A Week at the Lake (19 page)

“No, it's . . .” Emma began.

“Stop right there,” the physical therapist shouted to the driver of the boat, who'd cut speed but made no attempt to stop.

Nadia helped Emma up then tried to put her behind her broad back, but the deck was way too narrow. “Nyet! Halt! Don't closer!”

The driver idled the engine then turned it off completely. The boat floated in on its momentum, horizontally aligned to the dock, an impressive parallel parking job relying only
on wind, current, and experience. Emma reached out to grab the side of the boat.

“No, don't!” Bob lost his footing and fell into the water with a loud splash. Nadia windmilled her massive arms. Just when it looked as if she'd regained her balance, she fell to the side, pulling Mackenzie in with her.

“Some bodyguards you've got there.” The voice was wry with amusement. “Kind of reminded me of a Three Stooges movie I saw one time.”

Emma caught and tied a line to the cleat on the dock. “How have you been?”

“That's what I came here to ask you,” Jake Richards, longtime neighbor and first crush, said as he stepped onto the dock.

S
erena and Zoe had just relaxed into the backseat of the limo that Ethan Miller had sent for them, when Serena's cell phone rang. A glance confirmed that it was the call she'd both anticipated and dreaded, the one she'd convinced herself was not going to happen. The one that had been placed from a Charleston, South Carolina, number that she'd recently memorized, and that happened to belong to one Brooks Anderson II.

“Aren't you going to answer that?” Zoe asked, looking up from her own cell phone.

Despite the anticipatory dread, Serena had not completely decided the answer to Zoe's question. She knew she should just drop the call. Except that there was a tiny part of her that wanted to at least hear his voice and what he had to say, so maybe she should let him leave a message? Her thumb began to move, but it seemed to have a mind of its own. Instead of hitting the drop button it accepted the call.

“Hello?”

She glanced at Zoe. If she'd been alone, Serena would already be speaking with some foreign accent. Pretending to be someone else so she could hang up the phone.

“Serena?” The voice was rich and full and confident.

She hadn't heard it for more than two decades except in her memory. Yet it was exactly as she'd remembered it, maybe better. Warm and husky with the long, drawn-out vowels and prep school delivery of home.

“Serena? Are you there?”

Her hands felt clammy. Her heart beat too fast. Her breathing turned shallow but there was no way in hell she'd let him know that. Just as she did before stepping on a stage, she drew a deep calming breath, tuned out everything else, and imagined her mind cleansed of all the excess debris, like a desk that's cleared, so that only the essential remained. “Who's calling?” Serena asked impatiently.

“It's Brooks.”

She said nothing.

“Brooks Anderson.”

He had placed the call. He had some purpose she did not want to speculate about for getting in touch. It was, in essence, his dime. She would not make it easier.

“I . . .” He paused and she half expected an apology, which she could either reject or pretend to accept before ending the call, getting herself off the line. Out of harm's way. “I'm calling because I've accepted an assignment in New York. I arrived yesterday and I'm going to be here for the next six weeks.”

Her thoughts skittered to a stop. Restarted. He'd called before he flew up and had continued to call after he arrived. She could not imagine why. Did not want to imagine why.

“Ironic, I know.” His tone turned self-deprecating. But he didn't add any of the things she realized she was hoping to hear. That he'd made a huge mistake not coming twenty-odd years ago. That he'd married the wrong woman. Lived the wrong life. All he said was, “I'd really love to take you out to dinner to catch up. It would be great to see you.”

Serena exhaled the breath she'd been holding. Now was the moment to tell him she had no interest in anything but an apology. Except asking for an apology would indicate that she still thought about him, that he still mattered. Did she want him to know that his choice, his rejection of her, had altered the course of her life every bit as much as it had his? That it had left her feeling, not really worth marrying, not truly desirable,
just not enough, no matter how many times she'd denied it to everyone but James Grant, MD, PhD? No way in hell.

“Why? What would be the point?”

She sensed the surprise in his silence and smiled grimly.

“I don't know that I'm interested in a walk down memory lane,” she said in an intentionally casual tone. “Plus I'm staying up at a friend's place on Lake George. I'll only be in and out of town for work on occasion.”

“Yes,” he said. “I read about Emma Michaels's accident and release from the hospital. I'm glad she's okay. I remember you mentioning her the last time we spoke.” So he remembered that last call, the night she'd drunk dialed him and cried so pitifully.

“I understand if you don't want to see me, Serena. It's been a lot of years. But I'm here for the next six weeks. I'm happy to meet at your convenience when you're in town. Or I can come to where you are. I know it's not the Lowcountry, but I hear the Adirondacks are quite spectacular. My time is my own.”

What the hell did that mean? Was he divorced? Separated? Or simply an adulterer? No, her mother would have told her if he were any of those things.

She felt Zoe's eyes on her and realized she hadn't said anything for some time. Neither had Brooks Anderson. She stared out the window watching the scenery flash by. Now was the moment she'd been waiting for and didn't think would ever come. Her opportunity to cut him off at the knees, to tell him that the next time she'd see him would be in hell, or better yet, when hell had frozen over. She could close the loop right now. She could have her say and then finally move on.

