A younger Mac Hudson pausing as he lifted himself out of the lake onto the dock, his body sun-browned and perfect, water sluicing off the rippling smooth lines of his muscles, looking up at her, with laughter tilting the edges of his ultra-sexy eyes.
Do you love me, Lucy Lin?
Never I love you from him.
The memory hardened her resolve not to be in any way vulnerable to him. He was an extraordinarily handsome man, and he used his good looks in dastardly ways, as very handsome men were well-known to do.
On the other hand, her fiancé, James Kennedy, had been homely and bookish and had still behaved in a completely dastardly manner.
All of which explained why romance played no part in her brand-new dreams for herself.
Fortified with that, Lucy ordered herself not to stam-mer. “No, I’m sorry, it isn’t Mama Freda.”
There was a long silence. In the background she could hear a lot of noise as if a raucous party was going on.
When Mac spoke, she took it as a positive sign. At least he hadn’t hung up.
“Well, well,” he said. “Little Lucy Lindstrom. I hope this is good. I’m standing here soaking wet.”
“At work?” she said, surprised into curiosity.
“I was in the hot tub with my assistant, Celeste.” His tone was dry. “What can I do for you?”
Don’t pursue it, she begged herself, but she couldn’t help it.
“You don’t have a hot tub at work!”
“You’re right, I don’t. And no Celeste, either. What we have is a test tank for kayaks where we can simu-late a white-water chute.”
Lucy had peeked at their website on and off over the years.
The business had started appropriately enough, with Mac’s line of outdoor gear. He was behind the name brand that outdoor enthusiasts coveted: Wild Side. First it had been his canoes. It had expanded quickly into kayaks and then accessories, and now, famously, into clothing.
All the reckless abandon of his youth channeled into huge success, and he was still having fun. Who tested kayaks at work?
But Mac had always been about having fun. Some things just didn’t change.
Though he didn’t sound very good-humored right now. “I’m wet, and the kayak didn’t test out very well, so this had better be good.”
“This is important,” she said.
“What I was doing was important, too.” He sighed, the sigh edged with irritation. “Some things just don’t change, do they? The pampered doctor’s daughter, the head of student council, the captain of the cheerleading squad, used to having her own way.”
That girl, dressed in her designer jeans, with hun-dred-dollar highlights glowing in her hair, looked at her from her past, a little sadly.
Mac’s assessment was so unfair! For the past few years she had been anything but pampered. And now she was trying to turn the Books part of Books and Beans into an internet business while renting canoes off her dock.
She was painting her own house and living on maca-roni and cheese. She hadn’t bought a new outfit for over a year, socking away every extra nickel in the hope that she could make her dream a reality.
And that didn’t even cover all the things she was running next door to Mama Freda’s to do!
She would have protested except for the inescap-able if annoying truth: she had told a small lie to get her own way.
“It was imperative that I speak to you,” she said firmly.
“Hmmm. Imperative. That has a rather regal sound to it. A princess giving a royal command.”
He was insisting on remembering who she had been before he’d ruined her life: a confident, popular honor student who had never known trouble and never done a single thing wrong. Or daring. Or adventurous.
The young Lucy Lindstrom’s idea of a good time, pre-Mac, had been getting the perfect gown for prom, and spending lazy summer afternoons on the deck with her friends, painting each other’s toenails pink. Her idea of a great evening had been sitting around a roaring bonfire, especially if a sing-along started.
Pre-Mac, the most exciting thing that had ever hap-pened to her was getting the acceptance letter from the university of her choice.
“Pampered, yes,” Mac went on. “Deceitful, no. You are the last person I would have ever thought would lower yourself to deceit.”
But that’s where he was dead wrong. He had brought out the deceitful side in her before.
The day she had said goodbye to him.
Hurt and angry that he had not asked her to go with him, to hide her sense of inconsolable loss, she had tossed her head and said, “I could never fall for a boy like you.”
When the truth was she already had. She had been so crazy in love with Mac that it had felt as though the fire that burned within her would melt her and everything around her until there was nothing left of her world but a small, dark smudge.
“I needed to talk to you,” she said, stripping any memory of that summer and those long, heated days from her voice.
“Yes. You said. Imperative.”
Apparently he had honed sarcasm to an art.
“I’m sorry I insinuated I was Mama Freda.”
“Insinuated,” he said silkily. “So much more palat able than lying.”
“I had to get by the guard dog who answers your phone!”
“No, you didn’t. I got your messages.”
“Except the one about needing to speak to you personally?”
“Nothing to talk about.” His voice was chilly. “I’ve got all the information you gave. A Mother’s Day Gala in celebration of Mama Freda’s lifetime of good work. A combination of her eightieth birthday and Mother’s Day. Fund-raiser for all her good causes. She knows about the gala and the fund-raiser but has no idea it’s honoring her. Under no circumstances is she to find out.”
Lucy wondered if she should be pleased that he had obviously paid very close attention to the content of those messages.
Actually, the fund-raiser was for Lucy’s good cause, but Mama Freda was at the very heart of her dream.
At the worst point of her life, she had gone to Mama Freda, and those strong arms had folded around her.
“When your pain feels too great to bear, liebling, then you must stop thinking of yourself and think of another.”
Mama had carried the dream with Lucy, encouraging her, keeping the fire going when it had flickered to a tiny ember and nearly gone out.
Now, wasn’t it the loveliest of ironies that Mama was one of the ones who would benefit from her own advice?
“Second Sunday of May,” he said, his tone bored, dismissive, “black-tie dinner at the Lindstrom Beach Yacht Club.”
She heard disdain in his voice and guessed the reason. “Oh, so that’s the sticking point. I’ve already had a hundred people confirm, and I’m expecting a few more to trickle in over the next week. It’s the only place big enough to handle that kind of a crowd.”
“I remember when I wasn’t good enough to get a job busing tables there.”
“Get real. You never applied for a job busing tables at the yacht club.”
Even