C01 Take a Chance on Me

by Susan May Warren

  She pried stories out of Casper while she helped Tiger roast a marshmallow and create a gooey s’more. She even laughed and cleaned him up when he showed her his sticky fingers.

  Now, Tiger sat beside her on the beach of the Deep Haven harbor, on a stadium blanket Darek remembered to bring. She’d donned a University of Minnesota sweatshirt over her lemon dress, and the wind had tugged her hair down from her ponytail, whispering it around her face and sending him the slightest hint of some clean vanilla scent.

  She’d purchased a neon-lit glow stick and fashioned it into a circular crown, which she placed on Tiger’s head. A sea of fellow spectators surrounded them, sitting on blankets or folding chairs, waiting for the Elks Club to start the annual fireworks across the bay. The Christiansens had arrived in time to stake out their traditional perch—next to giant boulders that cordoned off the beach from the rest of the shoreline. As children, Darek and his siblings had loved to climb on the rocks, daring each other not to fall into the lake.

  Sometimes, looking back at his childhood, he wondered how they’d ever lived through it. Or how their mother hadn’t lost her mind with worry.

  Darek picked his way through the crowd, holding a tray of cones from the local Licks and Stuff. He hunkered down next to Ivy and Tiger, handing them their orders.

  Ivy took her cone—butter brickle and vanilla, double scoop. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Tiger, let me . . .” He tucked a napkin into his son’s jacket. It stuck out like a beard, but maybe it would keep the five-year-old from walking away a sticky mess. At the rate Tiger had been eating tonight, he’d probably be sick, but Darek had never seen his son so happy—and easy to control. He hadn’t wandered away once, and there wasn’t even a hint of a meltdown on his face.

  Yes, Ivy wielded some kind of magical powers with children.

  The night had turned into jeweled perfection, the sky washed with diamonds, glistening on the dark velvet surface of the lake. The thunder had rolled off into the distance, dying without a hint of moisture.

  Grace and Casper had climbed onto the boulders to watch the show, Amelia standing on the pathway behind them, snapping shots destined to appear on the Deep Haven Facebook page. Their mother and father had brought their folding chairs and now sat like royalty among their subjects. Owen, of course, vanished the moment they hit town—probably stirring up trouble with his buddies. Eden sat next to her mother, fiddling with her smartphone.

  “This is amazing,” Ivy said, catching dripping custard with her tongue. “The harbor beach is packed.”

  “People come in from all over the county to watch the fireworks,” Darek said. “It’s the hottest ticket in town—to watch the display over the harbor, reflected in the water.”

  “You’re so lucky to live here. I read about Deep Haven—there are articles in the Minneapolis paper sometimes about events up here. But I never dreamed it would be so quaint.”

  Events. Like crimes? Felicity’s death—and Jensen’s guilt—had made the news even in Minneapolis. But that had been three years ago. Certainly she wouldn’t remember that.

  No. This was a fresh start with a woman who’d slipped into his life without baggage, without the headlines standing between them. A woman who didn’t see his mistakes but his future.

  He licked a chocolate drip running down the side of his cone. “Deep Haven is a great place to grow up.” For him, at least. He wanted to believe those words for Tiger, too.

  “I never lived in one place for more than a year,” Ivy said. Tiger scooted off the blanket and went to sit on the rocks.

  She finished the top of her ice cream and started in on the cone. “After the state severed my mother’s rights, I spent about a year bouncing around the system. I’ll never forget my first long-term placement. I arrived just before Thanksgiving. There were three other foster kids who lived there, but the family had six grown children who all brought their spouses and children with them. The house was packed, about fifty people over for dinner, and I remember listening to the noise, the laughter, the way they all knew each other, and . . .” She raised a shoulder, then looked away, her voice thickening just a little. “It was nice.”

  Nice. But he could hear so much more in those words. He grabbed a napkin and wiped his wrist, working on the edges of the cone. “How long did you stay?”

