Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish (9 page)

She was aware of Mac giving her a sidelong look, but also of a little smile tickling the edges of his mouth that was quite different from his devil-may-care smile.

“Well, that I can’t resist!” And then quiet little Beth Adams, whom she had always liked, stepped forward. “I’ll try it.” She gave Lucy a quick, hard hug, and said quietly, “It is so good to see you.”

It was so sincere that Lucy felt tears sting her eyes.

After that it was as if a dam had burst. People coming and hugging her, shaking Mac’s hand, saying how good it was to see them both.

The party moved out onto the lawn as everyone lined up to watch Beth try the bike. Beth hitched up her skirt and kicked off her shoes. Lucy got on the backseat. There was laughter and encouragement as they wobbled down the path.

“Sing,” Lucy ordered Mac.

He was a good sport.

“Ring the bell,” Lucy called as they turned around at the parking lot and came back, the assembled crowd scattering off the walkway. “Don’t get going too fast, the brakes are faulty.”

Beth rang the bell, as Mac sang.

The way his eyes rested on her, it almost felt as if he was singing to her. He looked so proud of her!

Then Beth called her sister, Prue, to try it with her. Prue gamely hitched up her dress and tossed her shoes on the grass.

Mac started the song all over. Lucy sang with him.

And then to her amazement, everyone was singing.

Laughter flowed as others tried the bike, first some of the women together, and then couples.

It seemed everyone had to have a turn.

* * *

Mac nursed his
lemonade, delivered to him and Lucy on the lawn by a very sulky Claudia. He was glad to be out of the clubhouse and back into the sunshine.

The yacht club had surprised him. Once, it had seemed like
the
place that meant you’d arrived, the exclusive enclave of the old and wealthy Lindstrom Beach families. He’d never been invited here when he lived here, nor had he attended the functions that had been open to the public, a kind of reverse snub.

Now, all these years later he’d been to places that were truly exclusive. Many of them.

And in comparison the Lindstrom Beach Yacht Club seemed like a three trying to be a nine. It had a “clubhouse” feel to it, but not in a good way. There was carpet, which was always a bad idea in a place close to water. The paneling was too dark and the paintings too somber.

He smiled as Lucy got everyone moving to the deck and then down on the lawn.

There was quite a gathering of people he’d gone to school with, some of them relatively unchanged, some changed for the worse. Most had arrived in the powerboats that were tied to the dock, and most of the women, at least, were “dressed,” their opportunity to haul out the expensive cocktail dresses they normally wouldn’t get a chance to wear.

Billy Johnson had aged poorly and had a tortured comb-over hairdo, and a potbelly.

Lucy was as he remembered her, finally. At the heart of it all. Encouraging them to laugh and have fun. Just as in the old days, they thought they were so cool, but they were chirping along to that hokey old song.

In her smudged pants and sleeveless top, with her knee bashed up, he thought she did look like queen.

He loved how she was getting everyone on that bicycle.

He loved how they were all singing that song, Lucy waving her arms around like a bandleader.

He noticed Claudia simmering beside him.

“You and Billy should try it,” he said.

“Why would I?” she snapped.

“Come on, Claudia,” Billy said. “Everybody but us has tried it. We could win the prize!”

She had been getting drinks when Lucy had announced the prize so Mac had to bite back a shout of laughter.

Annoyed, Claudia nonetheless did not want to seem like the only spoilsport on the lawn.

And Billy still had a bit of the captain of the football team in him. Or a few too many drinks. Because where everyone else had gone up the path and around the parking lot a few times, Billy began to go up the long steep driveway that people used to get their boats into the water.

At the top, he and Claudia disappeared onto Lakeshore Drive.

“Riding to town,” someone guessed.

“Had a wreck,” someone else said. “Impaired driving!”

“Oh, here they come!”

They had just turned around somewhere on the road. Claudia had obviously missed the part about the brakes, Billy had possibly already had too many drinks to get it.

As they whirred down the hill on the ancient bicycle, the little crowd burst into song.

The bike was wobbling but picking up speed. Billy was yelling, happily, “Faster! Faster!” He put his head down, pedaled with fury.

Claudia, her cocktail dress flying in the wind behind her was shrieking to him to slow down.

The crowd sang boisterously, saluting the couple with their wineglasses.

The bike careened down the hill and past the crowd. It went down the cement ramp that allowed boats to be backed gently into the lake.

