Come to the Lake

by Macarthur, Autumn

  “Emily, you’ll see him again when he comes back for some more pie. Liz, please?” She threw her neighbor a warning glance, hoping her eyes could say what her mouth didn’t dare to. “Daniel’s an investigative journalist, who mostly writes about fraud and corruption. His specialty is uncovering lies.”

  “Oh. I see.” Liz’s shoulders sagged.

  At least that might stop any more attempts to pair them off.

  “Let’s go home. If I carry the basket, can you manage Bear?”

  Thankfully, as soon as they reached the cottage, Liz agreed to go home and rest. Provided Daniel didn’t intend to stay and watch, she’d try laundering and ironing his clothes.

  Thirty minutes later, the front doorbell chimed, and she hurried to answer it.

  Lord, please help me. Help me to tell the truth as much as I can. And Your will be done.

  The pie was ready to serve. The coffeemaker was ready for action. He hadn’t brought any muddy clothes to test her limited laundry skills. She’d prayed. What could go wrong?

  Scratch that. She hadn’t planned on a lot of things, but especially not Emily stopping Daniel in the hall and asking him to open the closet pretty please. Her polite request jolted Sam out of any hope this would end well.

  A few steps too far away, she spun on her heel, arm outstretched. “No, don’t!”

  Too late. Instead of easing the stiff hinges open, ready to catch whatever fell out, he jerked the door — hard.

  She cringed, heart slowing then racing, hands covering her mouth to hold back a moan. This was worse, far worse, than failing Homemaking 101. Even worse than being stood up by her date for the prom. In slow motion, inevitable as a car crash, all the toys she’d stuffed in there this morning in her whirlwind clean up cascaded out, tumbling around him. The Barbie doll she’d wedged on the top shelf bounced off his head. Thankfully, his quick jump backward ensured nothing hit him too hard.

  She hoped.

  “My Barbies!” Emily shrieked, rushing to gather her precious dolls.

  Daniel turned stunned eyes on Sam. “What the—”

  As if Bear covering him with mud wasn’t enough, she’d now tried to maim him with six Barbies, their doll-sized closets full of miniature clothes, a pink plastic fully-equipped campervan, and several horses. To make the mess covering the floor even worse, a huge container of Legos exploded on impact, scattering multicolored blocks like hardened confetti.

  Lord, help!

  Taking a deep breath, she lifted her chin. Time to stop pretending. No point trying to brazen it out.

  Total peace enveloped her, evaporating her previous urge to run and hide.

  “I’m sorry, Daniel. That wasn’t supposed to happen, any more than Bear covering you with mud.” She proffered a regretful and apologetic smile. “Unfortunately, shoving things in the closet is my way of tidying up in a hurry. You’ve probably guessed I’m not really a wonderful homemaker. I’m just a very ordinary woman, with zero homemaking skills, trying my best to give my nieces a happy summer.”

  Chapter 4

  Daniel searched Samantha Rose’s face.

  He couldn’t possibly think of her as Sam. She wasn’t a Sam, any more than he was a Dan. The name didn’t fit the little he knew about the shamefaced but lovely blonde standing in front of him.

  Not when her cheeks flushed almost as bright a pink as the flowers in her hanging baskets and those soft strands of hair escaped her up-do to curl around her face. Hands clasped in front of her chest as if she prayed, she regarded him steadily.

  No evasiveness now.

  So his instinct she hid something proved correct. The only surprise was how disappointed he felt. Another hypocritical Christian, just like all the others.

  Once, as a kid, he’d tried to lie to Dad. The following beating and lecture cured any desire to try again. Then he’d found out about Dad’s lies.

  Meg called it cynical. He called it facing facts.

  In his world, honesty was a rare commodity. Once you looked below the facade, most people covered up dishonesty of one sort or another.

  Even Samantha Rose.

  If she’d faked her popular blog, it was news. Not quite the scoop of identifying high-level bribery in City Hall or uncovering some hypocritical oh-so-saintly businessman running a secret vice ring, but still news. Good thing he’d taken a few extra minutes to snap some phone photos of his muddy clothes when he’d changed.

