Dockside at Willow Lake

“It is simple. Bailey retired from the bank and Brooke took over the asset management. She sold me the inn.”

Nina glared at him. “What did you do, sleep with her to get a good deal on the place?”

He glared back. “That’s none of your business.”

All right, Nina thought, that was probably a low blow, but she didn’t care. “I don’t get it. What on earth do you want with this place?”

“It’s exactly what I’ve been hoping to find. A business that keeps me close to home for my kids, something I like doing. And I know you’re the ideal manager. You’ve got a history with the place, experience running it. You’re perfect.”

This was so classic. The Bellamys were a favored family. It seemed to Nina that every last one of them had been born with a silver spoon in their mouth. It seemed that fortune denied them nothing. While ordinary people like the Romanos struggled for everything they had, the Bellamys swept in and helped themselves.

For Nina, even traveling was bad luck. “The deal’s off,” she said tightly.

“Are you always this angry, or is this something special, just for me?”

“I had plans,” she snapped. “I know that doesn’t matter to you, but—”

“Come on, Nina. At least hear me out.”

“Why should I?”

He didn’t react to her challenging tone. Instead, he said simply, “No reason. We barely know each other. For what it’s worth, I had plans, too.”

Plans. “You probably want to turn this place into some kind of overpriced corporate retreat,” she said. “And wouldn’t that be just charming.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I’ve seen the numbers. It’s the best way to turn a profit.”

“And that’s what I’m all about. Turning a profit.”

To be honest, she didn’t know what he was about. She didn’t know much about him at all. That hadn’t stopped her from jumping to conclusions about him. She took her fury down a notch.

“So tell me. I really want to know.”

He studied her, and there was something in his gaze, some level of trust and confidence. “All my life, I’ve done what I thought I was supposed to do. Ten years ago, I started my own firm in Manhattan because it seemed like the responsible thing to do. What I ended up with was a job I didn’t like and one that made me ignore my family.”

All right. So he wasn’t a complete selfish bastard. But why on earth did his act of redemption have to step on her toes? “There are lots of ways to do that,” she told him. “You don’t need this place.” I do, she thought. I always have. When she was fifteen years old, the roadmap of her life had unfolded, and she’d always known her final destination was here.

“You don’t know what I need. Maybe this will give you an idea.” He went to the front desk, already furnished with computer and phone. She heard the breathy whisper of a printer, and then he brought her a copy of the contract. She’d been so excited the day she’d signed it. Now she felt sick to her stomach.

“The modifications are in bold,” he said.

“You think you can come in here with your money, buy this place and me along with it, a single woman with limited options,” she said. “Well, think again. You can’t—”

“When you buy a business, you buy all its assets and liabilities. This contract with you is one of its assets.”

She grabbed the document from him and studied his suggested changes. She blinked to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks. He had increased the salary and added a profit-sharing option and pension.

Just for a moment, she wavered. This was real money. For once in her life, she would be financially secure. She could help out Sonnet, because even with the scholarships she’d won and her father’s contributions, it didn’t mean her education would be without cost.

No, Nina thought. No. She recoiled from the contract as though it had turned into a snake. For all the incentives he’d added, he’d still taken away the one thing worth having—the possibility of owning the place one day.

She got up and went to the window, knowing she probably looked completely undignified in a robe three sizes too big, but she didn’t care. She studied the view outside—a broad, sloping lawn dotted with Adirondack chairs, the belvedere, carriage house and caretaker’s quarters, the boathouse, dock and the lake in the distance. Max had apparently grown bored with fishing. A pole lay abandoned on the dock. “I’m not signing that,” she said over her shoulder. “Find someone else.”

“I suppose I could opt for a commercial management company from out of town, but I’m hoping to avoid that. I want you,” he said simply.

She swung around to face him. “You can’t have me.”

His expression indicated that this was not something he often heard from a woman. Well, of course not. He was a Bellamy. He looked like the American Dream come to life. He was not the kind of guy a woman refused. “You were perfectly happy to make a deal with the bank,” he pointed out.

