Fifteen
Chapter One
Upstate New York, March
“I am so angry with you, Lee.” Mac stood there at the bottom of the porch steps, against a backdrop of blooming crocuses in bright yellow and purple, while the still-bare trees gleamed with a coating of ice against a perfect late-March blue sky.
His hair was getting a little long, and he must have combed it back with his fingers because it lay in untidy, slightly wavy strands along the top of his head and down the back of his neck. A glint of sunlight caught his cheekbones, and the shadow above them made his dark eyes seem even darker. His shoulders looked strong and square under his shirt, and he stood with his feet planted on the ground as if ready for a fight with a grizzly bear. He was so gorgeous it almost hurt to look at him.
He hadn’t told Lee he was coming, and he’d driven here, he hadn’t flown. His familiar dark blue pickup was parked right there, still muddy and speckled with splashes of Colorado mountain road salt even after a journey of two thousand miles.
It spooked Lee that he’d driven all this way without a word of warning. Rattled the cage of her catlike independence, and made her very wary about his reasons. There was a statement in what he’d done. He’d ambushed her deliberately, and she didn’t know whether to be angry right back, or fall into his arms, or some third alternative that for the moment she couldn’t bring to mind.
It was never meant to get serious....
It was ten in the morning and Lee was still wearing her thick, fluffy, blue robe, wrapped in it for comfort as much as for warmth, because she’d felt disgustingly sick to her stomach since first rolling over in the glorious coziness of her bed at seven.
Her hair hung down around her face in a mess, and she could see it in the corner of her vision, like ropes of caramel taffy. Her mouth still tasted too strongly of mint toothpaste, and of the sweet grapes she’d eaten to mask the mint. When she’d come down to answer the knocking at the office door, she’d expected a delivery of clean linen or liquor supplies or bulk groceries, all of which were due sometime over the next couple of weeks.
Spruce Bay Resort was currently closed, in preparation for the coming spring and summer seasons. It was Monday, but the landscaping crew wasn’t here today, thank goodness. Mom and Dad were on the way back to their new home in South Carolina, her sister Daisy and new husband, Tucker, had left for their honeymoon after Saturday’s small wedding, and her other sister, Mary Jane, the eldest, had gone away yesterday afternoon for three days of indulgence at a spa in Vermont.
“You’d better come inside,” Lee said. Mac was wearing jeans and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled, comfortable for driving, but not warm enough in the open air chill.
“So angry!” he repeated. “Do you not understand that?”
She forced herself to speak calmly, trying to hose down the mood as best she could. “Well, yes, I do, but we did talk about it. It’s not as if I hid anything, or lied to you.”
“You talked. I was too stunned to react. I had things to think about, too, remember? And by the time I reacted, you’d just...gone.”
Because we never once said it was serious, so why should that change now?
“Want some coffee?” she asked.
“That’s what you have to offer?”
“It’s a start, isn’t it?” It had been a start for them, before. “We obviously need to talk. About why you’re here. And how long you’re staying. And it’s cold. So you should come inside, and we should have coffee. We both like coffee.”
“You drive me crazy.”
“I know.”
“You are nothing like my sister.”
“I know that, too.”
“Or my mother.”
“So you tell me.”
“Or any woman I’ve ever known.” She was like a cat, he’d told her the day after they’d met, and since then she’d embraced the idea. She was good with being a cat. The independence, the pleasing herself, the appreciation for comfort and warmth, but quite a taste for curiosity and adventure, as well.
“Isn’t that what you like about me?” She ventured a grin, but he wasn’t to be softened so easily.
Because it is serious.
“I don’t know if I like anything about you right now, Lee Cherry,” Mac said. He stepped onto the porch, crossed it in two strides, pushed past her as she pressed her back against the open door. Then he turned around. “What is this? The office? Why are we in here?”
“Yes, it’s the office. But there are stairs in back, up to the apartment.”
“You’re living above the resort office? On your own?” He was looming over her, seeming like too much big, strong, healthy beautiful man for the rather dark and confined space.
He was glaring at her with those dark eyes of his, but then they flicked down. To her lips. Which were suddenly hot and dry. The impenetrable gaze flicked back up before she could even swallow. It almost felt as if he’d kissed her, even though his mouth hadn’t come anywhere near hers. She loved the way he kissed.
“With my sister, Mary Jane, at the moment,” she answered him, incredibly annoyed to discover that her voice wasn’t quite steady. “Except that she’s away.”
They had talked. She hadn’t just run out on him. She’d presented him with the whole situation, her decisions and her plan, assuming he’d feel the same way she did, and he had.
He had! He hadn’t given her any kind of argument, hadn’t said a word about wanting to stay together.
“It’s bigger than it looks,” she went on, knowing she was giving unnecessary detail about the Cherry family apartment. “It’s a real home, Mac, not just ‘living above the office.’” She wanted to fill the space with talk, instead of this hyperawareness of his body...of his whole presence. His anger. His attitude. The creeping possibility that she might be in the wrong. “Four bedrooms, kitchen, living room, two bathrooms, above this lower level, which has the office and three storerooms and the double garage. We all lived here, growing up.”
“That’s your parents and your two sisters, running the resort. And you’re the eldest?”
“Middle.”
See? How could it have been serious, if you don’t even know where I fit in my family?
He ignored her correction. “So coffee is upstairs?”
“Yes.” She turned and led the way, relieved that he was the one focusing on mundane detail now.
He
