Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish (8 page)

He was so close. She could smell the familiar, intoxicating scent of him. If she reached out, she could touch his arm.

“I have to go,” she said, jumping up abruptly.

“Something urgent to do? Feed your fish? Put up a new swatch of color?”

“Something like that,” she said.

“Don’t forget, you owe me. You still have to eat a Rolliepop.”

She grimaced. “I think I’d have nightmares. Herring wrapped around something ‘savory’? Not my idea of a bedtime snack, but you know what? A bet is a bet.”

“Yes, it is, but even though we had a deal, I’ll let you off the hook. For tonight. I’ll enjoy having something to hold over you.”

He insisted on walking her back across the darkened lawns. A loon called on the lake and they both stopped to listen to its haunting cry.

“I don’t like it that Mama was tired tonight,” she said as they stood there. “She always insists on watching every movie to the end, even if it’s awful. She told me once she always gives it a chance to redeem itself.”

“People. Movies. She’s all about second chances, our Mama. I’m concerned she’s wearing herself out cooking for me. I told her to stop, but she won’t.”

“What rhymes with stop?” Lucy asked.

“Schnop,” he said, and they shared a quiet laugh, but grew serious again as they continued walking across the backyard.

“I’m worried that it’s not cooking that’s wearing her out.”

“Me, too.”

It felt entirely too good to have someone to share these worries with.

“Has she said anything? About her health?” Lucy asked.

“No. I’ve been probing, too, but she says she’s fine. While repairing the bathroom, I looked through the medicine cabinet. There was a prescription bottle, but she doesn’t have internet, so I couldn’t check what it’s for.”

“I can.”

“I know, but it makes me feel guilty. Like I’m spying on her. It’s kind of an affront to her dignity. So, I’m just going to hang out and fix the house, and keep my eyes and ears open and see if she tells me.”

He stopped on her back porch.

“Good night, Lucy.”

“Mac.” It seemed to her suddenly she was a long way from her goal of proving to herself that he had no power over her anymore.

In fact, it felt like everything it had always felt like with him: as if the ordinary became extraordinary, as if she’d been sleeping and was coming awake, feeling the utter glory of life shimmering through her very pores.

The moonlight and the call of the loons wrapped her in their spell.

On an impulse she stepped in close to him. She needed to know.

On an impulse she stood up on her tiptoes. She needed to know if that was the same.

She wasn’t sure why she had to do this. Maybe because she felt he believed she was way too predictable, from her car to her loyalty to her little town to what he presumed was the lack of fun in her life.

She had kissed other men since then. She had something to compare him to now. She had not back then. She would not be as easy to dazzle as that girl, a virgin whose only experiences with kisses had been spin-the-bottle at parties.

Or maybe she just had something to prove to herself when she took his lips.

That she could have the power. That she didn’t need to wait for other people to instigate.

But whatever her intention was, it was lost the second their lips connected. He groaned and pulled her close to him, surrendered to her and claimed her at the very same time.

Oh, no. It was the same.

It was the same way as it had always been. She had never felt it before him, and never after, either. Certainly not with the man she had nearly married.

Oh, God, had she picked James precisely because he didn’t make her feel like this? No wonder he had gone elsewhere for his passion!

When Mac’s lips met hers, it was as if the world melted, as if the stars began to swirl in that dark sky, faster and faster until they melted right into it and everything became one. The stars, the sky, the loons, the lake, her, Mac.

All one incredible, swirling energy that was life itself.

How was it possible that she had convinced herself she could live without this?

She could feel the danger of being sucked right into the vortex of all that energy. She could feel the danger of wanting to be sucked into it.

Instead, she forced herself to yank away.

“Damn it all to hell,” she said.

“Whoa. Not the normal reaction when a woman kisses me.”

Was that often? Of course it was! Look at the man!

“You stud muffin, you,” she said to hide how rattled she was.

“I have the feeling if we were on the dock, I’d be getting shoved in again. Why are you so angry with me, Lucy Lin?”

“I’m not!” she said.

And she wasn’t. That was the whole problem. She wasn’t angry with him at all. She loved it that he was making her laugh, and making ordinary things seem fun, and carrying the burden of Mama with her.

