Cara Colter - Second Chance with the Rebel

“Not the most noble work, but honest,” he said. “And real.”

So, who are you to be telling me to get real? He didn’t say it, but he could have.

Noble or not, she could remember the ridged edges of the sleek muscles, how she had loved to touch him, feel his wiry strength underneath her fingertips.

He mistook her silence for judgment. “It runs in my family. My dad was a ditchdigger, too. They had a nickname for him. Digger Dan.”

She felt the shock of that. She had known Mac since he had come to live in the house next door. He was fourteen, a year older than she was. When their paths crossed, he had tormented and teased her, interpreting the fact she was always tongue-tied in his presence as an example of her family’s snobbery, rather than seeing it for what it was.

Intrigue. Awe. Temptation. She had never met anyone like Mac. Not before or since. Ruggedly independent. Bold. Unfettered by convention. Fearless. She remembered seeing him glide by her house, only fourteen, solo in a canoe heavily laden with camping gear.

She would see his campfire burning bright against the night on the other side of the lake. It was called the wild side of the lake because it was undeveloped crown land, thickly forested.

Sometimes Mac would spend the whole weekend over there. Alone.

She couldn’t even imagine that. Being alone over there with the bears.

The week she had won the spelling bee he had been kicked out of school for swearing.

She got a little Ford compact for her sixteenth birthday, while he bought an old convertible and stripped the engine in the driveway, then stood down her father when he complained. While she was painting her toenails, he was painstakingly building his own cedar-strip canoe in Mama’s yard.

But never once, even in that summer when she had loved him, right after her own graduation from high school, had Mac revealed a single detail about his life before he had arrived in foster care in Lindstrom Beach.

Was it the fact that he had so obviously risen above those roots that made him reveal that his father had been nicknamed Digger Dan? Or had he changed?

She squashed that thing inside her that felt ridiculously and horribly like hope by saying, proudly, “I don’t really care if you come to the gala or not.”

She told herself she was becoming hardened to rejection. All the people who really mattered to Mama—except him—had said they would come. But her own mother had said she would be in Africa on safari at that time and many people from Lucy’s “old” life, her highschool days, had not answered yet. Those who had, had answered no.

There was silence from Mac, and Lucy allowed herself pleasure that she had caught him off guard.

“And I am sorry about messing up your Mother’s Day.”

“What do you mean, my Mother’s Day?” His voice was guarded.

That had always been the problem with Mac. The insurmountable flaw. He wouldn’t let anyone touch the part of him that felt .

“I chose Mother’s Day because it was symbolic. Even though Mama Freda has never been a biological mother, she has been a mother to so many. She epitomizes what motherhood is.”

That was not the full truth. The full truth was that Lucy found Mother’s Day to be unbearably painful. And she was following Mama Freda’s own recipe for dealing with pain.

“I don’t care what Day you chose!”

“Yes, you do.”

“It’s all coming back now,” he said sardonically.

“Having a conversation with you is like crossing a minefield.”

“You feel as if Mother’s Day belongs to you and Mama Freda. And I’ve stolen it.”

“That’s an interesting theory,” he said, a chill in his voice warning her to stop, but she wasn’t going to. Lucy was getting to him and part of her liked it, because it had always been hard to get to Mac Hudson.

It might seem as if you were, but then that devil-may- care grin materialized, saying Gotcha, because I don’t really care .

“Every Mother’s Day,” she reminded him quietly, “you outdo yourself. A stretch limo picks her up. She flies somewhere to meet you. Last year Engelbert Humperdinck in concert in New York. She wore the corsage until it turned brown. She talked about it for days after. Where you took her. What you ate. Don’t tell me it’s not your day. And that you’re not annoyed that I chose it.”

“Whatever.”

“Oh! I recognize that tone of voice! Even after all this time! Mr. Don’t-Even-Think-You-Know-Me.”

“You don’t. I’ll put a check in the mail for whatever cause she has taken up. I think you’ll find it very generous.”

“I’m sure Mama will be pleased by the check. She probably will hardly even notice your absence, since all the others are coming. Every single one. Mama Freda has fostered twenty-three kids over the years. Ross Chillington is clearing his filming schedule. Michael Boylston works in Thailand and he’s coming. Reed Patterson is leaving football training camp in Florida to be here.”

“All those wayward boys saved by Mama Freda.” His voice was silky and unimpressed.

“She’s made a difference in the world!”

“Lucy—”

She hated it that her name on his lips made her feel more frazzled, hated it that she could remember leaning toward him, quivering with wanting.

“I’m not interested in being part of Lindstrom Beach’s version of a TV reality show. What are you planning after your black-tie dinner? No, wait. Let me guess. Each of Mama’s foster children will stand up and give a testimonial about being redeemed by her love.”

Ouch. That was a little too close to what she did have planned. Did he have to make it sound cheap and smarmy instead of uplifting and inspirational?

“Mac—”

“Nobody calls me Mac anymore,” he said, a little harshly.

“What do they call you?” She couldn’t imagine him being called anything else.

“Mr. Hudson,” he said coolly.

She doubted that very much since, she could still hear a raucous partylike atmosphere unfolding behind him.

It occurred to her she would like to hang up on him. And she was going to, very shortly.

“Okay, then, Mr. Hudson,” she snapped, “I’ve already told you I don’t care if you don’t come. I know it’s way too much to ask of you to take a break from your important and busy schedule to honor the woman who took you in and pulled you back from the brink of disaster. Way too much.”

Silence.

“Still, I know how deeply you care about her. I know it’s you who has been paying some of her bills.”

He sucked in his breath, annoyed that she knew that.

She pushed on. “Aside from your Mother’s Day tradition, I know you took her to Paris for her seventyfifth birthday.”

“Lucy, I’m dripping water on the floor and shivering, so if you could hurry this along.”

She really had thought she could get through her life without seeing him again. It had been a blessing that he came back to Lindstrom Beach rarely, and when he had, she had been away.

Because how could she look at him without remembering? But then hadn’t she discovered you could remember, regardless?

Once, a long, long time ago, she had tried, with a desperation so keen she could almost taste its bitterness on her tongue, to pry his secrets from him. Lying on the sand in the dark, the lake’s night-blackened waters lapping quietly, the embers of their fire burning down, she had asked him to tell her how he had ended up in foster care at Mama Freda’s.

“I killed a man,” he whispered, and then into her shocked silence, he had laughed that laugh that was so charming and distracting and sensual, that laugh that hid everything he really was, and added, “With my bare hands.”