Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish

by Cara Colter

  “Worried, schmurried,” she muttered without looking up from the book.

  He shrugged and grinned at Lucy, then helped her buckle in, and adjusted her headset for her. There was something entirely too sexy about Mac at the controls of the plane. He was confident and professional, on a two-way radio filing a flight plan, going through a series of checks.

  As the plane taxied along the lake, Lucy looked over her shoulder to see Mama jacking up the volume of her eight track and squinting furiously at her book.

  “Is that Engelbert Humperdinck?” Mac asked.

  “I’m sure that’s what she’s listening to.” Lucy confirmed.

  She thought she heard a sound from Mama, but when she turned around again it was to see Mama glance out the window at the lakeshore rushing by them, go pale and jack up the volume yet again.

  The plane wrested itself from gravity, left water and found air. Lucy found herself holding her breath as the plane lifted over the trees at the far end of the lake and then banked sharply.

  “Have you ever been in a small plane before?”

  “No.”

  “Nervous?”

  Lucy contemplated that. “No,” she decided. “It’s exhilarating.”

  Mac flew back over her house and she knew he had done that just for her. Her house from the air was so cute, like a little dollhouse, all the canoes lined up like toys on her dock.

  She thought it looked very nice in white.

  “Is the lavender going to be a mistake?” she said into the headset. Then, “No! No, it isn’t!”

  He smiled at her as if she had passed a test—not that devil-may-care smile that held people at a distance. But a real smile, so genuine she could feel tears smart behind her eyes.

  She turned and tried to get Mama’s attention so she could see her own house from the air, but Mama was muttering along to her music, licking her pencil furiously, and scowling at her word-puzzle book, determined not to look out that window.

  “What’s Caleb’s House?” Mac asked.

  She went from feeling safe and happy to feeling as if she was on very treacherous ground. Lucy felt her heart race. “What? Why do you ask?”

  “That’s the charity Mama told me she wants the money from the fund-raiser to go to. I’d never heard of it. She said to ask you.”

  She was aware she could tell him now. That there was something about hearing him say Caleb’s name that made her want to be free of carrying it all by herself.

  But the time was not right, and it might never be right. He was here only temporarily. Why share the deepest part of her life with him? Why act as though she could trust him with that part of herself?

  She had trusted him way too much once before. She had talked and talked until she had no secrets left. Now, she had a secret.

  After he had left here, seven years ago, Lucy had found out she was pregnant. Terrified, she had confided in one friend.

  Claudia.

  Claudia had felt a need to tell her mother and father, who had told Lucy’s mother and father, and maybe a few other members of their church, as well.

  Lucy’s decent, upstanding family had been beyond dismayed.

  “How could you do this to us?” her mother had whispered. “I’ll never be able to hold up my head again.”

  Her father’s disgust had been visited on her in icy silence. Her plans for college had gone up in smoke. Her friends had abandoned her. She had been terrified and alone, an outcast in her own town.

  She had never felt so lonely.

  And still, that life that grew within her had not felt like an embarrassment to her. It felt like the love she had known was not completely gone. She whispered to her baby. When she found out it was a boy, she went and bought him the most adorable pair of sneakers, and a little blue onesie.

  When it had ended the way it had, in a miscarriage, it was as if everyone wanted to pretend it had never happened.

  But by then she had already named him, crooned his name to him to make him feel welcome in a world where he was not really welcome to anybody but her. That was the night she had run to Mama’s in her bare feet, needing to be somewhere where it would be okay to feel, to grieve, to acknowledge she could never pretend it hadn’t happened.

  That was the night she had spoken out loud the name of the little baby who had not survived.

  Caleb.

  Lucy was careful to strip her voice of all emotion when she answered.

  “It’s a house for young girls who are pregnant,” she said. “It’s still very much in the planning stages.”

  “One thing about Mama,” he said wryly. “There’s never any shortage of causes in her world.”

  To him it was just a cause. One of many. She took a deep breath. Was it possible he had changed as much as she had?

  “Mac,” she said, “tell me about you.”

  Part of her begged for him to see it for what it was, an invitation to go deeper.

  Maybe it was different this time. If it was, would she tell him about Caleb?

  “Remember I built that cedar-strip canoe?”

  She nodded.

  “My first sales were all those kind of canoes. It was hard to make money at it, because they were so labor-intensive, but I loved doing it. I started getting more orders than I could keep up with, so I went into production. Pretty soon, I was experimenting with kayaks, too. Two things set me apart from others. Custom paint that no one had ever seen before—canoes were always green or red or yellow, some solid, nature-inspired palette, and I started doing crazy patterns on them. It appealed to a certain market.”

  As much as she genuinely enjoyed hearing about the building of his business, it hardly struck her as intimate.

  “The other thing was, when you bought a canoe from me, you became part of a community. I kept in touch with people, put them in touch with other people who had purchased stuff from me. Eventually, it got big enough I had to do a newsletter and a website, a social-media page and all that stuff. I didn’t realize I was setting something in place that was going to be marketing gold.”