  “Until the next June.”

  That was a long-term placement? Eight months? He swallowed down a tightness in his throat, his appetite gone. “How many foster homes did you live in?”

  She looked at him, found a smile. “Fourteen, total.”

  Fourteen. He couldn’t help himself. “I’m sorry, Ivy.”

  She shook her head. “It taught me to be resilient.” She finished her cone and reached for a napkin.

  “Is that why you became an attorney? To help kids in the system?”

  “And women like my mother, too. And to make deadbeat dads like mine help raise their own children. There’s nothing worse than a man who has a child, then walks away.”

  “Yes,” he said, feeling a twist of shame. He finished his cone without tasting it, glad for it to be gone. “Is that what happened to your mother?”

  “She got pregnant at fourteen, ran away from home, and I landed in foster care for the first time before she turned twenty-two. By then, she’d lived with two other men, had an abortion from the first man, and was nearly killed by the second one. In between boyfriends, we lived in boxes and abandoned cars, and she did anything she could for money. . . .

  “We ended up in Minneapolis, with a guy she met in Des Moines. He was a trucker and, I think, took pity on us. He had three kids of his own. I liked it there; I shared a room with his daughter, who braided my hair and let me play with her Barbies. He tried to help my mother, and it worked for a while. She got a job at a mail-stuffing place and stopped using. It was a real home, you know? I started going to school, making friends, believing that finally I might have a dad. Then my mom got hurt on the job—lifting something, I think—and it put her on her back. She started taking pain meds and it all started again. One day I came home to find her passed out, hardly breathing. I called 911 and that was the beginning of the end. I was permanently removed when I was nine.”

  At nine, he’d been in third grade, spending his summers learning to swim and fish with his dad while Ivy tried to figure out why she didn’t have one.

  Tiger came toward him, his hands extended and dripping with vanilla custard. Darek intercepted him, grabbing napkins to work off the paste. His mother handed him a wet wipe and he went to town on the boy’s face.

  Ivy waited until he turned Tiger loose and the boy ran away before she continued. “My mother finally ended up in jail. I looked her up when I turned eighteen and visited her in the women’s prison. She . . . she was sad for the way our lives turned out, but sometimes it’s just the way it is. She didn’t expect her life to turn out this way either—she just let defeat take over and rule her. Severing her rights was probably the best thing that could have happened for me.”

  “You’re not angry with her?”

  “Bitterness only eats you alive.” She looked at him. “Right?”

  He frowned, then gave a quick nod. “Right.”

  He checked on Tiger, who was climbing a rock. Casper hauled him up.

  “Keep him out of the water, Casper,” Darek called.

  “Anyway, I get to choose my own life, my own path. And I chose Deep Haven. I’m here now, and I’m not leaving.” She leaned back on her hands. “Ever.”

  Not leaving.

  “You know, you can see the fireworks better from the lighthouse out there.” He pointed to the break jutting out from shore. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  “What about Tiger?”

  Darek glanced at Casper. His brother was already looking at him, wagging his eyebrows. See, this was what happened when you lived in a small town. Everyone watched as you fell in love with the new girl.

  No, not fell in lov
e. Just . . . started over. He wasn’t sure he even knew what it felt like to fall in love. What he and Felicity had shared felt more like . . . well, it certainly wasn’t love at the end.

  “Tiger’s okay with Casper.”

  “Then sure,” Ivy said.

  He held out his hand as he got up, intending to help her, but when she slid hers into his grip, he didn’t let go.

  She had soft, tiny hands, and he felt like a clod with his work-worn calluses. But he held on and led her through the crowd to the sidewalk, then down the beach and around the block to the lighthouse pathway.

  The streetlights didn’t reach far enough, and he slowed so she could pick her way along. He climbed onto the breakwater and helped her up.

  “You know this area so well.”

  “Deep Haven boy,” he said simply.

  “Right.” The breakwater was wide enough to walk side by side. “Thank you for letting me meet your family. They’re great.”