“That was different. I—” She stopped herself. She wasn’t going to tell him her hopes, the future she’d imagined for herself. It was none of his business, and she already looked pathetic enough, standing here in her borrowed robe. “I have to go,” she said, heading down the hall to the laundry.

“Your clothes aren’t dry yet.”

“I’ll live.” She’d survived worse.

He intercepted her in the hall. For a second, his nearness shocked her and she didn’t know why. Her skin flushed and her heart sped up, and all he was doing was standing there. He smelled of the freshness of the lake, and unlike some guys, he looked even better up close. Kissing Shane Gilmore hadn’t affected her like this, and Greg wasn’t even touching her.

She glared at him. “You’re in my way.”

“I’m just not getting the rage, Nina. What is up with you?”

“You don’t get me, that’s what. This was supposed to be my time to shine. My whole life has been reacting to a change of plans. I never dreamed I’d be realigning my thinking about this and now here I am … I don’t walk away from a challenge.”

“Then why would you do that now?”

“There’s nothing here for me, nothing but a job, working for you. I don’t need this. I don’t need you. I have options.”

“I want you to stay,” he said, still close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath. “Let’s talk about this.”

She suspected he started a lot of sentences with “I want.” She kept her gaze steady as she said, “There’s really nothing to talk about. I suggest you get busy trying to find someone to sign your contract.” With that, she pushed past him with as much dignity as she could muster, and ducked into the laundry. She slammed the door and opened the industrial-size dryer. Sure enough, her clothes were at that lukewarm, half-dry stage that made them clammy and supremely uncomfortable. She didn’t care. She had to get the hell out of here.

She could feel the fury and resentment pouring off her as she returned to the salon with the damp clothes stretched over her, probably in the most unflattering fashion. Greg either didn’t notice or didn’t care about her appearance or her state of mind as he followed her outside, across the lawn and down the dock.

“Let’s put the kayak on my truck and I’ll give you a lift back to your place.”

“No, thanks,” she said pulling on her vest. Such a gentleman, ripping her future to shreds while offering her a lift to nowhere. In one angry movement, she launched the kayak, got in the rear seat and pushed off.

“Nina,” he called.

Forget it, she thought. He can beg all he wants. In so many ways, he was still that too-handsome, too-lucky guy she remembered from the past. She wondered what he remembered about her. Sure, it was a long time ago, but still…. Clearly the meetings had meant more to Nina than to Greg, which only fueled her anger at him.

“Nina.” His voice was a bit more urgent. “I don’t care how pissed off you are,” he said. “You won’t get far without this.”

She glanced back in time to see him standing on the dock, holding out a double-ended paddle.

So much for her exit. Leaning forward, she reached for the paddle. She couldn’t quite touch it, so he leaned a little farther over the water until she was able to grasp the blade. At the same time she gave it a slight tug—an accident, of course. For a split second, they engaged in a tug-of-war, angry gazes locked, the paddle between them. Seized by a childish impulse, she gave one final tug on the oar. He wobbled for a moment, then pitched forward into the water, making a splash that didn’t quite drown his curse.

“Nice, Greg,” she murmured, then dipped in her oar and glided away.

Three

After dinner that evening, Greg sat with his daughter Daisy, going over the hundreds of photos she’d taken for the inn’s new brochures, ads and Web site. He studied her as she concentrated on the images. Current mood, he assessed, was cooperative. With her face bathed in the pale glow from the computer screen, Daisy was fully absorbed by the task. She was so beautiful, his daughter, and at eighteen, so heartbreakingly young.

He wished he could talk to someone about what it was like, picking his way through the minefield that was his relationship with his troubled daughter. Since the divorce, he and Daisy had grown close, although it had been a struggle. Some days, the closeness felt more like a détente.

“How about these four?” she asked. “One for each season.”

