Summer's End (10 page)

Okay. It was time to admit to a certain amount of male vanity here. In the best of all possible worlds, it would be nice to make a good first impression on Amy-the-Legend. He didn't need her to be instantly smitten with his multifold masculine charms, but it would be nice if she didn't leap back and make the sign of the cross.

But he had been driving for two days, he had spent the morning at the Ax Man, he was towing one juvenile delinquent and one chained-to-her-fax lawyer. A good impression wasn't likely. Probably not even possible. Oh, well, that was life in the regular-guy world. And Jack considered himself to be a regular guy to end all regular guys. He jammed his hands into his pockets.

He looked over his shoulder. Holly was still on the phone.

The ticket agent opened the gate. Two businessmen came out, and right after them was Amy Legend.

There was no question about it. This was Amy Legend, the sunny blonde hair, the clear features, the blue-green eyes. Her smile didn't quite have the full-wattage incandescence of her pictures, but that was hardly to be expected. She was getting off a plane; what was there to smile about? Jack stepped forward.

“Amy, I'm Jack Wells.” She was shorter than he had expected.

She put out her hand and greeted him quickly. Her handshake was firm; her voice was pleasant but rushed. “I did check my baggage, I hope that's not a problem.”

“No, no.” But before Jack could say any more, she started off down the concourse. She didn't pause, she didn't turn her head to see if he was with her, she didn't
leap back and make the sign of the cross, she just took off.

So much for the good first impression. She had hardly looked at him.

But he had a bigger problem. One of his charges was still on the phone, another was plugged in and tuned out, and the third—the injured one—was speeding down the concourse.

Holly could take care of herself, and she was too much their mother's daughter to let anything happen to St. Nick. So Jack set out after Amy.

It took him a few paces to catch up with her. Then she stopped so quickly that he almost crashed into her. She gestured at the door of the ladies' room. “If a lady in a fuchsia blouse comes by, don't let her in. The blouse has tucks and a notched collar and a stain right here.”

She pointed at her collarbone and disappeared inside the rest room. The door swung shut behind her. Jack stared at it. This was really great. What was he supposed to say if the lady in fuchsia had to go pee? “I'm sorry, madam, this facility is under surveillance.” He wasn't even sure what color fuchsia was. And tucks and a notched collar? What did that mean?

Jack looked down the concourse. Indeed, there was an overweight woman in a bright pink blouse, puffing along as fast as she could. She had three kids with her, and they were all as fat as she was. “She must have come this way,” the mother said. “We can't have missed her.”

Jack now understood. America's sweetheart was hiding from her public.

“Maybe we'll see her at the baggage claim,” one of the kids said, and the whole family lumbered off.

“Where's Amy?” It was Holly. Nick was a couple of steps behind her. “In the bathroom?”

Jack nodded, and a moment later the ladies' room door eased open and he could see the top of a honey-blonde head.

“You can come out,” he called. “The wicked witch is dead. The house has landed on her.”

Amy Legend came out of the bathroom. “I am sorry. That wasn't very dignified, was it?” Her smile was apologetic, but her gaze was very level and direct. “Thank you for helping. I don't like not being able to manage on my own, but sometimes I can't.”

“I didn't do a thing,” he pointed out.

“I was desperate,” she continued. “They have not left me alone for one minute. They kept trying to make up excuses to come up to the front of the plane. It was hard on everyone, not just me.”

“They're hoping to meet you at the baggage claim.”

She made a face, then flicked a hand. “Oh, well, I didn't need any of that stuff.”

“Do things like this happen to you often?” Holly asked.

Amy shook her head. “Most of the time I'm traveling with someone. And if you are clearly in a conversation, people usually don't interrupt.”

She was, Jack noticed, standing a little closer to them than the casualness of this conversation warranted. About ten feet away two teenage girls were standing and staring at her. He made a shooing motion with his hands, and they moved on.

Holly spoke. “I hope Jack introduced himself. I'm his sister Holly, and this is our cousin, Nick Curtis.”

