When Somebody Loves You (22 page)

It was one of those days that, if she could have found a way, Jo would have bottled and saved so she could retrieve it later to savor and enjoy. The lake was pastel blue and portrait still, a mirror of the sky that held court to a brilliantly burning sun. The air was warm and fragrant with scents of the approaching fall. The man at her side was, for a change, quite mellow, his usual scowl replaced by a thoughtful, if disconcerting, stare.

She’d set out a noon lunch of sandwiches, peanut butter cookies, and chips at one of the picnic tables overlooking the lake. Cooper lounged in the grass at the head of the table, conspicuously alert for handouts.

If anyone had come upon the scene they would have thought they’d stumbled on the epitome of serene domestic bliss. A woman, her man, and a dog. She’d have laughed at the notion if it hadn’t suddenly seemed so appealing.

Her man
. Propping her elbows on the picnic table, she dug in to her sandwich and told herself to snap to. Since when had she started painting herself into pictures that reeked of romance and happily ever after? Since Adam Dursky had limped onto the scene, that’s when.

Losing her appetite, she set her sandwich back on the table. Maybe once, long ago, she’d wanted that scenario. Forcing herself to remember what had happened the last time she’d thought she had a man pegged, she put on the skids. She’d believed she’d seen something in that other man that hadn’t been there. Integrity, for one thing; love, for another. All she’d gotten for her efforts was heartache.

She was wise enough now to know she could do just fine without a man . . . especially a man like Adam.

He’d leave here the way he came—a stranger.

She would miss him, though, she admitted as she indulged in a long, assessing look at his profile. She’d miss the mystery and the man.

His face was a study in symmetry. His nose was Spartanly straight and perfectly positioned beneath that surly, brooding brow. The sunlight shining on his angular features did nothing to diminish his rugged appeal. Instead, it added depth and character, and emphasized that undeniable vulnerability held in check by inner strength. And it drove home the fact that although the shaded hollows below his cheekbones could have been etched from bronze, and his jaw chiseled from granite, he was cast from anything but stone. He was flesh and blood and substance.

She tried not to think of him in those terms, as a man who felt pain and regret. Yet it was becoming increasingly harder to convince herself that he was the hard, cynical rebel he’d like her to believe he was.

The way the light played across his face made him look younger than she’d originally guessed. Late thirties, maybe early forties. As she’d already discovered, he had the body of a young man. He was hard and lean, and his skin, stretched taut over all that sinew and muscle, had drunk color from the sun the past few days, giving him a natural, honeyed tan. Her gaze dropped to his leg and she wondered again how he’d come by that limp.

When she looked up again, it was to see he’d caught her watching him. The unrest in his eyes set her pulse skittering. After several thick, damning seconds, he turned away. Several more seconds passed before she realized he’d asked her a question.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked you if you really think you’ve got a prayer of making this place pay.”

So
, she thought, working hard to contain a grin.
The cynic speaks.
Leave it to him to draw up whatever barrier had been in danger of being breached between them.

He was really very predictable. In some small way, she found that assuring, even mildly amusing. He didn’t want to deal with whatever was happening between them any more than she did. For that she thanked him silently and answered his question as a reward.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” she began conversationally. “Just as soon as word gets out that Shady Point is back in business and better than ever, old customers and new ones will be calling in with bookings. What?” she asked, unable to suppress a smile at his doubtful look. “You don’t see the possibilities?”

He grunted, swallowing a mouthful of sandwich. “I see possibilities, all right. They all start and end with bankruptcy.”

“Exactly.” She nibbled on a chip. Shady Point was her favorite subject, and she was glad to share her strategy with him. “That’s how I got the lodge back.”

His scowl deepened. “Bankruptcy?”

“Yup.” Relaxing a little, she dangled her soda can between her fingers and caught his eye.

He looked quickly away, frowning at a new blister forming on his palm. She could see that he was interested, and decided, just for the fun of it, to wait until he made the next move.

The wait paid off with classic Dursky sarcasm. “Am I going to be privileged enough to be enlightened with a more detailed explanation, or is this where your little economics lesson ends?”

She took a sip of her soda, enjoying both his dry wit and his curiosity. “I wouldn’t have thought economics would be a topic that would interest a man like you.”

“A man like me,” he mused aloud, as if wondering what kind of man she’d decided she was dealing with. She saw it again, that spark in his eyes that hinted at a sense of humor. Fascinated, she waited to see what came next. What came next was that he baited her.

“Well, I’ll tell you, ki—”

She automatically shot him a cautioning glare, and he grinned. An honest-to-goodness, no-holds-barred, thoroughly engaging grin. She was enthralled.

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’ll tell you,
boss
, it really
doesn’t
interest me. I’m just trying to figure out if you add with the same set of numbers as the rest of us.”

Feeling easier with him than she ever had, she decided to entertain his curiosity. “Bankruptcy was to my benefit,” she explained, “because the bank just kept passing my father’s bad paper from one new owner to another, and each only succeeded in taking the place from bad to worse. This spring I convinced the loan officer that I’d have a better chance than the others at paying off the note because I’m a native and I know Shady Point. I know what it needs to make it profitable again.”

“What it needs,” he mumbled, “is a bulldozer.”

“Shows how much you know. You see, if I can get the place prettied up by the end of the month, the bank is going to be a lot more willing to hand me the additional loan I need to buy the land when it goes up for auction the first of November.”

He took a huge bite of a cookie and tossed the rest to Cooper. “Auction?”

“Auction. The first of November.”