  “You’re great.” Oh, wow . . . um . . . “I mean, thanks for being so great to them. Casper thinks he’s going to discover some hidden treasure, and Owen just wants to flex for everybody to fawn over his physical prowess. Grace is always looking for people to try out her recipes, and Eden thinks she’s going to be a superstar reporter. You listened to them all. Even posed for Amelia.” He slowed, turned. “Thanks for that. And especially for being so nice to Tiger.”

  “Tiger is a wonderful little boy. You’ve given up so much for him.”

  He frowned.

  “Your firefighting dreams. It’s so romantic that you gave it all up for love. I’m so sorry about your wife, Darek. You don’t talk about her, but I can imagine that you miss her.”

  The wind trailed a long strand of hair into her eyes, and he brushed it away. Wished he could tell her the truth without sounding like a jerk.

  “I do, yes.” For Tiger’s sake. And for himself. Felicity’s death had stolen from him the chance to make it all right. To fix his mistakes.

  No, Jensen had stolen that.

  “But I’m trying to move on. To build a life for Tiger. I hope that we can build up the resort so he can take it over someday.”

  “It’s a beautiful place. But . . . was it full?”

  “No. We had a terrible winter—no snow. And spring came early. It’s been so hot and miserable, and without air-conditioning or Internet in our units . . .”

  “People don’t appreciate the idea of an oasis in the woods.”

  “It’s hard to update your Facebook status from Evergreen Lake. No cell towers.”

  “I rather enjoyed the luxury of being off the grid today.”

  “You’re among the rare, then.” He glanced at her, his words finding soft soil. Rare, indeed. “You know, the only thing I miss about my hotshot days is my motorcycle.” Okay, that wasn’t true. He missed the camaraderie, the challenge, the urgency of fighting fires. But admitting it only revived the ache.

  And how could he compare that life to the life he had with Tiger? His family?

  “You had a motorcycle?”

  “The one Casper’s driving. The Kawasaki 300. It was mine. I traveled to Montana and back quite a few times on that thing.”

  “Hard to strap a car seat to a motorcycle.”

  “Exactly.”

  They’d reached the end of the breakwater, where the lighthouse perched. He tugged her underneath the giant girders and beyond, to the edge.

  From here, looking back along the shoreline, the town sparkled, lights sprinkled around the bowl of the harbor and against the hill.

  “You know every great view in town,” Ivy said.

  “Just about,” he said, turning to her. Oh, she was pretty, with those freckles that belied her job as a prosecutor, those big green eyes, staring at him.

  There was something about her that made his breath leave him, warmed everything inside him. Maybe it was just the longing for something to be different and good. For someone to look at his broken life and put it back together.

  For God to finally let him start over.

  Darek licked his lips, tried to find the words. “I’d like to . . . ,” he said softly. He touched her face, running his thumb down her cheek, meeting her eyes. “Can I . . . ?” He drew in a breath as the fireworks started behind him. He could hear the murmur of approval from the audience echo across the harbor.

  “I’d really like to kiss you.”

  Ivy looked at him, blinked. Swallowed. Then a smile slid across her face. “I . . . I’d like that.”

  I’d like that.

  So he started with something gentle, tentative, brushing his lips against hers. A sweet chill ran through him at the taste of butter brickle ice cream, the vanilla fragrance of her skin lighting a blaze inside. She reached up and hooked her hands lightly around his jacket collar as if to pull herself closer, and he ran his hand behind her head, into that thick, soft hair, just barely holding himself back from deepening his kiss, from allowing this heady rush of emotions to scare them both.

  Because holding her like this, kissing her, awakened an awareness in him of just how long it had been since he’d let himself wonder, let himself want. Let himself believe in grace.

  Yes, standing here in the glow of the brilliant plumes of celebration, his arms wrapped around this beautiful woman who molded herself to him and kissed him with such tenderness, could only be something he didn’t deserve.