  “So, you’re telling me your blog is a lie?” Accusation hardened his question.

  Instead of replying, she squatted down on a level with the sniffling twins and held out her arms to them. Both girls ran to her, openly crying now, and she hugged them close until the sobs subsided. Tears glimmered in her eyes.

  The sight tweaked something in his chest. Mom died giving birth to him, so he’d never known a mother’s love. But if he had, it could have looked a lot like this.

  Surely, her care for her nieces couldn’t be faked.

  “Emily, Rose, I’m so sorry your toys fell down. But I’ll make sure it’s all right.” Her sweet voice held a world of love and reassurance. “Why don’t you pick them up now and take them into the living room where they’ll be safe? If anything is broken, tell me, and I’ll fix it for you or get you a new one. I’ll just be in the kitchen with Daniel. Is that okay?”

  The twins nodded, still sniffling a little. “Okay,” they repeated, first one, then the other.

  “Once your toys are picked up, we’ll all have some pie. Then after Daniel leaves, we’ll get the hose out and wash all that the mud off Bear.”

  “When you have the hose out, can we please play on the water slide once he’s clean?” Hope brightened the chattier twin’s small face.

  He’d never been a guy to notice kids much, but these girls really were cute.

  “Sure we can.” Samantha Rose stood and ruffled the child’s curls.

  The thought hit him — would she have kids as cute when she became a mother? The “About me” page on her blog claimed she was thirty-two, single, and childless. Unless that was a lie, too.

  Liar or not, he couldn’t imagine anyone as beautiful and as much a born mom as she appeared to be remaining single and childless long.

  Focus, Novak! You’re here to get at the truth, not muse on the subject’s future children.

  She faced him. “I’ll put the coffeemaker on. We can talk in the kitchen while the girls look after their things.” A quiet dignity steadied her voice, but her wild-rose blush intensified.

  Stepping carefully over the scattered toys, he followed her.

  “Please, sit.” She waved to the chairs gathered around the big old table.

  He sat. The cookies she’d been baking when he first arrived lay on the rack right in front of him. Since they’d cooled, the irresistible odor that welcomed him to the house had faded, but enough remained to entice him to bite into one.

  The cookies didn’t look or smell fake, and he’d bet they didn’t taste fake, either. The incident with the unruly dog could have happened to anyone. Bundling toys in the closet was hardly a crime.

  So what was she faking?

  She busied herself finding a fresh filter and scooping coffee. He sensed she wanted time to find the right words. Would they be excuses or explanations? Once she switched the coffeemaker on, her shoulders visibly squared before she sat at the opposite side of the table.

  Her chest heaved in a heavy breath, but her clear gaze met his. “There are two things I want you to know before we begin. Honesty is important to me. I haven’t once lied on the blog or in any of my other interviews. I haven’t lied to you either. And I started the blog because I love my sister and her girls, and I wanted them all to have the best summer possible.”

  “Okay.” Truth rang as clear in her words as in the stories he wrote for the paper. She seemed willing to tell the whole story, but he kept his murmur noncommittal and nonjudgmental.

  Once subjects felt judged, they either clammed up or got defensive. Neither helped ge
t to the truth. It worked with murder suspects and bent politicians, and it would surely work with Samantha Rose. Though the pretty blogger was far from his usual subject.

  Nodding as if she’d made some sort of decision, she continued. “Mom and my sister are both fabulous cooks and homemakers.” Her lips twisted ruefully. “I’m not. As you’ve seen, I’m a domestic disaster area.”

  He rubbed his head. “I think I have a bump to prove it.”

  Eyes wide and horrified, she jumped up. “Oh no. Is it very painful? Do you need an ice pack?”

  “I’ll live.” Truth was, the small bump hardly hurt. “So why the blog?”

  As she sat again, she shrugged. “My widowed sister had the opportunity of a lifetime, so I offered to care for them for the summer. But I knew she’d worry about them, especially what they’d end up eating. Both their grandmothers would, too, once they discovered I had the girls. I started the blog to reassure them.”

