Second Chance with the Rebel. Cara Colter
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Not to be so alone.
Her trembling deepened, and a soblike sound escaped her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said as she admitted the full truth to herself. It was not the cold making her weak. It was him.
Lucy felt a terrible wave of self-loathing. Was life just one endless loop, playing the same things over and over again?
She was cursed at love. She needed to accept that about herself, and devote her considerable energy and talent to causes that would help others, and, as a bonus, couldn’t hurt her.
She pulled away from him, though it took all her strength, physical and mental. The blanket held her fast, so that mere inches separated them, but at least their bodies were no longer glued together.
History, she told herself sternly, was not repeating itself.
It was good he was here. She could face him, puncture any remaining illusions and get on with her wonderful life of doing good for others.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, putting her away from him, scanning her face.
She already missed the small warmth that had begun to radiate from him. Again, she had to pit what remained of her physical and mental strength to resist the desire to collapse against him.
“I’m fine,” she said tersely.
“You don’t look fine.”
“Well, I’m not hurt. Mortified.”
His expression was one of pure exasperation. “Who nearly drowns and is mortified by it?”
Whew. There was no sense him knowing she was mortified because of her reaction to him. By her sudden onslaught of uncertainty.
They had both been in perilous danger, and she was worried about the impression her hair made? Worried that she looked like a drowned rat? Worried about what pajamas she had on?
It was starting all over again!
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