The Return Of David Mckay

Addy made a face. She was embarrassed but glad that if anyone had to catch her blubbering like a baby, it was Dani. “Do I look all right?”

“No. Is there something I can do to help?”

“Not unless you know a magic trick that can make someone disappear.”

“Is this about Geneva’s grandson? The fact that he’s going on this trip with you?”

“It’s that obvious?”

Dani sat down next to her on the hay bale, nudging her gently with her shoulder. “Rafe told me he broke your heart years ago.”

“Rafe talks too much all of a sudden.”

“Do you want to discuss it?”

“Not much to tell.”

“I’m a good listener.”

“It’s not that exciting.”

“Try me,” Dani said with an encouraging smile.

Addy shrugged. She supposed there was no harm in telling Dani. She was so new to the family that she’d have no preconceived notions. “David McKay moved here to live with his grandparents after his parents were killed in a car accident. I was in the seventh grade when he showed up in my English class. By the eighth grade I was practicing writing Mrs. Adriana McKay.”

Dani laughed a little. “Love at first sight, huh?”

Addy nodded. “For me, anyway. Not for David. He was very popular with all the girls. He was a math wiz, but he really wanted to be a documentary filmmaker. He was so passionate about things. It was one of the ways he was different from everyone else. It was what made him special in my eyes.”

“After you left, Geneva was telling us about the movie that was filmed here and how quickly David made a name for himself once he moved to Hollywood.”

“That was really the end for us, that film,” Addy said with a sigh. “After he got involved with it he was…different.”

“How?” Dani touched her arm sympathetically. “Geneva said David became very good friends with the producer and the crew. That he followed them to Hollywood because he felt he could get an introduction into the business.”

“He did. Everything he’d been dreaming of came to him because of that one silly movie.”

“An offer he couldn’t turn down.”

“Of course,” Addy admitted. “That’s really at the heart of it, you know? That he could run off to Hollywood with those people. We’d been dating steadily. It had never occurred to me that he would ever seriously want to leave here. To leave me. But he said it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. That he’d come back. I was devastated.”

“So you fought?”

Addy nodded. “Out by the lake on the night before he left. The things we said to one another were hateful. He accused me of being jealous, not trusting him. Of trying to keep him from achieving his dream. I told him that he’d obviously found a way to use people to get to the top. That he didn’t need me any longer since there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to help him.”

Dani’s eyes widened. “Wow. Not a great way to end a relationship.”

“No. That was the last time we spoke.” Addy raked her fingers through her hair wearily. “And now he’s back.”

Dani reached out to squeeze her hand. “Do you still love him?” she asked quietly.

Addy’s heart bumped a little. Stupid, really, because she knew now that their love had been a fierce, ragged flame destined to go out. “No. But that doesn’t mean he can’t get to me. He’s the one I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. I used to picture the two of us living here, near our families. When he left, I…”

“You what?” Dani asked with a quizzical glance.

“I think I gave up on all of that.”

Dani stood, crouching in front of Addy so that she could take her arms in both hands. She frowned down at her. “It doesn’t mean you can’t have it with someone else, Addy. You have so much to give a man. One day—”

“One day, one day,” Addy mimicked, feeling miserable and mired in the loneliness that now characterized her life. “I don’t want to wait any longer to get what you and Rafe have. What Matt’s found with Leslie. And Nick with Kari. If I can’t have that…”

Neither of them said anything for a few moments. Then Dani spoke. “So you think having a baby of your own, raising a child alone, will make up for not having a man in your life?”

“I think I want something. I need to have…” She trailed off with a sigh. “Right now I have to get through two weeks with David McKay. And I just don’t know how to do that.”

Dani gave her a little shake, making Addy look up. “Adriana D’Angelo! Stop talking like such a weakling. You come from one of the toughest, most sensible families I’ve ever met. You’re a helicopter pilot. You run this stable. You’re considering being a single parent. You take on responsibilities that would send a weaker woman screaming for help.”

“I can make rose radishes and you can’t.” She gave a watery smile. “That doesn’t make me exceptional.”

“Well, you are,” Dani said. “All right. So this idiot is suddenly in your face again. It shouldn’t even be a blip on your radar. You can handle him. So maybe he had the power to turn your knees to jelly ten years ago, but if he thinks you’re going to fall for moonlight and roses still, he’s dead wrong. You’re wiser and he has no power over you. He’s just another guest.”

“He’s more than that.”

“No, he’s not. Your father would say he’s not a problem, he’s just a challenge you haven’t found an answer for yet.”

Losing the impulse to lie, Addy shook her head. “My father doesn’t know David McKay was my first lover. The man who got me pregnant.”

Dani’s mouth parted in surprise. “What?”

“No one knows it, but I miscarried a little boy three days after David left town.”

CHAPTER THREE

LATE THAT EVENING, IN her guest bedroom at Lightning River Lodge, Geneva sat on the side of the bed and looked down at the box containing her late husband’s ashes. She didn’t really believe Herbert was there. In fact, she was quite sure he watched over her from heaven. But when she spoke to him—and she often did—she liked to have this touchstone close. She supposed she was getting old, acting so foolishly sentimental.

“Now don’t fret, Herbert,” she said. “What I told David was only a tiny, harmless bit of deception. He needs this so much. Ulcers and headaches and wrinkles on his forehead at his young age—why, our boy’s a walking medical journal.”

She wiped a minuscule bit of lint out of a crevice on the lid. In the early years of their marriage, back before arthritis had played such havoc with his fingers, Herbert had carved this notions box for her. No one knew that—not even David.

“I miss you so much,” she said softly, then shook her head, refocusing her thoughts. “He’s not happy, Herbert. All that success, and he’s miserable, I tell you. I know you never liked me to meddle, but I just couldn’t let it go on without trying to do something. I have a good feeling about this trip.”

There was a light tap on her bedroom door. She’d been expecting it and she went quickly to answer, pulling the sash of her robe tighter.

“Come in,” she said softly. She glanced up and down the hallway. “Did anyone see you?”

“Not a soul,” Sam D’Angelo answered with a conspiratorial grin.

SAM HAD SETTLED INTO one of two chairs by the window. He smiled again at Geneva, feeling like a guilty child. He had always been the kind of man who loved intrigue, and lately there had been so little of it in his life. He felt revitalized and excited by the plot he and Geneva had hatched.