rescue? For the second time in your life, by the
way.”

Because of what happened the first time,
you idiot.

“If I needed a hero,” she said with soft fury, “you are the
last person I would pick.”

That hit home. He actually flinched. And she was happy he
flinched.
Snotty, stuck-up brat?

Then a cool veil dropped over the angry sparks flickering in
his eyes, and his mouth turned upward, that mocking smile that was his
trademark, that said
You can’t hurt me—don’t even try.
He folded his arms over the deep strength of his broad chest, and not
because he was cold, either.

“You know what? If I was looking for a damsel in distress, you
wouldn’t exactly be my first pick, either. You’re still every bit the snooty
doctor’s daughter.”

She felt all of it then. The abandonment. The fear she had
shouldered alone in the months after he left. Her parents, who had always doted
on her, looking at her with hurt and embarrassment, as if she could not have let
them down more completely. The friends she had known since kindergarten not
phoning anymore, looking the other way when they saw her.

She felt all of it.

And it felt as if every single bit of it was his fault.

“Just to set the record straight, maybe it’s you who should be
thanking me,” she told him. “I came down here to rescue you. You were the one in
the water.”

“I didn’t need your help....”

So, absolutely nothing had changed. She was, in his eyes, still
the town rich girl, the doctor’s snooty daughter, out of touch with what he
considered to be real.

And he was still the one who didn’t
need.

“Or your botched rescue attempt.”

The fury in her felt white-hot, as if it could obliterate what
remained of the chill on her. Lucy wished she had felt
that
when she had seen him get knocked off the dock by the post. She
wished, instead of running to him, worried about him, she had marched into her
house and firmly shut the door on him.

She hadn’t done that. But maybe it was never too late to
correct a mistake. She could do the right thing this time.

She stepped in close, shivered dramatically, letting him
believe she was weak and not strong, that she needed his body heat back. Mac was
wary, but not wary enough. He let her slip back in, close to him.

Lucy put both her hands on his chest, blinked up at him with
her very best will-you-be-my-hero?
look and then
shoved him as hard as she could.

With a startled yelp, which Lucy found extremely satisfying,
Macintyre Hudson lost his footing and stumbled off the dock, back into the
water. She turned and walked away, annoyed that she was reassured by his
vigorous cursing that he was just fine.

She glanced back. More than fine! Instead of getting out of the
water, Mac shrugged out of his leather jacket and threw it onto the dock. Then,
making the most of his ten minutes, he swam back to his plane.

Within moments he had the entire situation under control, which
no doubt pleased him no end. He fastened the plane to the dock’s other pillar,
which held, then reached inside and tossed a single overnight bag onto the
dock.

She certainly didn’t want him to catch her watching. Why was
she watching? It was just more evidence of the weakness he made her feel. What
she needed to be doing was to be heading for a hot shower at top speed.

Lucy had crossed back into her yard when she heard Mama’s
shout.

“
Ach!
What is going on?”

She turned to see Mama Freda trundling toward her dock, hand
over her brow, trying to see into the sun. Then Mama stopped, and a light came
on in that ancient, wise face that seemed to steal the chill right out of
Lucy.

“Schatz?”

Mac was standing on the dock, and had removed his soaking shirt
and was wringing it out. That was an unfortunate sight for a girl trying to
steel herself against him. His body was absolutely perfect, sleek and strong,
water sluicing down the deepness of his chest to the defined ripples of his
abs.

He dropped the soaked shirt beside his jacket and sprinted over
the dock and across the lawn. He stopped at Mama Freda and grinned down at her,
and this time his grin was so genuine it could have lit up the whole lake. Mama
reached up and touched his cheek.

Then he picked up the rather large bulk of Mama Freda as if she
were featherlight, and swung her around until she was squealing like a young
girl.

“You’re getting me all wet,” she protested loudly, smacking the
broadness of his shoulders with delight. “
Ach
. Put
me down, galoot-head.”

Finally he did, and she patted her hair into place, regarding
him with such affection that Lucy felt something burn behind her eyes.

“Why are you all wet? You’ll catch your death!”

“Your dock broke when I tried to tie to it.”

“You should have told me you were coming,” Mama said
reproachfully.

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“Surprise, schmize.”

Lucy smiled, despite herself. One of Mama’s goals in life
seemed to be to create a rhyme, beginning with
sch,
for every word in the English language.

“You see what happens? You end up in the lake. If you’d just
told me, I would have warned you to tie up to Lucy’s dock.”

“I don’t think Lucy wants me tying up at her dock.”

Only Lucy would pick up his dry double meaning on that. She
could actually feel a bit of a blush moving heat into her frozen cheeks.

“Don’t be silly. Lucy wouldn’t mind.”

He could have thrown her under the bus, because Mama would not
have approved of anyone being pushed into the water at this time of year, no
matter how pressing the circumstances.

But he didn’t. Her gratitude that he hadn’t thrown her under
the bus was short-lived as Mac left the topic of Lucy Lindstrom behind with
annoying ease.

“Mama, I’m freezing. I hope you have
apfelstrudel
fresh from the oven.”

“You have to tell me you’re coming to get strudel fresh from
the oven. That’s not what you need, anyway. Mama knows what you need.”

Lucy could hear the smile in his voice, and was aware again of
Mama working her magic, both of them smiling just moments after all that
fury.

“What do I need, Mama?”

“You need elixir.”

He pretended terror, then dashed back to the dock and picked up
his soaked clothing and the bag, tossed it over his naked shoulder. He returned
and wrapped his arm around Mama’s waist and let her lead him to the house.