She had talent, and it wasn’t just in his mind. Some of her work was on display in the bakery/café in town where she used to work, and people bought the framed, signed prints with gratifying regularity. Greg hoped like hell her gift—and her passion for it—would give her something to aim for in the future, something that would fulfill her and make use of her talents. She had a knack for picking the unexpected angle or perspective that turned something ordinary—a tree branch, a window seat, a dock—into something special. She preferred the fine detail over the wider view, showcasing nature’s splendor in a single perfect rhododendron blossom. A well-thumbed novel beside a claw-footed tub conveyed a sense of luxury, and panoramic shots of the whole resort showcased the grandeur of the place.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said to him.

“Your instincts are better than mine when it comes to things like this.”

She nodded and relabeled four of the shots. “So did you talk to Nina Romano about the inn?”

“Yeah, earlier today.”

“And?”

And he’d done a lousy job explaining himself to the woman. In fact, he didn’t know what Nina hated more—him, or the idea of working for him. The fact that he’d bought the Inn at Willow Lake was an affront to her. She acted as though he’d somehow stolen it away from her. “She’s thinking about my offer.” Right.

“Well, you’d better make sure she says yes,” Daisy admonished. “I don’t think we can make this work without her.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Come on, Dad. What do either of us know about running a hotel?”

He could have pointed out that he’d built a thriving landscape architecture business in Manhattan. And despite his education and expertise, despite the fact that he didn’t have a clue what he was doing when it came to hotels, he had learned that hard work and common sense went a long way. Yet he reminded himself why he was doing this. Making the firm a success had carried a cost he’d never anticipated. Lucrative didn’t always mean successful. He had been so consumed by work that, without his even noticing it, years passed and he woke up one day to find himself with two kids who were practically strangers and a marriage that was damaged beyond repair.

As his marriage ended, he had resolved to make a new beginning. He’d pulled his supremely unhappy kids out of their upper East side private prep school and moved upstate to Avalon. The Bellamys had long-standing ties to the community. Greg’s parents had operated Camp Kioga until their retirement ten years before. They’d held on to the property, and when his marriage raged out of control, the place had been his anchor.

Last summer, with his marriage in its death throes, he had made a desperate move, bringing the kids to Camp Kioga to help Olivia renovate the place for his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. He thought he’d seen progress with Max and Daisy by summer’s end—his son was no longer obsessed with video games and his daughter had stopped smoking. But when they returned to the city, Daisy had started her senior year in a state of open rebellion and Max had adopted a who-the-hell-cares attitude, wearing it like body armor. Ultimately, when the time came to rebuild his life, he’d decided to do it here, in the riverside town he remembered from the summers of his boyhood.

It was too soon to tell whether or not this was the right move, but he was determined to change his life, engaging in work that revolved around his family. In his former life, he was all about building things for the world. Now he was determined to focus on building a world for his family.

“Your cousin Olivia didn’t know anything about running Camp Kioga, and look at her now,” he pointed out. A year ago, Greg’s grown niece had also made the move from Manhattan to the mountains. She’d been charged with renovating Camp Kioga, and the project had given her an entirely new direction and a future she’d never expected.

“But Olivia has Connor Davis helping her,” Daisy pointed out. “He’s a contractor. He fixes stuff up for a living.” She sighed romantically. “Besides, they’re, like, the most perfect couple ever.”

Greg made no comment. At summer’s end, Olivia and Connor were getting married at Camp Kioga, and the event had snowballed into the biggest Bellamy family affair since his parents’ anniversary the previous year. Relatives and friends would be coming from all over, many of them planning to stay at the Inn at Willow Lake. He wished Olivia and Connor well, of course, but being regarded as a perfect couple had its drawbacks—like trying to live up to an image that existed in other people’s minds. He and Sophie had been called the perfect couple, too, despite the rushed circumstances of their marriage.

He hoped Olivia would have better luck than he had.

Daisy shifted uncomfortably in her chair, folding her arms across her stomach. “So I wanted to ask you something, Dad.”

“Sure, anything.” But of course, inwardly, he braced himself, wondering, Now what?

“Classes start in a few weeks, and I thought …” Her voice trailed off and she got up, rubbing the small of her back. She turned, and the evening light from the window crisply outlined the incongruous curve of her belly.