She loved the taste of his lips and the way his arms closed around her. It felt like a homecoming for one who had wandered too long in foreign lands.

She loved the way women looked at him in the grocery store, confirming what she always knew: Mac Hudson was about the most handsome man ever born.

And she hated herself for loving all those things.

She was angry with herself because she hadn’t proved what she wanted at all. In fact, the exact opposite was true!

She had proved her life was empty and passionless, despite all her good causes!

She went in her house and closed the door, and forced herself not to look back to see him crossing the lawn in the moonlight.

“Stay on your own side of the fence!” she ordered herself grimly.

* * *

When Mac got
back in, Mama was up, watching the end of the movie.

“I thought you were tired,” he said.

“
Ach,
at my age, being tired doesn’t mean you get to sleep. I thought the movie might redeem itself.”

“Has it?”

“No. Why is this funny, people treating each other so badly?”

“I don’t know, Mama.” He sat down beside her, and she turned off the movie.

“What’s wrong,
schatz?
”

“Mama, have I ever told you that I love you?”

“Of course,” she said, with no hesitation. “Just not with words. You take time from your busy work and come to help me. What is that, if not love?”

“Too bad all women aren’t as wise as you.”

“When you look like me, you develop wisdom.”

“I think you’re beautiful,” he said.

“See? What is that, if not love?”

“I’m worried about you, Mama. Living here by yourself. The house getting to be too much for you. I’m worried you’re sick and not telling anyone.”

“This is a good thing, my boy. To worry about someone else, hmm? It means you are not thinking of yourself all the time.”

It was hard to be offended when it was true. He lived a hedonistic lifestyle. Self-indulgent. His business had allowed him to travel the world. Collect every toy. Seek increasing levels of adventure to fill himself, for a while. His lack of commitment made him responsible to no one but himself.

When he started feeling vaguely empty, he raced to the next rush, hoping it would be the thing that would fill him.

“When you feel pain, you have to do something for another.”

“I can build you a new house.”

“Would that make
you
feel better?”

“Wouldn’t you like it?”

“I consider having more than what I need a form of stealing.”

Hmm. Hadn’t Lucy said something almost the same? About his vehicles. Taking more than his share of the world’s resources?

“Everybody filling up their lives full, full, full with stuff,” Mama said. “What is it they don’t want to feel?”

“Lonely, I guess,” he surprised himself by saying. “Less than.”

“Do something for someone else.”

“I am. I’m doing something for you.”

“You should do something nice for Lucy.”

Wasn’t that what he’d already decided? But now, that kiss changed everything. He felt as if he was floundering.

“She seems angry at me.”

“So, that stops you? You can only offer kindness if there is something in it for you? Why is she angry at you?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you know we had a little thing that summer before I left. I knew she couldn’t come with me. She loved it here. The little bit of time that she was with me put her at odds with her friends and family. Her dad threatened to have me arrested he was so put out by the whole thing. We were both stupidly young. How could that have worked?”

Mama was silent, and then she said, “You left her to the only life she’d ever known. Maybe that was love, also, hmm,
schatz?
”

He was suddenly nearly blinded with a memory of how it had felt being with Lucy. Waking up with a smile on his face, needing to be with her. Practically on fire with the sensation of being alive.

He shook it off and sighed. “I’m not sure I’m capable of such nobility,” he said. “She wanted more of me than I could give her.”

“Ah.”

“Maybe,” he said hopefully, “it’s not me that she’s angry with. Her recent fiancé took a pretty good run at her self-esteem by the sounds of it. And something is going on with her old crowd. I hate it that Claudia Stupid-Johnson feels better than her.”

“No,” Mama said softly. “What you hate is that Lucy lets her.”

He felt like he was getting a headache. This was all way too deep and complicated for a guy as dedicated to the rush as he was. But while he was tackling the hard stuff, there was no sense stopping halfway.

“You didn’t answer me, Mama. Are you sick?” He hesitated, and said softly, feeling the anguish of it, “Are you going to die?”

“Yes,
schatz,
sooner or later. We are all dying. From the very minute we are born, we are marching toward the other end. Why does everybody act surprised when it comes? Why does everyone waste so much time, as if time is endless, when it is the most finite of all things?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Do something nice for Lucy. It will make you feel better. And send a card to your mother.”