  Her clear blue gaze didn’t waver from his as she spoke. Either she was an accomplished and shameless liar, which he doubted, or that much was the truth.

  “Uh-huh.” Hands open on the table, he waited for her to tell him more.

  A more genuine smile lifted her lips. “Then I found I enjoyed doing the blog and the girls did, too. Taking pictures of them, the house and garden, and what we were eating became fun. It became a challenge to make each entry prettier than the one before.”

  “You succeeded in that. Part of Perfectly Proverbs 31’s popularity is due to how appealing it is visually.” He’d read that in an online article this morning. All the pink and the flowers and ribbons with ornate script headings held no appeal for him, but obviously struck a chord with many women.

  “I hope so. I’ve done many web designs for homemaking bloggers, so I had some idea how to produce a nice-looking site. I’ve had quite a few inquiries for my business from a small link at the bottom of each page.”

  His lip curled. So she wasn’t as free from self-interest as the story about worried sisters and grandmothers implied.

  As if he’d spoken his thought out loud, she rushed into speech.

  “Please don’t think that’s why I started the blog. It’s not. The sudden popularity is completely unexpected. I wanted my sister to be able to see her girls, and they love the idea their mom can see them, too.” She buried her face in her hands. “You can’t guess how many times I’ve wished I could just email her the photos instead.”

  “Why didn’t you? A blog does seem to overcomplicate things.”

  Her head lifted, and she shook it ruefully. “I know. But her internet access is limited, so she might not be able to download email attachments easily. Despite all the pretty images, I’ve designed the pages to load fast using minimum bandwidth.”

  Again, he didn’t get the sense she was lying. It all made sense.

  Though he couldn’t discount the possibility of his attraction for her clouding his judgment.

  “So how are you a fake?” Genuinely puzzled, he spread his hands. “The pictures show no signs of being Photoshopped, and they can’t possibly be stock images. It’s clear you care for the twins. Lunch was delicious. And these cookies look real.” He gestured to the rack in front of him.

  Samantha Rose snorted. “Those cookies! No, they’re the most fake of the lot. Window dressing to make the house smell nice when you got here and show me being domesticated. At least everything else was genuinely homemade. Just not by me.”

  She hurried to the trash container near the back door and pulled out a package he recognized from TV ads.

  “That’s what you almost caught me buying at the store. Precut and ready to bake. See how they’re all the same size? Homemade cookies aren’t usually so tidy. Mine never are.”

  As if her confession finally gave him permission to do what he’d longed to since he arrived, he picked up a cookie and bit into it, enjoying the sugary chocolate hit. “Tastes fine.”

  “Good.” Her smile bent crookedly. “But I had nothing to do with it. All I needed to do was break them apart, put them on a tray, and leave them in the oven for the right amount of time.”

  Mouth too full of cookie to speak, he could only nod. He didn’t care too much how the cookies were made — they still tasted good. But obviously, it must be a big thing to her readers. Why else would she look so shamefaced?

  As she threw the plastic packaging back in the trash, she sighed. “I’m afraid that’s the limit of my cooking skills. In my defense, I didn’t ever claim I’d made any of the food on the blog, any more than I claimed I’d created the recipes.”

  The coffeemaker beeped. The speed she rushed to it suggested she was glad for the distraction. “How do you like your coffee?”

  “Cream, no sugar, thanks. So all the other food in your photos?”

  Returning to the table with a mug in each hand, she placed one in front of him, then sat. Nibbling at a cookie, she lifted troubled eyes to his. “Liz cooked it. Or Maddie. The most I ever did was reheat and plate it at mealtime. All the recipes on the blog are theirs, not just the pie. Liz prepared the food for our picnic today.”

  He took a cautious sip of coffee and then raised his mug to her. Hot and strong, the way he liked it. “You make good coffee.”

  Her lovely eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “I live in Seattle. It’s compulsory to know one’s arabica from one’s java. Welcome to Seattle — here’s your coffee machine.” Bitterness edged her laugh.

