Second Chance with the Rebel

This crippling need. He had seen her once, when it seemed no one else could. Hadn’t she longed for that ever since?

Had she pursued getting that message to him so incessantly because of Mama Freda? Or had it been for herself? To feel the way she had felt when his arms closed around her?

Trembling, trying to fight the part of her that wanted nothing more than to scoot back into his warmth, she reminded herself that feeling this way had nearly destroyed her. It had had far-reaching repercussions that had torn her family and her life asunder.

“This is all your fault,” she said. Thankfully, he took her literally.

“I’m not responsible for your bad catch.”

“It was a terrible throw!”

“Yes, it was. All the more reason you shouldn’t have reached for the rope. I could have thrown it again.”

“You shouldn’t have jumped back in the water after me. You could have been overcome by the cold. I’m surprised you weren’t. And then we both would have been in big trouble.”

“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.