Mama patted his cheek, got up and went up the stairs.

Well, since he wasn’t sending a card to his mother, that left doing something nice for Lucy. And he knew exactly what that was. She’d somehow lost sight of who she was. She was uncomfortable going to the yacht club! Hell, she should walk in there like the queen that she was!

He thought about her lips on his.

And wondered if Mama had any idea how complicated things could get.

CHAPTER SEVEN

L
UCY
WAS
SITTING
on her deck with her laptop. Her mother had sent her an email from Africa with a picture attached. Her mother looked happy. Her hair wasn’t done, and she had a sunburn. It was odd, because Lucy didn’t really recall her mother not having her hair done. And she was not what she would have ever called a happy person.

Her inbox had more RSVPs, two more from her old high-school crowd, saying no, they would not be able to attend the gala.

It didn’t have quite the sting it had had previously. Of course, it was a beautiful mild spring day, the sun on the lake and her skin and in her hair. How could you feel bad on a day like this?

Was there a possibility she was able to dismiss negative things more easily and feel beautiful things more intensely since that kiss?

“Of course I’m not!” It was days ago! She hadn’t, thank goodness, seen Mac since.

But think of the devil, and he will appear!

“Hey, Lucy Lin!” Mac was on the other side of her deck, peering through the slats of the deck railing at her. “Are you talking to yourself?”

Which would seem pathetic. Thankfully, she was not in her pajamas. It felt as if she was experiencing his sudden appearance intensely, too.

Her heart began to beat a little faster, her cheeks felt suddenly flushed. She was so aware of how incredibly handsome he was. And sexy. She was a little too aware of how his lips tasted.

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“It doesn’t look like you’ve made much progress on that paint.”

“I’m not sure about the color anymore,” she admitted a bit grumpily.

“Come and see what I found in Mama’s shed.”

She needed to pretend he wasn’t there, go in her house and follow his suggestion of locking her doors.

But, of course, if she reacted like that, he would
know
he was affecting her way too deeply.

She set her laptop aside, got up and reluctantly padded over and looked over the railing, bracing herself. With Mac it could be anything, from a snake to an antique washboard.

He grinned up at her, and she knew that was what she really needed to brace herself against.

That, and the fact Mac was holding the handlebars of a bicycle built for two. It might have been gold once, now it was mostly rust. The leather seats were cracked.

“If you promise to keep your lips off of me, I’ll take you for a ride.”

“Look, let’s get something straight. I didn’t kiss you because I find you in any way attractive.”

“Hey! That was just plain mean.”

“Not that you aren’t.” Oh! This was going sideways. “I kissed you as a way of saying thank you for caring so deeply about Mama.”

“Well, I’m glad you cleared that up. Let’s go for a ride.”

She looked at him. She looked at the bike. She had cleared up the lip thing. Well, she hadn’t really, but he had accepted her explanation. It was a beautiful day. An unexpected gift was being offered to her.

You are giving in to temptation,
she told herself. “No,” she told Mac.

“Look, princess, it’s a bike ride or the Rolliepop. You owe me.”

Her lips twitched. Once, for a few weeks, it had felt as if Macintyre Hudson was her best friend. She could tell him anything, be totally herself around him. In many ways, it felt as if she had found out what that meant—to be totally herself—around him.

She was aware of missing that.

Could they be friends? Without the complication of becoming lovers? What would it hurt to find out?

“You’re even dressed for it,” he said, sensing her weakening. “Aren’t those things called pedal pushers?”

Those
things
were a pair of eighty-dollar trousers she had ordered well before her self-imposed austerity program. “It said capris when I ordered them online.”

“Ah, well, you know, one born every minute.”

And even though she had practiced saying no to him over and over again in her mind, she might as well not have practiced at all.

Because he was in possession of a bicycle built for two, and she wasn’t in the mood to eat a Rolliepop. Plus, she was wearing an eighty-dollar pair of pedal pushers. It seemed like it would be something of a waste not to try them out!

She came down off her deck, and they pushed the bike, which was amazingly heavy, up her steep driveway to the relative flatness of Lakeshore Drive above it.