  “You know, using store-bought products or food cooked by someone else in your blog posts is hardly a crime.” Maybe this story wasn’t such a scoop, after all. What she’d done was wrong, but not really news.

  Her headshake loosened more strands from her disheveled hairdo. “My mom might think so. The girls’ other grandma probably. And the women who now follow my blog posts and comment on it certainly will. They’ll feel cheated and betrayed.”

  And there was his story, once he added a quote or two from some psychologist or sociologist about how blogs like hers made women feel inadequate.

  Clearly, her blog even made her feel inferior and second best.

  Sitting with her shoulders drooping and lips turned down, Samantha Rose could be the poster girl for dejection. He’d seen murderers confess to their crimes with less remorse.

  “Besides, I know I cheated,” she continued. “And God knows I cheated. Okay, I didn’t tell a lie, but I implied a lie. Deception by implication is still deception. Even with good intentions, it’s still wrong. Once the blog went viral, I should have ’fessed up.”

  As he swallowed more coffee, a lump in his throat surprised him. He’d never once felt sympathy for his subjects. But most of them denied any wrongdoing or found excuses to justify it. She seemed just the opposite.

  “I have to tell the truth when I write up this story. You know that, don’t you?”

  He kept his voice gentle, though his journalistic code of honor remained rigid. It had to. The truth had to be told. He’d still use those selfies of himself covered in mud. And detail her deceptions, with the reasons why they mattered. A crime journalist who concealed the truth was little better than the crooks he wrote about.

  Not that he saw Samantha Rose as a crook, exactly. Pretending to be a better homemaker was hardly the worst lie imaginable.

  “I know. I wouldn’t ask you to lie.” Loosing a heavy breath, she slumped in her seat. “I just hope Nancy, the girls’ other grandma, doesn’t feel she needs to rush here to rescue them from my bad influence. They’ll be miserable with her.”

  He didn’t reply. For the first time, guilt twinged at him. He’d never considered the effects of his stories. Meg’s reason for giving him time out.

  But surely telling the truth was more important than the consequences. The truth still had to be told.

  For a moment, she fell silent, eyes downcast, shoulders still slumped.

  Then she straightened in her seat, desperate hope sparking in her eyes. Words tumbled from her. “Please, give me another ch
ance? Liz is teaching me to cook. I’ve heard you booked a longer stay with them. My blog readers deserve the truth, but first, let me try preparing you a meal from scratch. Then write your article. You can watch me do it, if you want, so you know I didn’t cheat. I’ll even see if I can manage the pie.”

  As she gazed at him hopefully, he considered the rights and wrongs of agreeing to her deal. The sort he’d refuse point blank and include in his article if anyone he investigated for more serious deceptions suggested it.

  He’d seen no evidence to suggest she had more ulterior motives. Making a quick decision, he nodded. “Okay. You can have your chance. I’m here twenty-seven more days. You can try serving me that meal on my last evening here. That gives you plenty of time to prepare.”

  Since Meg insisted on this enforced vacation, she couldn’t be in too much of a hurry for the article. Okay, and a small, childish part of him rubbed its little hands gleefully at the thought of making her wait.

  As gratitude flooded Samantha Rose’s lovely face, the idea of a month exiled to the wilderness suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

  Chapter 5

  Sam plunged her hands into the lukewarm soapy water and started washing the breakfast dishes.

  Real homemaking bloggers probably didn’t leave dirty crockery soaking in the sink for hours, while they sat on the floor playing games with the kids. Mom never did. But she had and not for the first time.

  When Daniel arrived early for her cooking class, she’d gratefully accepted his offer to take the girls into the yard. They weren’t complaining, either. Sometime in the ten days since that disastrous interview, they’d decided they loved him unreservedly.

  Steph could come back to find they’d picked their new daddy for her.

  He’d make a wonderful father, appearing to enjoy playing chase with Bear as much as the giggling twins did. Plus, his arrival at the cottage well before Liz started her lesson got them out from underfoot, letting her tidy the kitchen without distractions.