The Millionaire Next Door

Amanda gritted her teeth and cleaned up the mess. Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she just stopped cleaning up after Mick. Would he even notice? But nagging didn’t do any good, nor did threats. He was a twenty-two-year-old boy-man who simply hadn’t grown up yet. As soon as she got him through college and he got a job, he would move out on his own and fall in love with some woman, who would reform him.

As she threw a frozen pasta dinner into the microwave, her thoughts returned to Hudson Stack, and she started worrying about something else. What if that cash was all he had? His daughter had said he was out of work. What if he’d needed this cash to live on?

Okay, if this was all he had, he wouldn’t have rented a lake house. Unless he’d promised his daughter…

No. She was being ridiculous. Hudson was a grown man, and she had no business worrying about his financial status. If he’d rented a house he couldn’t afford, that was his problem. She had her cash up front, and that was all that mattered.

Right?

A PRESSURE AGAINST Hudson’s stomach woke him up. He cracked one eye open to a pitch-black room. Bethany was sitting on his rib cage.

“Daddy! Are you awake?”

“I am now.” He’d tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning. It was too quiet here. He missed the white noise of traffic, horns, sirens. He liked the idea that there were people all around him. This house was too isolated. The only nearby neighbor was Amanda Dewhurst, and he’d managed to alienate her.

The quiet had nearly driven him crazy.

“I’m bored,” Bethany announced.

Hudson checked the illuminated dial on his watch. It was a little after five o’clock. “Go back to bed. It’s too early.” It would be six, Boston time. He would already be on his way to the hospital, mentally preparing for his first surgery.

“I can’t sleep,” Bethany said.

Bethany had never awakened him before. Back home, if she cried in the night or had a bad dream, she went to the live-in housekeeper. She’d been told not to disturb his sleep, because he needed plenty of rest if he was going to stick a scalpel into someone’s heart the next day.

Now he had no such excuses. His daughter was his responsibility, totally. It scared him a little.

“Do you want to climb into bed with me?” he asked, a little apprehensively. He wasn’t sure that was proper, but maybe it would help her feel more secure if an adult was nearby.

“No. I want you to get up. I’m hungry.”

Hudson groaned. “Get a Pop-Tart. They’re in the cabinet.”

“I can’t reach.”

Hudson reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. His daughter stared at him earnestly. He would have to get up—he didn’t know what else to do. Maybe he shouldn’t have made Bethany take that long nap yesterday.

He set her on her feet, then climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans.

As he was fixing Bethany a Pop-Tart, he looked out the window and noticed lights on at the house next door. Amanda must be an early riser. He thought about asking her over for coffee. It would be nice to have another adult to talk to. He was going batty here, and he’d been here less than a day.

Then he realized how stupid an idea that was. First, he didn’t have any coffee. And even if he did, the cabin didn’t have a coffee maker. Second, an attractive woman in his cabin would only make his blood pressure go up. And the objective was to make it go down. He’d brought a cuff with him and he intended to check it often. The moment he got the numbers down to normal, he was heading back to Boston.

Third, Amanda probably wasn’t speaking to him. Although he hoped the cash left on her door would lessen her anger with him.

He thought back to the way she’d gone off on him yesterday. Her eyes had sparked fire, and little wisps of blond hair had pulled free of her tight twist, framing her face in a shimmering halo. He’d liked seeing her that way, free of her ultraprofessional real-estate-lady persona. He just wished her anger hadn’t been aimed at him.

He thought about her loss of composure and wondered what it meant. Yelling at him about the check he could understand. But that business about Mary Jo Whoever stealing her trophy—that was over the top.

The light upstairs went out, and another came on downstairs. Maybe he could take her out for coffee. Did Cottonwood have a Starbucks? He doubted it, but he’d seen something called the Miracle Café that served breakfast all day.

“Are you gonna give me that Pop-Tart or what?” Bethany asked.

Hudson realized he’d been staring at the house, lost in thought. The Pop-Tart had popped up and was cooling off. He plucked it from the toaster, set it on a paper towel, and handed it to Bethany.

“Grandma Ruth says we always have to eat at the table.”

“At home, maybe. But we’re on vacation.”

“What’s vacation?”

“You know, a trip. Where we have fun.”

“I’m not having fun.”

“You didn’t like sleeping in the loft?”

“Yeah. But I’m awake now.”

“Let’s go watch the sunrise.”

“Why?”

“Because…because it’s pretty. Because that’s what people do when they stay in a lake house, I guess.”

“What about fishing?”

When Hudson had checked out the house yesterday, he’d seen some fishing equipment in the garage. “Sure, why not? We’ll eat breakfast, get dressed, and by then the sun will be up and we can go fishing.”

Thirty minutes later, showered, dressed in old jeans and reasonably well fed with two Pop-Tarts, Hudson was in the garage sorting through a pile of dusty old fishing equipment. He selected what looked like the only two poles that actually had working reels attached. He sort of figured out how the reel worked. He found a tackle box that had an assortment of esoteric things inside, including hooks. He tied a hook onto the end of each line, using surgical knots.

“Piece of cake,” he murmured.

All the while, Bethany watched intently, asking him what he was doing each step of the way. He tried to act as if he knew the drill, but he’d never been fishing in his life except for the time he went deep-sea fishing on a yacht. This was a little different.

“The fish bite onto these hooks?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“Why do they do that? Are they stupid?”

“No. We have to trick them into biting the hook by putting bait on it.”

“What’s bait?”

“It’s something the fish would like to eat.”

“What do fish eat?”