But before she could open her mouth, she was waffling, wondering. Wouldn't it be better to do this in person so that she could see his face when she told him what an asshole he'd been? What he'd missed out on?

She averted her head so that Zoe wouldn't see how hard this was for her. Despite everything she was ridiculously
tempted to see Brooks one last time. Thank God Zoe's presence helped her resist that temptation.

M
ackenzie lay in what she'd come to think of as “her” hammock, her laptop propped on her stomach, watching Emma do her water exercises. Smiling over Emma's protests and attempts to get Nadia into the water and working out alongside her, Mackenzie checked her email. There was no word from Adam just as there'd been no phone calls or messages since their last conversation. She'd just spent thirty minutes trying to come up with a blog post that would address what a separation could do to a couple and ideas for how a determined twosome might overcome the obstacle of distance, but she had not been able to write the first word.

She stared out over the lake at the distant mountains, a sight that normally soothed and helped put things in perspective. But she was too hurt and irritated by Adam's lack of communication, his excitement about things that didn't seem to include her, to figure out how to bridge the gap that had opened up between them. It occurred to her that she was tired of having to work so hard at their relationship. Especially when Adam seemed to think everything was fine.

Her fingers dropped from the keyboard. She checked the screen to make sure she hadn't actually typed that.

As childish as it might be, she resolved that this time she was not going to be the one to call.

She skimmed down the rest of her inbox, which was full of what could only be labeled junk, pausing at an email from Cathy Hughes at Merritt Publishing. The communication was short and upbeat indicating that the editor understood from media reports that Mackenzie was in Lake George with Emma Michaels. Was Mackenzie ready to proceed with the book? And if so, did she have an agent they should contact?

The answer to these questions were “not sure” and “no.”
Since the day she'd practically fled the publishing house, she'd done her best not to think about it.

At the sound of a vehicle approaching the drive, Mackenzie checked over her shoulder. It was the UPS truck. She closed the laptop, grateful for a legitimate excuse to stop working, and slid out of the hammock to go sign for the delivery.

It was an envelope addressed to Emma. The sender was Eve Michaels.

Barely a day went by without some sort of message or gift from Eve and Rex or sometimes just Eve.

Mackenzie stowed her laptop in her bedroom and left the envelope on the foyer table.

I
t was so great!” Zoe's smile was broad when she and Serena got back to the lake house late the following afternoon. “Ethan said I did a really great job. He said that my performance ‘blew him away'! Can you believe it?”

They'd had dinner out on the screen porch not too long after Serena and Zoe returned from New York, a large meal of chicken and steak kabobs and corn on the cob cooked on the grill and served with yellow rice. There were ice cream sandwiches for dessert.

Zoe chattered with excitement through most of the meal and afterward, when they went out to the Adirondack chairs lined up on the small beach to watch the sky pinken then gray and the stars begin to come out.

“The script was so well written,” Zoe enthused. She had played Georgia Goodbody's current boyfriend's long-lost daughter. Whom he had never mentioned and who turns up on Georgia's doorstep. “Ethan says that I have a real future in front of me.”

Emma watched her daughter's face as she shared the nuances of Ethan's direction, the jokes he played on cast members, the fun atmosphere in the studio and the set. She felt a flicker of
unease. “You have plenty of time ahead of you for that. There's no need to rush into the business.” A fragment of memory niggled. She stopped and tried to grab on to it. “I know we've talked about that before.”

Zoe looked anxiously at Emma, and fell silent.

“We both had a great time,” Serena said. “And Zoe did a fabulous job. Everyone thought so. If Ethan were to bring back her character on occasion, I can't see how that would be a bad thing.”

Emma shot Serena a look. It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that Serena didn't have a daughter and wasn't in the business as a child, but she could never say that in front of Mackenzie, who would have given anything to have a daughter like Zoe.

“You should have seen the way Ethan looked at Serena whenever she wasn't looking,” Zoe said, raising her eyebrows dramatically. “If he weren't so old I'd be crushing on him myself.”

“He's just a friend,” Serena said. “We've worked together a long time and we have a good rapport, that's all.”

“The guy thinks you're hot.” Zoe giggled. “And he's like a comedic genius. You should totally be going out with him.”

Emma watched the exchange with interest. The lighting wasn't great, but she would have laid money that Serena was blushing. Which was not something you saw every day.

“I think Zoe's right,” Mackenzie said. “The man sent you
I Love Lucy
and Jujubes. That makes him a keeper in my book.”

“You should never underestimate a man who can make you laugh,” Emma agreed. “Clearly he knows you better than most.”

“A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing,” Serena quipped.

They laughed. Emma felt her spirits rise.

There were holes in her memory and she had the stamina of a ninety-year-old; she wasn't going to be training for or running a marathon anytime soon. But her hair was starting to grow back and she could handle the stairs on her own, brush
her teeth, put on her clothes. And the women around her continued to celebrate each and every improvement no matter how minor.

“I heard that you've already had a gentleman caller,” Serena said, giving Emma a look that said turnabout was fair play. “Not bad for someone who can barely touch her toes.”