And with that movement, Greg saw his daughter as though through a fragmented glass. The illusion that she was still his little girl fell to pieces. Even now that he’d had months to get used to the idea, the sight of her extremely pregnant silhouette still sometimes shocked him. She was a bundle of contradictions. The untimely ripeness of her form looked wrong with her still-soft, vaguely childlike features. She had painted her nails a vivid red-black and wore ripped jeans and a top that draped over the arc of her belly. She was a little girl, teenager and grown woman all in one, and she regarded him with a need and trust Greg wasn’t sure he deserved. She was his kid. And at thirty-eight, he hardly felt ready to be a grandfather.

Cut it out, he warned himself. He simply didn’t have a choice in the matter. Regrets and what-ifs were not an option, not at this point. “You thought what?” he prompted.

“Could you be my coach?” she asked. “For the childbirth classes, you know, and for the hospital.”

Her coach? The guy who stands by her in the delivery room? No, thought Greg, fighting a sick premonition. No way. Not in a million years would he be that guy, witnessing his child having a child of her own.

“My doctor said it should be somebody I trust and feel safe with.” She paused, bit her lip, and her expression was one he’d seen a thousand times through the years. “That’s you, right?” she said.

“But I’m … a guy,” he said lamely. A scared, freaking-out guy who didn’t trust himself to stay conscious in the delivery room or come through in an emergency. A guy who would rather have a root canal than see his daughter give birth. That seemed wrong on so many levels, he didn’t know where to begin.

“What about your mother?” he asked, his mouth working ahead of his brain, as usual.

Daisy’s expression froze, and although she would not appreciate knowing it, she looked just like Sophie. They both had that regal, withering ice-queen manner, able to belittle or intimidate with a razor-sharp glance.

“What about her?” Daisy asked. “The classes go on for six weeks. You think she’s going to put her life on hold and camp out in Avalon for six weeks?”

Sophie lived in The Hague, where she was a lawyer at the International Criminal Court. She came back to the States once a month to see the kids. After the divorce, Sophie had insisted that Daisy and Max live with her. Both kids, traumatized by the breakup of their family, had returned after just a couple of weeks, demanding to stay with Greg. He didn’t fool himself into thinking he was the preferred parent. It was just that the life he offered here in the States was a better fit for his two lost, hurting kids. So now Sophie had to make do with the visits, with phone calls and e-mail. The situation was sad and awkward, and Greg couldn’t tell if the kids had forgiven her or not. He figured his job was to stay neutral on the issue.

Daisy made a lofty gesture around the house. “Will Mom live with us? Yeah, she’d love that.”

“I own a hotel,” Greg pointed out. “We could put her in the Guinevere suite.” Like many of Avalon’s local establishments, the Inn at Willow Lake had an Arthurian theme with rooms named after characters from the old legend.

“Guinevere. Wasn’t she the one who cheated on her husband with his best friend?” Daisy asked archly.

“That was never proven. The French added it later.” Greg felt a strange and unjustified sense of solidarity with his ex. It was probably because of Daisy’s situation—unmarried and pregnant, with the monumental struggle of single motherhood ahead of her. Despite his differences with Sophie, he shared with her the sense that Daisy was going to need all the support and compassion they could offer. “I’m sure she’d be honored to be your coach.”

“And you wouldn’t?”

“Honey, of course I would. But I’m …” Damn. “It would be …” He paused, got up and paced the room, searching for the right word to describe attending your teenage daughter giving birth to your grandchild. “Weird,” he concluded. And that was putting it mildly.

“Listen, it’s just classes. You learn about the process and signs to watch for, and what to do when things start happening. And in the delivery room, everything is all draped, and you can just deal with me from the neck up. Maybe, um, hold my hand and talk to me, give me ice chips, stuff like that. It didn’t look like that big a deal in the video the doctor gave me to watch.”

“That’s assuming everything goes according to the video.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “Whatever. A birth coach is optional, anyway.”