  Was there something a little sad about him regarding the building of relationships as marketing gold?

  “They didn’t just buy a canoe. They belonged to something. They were part of Wild Side. Everybody wants to belong somewhere.”

  “It’s kind of ironic,” Lucy said. “Because you seemed like you didn’t have that thing about belonging.” Even to me.

  “I guess I never found anything in Lindstrom Beach I wanted to belong to.”

  She looked swiftly out the window.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said stiffly. “It was just a little summer fling. I’m sure you moved on to bigger and better things. I mean, that’s obvious.”

  “It’s true I’ve become a successful businessman. And it’s true I seem to have found my niche in life. But I’ve never been good at the relationship thing, Lucy. I have not improved with time. People want something I can’t give them.”

  Was it a warning or a plea? She turned back and looked at him.

  “And what is that?” she asked.

  “They want to connect on a deep and meaningful level,” he said, and there was that grin, devil-may-care and dashing. “And I just want to have fun.”

  She was not sucked in by the smile. “That sounds very lonely to me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’m looking for someone to rescue me,” he said, rather seductively, teasing.

  Lucy turned back to the window and studied the panoramic views, water, earth and sky. He had always been like this. As soon as it started to go a little too deep, he turned up the wattage of that smile, kidded it away.

  “Aren’t you going to try and rescue me, Lucy Lin?” he prod
ded her.

  “No,” she said, and then looked back at him. “I’m going to get you a cat.”

  “I killed my last three houseplants.”

  “Wow. That takes commitment phobia to a new level. You can’t even care about a plant?”

  “Just saying. The cat probably isn’t your best idea ever.”

  She sighed. “Probably not.” Then she realized they were in an airplane. It wasn’t as if he could jump out. She could probe his inner secrets if she wanted to.

  “You always seemed kind of set apart from everyone else. It seemed like a choice, almost as if you saw through all those superficial people and scorned them.”

  “I don’t know if scorn is the right word,” he said. “I’ve always liked being by myself. I’ll still choose a tent in the woods beside a lake with not another soul around over just about anything else.”

  “It sounds to me like someone hurt you.”

  His face was suddenly remote.

  “It sounds to me as if you don’t trust anyone but yourself.”

  He didn’t even glance at her, suddenly intently focused on the operation of the plane, and the instrument panel.

  “I’m sure my father didn’t help any. I’m sorry about the way Lindstrom Beach treated you. And especially my father. When you told me how he threatened you, said he was going to set you up as a thief, I was stunned. I was more stunned that you let it work. That you let him drive you away. I always figured you for the kind of guy who would stick around and fight for what you wanted.”

  “And I figured you would say something to your old man in my defense, but you never did, did you?”

  All these years that she had nursed her resentment against Mac, and it had never once occurred to her that she had hurt him.

  “That summer,” he continued quietly, “I’d never felt like that with another person. So close. So connected. Not alone.”

  Lucy felt as if she couldn’t breathe. It was the most Mac had ever said about how he was feeling.

  “And the fact it was you, the rich girl, the doctor’s daughter, loving me. Only, it was like you weren’t the rich girl, the doctor’s daughter. You stepped away from that role. You were so real, so authentic. And so was I around you. Myself. Whatever that was.”

  “Why didn’t you at least ask me to go with you, Mac?”

  “When you didn’t take a stand with your dad, I guess I already knew what you would tell me later. That in the end, you would never fall for a boy like me. It would be too big a stretch for you. And unfair even to ask it.”

  But she was surprised by the pain, ever so briefly naked in his face. He had trusted her, and she had let him down. She could see his trust had been a most precious gift.

  Lucy tried to explain. “It was only when it was obvious you were going, and you weren’t going to ask me to go, that it was not even an option you had considered, that I said that. I could never fall for a boy like you.”

  He glanced at her, searching. “It cut me to the quick, Lucy. It made me so aware of everything that was different about us when I had been living and breathing everything that was the same. I guess before you said that, I thought we’d keep in touch. That I’d phone and write. And maybe come back to visit.”

  Now was the time to tell him that she hadn’t meant it as in he wasn’t worthy of her. She had meant it as in he was too closed, he couldn’t be vulnerable with her.

  “Mac, I’m so sorry.”

  But he suddenly looked uneasy, as if he had already revealed more about himself than he wanted to, been as vulnerable as he cared to get. Some things didn’t change, and she did not feel she could repair that hurt caused all those years ago by trying to clarify it now.

  He must have felt the same way.

  “It’s all a long time ago,” he said with an uncomfortable shrug. “Look where it led me. Hey, and look where we are. We’re almost there. Look out your window. We’ll be passing right over the Pacific Ocean in two minutes, and then making our approach to the Vancouver Flight Centre at Coal Harbour.”

  His face was absolutely closed. If she pursued this any farther, she was pretty sure if he had a parachute tucked behind his seat he was going to strap it on and jump.

