Second Chance with the Rebel

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Then he picked up the rather large bulk of Mama Freda as if she were featherlight, and swung her around until she was squealing like a young girl.

“You’re getting me all wet,” she protested loudly, smacking the broadness of his shoulders with delight. “Ach. Put me down, galoot-head.”

Finally he did, and she patted her hair into place, regarding him with such affection that Lucy felt something burn behind her eyes.

“Why are you all wet? You’ll catch your death!”

“Your dock broke when I tried to tie to it.”

“You should have told me you were coming,” Mama said reproachfully.

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“Surprise, schmize.”

Lucy smiled, despite herself. One of Mama’s goals in life seemed to be to create a rhyme, beginning with sch, for every word in the English language.

“You see what happens? You end up in the lake. If you’d just told me, I would have warned you to tie up to Lucy’s dock.”

“I don’t think Lucy wants me tying up at her dock.”

Only Lucy would pick up his dry double meaning on that. She could actually feel a bit of a blush moving heat into her frozen cheeks.

“Don’t be silly. Lucy wouldn’t mind.”

He could have thrown her under the bus, because Mama would not have approved of anyone being pushed into the water at this time of year, no matter how pressing the circumstances.

But he didn’t. Her gratitude that he hadn’t thrown her under the bus was short-lived as Mac left the topic of Lucy Lindstrom behind with annoying ease.

“Mama, I’m freezing. I hope you have apfelstrudel fresh from the oven.”

“You have to tell me you’re coming to get strudel fresh from the oven. That’s not what you need, anyway. Mama knows what you need.”

Lucy could hear the smile in his voice, and was aware again of Mama working her magic, both of them smiling just moments after all that fury.

“What do I need, Mama?”

“You need elixir.”

He pretended terror, then dashed back to the dock and picked up his soaked clothing and the bag, tossed it over his naked shoulder. He returned and wrapped his arm around Mama’s waist and let her lead him to the house.

Lucy turned back to her own house, her eyes still smarting from what had passed between those two. The love and devotion shimmered around them as bright as the strengthening morning sun.

That was why she had gone to such lengths to get Macintyre Hudson to come back here. And if another motive had lain hidden beneath that one, it had been exposed to her in those moments when his arms had wrapped around her and his heat had seeped into her.

Now that it was exposed, she could put it in a place where she could guard against it as if her life depended on it.

Which, Lucy told herself through the chattering of her teeth, it did.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mac saw Lucy pause and watch his reunion with Mama.

“Is that Lucy?” Mama said, catching the direction of his gaze.

“Yeah, as annoying as ever.”

“She’s a good girl,” Mama said stubbornly.

“Everything she ever aspired to be, then.”

Only, she wasn’t a girl anymore, but a woman. The good part he had no doubt about. That was what was expected of the doctor’s daughter, after all.

Even given the circumstances he had noted the changes. Her hair was still blond, but it no longer fell, unrestrained by hair clips or elastic bands, to the slight swell of her breast.

Plastered to her head, it hadn’t looked like much, but he was willing to bet that when it was dry it was ultra-sophisticated, and would show off the hugeness of those dazzling green eyes, the pixie-perfection of her dainty features. Still, Mac was aware of fighting the part of him that missed how it used to be.

She had lost the faintly scrawny build of a long-distance runner, and filled out, a fact he could not help but notice when she had pressed the lusciousness of her freezing body into his.

She seemed uptight, though, and the level of her anger at him gave him pause.

Unbidden, he wondered if she ever slipped into the lake and skinny-dipped under the full moon. Would she still think it was the most daring thing a person could do, and that she was risking arrest and public humiliation?

What made her laugh now? In high school it seemed as if she had been at the center of every circle, popular and carefree. That laugh, from deep within her, was so joyous and unchained the birds stopped singing to listen.

Mac snorted in annoyance with himself, reminding himself curtly that he had broken that particular spell a long time ago. Though if that was completely true, why the reluctance to return Lucy’s calls? Why the aversion to coming back?

If that was completely true, why had he told Lucy Lindstrom, of all people, that his father had been a ditchdigger?

That had been bothering him since the words had come out of his mouth. Maybe that confession had even contributed to the fiasco on the dock.