“I got that part, Red. But you’re talking in circles. Why is property that you’re already buying going up for auction?”

“It’s a little complicated.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, but pay attention. What I’m buying from the bank are the buildings. What’s going up for auction is the land they’re built on. Lake Kabetogama is circumferenced by a state park. In addition, the state owns all the lakeshore lots and currently holds leases with the resort owners and the private homeowners scattered along the shoreline.”

He frowned absently as Cooper ambled over and begged for more cookies, slapping a paw on his thigh. “So you own the buildings but not the land they’re built on. Doesn’t sound like too stable a business proposition.”

“It isn’t. That’s why it’s about to change. The state, responding to lobbying from the leaseholders, has decided to sell—”

“At auction the first of November,” he concluded, as comprehension dawned. “But why the auction? Why doesn’t the state just offer the land to the leaseholders at a fair market price?”

“That was the original intent when this whole business started. But it got sticky when they turned up a law that requires all state-owned lands to be sold at public auction.”

“So what you’re telling me,” he said after feeding Cooper another cookie and thinking it through, “is that you could put all this time and money into the place, then someone could outbid you and buy it out from under you?”

She shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned. “Conceivably, yes, that could happen. But look around you. Who in their right mind would want to buy this place?”

“You’ve got a point there,” he said, but he was still frowning.

“Give me a little credit here. There’s a reason I’ve been back since spring and haven’t started fixing things up until this month. The state held an open house on the property at the end of August as the first phase of the auction process. Everyone who ever thought they wanted to own a fishing resort showed up. They all saw what you see, and most of them went away shaking their heads.”

“I take it the auction isn’t held on the property?”

“Bingo. By November first, Shady Point will be reduced to a number on a program in the auction hall, and anyone who came to the open house in August will cringe and figure the state will be lucky to give it away. I’ll be the one and only bidder.”

Cooper woofed impatiently. Adam threw him another cookie. “One thing bothers me.”

“Only one?” she asked, taking her cue from his sarcasm as she snagged the cookies and set them out of his reach. He was spoiling her dog.

“It seems to me you’re pinning a lot of hope on a flawed theory. What if one of those prospective buyers had the foresight to look past the run-down buildings and recognized the value of the lake frontage? If they outbid you, what happens?”

Her optimism gave way to a blank stare. He’d pointed out her biggest fear with cutting clarity. It wasn’t anything she didn’t already know or worry about, but it was something she didn’t like to face. “Then I’ll be forced to sell the buildings to the buyer for the state’s appraised value. But that’s not going to happen.”

It
couldn’t
happen, she assured herself. Still, the threat hung heavy in the air, and the easy mood was broken. She could see by his dark look that he thought she was crazy. Well, she was crazy to ever have thought she could confide in him, or that he’d ever give a rat’s rear end about her or Shady Point.

Rising swiftly, she stuffed the remains of their lunch into the picnic basket. “And this work isn’t going to get finished if we sit here and jaw all day.”

The little fool, Adam thought as he watched her walk up the hill to the main lodge, Cooper bounding at her heels. She’d do just as well to pin her hopes on a wave and expect it to stay put.

He was glad he wasn’t going to be around to watch her dream turn into a nightmare. Damn glad that come the first of November, he’d be gone and what happened to Jo Taylor and Shady Point Lodge would not be his problem.

Scrubbing a palm over his jaw, he looked at the lush forest surrounding him, at the cabins that were beginning to look more rustic than ruined, at the lake that had as many moods as a restless lover. And he thought of the woman who would be devastated if she lost it all.

He didn’t sleep much that night for thinking about her and her damn stubborn innocence. And her eyes. And that hair. As he lay awake he fought to purge from his mind the image he’d carried since he’d dragged her and that damn duck half-drowned and sputtering from the lake.

Her wet white T-shirt had been nearly transparent, and her nipples, puckered like raisins beneath it, were berry brown against the roundness of her small, exquisite breasts. Her hair, sodden heavy ringlets of amber fire, had framed her pixie face, a face that for all its innocence was the face of a woman.

But what singed and burned and tugged at the edge of his consciousness was the sight of a leather knife sheath strapped high and tight on the inside of her leg. The leather had imprinted itself into her surprisingly supple flesh, and that night, like every previous night, he fell asleep wondering how that suppleness would respond to his mouth, how his body would fit between the cradle of her thighs.

The memory of her was still tugging at him as they worked in silence for the better part of an hour the next morning. He was still fighting the pull when she shot him a nervous sideways glance. “How do you know my father?”

He looked over at her, glad for the diversion and surprised she’d finally broached the subject.

It was about time, he told himself gruffly. Until yesterday she’d studiously avoided any conversation other than what related to the work in progress on the cabins. That she was curious about John wasn’t at issue; it was whether or not that curiosity was ever going to get the best of her.

Now that it had, he weighed out his answer. He wasn’t sure how much she was ready to hear . . . or how much he wanted to tell.

“AA,” he said finally, deciding to lay it out in a straight line. When she didn’t react, he elaborated. “Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“I know what it is,” she snapped, and hopped off the deck like she’d snagged a sliver in her bottom.

“Then you know what it means,” he said tightly.

She looked at him long and hard and, he decided, with decidedly too much disappointment. “It means you’re just like him.”

He smiled grimly. “I’m not dying, if that’s what you had in mind.”

He’d said it more harshly than he’d intended. The bruised look in her eyes told him how deeply he’d cut. Hardening himself to her wounded gaze, he went on. “But if you meant, am I an alcoholic? Yeah, I am.”