“Hop on.” He took the front.

She folded her arms over her chest. “Why would you automatically get the front?”

“I assumed it would be harder.”

“I think you want control. That’s where the brakes are. And the steering.”

“Maybe
you
want control!”

“Maybe I do,” she admitted.

He sighed as if she was really trying his patience. “If you want the front, you can have it. Look, you even have the bell.” He rang a rusty old bell.

He surrendered the front, and she got on the bike. He got on the back. After a few false starts, they were off.

It felt as if she was pulling him. It was really the most awful experience. Because even though his handlebars were stationary and didn’t move, he acted as if they did, and every time he wrenched on them the whole bicycle shook precariously.

“Quit trying to steer!”

“I can’t help myself.”

“Are you pedaling?” she gasped.

“With all my might. Ring the bell and wave, we’re going by your neighbor gardening.”

She giggled, rang the bell and waved. The bike veered, and he tried to correct it with his handlebars that didn’t work. He nearly threw them both off the bicycle. Mrs. Feldman looked up, startled, and then smiled, unaware of the problems they were having, and waved back.

They rode by the houses with name plaques at the tops of the driveways. Her father had disapproved of naming the lake properties, saying he found it corny. But Lucy liked the names, ranging from whimsical: Bide Awhile, Pair-a-Dice, Casa Costallota, to the imposing: The Cliff House, Eagle’s Rest, Thunder Mountain Manor. Sometimes you could catch a glimpse of the house from the road, other times lawns, gardens, trees, lake, the odd tennis court or swimming pool.

Had she been asked, Lucy would have said Lakeshore Drive was perfectly flat. Now, it was obvious that from her house toward town, it sloped substantially upward.

She was gasping for air. “Don’t run over my tongue.”

“Ready to trade places?”

She did, gladly.

Though the back position was slightly more relaxing than the front, the feeling of being out of control was terrible. She had to trust him.

“Hey, you got the easy part,” she complained. The road that had been sloping upward crested, and began a gradual incline down.

“Woo-hoo! Look, no hands!”

“Put your hands back down.”

“No, you put yours up. Come on, Lucy, fly!”

And so she did, and found herself shrieking with laughter as they catapulted down the hill, arms widespread, chins lifted.

His hands went back to the handlebars and so did hers.

“I think we need to slow down,” she said. They were approaching the bottom of the rise, the road banked sharply to the right.

“You think I’m not trying?”

In horror, she leaned by him to see he was squeezing the handbrakes with all his might. Nothing was happening.

“Try pushing backwards on the pedals.”

He did. She did. The bike did not slow. They were coming up to the last curve into Lindstrom Beach.

He put his feet down to slow them. She was afraid he would break his leg. What his feet did was alter the course of the bike. It veered sharply left as the road went right. Her yanking away on her handlebars did nothing for their perilous balance.

They flew off the road and into a patch of thick bracken fern. She flew over her handlebars into him, and together they tumbled through the ferns. She landed on top of him, and the bike landed on top of her.

He reached up, and with one hand tenderly cupped the side of her face.

“Are you okay, Lucy Lin?” he asked with such gentleness it made her ache.

“I am,” she heard herself saying. “I am okay. I haven’t been for a long, long time, but I am right now.”

“That’s good. That’s perfect. Did I mention where we were going before we were so rudely interrupted?” Mac asked her.

“I didn’t think we were going anywhere. For a bike ride.”

He reached around and shoved the bike off them. She sat up, then got up. The capris were probably ruined, a dark oily-looking smudge across the front leg, a grass stain on the other side.

“Ah, actually, no. We were going to cocktail hour at the yacht club.”

She glanced at him, realized he must be kidding. “You have to
dress,
” she reminded him, joking.

He was picking up the bike, inspecting it for damage. “We are dressed.”

“That’s not what she meant.”

“Claudia had her opportunity to clarify and she didn’t. So, we’re dressed or we’re naked. You pick.”

She suddenly saw he was serious.

“I’m not going. I’ve scraped my knee. I think there are leaves in my hair.”

He wheeled the bike over, picked the leaves out of her hair, bent down and inspected her knee. Then he kissed it.

“You’re going,” he said.

“There are smudges on the front of my pants.”