Amy and Holly shook hands. Before she could put out her hand to Nick, he stuck up his thumb again, and she returned his gesture. She had very pretty hands, fluid and
graceful. “The message I got from my father was unclear,” she said. “Are we all driving up to the lake together?”

“That's the plan,” Jack answered. “Whether or not said plan is going to be carried out pretty much depends on everyone's hip size.” If he had been speaking to a normal person, he would have said “butt,” not hip. “We've got to squeeze four people into three seat belts. But we've got to get the luggage first.”

They set off down the concourse. Amy stopped three times to speak to people or sign autographs. Each time they paused for that, Holly eyed the phones and Nick drifted toward one of the shops. Jack wished he had brought a rope in from the truck. He could have lassoed the three of them together and tied them to his belt.

Two suitcases and a box were the last remaining bags on the carousel assigned to the New York flight. Jack recognized one suitcase as Holly's. Nick picked up the other.

“The box is ours too,” Holly said.

That surprised Jack. Traveling with a roped cardboard box was not his sister's style.

He lifted it off the carousel. It wasn't heavy. But the knots were well tied, a bowline in one end, a slipknot in another. That was one thing about being a navy kid. You learned your knots. Holly probably tied the best knots of anyone in her law firm. “What's in here?”

“A three-dimensional Scrabble game, a Twister game, six bags of those loops you make pot holders from, and an American flag.” Holly didn't sound happy about this. “And you want to know something? They do not sell pot holder loops on Wall Street.”

“Mom had you buy all that? What for?”

“I have no idea. This all came in a message. Maybe she knows you're worried about getting bored and wants some
nice craft projects for you.” She stopped, having obviously realized how she was sounding. “I'm sorry, Amy. Please don't think this is Mother complaining. It's me. She's really been having a wonderful summer. She says that the lake is everything your father said it would be.”

“Oh, don't worry about offending me.” Amy waved one of her pretty hands. “You need to be careful around my sister and brother, but me, I hate the place.”

“What?” Jack hadn't expected to hear that. “I thought this was Mecca, Nirvana, every person's dream.”

“Oh, the rest of my family loves it. And I'm sure you will. Really. Don't let me put you off. It's just me.” She was apologizing, even more than Holly had.

“Then it's good of you to come,” Holly said, and they all started to walk again. Jack couldn't help noticing Amy's stride; it was long and graceful. And her posture was great. His sister stood reasonably straight, probably better than every other lawyer on the planet, but a lot worse than your average admiral. Amy-the-Legend had even the admirals beat; her posture seemed easy and effortless.

“I thought you were injured,” he said.

“Who, me?” She was surprised. “No, it wasn't me. I'm never injured. It was Mark Widemann, the Canadian skater. I was about to start working on his television special, but he was having so many ankle problems that they had to postpone the whole thing. So I suddenly had some free time and here I am.”

“How long are you staying for?” he asked.

“I don't know. It depends on a lot of things.”

She sounded deliberately vague, so Jack shut up. They were approaching the carousel where the bags from her flight had been unloaded. He hid her behind a pillar while
he scouted the area. Her fans had given up on her. She had a pair of nice-looking leather bags. Jack balanced Holly's box on his shoulder and took one of Amy's suitcases from her. The workmanship on it was impressive, although there was something strange about the handle. It was small.

She must have had it made to fit her own hand.

Jack generally tried to get his clothes to fit him, although it wasn't certainly anything he obsessed about. It had never occurred to him to try to get luggage handles to fit him.

Out in the parking lot, he stowed the luggage in the back of his truck. Then he reached for Holly's attaché case. She tried to pull it away. “I'll just keep it with me,” she said.

“For God's sake, Holly, do you honestly think you're going to be able to work on the drive up? There are going to be four of us, crammed into a space for three. You'll put someone's eye out just trying to get the damn thing open.”

Reluctantly Holly gave it up.

