Summer sizzles, p.24
Summer Sizzles, page 24
Still, something was wrong. Off.
Seeing darling Fortune in her arms chilled me to the bone. She’d snuck into the lodge, taken Fortune from her crib.
“Lied about what?” I asked.
She lifted her chin to indicate Will. “Who’s he?”
“This is Will, Mac’s friend from college. He’s spending the summer here.”
She picked up her flashlight where it had been sitting on the stone sill next to her and pointed it at him. She narrowed her eyes.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Will said. There was a strange note in his voice, though, slightly strangled, and I looked at him.
In the glow of her flashlight, he seemed pale.
It didn’t seem like they were in this together—I didn’t know about him, but I didn’t think she was that good an actress. Then again, something about Paula seemed to be bothering him more than just the fact that she’d apparently snuck through a window in the lodge, taken Fortune, and hidden out here.
Fortune didn’t seem to be entirely distressed. She had three fingers stuffed in her mouth and was staring around as if analyzing the situation.
I panicked on her behalf. There was about half of a roof left in here—the floor above had only half-collapsed—but it still wasn’t somewhere we should be lingering. Not to mention the question of why Paula was here, and why she’d taken her sister out of the lodge, which was downright creepy.
Paula wasn’t well. Fortune wasn’t safe.
“Why don’t we go back to the lodge before the rain really starts coming down,” I said gently, trying to be soothing despite the fear churning in my belly. “Will can carry Fortune if she’s getting too heavy for you.”
“No.” Paula hugged Fortune closer, and now Fortune whimpered, her eyes even wider. She held out her arms to Will, a trusting gesture that made my heart twist, and wiggled in Paula’s arms.
“Why don’t you want to go to the lodge?” Will asked. He too pitched his voice so he sounded reasonable. Something was clearly upsetting Paula, and he was doing what he could not to upset her further.
“Because my parents will be there, and they’ll take Fortune away again,” she said. “I just want to be with my baby.”
Ohhh.
It all made sense now.
“Fortune’s your baby,” I said. “Of course she is. Look at that hair.” I smiled, hoping it looked sincere and gentle.
Why had my aunt and uncle passed off Fortune as Aunt Delilah’s late-in-life baby? Why hadn’t they wanted to the rest of us to know Paula had gotten pregnant? Had she even been on an internship this summer?
If not…?
If not, where had Paula been?
The question bordered on terrifying.
Now, I guessed, was not the time to ask.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Paula said, almost dreamily.
Distantly, I thought I heard voices. Maybe even someone calling my name. Or it could have been the wind moaning through the house. I wanted to look at Will—I could sense him close to my right shoulder, just behind me—but I didn’t dare turn away.
My mouth was dry. Paula clearly wasn’t okay. The rest of the family turning up might completely freak her out, and there was no telling what she’d do. Oh, my cousin, my dear old friend, what had happened to you?
I wrenched my painful brain back to the last words Paula had said. “Oh, she’s so beautiful,” I said, pouring the truth into my words, “but you don’t want her to catch a cold, do you? Or scrape herself on a rusty nail? It’s not safe in here.”
Paula glanced down at Fortune as if assessing the toddler’s condition. I figured that was a good sign, so I took a step closer.
Once I had Fortune in my arms, we could figure the rest of it out.
A flash and another boom of thunder, and then the storm broke. Rain sheeted down, pelting the island.
Paula flinched so hard she knocked her flashlight off the sill. I heard it rattle and bounce off a series of rocks down to the lake—the house was built right on the edge of the cliff—far enough that I couldn’t have heard the splash even without the sound of the downpour.
At the same time, Fortune reached out again, squirming and kicking her fat little toddler legs, which I knew were stronger than you’d expect, especially when she wanted down.
The movement threw Paula off balance. Backwards.
I didn’t have time to think. I leapt forward and grabbed for Fortune, getting my hands on her upper arms as Paula fell backward. Paula held on, her arm tight around Fortune’s waist.
Fortune shrieked her displeasure.
Will was at my side again.
The sudden weight of Paula’s descent yanked me, and my head slammed, hard, into the stone side of the window opening.
I lost my grip on Fortune.
I heard Paula scream as she fell.
No…
Then I heard Fortune crying and knew Will had her, just before my world went black.
I woke to arrhythmic jolting, every shake sending a flare of agony through my head, nauseating me. Rain sheeted against my face. I tried to raise my hand to block it, but my body didn’t want to respond.
A flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a long, slow grumble of thunder like waves on the shoreline, illuminated the face above me. Will.
Wet black hair plastered his skull. His face was pale, his lips parted as he sucked in air. He was carrying me through the dark woods, his feet thudding on the rocky, uneven path as he jogged.
I tried to ask him to stop, to put me down—my head hurt so bad—but all that came out was a low moan.
In the distance, a long, low rumble of thunder, like waves on the shoreline.
I tried again to shield my face, and this time my hand flopped against my forehead. I grabbed onto my own sodden hair so my hand wouldn’t flop down again. The tug against my scalp was nothing compared to the pulsing squeeze in my skull.
