Summer on Firefly Lake

by Jen Gilroy

  “Oh, honey, I didn’t think. The show was fabulous but you must be exhausted. You go on and give your sweet girls my love.” Gabrielle lifted her mother’s Wedgwood teapot and refilled Ward’s cup.

  His smile started deep in the blue of his eyes and pulled her in. It warmed almost forgotten places inside her, like she was a young woman again and life was rich with possibilities.

  Without another glance at Nick, Mia escaped up the stairs, her footsteps light on the wooden treads.

  Nick moved farther into the room and crossed his arms over his chest. “Ward, is it?”

  “Ward Aldrich.” Gabrielle made the introductions.

  Mia was right. It was none of Nick’s business who she made friends with.

  “Good to meet you.” Ward stood and shook Nick’s hand. “Your mom’s told me a lot about you.”

  “Funny, she never mentioned you.” Nick returned Ward’s handshake then sat in a blue velvet armchair and crossed one jean-clad leg over the other. “Mia didn’t either.” He flicked a glance toward the empty staircase, and his expression changed to one of such longing Gabrielle’s breath caught. Her boy felt something for Mia, she was sure of it. She only had to keep nudging the two of them in the right direction.

  “I stumbled across your mom’s garden and we got talking.” Ward dug in his pocket for his wallet and pulled out a business card. “I’m on a working vacation and based at the Inn on the Lake for a few weeks.”

  Nick took the card and studied it. “It must be interesting to travel all around the world and make nature films.”

  “It sure is. I’ll be in northern China in October for a documentary project.” Ward’s eyes lit up as he launched into a description of his work and travels.

  Gabrielle tightened her grip on the handle of her teacup. Of course Ward would leave. Whatever was between them was temporary. It had to be. She hadn’t told him she’d been sick, and she wouldn’t. Even a shopping trip to Burlington or a visit to her sister and cousins in Montreal was still too much. China might as well be the moon.

  “You and my mother are…?” The warning in Nick’s voice was unmistakable.

  “Nick.” Gabrielle set down her cup with a thud. Amber liquid sloshed over the fluted edge and splattered across the Victorian tea cart to stain the embroidered tray cloth.

  “The boy’s looking out for you, is all.” Ward got to his feet. “I’d like to think your mother and I are friends.”

  “Boy?” The corners of Nick’s mouth twitched as he rose to his feet, too. “You know I’ll check you out, don’t you?”

  “Of course you will. I’d do the same in your shoes.” Ward moved to stand next to Nick, the two men almost equal in height. “An attorney like you must have contacts in the right places.”

  “A few.” Nick’s smile came out and then he laughed, awkward, but still a laugh.

  Ward’s expression sobered and the sadness in his eyes was in stark contrast to the warmth and good humor Gabrielle was used to seeing there. “My wife, Carol, died almost twenty years ago. I’ve been alone since my daughter went off to college and then married. Now she has a little girl of her own.”

  “I’m sorry about your wife and…everything.” Nick cleared his throat. “I can be a bit—”

  “Overprotective.” Gabrielle joined the two men and linked an arm through her son’s. The sweet little boy who’d grown into the angry teen and then the disillusioned man. Damn Brian and damn Isobel, too.

  Ward’s expression changed again, and he shot Gabrielle a teasing glance. The kind of look that made her heart beat faster and made her forget about those traitorous cells that might still lurk inside her body to pounce when she least expected. “What checking me out won’t tell you is I’ve still got all my teeth and most of my hair. I broke my right leg climbing in the Himalayas three years ago, but I got a clean bill of health at my last physical in March. I also play a decent game of pool.”

  Nick laughed again, less awkward. “Pool, huh?”

  “You play?” Ward looped his arm through Gabrielle’s free one, the gesture as familiar and comfortable as if they’d known each other for years, and she shivered. A shiver that reminded her she’d once been a woman, not a cancer patient. Not a fighter and not a survivor but a woman who was healthy and whole.

  “When I have time, yeah, I play with a group of guys at the Moose and Squirrel, the bar down by the lake.” Nick opened his wallet and slid out his card. “Wednesday’s our pool night. Give me a call if you’re interested.”

  “Sure.” Ward took his arm away from Gabrielle’s to take Nick’s card. “Thanks.”

  They assessed each other the way men did, and Gabrielle watched them, her heart full. She loved Nick, more than she could ever tell him. For her sake, he’d try to get to know Ward and accept him, so he’d opened himself up in a way he rarely did.

  Like she’d opened herself to Ward. Even though, if she let herself, she could fall for him. And fall hard. But she couldn’t let herself.

  She bent to pick up Pixie, who snoozed on a needlepoint-covered footstool. The dog nestled into the curve of her chest, and her small body was warm and soothing. The old house creaked in the wind, and an upstairs window banged. Nick’s head jerked toward Gabrielle.