“Right, like I’m going to let you do this on your own.” Greg stuck his thumbs in his back pockets and stood at the window, looking out but seeing only memories of his own child being born. He hadn’t been there for Daisy’s birth, of course, thanks to the way Sophie had manipulated the situation. But he’d been present for Max. He remembered the long night, the glare of lights, the pain and the terror and the joy. God, it was yesterday.

Then he turned back to Daisy, his daughter—his heart. “I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” asked Max, coming in from the kitchen, trailing shoelaces and backpack straps in his wake. He was eating again. Of course he was. It had been a half hour since dinner. Max, who had the appetite of some hypermetabolic creature in a sci-fi flick, had taken to refueling a couple of times per hour. At the moment, he was eating a Pop-Tart, stone cold out of the wrapper.

“I’m going to be your sister’s birth coach,” he said. “What do you think of that?”

“I think you’re out of your freaking mind,” Max said with a shudder.

“Gosh, and I was going to invite you, too, Max,” Daisy said. “Having you there, holding my hand, would have meant so much to me.”

“It would mean you finally lost what’s left of your marbles. Geez.” He shuddered again.

Greg ground his teeth. Despite the fact that she was pregnant, she still bickered like a third grader with her brother. Although it took some restraint, Greg knew it was best not to intervene when the two of them went at it. The bickering usually played itself out and sometimes even seemed to relieve tension, oddly enough.

With an older brother and two older sisters, he understood the dynamics of siblings. The main thing was to stand back and let the fur fly. He found this surprisingly easy to do, zoning out while they picked at each other about everything from the way Max ate a Pop-Tart to their cousin Olivia’s upcoming wedding, in which Daisy was to be a bridesmaid, Max an usher.

“You know you’re going to have to take ballroom dancing lessons,” Daisy told her brother with a satisfied smirk.

“Better than birthing lessons,” he shot back. “You’ll be, like, the world’s largest bridesmaid.”

“And you’ll be, like, the world’s dorkiest uncle. Weird Uncle Max. I’m going to teach the baby to call you that.”

Greg figured if these kids could survive each other, they could survive anything. He left them to battle it out and went to his study to check e-mail. There was a message from Brooke with a noncommittal subject line—thanks for today …

He didn’t even need to click on it in order to guess the rest of the message: … let’s be sure we never do it again sometime. She probably wouldn’t be that blunt, but he’d belatedly figured out that Brooke Harlow’s interest in him was as a client, not a boyfriend. That was his conclusion after today, anyway. After the boating fiasco, she’d been all too eager to bug out with the lame-ass bank president in tow.

The encounter today with Nina had caused his confidence to falter. What the hell was he getting himself into? No. Greg was happy enough with the transaction. He did realize it could be a disaster—long hours, a challenge around every corner. Then again, it could be the second chance he needed for his family—an enterprise that kept him close to home, the kids engaged in family life, not avoiding it. He practically flinched as he remembered the end of his marriage, when he and Sophie had given up pretending for the sake of the children, who saw straight through them, anyway. Their unhappiness was like a disease that infected the whole family. They’d engaged in battles of bitter recriminations that usually ended in slammed doors, the four of them hiding from each other. Ultimately, Greg and Sophie attempted a trial separation. There was a sense of relief, sure, but the separation opened a whole new set of troubles.

Greg blamed himself for not seeing how troubled Daisy was by the divorce. If he had, maybe Daisy never would have gone to that weekend party on Long Island, and she never would’ve gotten pregnant. Well, not so soon, anyway.

He’d spent his entire marriage waiting for disaster and then reacting to it. He was determined to change now. Buying the inn felt right, and he was focused on making it happen.

The soft doorbell sound of an incoming e-mail distracted him. He glanced at the screen and then did a double-take when he saw who it was from—Nina Romano. The subject line read We need to talk.

Well, he thought. Well.

Nina looked at her best friend, Jenny, and then back at the computer screen. “I just hit Send. I can’t believe I just hit Send.”

“That’s the best way for him to get the message.”

“But I changed my mind.” Nina swiveled back to glare at the screen. She wished there was some way to dive through the digital ether and snatch back her message.