“Don’t you die on me, Lizzy Sloane.” Will’s voice was rough, coming through his harsh breath. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
It’s Elizabeth. Nobody calls me Lizzy anymore, I thought grumpily, and then everything went black again, just for a blissful moment before the jolting brought me back.
I licked my lips. How could they be dry in the rain? “Fortune?” I managed, the word broken into two distinct syllables as he jogged down the path, but also broken by my heart, because I was so afraid for her. I remembered talking to Paula, and then a blur of motion…
“She’s safe. Uncle Jeremy has her.”
Relief washed over me like the rain. But I needed to know more. I fought through the pain in my head. “Paula?”
“Your dad…he’s looking for her.”
Okay. Okay. Nothing I could do there. My heart ached, even as my thoughts were muddled from the agony of the migraine. I wished Will would stop jolting around, just give me a moment to rest. The pain was making me nauseated, and I didn’t want to throw up on Will—I didn’t think our relationship was strong enough to handle that.
Did we even have a relationship? Was he even someone I could trust? I swallowed hard against the need to puke.
“Will…”
I wasn’t sure if I breathed his name aloud, but then he answered.
“I know. I know, Lizzy. You’ve got to trust me. I just need to get you home and safe.
Who are you? I tried to ask, but my brain wouldn’t send the words to my mouth.
If he’d been a part of this, he wouldn’t be trying to save me.
I clung to that thought as everything went black again.
I was emergency lifted off the island. The chopper was impossibly loud, from the whopwhopwhop of the blades to the ambient roar to the medical personnel shouting over it all, making my head hurt even more. Rain sheeted blackly across the windows, and I missed Will.
There was the doctor in the hospital, tall and bald and wearing gold wire-rimmed glasses. If he told me his name, it’s gone now. But I distinctly remember him explaining to me that I had a nasty concussion and that it would take a few days before I felt better, because—and this part is crystal clear—my brain had sloshed around in my skull.
The very concept made my stomach churn.
I later learned I was in the hospital only overnight. The next memory I had was waking up in my own bed on the island, and feeling a wave of relief. I was home, and everything was going to be okay even if my head felt like a tiny man was digging at my skull with a rusty spoon.
The window was open, the filmy white curtain fluttering in the warm breeze. I breathed in the scents of pine and grass. Across the room, Cathy’s bed was neatly made; she’d been booted to the guesthouse while I recovered. In fact, nobody was supposed to visit me, to let me rest, and I was going out of my mind with boredom.
At some point during my recovery, I woke to voices outside my door, which was half-open, as if someone had just left. One was my mother, and I had a vague sense that she had been with me moments before.
Then Will slipped in through the open window. He wore blue shorts and his grey Cornell T-shirt, and he clutched a handful of white Queen Anne’s lace.
Delight at seeing him suffused me like sunlight, overpowering even my knee-jerk reaction that I hadn’t showered in several days and what did my hair look like? It didn’t matter, because he kissed my forehead, crouched by the bed, and said quietly, “I can’t stay long; you’re not supposed to have visitors. But I missed you.”
I groped around until I found his hand. “I missed you, too. Are you okay? Nobody will tell me anything. How’s Fortune? Paula…?”
He smiled. “Me? Not a hair out of place. Fortune doesn’t remember a thing. Paula…she’s pretty banged up, broken bones and stuff, but she’ll recover. Delilah and Jeremy have left, of course, and so have Cortland and Vanessa, but Mac and I stayed.”
He cocked his head, and I heard footsteps outside. “Gotta go,” he whispered. He brushed another kiss on my head and disappeared out the window.
I let out a long breath. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been, not knowing.
And how tense I still was, because in my happiness at seeing Will, I’d almost forgotten all the many unanswered questions I had about him.
A few days later, we prepared for the biggest weekend of the summer: Fourth of July.
It was overcast; not the best conditions for fireworks, but we Sloanes make do. We’re stubborn like that.
I was on an Adirondack chair on the patio, the Black Watch plaid wool blanket over my lap, wearing a sweatshirt because the evening was cool, thrilled to be sprung from my bedroom prison.
My mother was still keeping an eye on me because of the concussion, but I was not going to miss the fireworks.
Almost everyone else was inside because of the temperature; they’d emerge when it was time for the show. Cortland and Mac had come of age two years ago to be in charge of the fireworks, and they’d taken my brother and sister as their apprentices.
Will was with me. It was the first time we’d been alone together since that night, except for his very brief visit to my room. Mom hadn’t allowed me visitors for any length of time, and she’d noticed that bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace.
I already knew the basics of what had happened after I hit my head. The rest of the family had made it back to the island just before the storm broke—fairly shortly after we’d left to look for Fortune, really. They’d fanned out and checked everywhere, and my father and Uncle Jeremy had arrived at the old house ruins just after Paula fell. Jeremy took Fortune and my father went to look for Paula, because Will had insisted on carrying me back to the lodge.