  The fireworks went by too quickly. And not just the display in the night sky over the harbor, but the ones that happened inside Ivy as Darek held her in his arms.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been kissed the way Darek just kissed her.

  Okay, never. Because the truth was, she never had real time for dating. Not with keeping up her grades for her scholarships and clerking at Atwood and Associates and then her junior partner position in Daniel’s firm and the hours and hours she’d studied for the bar.

  Nope, with the exception of a very sloppy sixteen-year-old prom date, this was it. Her first real kiss. The kind to wait for.

  She couldn’t believe how sweetly he’d kissed her. Nothing like the prickly man she’d first met, wearing his anger on the outside. No, this man had asked her permission before he kissed her, savored the kiss, made her feel like he meant it.

  Please, let him have meant it. Because she surely did.

  They sat on the edge of the breakwater, watching the fireworks arching across the sky, holding hands. And then, when she shivered, pulling her knees up into her dress, he’d moved behind her and pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her.

  That kept her warm. On fire, really.

  She felt his heart thump against her back, reveled in the woodsy campfire scent of him, and felt only a little guilty that his wife had missed out on so much, her life cut short.

  But Ivy didn’t want to think about her. Not tonight.

  When the fireworks ended, Darek helped her down the breakwater and through the mass of crowds toward the beach. “I can walk home from here,” she said, but he had her hand and didn’t let go.

  “I’ll walk you home. I just want to check in with Tiger, make sure he’s okay.”

  What a great father. She could melt at the sight of Darek with his son, the way he’d gently wiped Tiger’s face and hands tonight.

  The smell of firework debris seasoned the air, the crackle of faraway contraband celebrators in the distance. Darek stopped on the beach, turned to look.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to call the sheriff’s department, see if they can track them down. It’s a great way to start a forest fire.”

  “Seriously?”

  She and Darek continued along the shore, rocks falling away under their feet. “The forest is one big tinderbox right now. And people can be so careless.”

  Oh, she loved the responsibility—

  Wait, not loved. Liked. A lot. She couldn’t fall in love with a guy on the first—okay, second—date. But the fact that he worried touched her a
nyway.

  “You loved firefighting, didn’t you?”

  He glanced at her; then a curious smile appeared on his face. “Yeah. I love the forest, and reading how a fire moves through it is fascinating to me. It’s like a battle, and you just have to outsmart the fire. But there are so many factors you can’t control—weather and wind. You have to always be thinking what it wants, where it wants to go.”

  “You talk as if it’s alive.”

  “It is. It breathes air, needs fuel to stay alive, is hungry for more.”

  “But it takes a spark to get it going.”

  “Right. And that’s what I’m hoping we can avoid. Because as much as I love fire, I don’t love it enough to wish it upon the beautiful forests. Forest fires are terrifying and dangerous, and I don’t miss the part where people could lose their homes or die.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever go back to it?”

  He shook his head. “That part of my life is over.” He said it in a way that sounded a little like he’d been punched in the chest, fighting to catch his breath.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looked at her again, gave her hand a squeeze. “Thank you.”

  As they came closer to where the family had parked, they saw a crowd—nothing big, but a few people turned, watching something.

  “Oh no,” Darek said.

  “What?”

  He dropped her hand and jogged up the beach. She couldn’t run in flip-flops, so she clambered after him. She worked her way in from the edge and then wanted to weep at what she saw.

  Tiger stood in the middle, soaking wet and shivering, his lip fat and bleeding. Casper was wrapping the picnic blanket around him.

  Darek knelt before his son, finished wrapping the blanket, then clutched Tiger tight to his chest. “Buddy, what happened?” Darek looked up at Casper as he asked, a darkness descending across his expression.

  “I fell!” Tiger began to cry and Darek picked him up, held him in those big arms.

  “He was climbing on the rocks, and even though I had ahold of him, he slipped, hit his mouth on the rock, and went in.”