“Well, there’s one on your derriere, too.”

“I am not going to the yacht club all disheveled and smudged, with leaves in my hair! What would they think of me?”

“Why do you care what they think of you?” he asked softly.

“I wish I didn’t care, but I do, okay? So far, not one of them is coming to the Mother’s Day Gala.”

“Why not?”

“No one in this set has ever liked Mama. My father set the tone for that years ago. They’re all for doing good on paper, but they don’t do it in their backyard.”

“That makes me all the more committed to attending their little cocktail hour.”

“Not me,” she said with a shiver.

“We are going,” he said, firmly. “And you’re walking into that room like a queen. Do you understand me?”

She looked at him. He wasn’t kidding.

“I don’t want to go.”

“Life’s about doing lots of things you don’t want to do. You’re going.”

And suddenly Lucy knew, with him beside her, she could do just what he had said. She could go. And she could hold her head high, too.

Suddenly, she knew he was absolutely right. She
had
to go.

She sighed. “I love it when you’re masterful.”

“Really? I’ll have to try that more often. Back on the bike, wench.”

And just like that she was riding toward what she had feared the most for a long, long time. Only, she didn’t feel at all afraid.

They rode up on their now quite wobbly bicycle built for two. She would have left it at the back door, but Mac was in the control position, and he rode along the pathway that twisted to the front of the club, where it faced the lake. Some of the cocktail crowd were out on the deck.

There was a notable pause in the conversation as they parked the bike.

Mac threw his arm over her shoulder as they went up the steps, and she glanced at his face.

He had that smile on.

If you didn’t know him, you might be charmed by it.

She said quiet hellos to people on the deck, sucked in her breath and, with Mac at her side, entered the yacht club.

“Macintyre Hudson!” Claudia squealed, just in case anyone hadn’t recognized him, “I’m so glad you came. Look, folks—” she looped her arm through his “—Mac is back!”

If he cared that he was in shorts when every other man was in a sports jacket and slacks, you couldn’t tell.

As always, he carried himself like a king.

And she took her cue from him. Claudia was pointedly ignoring her, so she pointedly ignored Claudia.

“Ellen!” she said, finding a familiar face, “I haven’t seen you for ages. What’s this I hear that you don’t like my paint color on my house?”

“Don’t you, Ellen?” Her husband, Norman, turned and looked at her. “I like it.”

Claudia’s mouth puckered and pointed down. “Let me get you a drink, Mac.”

“I’ll have lemonade. Lucy?”

“The same.”

She grinned at Mac. He had Claudia fetching her a drink!

He winked at her.

And suddenly, in this crowd of people who had once been her friends, she felt lighthearted. Had she bumped her head on the bike?

Because all these people
had
once been her friends. The girls she had known and chummed with since kindergarten. They had stopped calling her. Looked the other way when she came into a room.

And suddenly, she really didn’t care. Wasn’t that more about them than her? Why hadn’t she picked up the phone? When had she forgotten who she was?

They all seemed so stuffy! The atmosphere in this room seemed subdued and stifling. Mac’s question came back to her.
What do you do for fun?

“Why are we all inside?” Lucy asked. “It’s a gorgeous day. And Mac and I brought a bicycle built for two!”

People were looking at her! Good!

“Anyone want to try the bike?” she asked.

Silence. It was obvious no one here was dressed for this. But even so, how could they be so young and still so set in their ways? Where were their kids, for heaven’s sake? Didn’t they like being with their kids? That made her feel almost sorry for them.

Lucy felt determination bubbling up in her. Not to change who they were. No, not that at all. But not to hide who she was, either. Not anymore.

“There will be a prize,” she said, “It’s trickier than it looks!”

Still, silence. They were going to reject her. She didn’t care! She was stunned by the freedom of not caring!

“The prize is complimentary tickets to the Mother’s Day Gala. I have a few left.”

Some of them looked uncomfortable then!

“I might throw in a free canoe rental for an afternoon. Much more romantic than those power boats tied up at the dock. That’s if I’m still in business.”

She was throwing their snubs back in their faces, and loving it.

“Don’t pass up on this! Mac is going to serenade you with that famous song about a bicycle built for two while you ride.”