The whole sordid story had come out after that. Delilah and Jeremy had decided to claim Fortune as theirs because they wanted Paula to finish university and have a normal life. Paula had agreed with all of that until Fortune had been born, when she suffered from some pretty serious post-partum depression and possibly a minor psychotic break. But the lies were already in motion—Delilah had worn padding and we’d all believed she was pregnant—so they insisted on maintaining the subterfuge.
A lot of people in the family were angry about not being told, but they’d get over it the next time our family had to close ranks against some outside threat. Another Sloane trait.
Will might be that threat.
Thus far, though, he hadn’t been booted off Blue Heron Island, probably because I hadn’t told anyone my suspicions about him.
Now, however, he was going to tell me what was going on. I’d made it clear he had no choice. I kept my hands beneath the blanket, unwilling to touch him before I knew how betrayed I should feel.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked now.
I shook my head—carefully, because too much motion made the world spin. “Remember you from where?”
“My mother was the cook you mentioned who was here only one summer,” he said. “I was twelve. I…wasn’t very nice then. I had a chip on my shoulder because my father had left us and my mom could barely make ends meet. Plus I had glasses and an overbite and a mouthful of braces, and my mom had shaved my head before we got here because I’d had lice. It was awful. I was awful.”
I squinted, trying to imagine an awful, homely boy beneath those gorgeous features and kind mien. I put a hand to my mouth. “Billy? Billy…something. Not Madigan.”
He shook his head. “My mom remarried the next year, and my stepdad adopted me, so I took his name. But yes, Billy.”
“You were awful,” I said. I’d been bookish and shy, comfortable mostly only around my own family. My cousins had tried to include the cook’s son, but he refused. He called us snobs, and pinched me once, hard, on the upper arm when I came into the kitchen hoping for an extra slice of Uncle Buster’s cherry pie.
“It was just that one summer,” I said. “Nine years ago. That’s probably why I didn’t recognize you.”
“Well, I hope I look at least a little different now,” he said, with such horror in his voice that I had to laugh.
“Yes, yes you do.”
“My mom met a wonderful man that fall—my stepdad. He’s a lawyer, so my mom was able to go back to school and become a chef. She owns Great Peaks, among other restaurants, and she created a line of organic frozen meals that really took off.”
“So, why didn’t you tell any of us this?”
He set his hand on the arm of my chair, palm up. I considered it. After a moment, I took it, and he wrapped his warm fingers around mine.
“Lots of reasons. I was embarrassed to have been the son of the help, for one. I hate to say it, but your family can be kind of snobby sometimes.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “It’s true. I’ve had a lot of lectures about dating beneath me.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Thanks to my stepdad, I pulled myself together and started studying hard, and I got a scholarship to Cornell. I met Mac by accident—we were already friends before I clued in to who he was. He’s…more laid back than a lot of your family.”
“Also true,” I agreed.
“When I realized, I didn’t want to tell him, because I didn’t want him to think I’d befriended him on purpose. And then when he invited me here for the summer…”
Will ducked his head, his long lashes shadowing his eyes. This was hard for him, and it made my heart hurt.
Finally he looked back up, looked me straight in the eye with those gorgeous blue eyes of his, and said, “Believe it or not, I had a crush on you all those years ago. I agreed to come because I wanted to find out what kind of woman you’d become, and see if maybe there could be something, still. I figured I’d have to win your heart by showing you who I am now.”
“You liked me? You pinched me so hard, I had a bruise for two weeks!”
“I think that was when it happened,” he said. “You didn’t cry. You stared at me with tears welling up in your big, beautiful brown eyes…and then you hauled off and punched me in the arm. I had a bruise, too. You were—you are—one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. When Fortune went missing, I knew you weren’t going to fall apart. You just took charge.”
“I was terrified,” I said.
“But you didn’t let that stop you,” he said.
I felt tears welling again. I blinked them away. “Dammit, Will Madigan. I think I’m in love with you.”
He cocked his head toward the house. “Is that going to be a problem?” he asked, and I knew he meant my family. Because he was going to have to come clean, and although my parents are generous and kind to the help, socializing with them was another matter entirely.
But Will was making something of his life, the same way my great-great-grandfather had (only hopefully with more ethics). And my father did know his father’s name, and his mother was a very successful businesswoman now and sort of a famous chef to boot.
“You saved Fortune’s life,” I said. “If they ever, ever question my being with you, I’m going to remind them of that. So on behalf of all the Sloanes and Sloane-adjacents, welcome to the family.”
His grin as always, charmed me down to my toes.
“I love you too, Elizabeth Sloane.”
“You are allowed to call me Lizzy,” I said, and then I kissed him, as a loon’s cry echoed over the lake and across Blue Heron Island.
About the Editor
Called “The Reigning Queen of Paranormal Romance” by Best Reviews, bestselling author Kristine Grayson has made a name for herself publishing light, slightly off-skew romance novels about Greek Gods, fairy tale characters, and the modern world.
She writes historical mysteries as Kris Nelscott, and she also writes in a variety of genre, from literary to science fiction to romance, under her real name—Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She has won dozens of awards for her writing
As Kristine Grayson, she also edits the romance volumes of Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine.
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