Second Chance with the Rebel

“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

“YOU 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 ultra-sophisticated, 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.

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