Mac wasn’t sure that Billy even tried the brake.

In fact, he seemed to be yelling “Ta-da” as they entered the water in a great spray of foam.

Claudia, on the backseat, flew off and into him, just as he and Lucy had done earlier.

It was spectacular! They both plunged into the water with a great splash.

Claudia floundered and squealed until Billy picked her up and hauled her out of the water. People swarmed around them. Claudia’s dress looked as if it was made out of soggy toilet paper. Her hair hung in horrible ropes. Her makeup was running.

Her husband whirled her around. “Now, honey
, that
was fun! Hey, Lucy, did we win the prize?”

“Oh, you sure did,” Lucy said. She was doubled over with laughter.

“What prize?” Claudia sputtered.

Mac could not take his eyes from Lucy. This is what he remembered. At the very center of it all. Only, there was something about it that was even better.

Because before, there had been no shadows in her.

And now that there were, it was twice as gratifying to see them go away. And now that there were, it was like seeing the sun after weeks of rain.

Beautiful.

The most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“I’
VE
GOT
TO
make some changes to the gala,” Lucy panted. She was on the front of the bike, pedaling with all her might. They had left the yacht club and were on the final hill before her house. “I had it all wrong. It was like, when I was planning it, I was trying to win their approval. And none of them were even coming!”

“Well, they’re all coming now,” he said.

“That remains to be seen. They could all come to their senses before then.”

“I think they just did come to their senses.”

“I don’t want it to be stuffy.”

“Like cocktail hour was before you arrived?”

“Exactly. We need something more fun for the gala. I mean, still a dinner, and obviously it’s too late to change the black-tie part, but what would you think of a comedian?”

“Lucy, please be quiet and pedal the bike!” She didn’t even seem to be tired, bursting with a new energy. Mac wondered what the heck he had unleashed.

Since they knew the bike had no brakes, they walked the final decline in the road. Now that he had seen her light flicker back on, Mac felt honor bound to fan it to life, to keep it going, and it didn’t take much.

Over the next few days, he did simple things. He brought a pack of hot dogs and some sticks to her place, and they roasted wieners over an open fire. And then cooked marshmallows, and ate them until their hands and faces were sticky.

He had the bike fixed and they rode it into town for ice cream.

He had one of his double kayaks sent up, and they began to explore the lake in the afternoons.

All this wholesome fun was great, but he wanted to show her more. He wanted to show her a bigger world than Lindstrom Beach. He wanted to show her he was more than the boy he had once been. That he had succeeded in a different place and moved in that place with comfort and confidence.

It occurred to him that his need to show her something more of himself was not strictly within the goal he had set for himself of showing Lucy some fun.

But since he already knew just how he would do it, he refused to ask the question whether he was going deeper than he had ever intended to go.

* * *

“Miss Lindstrom?” a deep voice, faintly muffled voice said.

“Yes?” Lucy shook herself awake, played along. She was still in bed. She looked at the clock. It was 6:00 a.m. A girl could live to wake up to the sound of his voice, even when he was trying to disguise it.

“You have won an all-expense-paid trip to Vancouver, B.C. Your flight is departing from the Freda dock in ten minutes.”

That sounded so fun. And exciting. Lucy marveled at this woman she had become. But maybe they’d better set some limits.

“Mac!”

His voice became normal. “How did you guess?”

“You’re the only one I know with a plane tied up at Mama’s dock. I can’t come—for goodness’ sake, the gala is days away. This is no time to be taking off.”

“Literally, taking off.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I’m coming over.”

Something in her sighed. Mac coming over, them passing back and forth between houses as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

The truth was she couldn’t wait to see him. Seeing him for the first time in a day always felt so wonderful. She told herself she had to stop this. She told herself she was playing with fire.

But she had set it off, all those days ago when he had shown up with the bicycle to see if they could be friends.

And it seemed as if they could.

Okay, so she yearned to taste him. To hold him. To kiss him. But no, that had ruined everything last time.

This time she was going to be satisfied with friendship.

She wrapped her housecoat around her and went to the door. Mac looked incredible, of course, in a nice shirt and khakis.

“You spend an awful lot of time in that housecoat, Lucy Lin.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

He grinned wickedly. “So, what do you say? You want to come play?”

“One of us has to be a responsible adult! The gala—”

“Part of the reason for the trip,” he said with sincerity.