Jack slammed the tailgate shut. “All right, folks, let's see if we fit.”

His plan was to put Amy next to the window, then Holly next to her with Nick squeezed in between Holly and himself. Surely the pleasure of being crammed up to Nick for five hours belonged to his blood relatives.

But Amy had already gotten in, and Holly was sliding in next to her. Holly pulled out the middle seat belt and passed it over to Amy. Fortunately it was a long one without a shoulder harness. The two of them snuggled their hips together, and the seat belt clicked in.

“It's a good thing our butts aren't any bigger, isn't it?” Amy laughed.

She was being a good sport. Jack liked that. He could forgive just about anything in people as long as they didn't whine or think themselves too good for the rest of the world. And so far Amy Legend had been a very good sport. She looked interestedly at the dashboard of the truck. “This can't be the kind of transportation you're used to,” he said.

“That's why it seems so exciting. It feels like we're all going to summer camp.” She sounded as if she thought that would be fun.

“I think that's what Holly's worried about.” Jack put the key in the ignition. “Now, who knows where we're going?”

“I have the instructions in my attaché case,” Holly said and pointedly looked toward the back of the truck.

“Too late,” Jack told her. “You know how to get there, don't you?” he asked Amy.

She shook her head. Her hair brushed against his arm. He could smell her perfume. It was light and woodsy. “Actually, no. We take a left turn somewhere, that's all I know. I don't pay any attention to where I am going unless I am driving, and not always then.”

“That sounds safe.” Jack put the truck in gear. “Let's just go until we get bored, and then we'll take a left turn.”

“Jack!” Holly protested. “If you can wait two seconds, I'll get the directions.”

“Oh, no, it will be more fun this way.”

He was teasing her. He had checked a map while waiting for her plane, and he was reasonably sure he could get them within five or six miles of where they were supposed to be. Then they could start the left turns and see what happened.

By the time he was out of the airport traffic, Holly and
Amy were already well launched into a conversation about clothes that was far too technical for him. If you had the arm holes in your jackets cut very high, he learned, it was more flattering to your waist. “You can't move,” Amy reported, “but you look great.”

Nick had pulled his earphones back on. Jack didn't blame him.

They were soon on Interstate 35 heading north. Holly and Amy were talking about shoes. Amy propped her foot up on the dashboard to demonstrate something about an “instep strap.” Her knee bumped against the steering wheel.

“Sorry,” she said to him and went back to talking to Holly. “It is hard to find a daytime shoe with a strap that doesn't make you look like a schoolgirl or a tart, but some years diagonal straps are out there in leather. If you can find a closed shoe with straps and a court heel, you can climb Everest even on three-inch heels.”

Jack glanced at his sister. She was nodding. She had understood every word. “What are you doing about shoulder pads these days?” she asked.

That opened the gates for another vocabulary—“haircanvas base” and “feathering at the neckline edge.” Both of them were gesturing toward their shoulders, drawing curving lines over their clavicles. Each time one of them moved, Amy was crowded closer to him. He put his arm along the back of the seat to give her more room. When, a few minutes later, she leaned forward to struggle out of her jacket—he now knew it to be reversible, washable silk—so that she and Holly could figure out how the inner jacket had been “turned”—whatever the hell that meant—her elbow poked into his chest.

Finally Holly changed the subject. “So tell us more about this lake. Your family has three cabins?”

They did, Amy answered, but all three were quite small. The one that the family had had from the beginning had only one bedroom. It was log-sided, and they called it the “main cabin.” “Even though it's probably the smallest, it's where we always eat and such.”

The “new” cabin actually had been purchased next. It was called the “new” cabin because it had been built only a few years before the family bought it. “It's the most comfortable. It has two bedrooms and lots of windows, so it's light and it has a much more open floor plan. The kitchen's separated from the living room only by a counter, things like that.”

“Then why don't you eat there?” Holly asked.

“Because we don't. The important thing about the lake is to go up and do exactly what you did the year before.”