Lucy turned back to her own house, her eyes still smarting from
what had passed between those two. The love and devotion shimmered around them
as bright as the strengthening morning sun.

That
was why she had gone to such
lengths to get Macintyre Hudson to come back here. And if another motive had
lain hidden beneath that one, it had been exposed to her in those moments when
his arms had wrapped around her and his heat had seeped into her.

Now that it was exposed, she could put it in a place where she
could guard against it as if her life depended on it.

Which, Lucy told herself through the chattering of her teeth,
it did.

* * *

Out of the
corner of his eye, Mac saw Lucy pause and watch his reunion with
Mama.

“Is that Lucy?” Mama said, catching the direction of his
gaze.

“Yeah, as annoying as ever.”

“She’s a good girl,” Mama said stubbornly.

“Everything she ever aspired to be, then.”

Only, she wasn’t a girl anymore, but a woman. The
good
part he had no doubt about. That was what was
expected of the doctor’s daughter, after all.

Even given the circumstances he had noted the changes. Her hair
was still blond, but it no longer fell, unrestrained by hair clips or elastic
bands, to the slight swell of her breast.

Plastered to her head, it hadn’t looked like much, but he was
willing to bet that when it was dry it was ultrasophisticated, and would show
off the hugeness of those dazzling green eyes, the pixie-perfection of her
dainty features. Still, Mac was aware of fighting the part of him that missed
how it used to be.

She had lost the faintly scrawny build of a long-distance
runner, and filled out, a fact he could not help but notice when she had pressed
the lusciousness of her freezing body into his.

She seemed uptight, though, and the level of her anger at him
gave him pause.

Unbidden, he wondered if she ever slipped into the lake and
skinny-dipped under the full moon. Would she still think it was the most daring
thing a person could do, and that she was risking arrest and public
humiliation?

What made her laugh now? In high school it seemed as if she had
been at the center of every circle, popular and carefree. That laugh, from deep
within her, was so joyous and unchained the birds stopped singing to listen.

Mac snorted in annoyance with himself, reminding himself curtly
that he had broken that particular spell a long time ago. Though if that was
completely true, why the reluctance to return Lucy’s calls? Why the aversion to
coming back?

If that was completely true, why had he
told Lucy Lindstrom, of all people, that his father had been a
ditchdigger?

That had been bothering him since the words had come out of his
mouth. Maybe that confession had even contributed to the fiasco on the dock.

* * *

“What’s she doing?” Mama asked, worried. “Is she wet,
too? She looks wet.”

“We both ended up in the lake.”

“But how?”

“A comedy of errors. Don’t worry about it, Mama.”

But Mama was determined to worry. “She should have come here. I
would look after her. She could catch her death.”

Mama Freda, still looking after everyone. Except maybe herself.
She was looking toward Lucy’s house as if she was thinking of going to get
her.

He noticed the grass blended seamlessly together, almost as if
the lawns of the two houses were one. That was new. Dr. Lindstrom had gone to
great lengths to accentuate the boundaries of his yard, to lower any risk of
association with the place next door.

Despite now sharing a lawn with its shabby neighbor, the
Lindstrom place still looked like something off a magazine spread.

A bank of French doors had been added to the back of the house.
Beyond the redwood of the multilayered deck, a lawn, tender with new grass,
ended at a sea of yellow and red tulips. The flowers cascaded down a gentle
slope to the fine white sand of the private beach.

On the L-shaped section of the bleached gray wood of the dock a
dozen canoes were upside down.

What was with all the canoes? He was pretty sure that Mama had
said Lucy was by herself since she had come home a year ago.

A bird called, and Mac could smell the rich scent of sun
heating the fallen needles of the ponderosa pine.

As he gazed out over the lake, he was surprised by how much he
had missed this place. Not the town, which was exceptionally cliquey; you were
either “in” or you were “out” in Lindstrom Beach.

Lucy’s family had always been “in.” Of course, “in” was
determined by the location of your house on the lake, the size of the lot, the
house itself, what kind of boat you had and who your connections were. “In” was
determined by your occupation, your membership in the church and the yacht club,
and by your income, never mentioned outright, always insinuated.

He, on the other hand, had been “out,” a kid of questionable
background, in foster care, in Mama’s house, the only remaining of the original
cabins that had been built around the lake in the forties. Her house, little
more than a fishing shack, had been the bane of the entire neighborhood.

And so the sharing of the lawn was new and unexpected.

“Do you and Lucy go in together to hire someone to look after
the grounds?” he asked.

“No, Lucy does it.”

That startled him. Lucy mowed the expansive lawns? He couldn’t
really imagine her pushing a lawn mower. He remembered her and her friends
sitting on the deck in their bikinis while the “help” sweated under the hot sun
keeping the grounds of her house immaculate. But he didn’t want Lucy to crowd
back into his thoughts.

“You look well, Mama,” he said, an invitation for her to
confide in him. He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

“I look well. You look terrible.” She gave his freezing, naked
torso a hard pinch. “No meat on your bones. Eating in restaurants. I can tell by
your coloring.”

He thought his coloring might be off because he had just had a
pretty good dunking in some freezing water, but he knew from long experience
that there was no telling Mama.

They approached the back of her house. The porch door was
choked with overgrown lilacs, drooping with heavy buds. Mac pushed aside some
branches and opened the screen door. It squeaked outrageously. He could see the
floorboards of her screened porch were as rotten as her dock.

He frowned at the attempt at a repair. Had she hired some
haphazard handyman?

“Who did this?” he said, toeing the new board.

“Lucy,” she said, eyeing the disastrous repair with pride.
“Lucy helps me with lots of things around here.”