She folded her hands over her chest, waiting to see how he was going to pull this off.

“Mama found out it’s not just about Mother’s Day. That it’s in her honor. She’s quite impressed that something at the yacht club is being held in her honor. She considers it
swanky.
”

“But it’s supposed to be a surprise!”

“Come on. There are no secrets in Lindstrom Beach.”

That, Lucy knew firsthand. “Did you tell her?”

He looked hurt. “No. Agnes Butterfield. It slipped out, apparently. Mama thinks it’s a good thing she found out, because, according to her, she has nothing suitable to wear to such a
swanky
venue.”

“Could you quit saying
swanky
like that? As if we’re a bunch of small town hicks putting on airs?”

“Consider swanky banned from my vocabulary. If you’ll come.”

Really? A fly-in shopping trip to the big city? How on earth could she refuse that? Apparently he still thought she was resisting, and it was fun to make him try and convince her to do something she’d already decided she wanted to do.

“Mama says a galoot-head like myself cannot be trusted to help her pick a dress.”

He was pushing all the right buttons. “Mac, she has more dresses and matching hats than the queen.” But she said it weakly.

The carefree look melted from his face. He turned from her and looked over the inky darkness of the lake. His voice was low when he spoke. “She told me nothing she owns fits, that she lost a lot of weight last winter.”

Lucy felt that ripple of fear. “I never noticed that,” she said, biting a nail.

“I didn’t, either. I thought it was because I hadn’t seen her for a while. She said it’s because she walks more, now that she doesn’t have a driver’s license.”

Lucy closed her eyes, tried to swallow the fear and think rationally. She realized she was really dealing with two kinds of fear.

One, that something was wrong with Mama that had her losing weight and planning her own funeral.

And two, that Mac Hudson was standing on her back deck, and he still made her feel as though she was melting.

There was something quintessentially sexy about a man who could fly an airplane.

As if he knew she had given in, he said, “I told her I’d get her a new dress for her birthday. Lucy, we’ll leave in a few minutes, shop, have a nice private birthday lunch with Mama and be home by early evening. It will be fun.”

Oh, more fun. Didn’t it seem like she was setting herself up for a heartbreak? Because he would leave and all the fun she was becoming so accustomed to would stop.

It was only a heartbreak if there was love involved she told herself. They were just friends. Besides, when was the last time she had just had a lighthearted shopping trip?

Come to think of it, Lucy realized, she was going to need a dress, too.

And come to think of it, she needed a dress that would show Mac she was not quite the stick-in-the-mud, fun-free creature he seemed to believe she was.

And maybe that she had come to believe she was, too!

Besides, wouldn’t it be the best of exercises to prove that not only was she capable of embracing a spontaneous day of pure fun, but that she didn’t have anything to fear from her reactions to Mac anymore?

She was a grown-up. So was he.

They could be friends. They had been proving that all week, with their strongest bond being their mutual caring for Mama Freda.

Still, this felt different than hanging out over a bonfire, eating marshmallows until they were sticky and sick.

Lucy found herself choosing what to wear very carefully. Finally, she settled on jeans, high heels, a white tailored shirt and a leather jacket. She’d finished with a dusting of makeup, a few curls in her too-short hair, and big gold hoop earrings. The look she was hoping for was casual but stunning.

And from the almost surprised male appreciation in his eyes, she had achieved it.

Mac helped Mama into the plane. Then it was her turn, and his hand closed around hers to hand her up. Given that the plane was bobbing on water, and they were stepping from the dock, this took more physical contact than Lucy had prepared herself for, but at least she didn’t end up with his hand on her backside!

Her reaction to it, she told herself, was only evidence that it was time for her to stop being such a hermit.

Mama insisted on sitting in the back.

Apparently she was terrified of flying, a small detail that she was not going to allow to get in the way of a shopping trip and a new dress.

Mac leaned into the back to help her with her seat belt, but she refused the headset Mac passed to her. Instead, out of a gargantuan red handbag, she pulled a bulky eight-track tape player. After checking batteries, she plugged in an eight-track cassette. Then, she fished through the enormous purse, pulled out a book of word searches and a pencil and hunkered down in her seat.

“Mama, there’s nothing to be worried about,” Mac told her.

“Worried, schmurried,” she muttered without looking up from the book.