  They still had the trip home! And maybe he needed a rescuer, even as he kidded about it. She didn’t know how long he was going to stick around, but she had him for today.

  Maybe, just for today, neither of them needed to be lonely.

  “It’s only been two hours! It takes four or five times that long to drive here from Lindstrom Beach!”

  “I know. It’s great, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” she said, and suddenly felt a new willingness to let go, to embrace whatever surprises the day held for her, to embrace the fact that for some reason fate had thrown her back together with the man who had left her pregnant all those years ago. Who had hurt her.

  And whom she had hurt, too. Were they being given a second chance? Could they just take it and embrace it without completely rehashing the past? Lucy found herself hoping.

  “Are we landing?” Mama demanded from the back.

  “Yes.”

  She put her puzzle book away and fished through her bag. She drew out her rosary beads.

  “Hail Mary...”

  Whether it was Mama’s prayers or his expertise, or some combination of both they landed without incident and docked at one of the eighteen float-plane spaces at the dock.

  A chauffeur-driven limousine was waiting for them, and it whisked them by the Vancouver Convention Centre to the amazing Pacific Centre Mall.

  He pressed them into a very posh-looking store. The salesclerks in those kind of stores always recognized power and money, even when it came dressed as casually as Mac was.

  “My two favorite ladies need to see your very best in evening wear,” he said.

  The clerk took it as a mission. Lucy and Mama were whisked back to private dressing rooms. Mac was settled in a leather chair and brought a coffee.

  “Would you like something to read? I have a selection of newspapers.”

  He shook his head, but after Mama and Lucy had modeled the saleslady’s first few selections, he wandered off. Lucy assumed he was restless, and didn’t blame him.

  Lucy had grown up with privilege, but even so, it had been Lindstrom Beach. She had never worn designer labels like these. She and Mama were in awe of how good clothes fitted, the fabric, the drape of them. Of course, even if she weren’t on an austerity program, she would never be able to afford dresses like these. Even so, it was so much fun to try them on.

  Mac came back, a dress over each arm. “The black for Mama, the red for you.”

  “Red,” she said, and wrinkled her nose. “You know I’m not flashy, so you must be afraid of losing me in the parking lot. Do you have any idea what dresses like these cost?”

  “The saleslady asked for my gold card before she’d even take those down for me.”

  “I shouldn’t even try it on,” she said, but heard the wistfulness in her own voice.

  “You’re trying it on.”

  “What can I say? You know I love it when you’re masterful.”

  And so she did. She wasn’t going to buy this dress, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow him to buy it for her, but why not just give herself over to the experience?

  Mama went first. Lucy and Mac had “oohed” and “aahed” over the selection of designer dresses that had been brought out for Mama so far, but the one he had chosen was the best. Simple, black, silk: it was classic. Lucy and Mac applauded as Mama modeled, as if she had been on the runway all her life. She sauntered down the walkway between the change rooms, hand on her ample hip, turned, winked, flipped the matching scarf over her shoulder.

  The salesclerk, Mac and Lucy applauded. Mama beamed. “This
is it.”

  It was Lucy’s turn. The clerk came into the fitting room with her to help slide the yards of red silk over her head.

  Even before she looked in the mirror, Lucy could tell by the way she felt that this dress was the kind of dress a woman dreamed of.

  The clerk stared at her. “That man has taste,” she said.

  Lucy turned and looked in the mirror. The dress had slender shoulder straps and a neckline that was a sensual V without being plunging. It had an empire waistline, tight under her breasts, and then it floated in a million pleats to the floor.

  She came out of the dressing room.

  “Walk like a queen,” the clerk said.

  That’s what Mac had said, too, when he had forced her to go to the yacht club. Walk like a queen. In a dress like this it was easy enough to do.

  When Mac saw her, his reaction was everything she could ever hope for.

  She had never seen him look anything but in control, but suddenly he looked flustered.

  “You,” he said hoarsely, “are not a queen. Lucy Lin, you are a goddess.”

  She could not resist walking with swaying hips, spinning in a swirl of rich color, tossing a look over her shoulder. She licked her lips and winked.

  She was trying to add a bit of levity, but Mac, for once, did not seem to find it funny.

  After she had taken off the dress, Lucy came out of the dressing room, feeling oddly out of sorts. What woman tried on a dress like that and then felt okay when she walked away from it?

  She went and waited outside the store while Mac bought Mama the black dress to wear at the gala.

  Mama was hugging her package to her and chastising him in a mix of German and English about spending too much money on her. But they could both tell she was utterly thrilled.

  They went for a fabulous lunch at a waterfront restaurant, and then, almost as if the whole thing had been a dream, they were back in the plane.

  They were home before supper.

  He helped her get down from the plane, then they watched Mama waddle happily across the yard with all her bags.

  “Thank you for a beautiful day, Mac. It was like something out of a dream. Honestly.”