He shrugged and grinned at Lucy, then helped her buckle in, and adjusted her headset for her. There was something entirely too sexy about Mac at the controls of the plane. He was confident and professional, on a two-way radio filing a flight plan, going through a series of checks.

As the plane taxied along the lake, Lucy looked over her shoulder to see Mama jacking up the volume of her eight track and squinting furiously at her book.

“Is that Engelbert Humperdinck?” Mac asked.

“I’m sure that’s what she’s listening to.” Lucy confirmed.

She thought she heard a sound from Mama, but when she turned around again it was to see Mama glance out the window at the lakeshore rushing by them, go pale and jack up the volume yet again.

The plane wrested itself from gravity, left water and found air. Lucy found herself holding her breath as the plane lifted over the trees at the far end of the lake and then banked sharply.

“Have you ever been in a small plane before?”

“No.”

“Nervous?”

Lucy contemplated that. “No,” she decided. “It’s exhilarating.”

Mac flew back over her house and she knew he had done that just for her. Her house from the air was so cute, like a little dollhouse, all the canoes lined up like toys on her dock.

She thought it looked very nice in white.

“Is the lavender going to be a mistake?” she said into the headset. Then, “No! No, it isn’t!”

He smiled at her as if she had passed a test—not that devil-may-care smile that held people at a distance. But a real smile, so genuine she could feel tears smart behind her eyes.

She turned and tried to get Mama’s attention so she could see her own house from the air, but Mama was muttering along to her music, licking her pencil furiously, and scowling at her word-puzzle book, determined not to look out that window.

“What’s Caleb’s House?” Mac asked.

She went from feeling safe and happy to feeling as if she was on very treacherous ground. Lucy felt her heart race. “What? Why do you ask?”

“That’s the charity Mama told me she wants the money from the fund-raiser to go to. I’d never heard of it. She said to ask you.”

She was aware she could tell him now. That there was something about hearing him say Caleb’s name that made her want to be free of carrying it all by herself.

But the time was not right, and it might never be right. He was here only temporarily. Why share the deepest part of her life with him? Why act as though she could trust him with that part of herself?

She had trusted him way too much once before. She had talked and talked until she had no secrets left. Now, she had a secret.

After he had left here, seven years ago, Lucy had found out she was pregnant. Terrified, she had confided in one friend.

Claudia.

Claudia had felt a need to tell her mother and father, who had told Lucy’s mother and father, and maybe a few other members of their church, as well.

Lucy’s decent, upstanding family had been beyond dismayed.

“How could you do this to us?” her mother had whispered. “I’ll never be able to hold up my head again.”

Her father’s disgust had been visited on her in icy silence. Her plans for college had gone up in smoke. Her friends had abandoned her. She had been terrified and alone, an outcast in her own town.

She had never felt so lonely.

And still, that life that grew within her had not felt like an embarrassment to her. It felt like the love she had known was not completely gone. She whispered to her baby. When she found out it was a boy, she went and bought him the most adorable pair of sneakers, and a little blue onesie.

When it had ended the way it had, in a miscarriage, it was as if everyone wanted to pretend it had never happened.

But by then she had already named him, crooned his name to him to make him feel welcome in a world where he was not really welcome to anybody but her. That was the night she had run to Mama’s in her bare feet, needing to be somewhere where it would be okay to feel, to grieve, to acknowledge she could never pretend it hadn’t happened.

That was the night she had spoken out loud the name of the little baby who had not survived.

Caleb.

Lucy was careful to strip her voice of all emotion when she answered.

“It’s a house for young girls who are pregnant,” she said. “It’s still very much in the planning stages.”

“One thing about Mama,” he said wryly. “There’s never any shortage of causes in her world.”

To him it was just a cause. One of many. She took a deep breath. Was it possible he had changed as much as she had?

“Mac,” she said, “tell me about you.”

Part of her begged for him to see it for what it was, an invitation to go deeper.

Maybe it was different this time. If it was, would she tell him about Caleb?

“Remember I built that cedar-strip canoe?”

She nodded.

“My first sales were all those kind of canoes. It was hard to make money at it, because they were so labor-intensive, but I loved doing it. I started getting more orders than I could keep up with, so I went into production. Pretty soon, I was experimenting with kayaks, too. Two things set me apart from others. Custom paint that no one had ever seen before—canoes were always green or red or yellow, some solid, nature-inspired palette, and I started doing crazy patterns on them. It appealed to a certain market.”