  “I’ve given Mia Georgia’s old room. The window’s sticking again, but neither of us is strong enough to fix it.” A little white lie, which was justified if it got Mia and Nick to talk to each other. Gabrielle gave him as helpless a look as she could muster.

  “I’ll come by at lunch tomorrow and take a look,” Nick said. “Mia’s going to Camp Rainbow, so I won’t disturb her. The sooner you get this place sold and you move into that bungalow, the better. It has new windows and frames and everything is energy-efficient and maintenance-free. You’ll be warm, no matter what the Vermont winter throws at you, and cool if it’s a hot summer.”

  “What bungalow?” Ward’s expression was puzzled.

  Gabrielle looked at Nick and summoned the courage to tell him the truth she’d avoided for weeks. The truth he’d never wanted to hear. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not selling Harbor House.”

  “But I hired Mia to help you and—”

  “She has helped me,” Gabrielle broke in. “Mia’s helped me see how much I love my home and how it would about kill me to leave it and see strangers living here.”

  “Mom, be reasonable, you can’t—”

  “Don’t use that ‘I know best’ tone with me.” Gabrielle straightened, strong and sure. “If you want that new bungalow so much, buy it for yourself. Pixie and I are staying right here where we belong.”

  Chapter Seven

  His mom was stubborn and contrary, but whenever Nick thought about losing her, he got so damn scared he couldn’t think straight. He drained his soda and rested his elbows on his office desk, where the endless stack of paperwork mocked him.

  The time on his laptop was twelve thirty a.m., and he’d sat here for almost two hours, trying to lose himself in work and deal with other people’s problems in a futile attempt to stop thinking about his own. Like what he’d do about his plan to go back to New York if his mom insisted on staying in Harbor House. And why he’d kissed Mia.

  That mind-blowing kiss he couldn’t stop thinking about. The taste of her mouth, sweet and rich, and the softness of her lips under his. How, if he hadn’t come to his senses, he’d have taken things further and ruined a friendship he counted on.

  Since work was going nowhere fast, he should at least try to get some sleep. Outside the office window, Main Street was quiet. Dark clouds scudded across the moon and cast long shadows over the silent buildings. He flipped off the desk lamp and headed upstairs to the apartment, which, like the office, was supposed to be temporary, so there were no personal touches to make it a home.

  As he unlocked the door, his cell phone buzzed. He tensed and grabbed it from his pocket to answer on the second ring.

  “Thank God you’re still up.” Sean’s voice echoed like he was at the bott
om of a well.

  “What’s wrong?” Nick stood inside the compact apartment foyer with its plain white walls and table with a stack of junk mail.

  “It’s Charlie.” His friend’s voice broke. “There’s something wrong with the baby. Charlie’s bleeding. I called the paramedics and they’re taking her to the hospital in Kincaid.”

  “No.” Nick’s palms were damp and his heart pounded.

  “I need you to pick Mia up from your mom’s place. That old clunker of hers is in the shop again and Charlie needs her.” Sean’s voice was muffled and there were noises in the background. Noises Nick didn’t want to hear. Moans and a high-pitched cry. Official voices too, brisk and meant to reassure.

  “Of course. Whatever you need.” He cared about Charlie and Sean like family. Nick’s hand slid on the phone and his body was ice cold.

  A car door slammed, and Sean took a rasping breath. “Thanks, buddy. I already called Mia. She’ll wait for you outside Harbor House.”

  Nick grabbed a sweatshirt from a chair, checked to make sure he had his wallet and car keys, and fought the panic in his throat.

  “I have to go.” Sean’s voice yanked him back to reality. “I knew we could count on you.”

  “I’m on my way.” He hit the stairs at a run, even though his legs were numb.

  The accident was a lifetime ago. He’d driven that road to Kincaid hundreds of times when his mom was in the hospital. Tonight was no different and, unlike his friends, Charlie and the baby would make it. They had to.

  Five minutes later, he pulled his Lexus into the circular drive in front of Harbor House, where Mia stood on the bottom porch step. In dark sweats and a hoodie, her hair in a messy ponytail and square-framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, she looked like she’d rolled out of bed minutes earlier. Before the car came to a complete stop, she had the passenger door open and was belted into the seat beside him. Her face was ashen and, behind the glasses he’d never seen her wear, her eyes were stark with fear.

  “Hurry. Please hurry.”

  His mom and Cat stood on the porch in fuzzy bathrobes and slippers. His gaze locked with theirs, and then he eased the car out of the drive between the line of trees older than he was.

  “It sounds like Charlie’s hemorrhaging. I couldn’t talk to her but Sean…” Mia stopped and dropped her head into her hands. “It’s not good. I can’t lose her.”

  “You won’t lose her. She’s a fighter. When she was a foreign correspondent, she survived a roadside bomb, didn’t she? Her colleague died, but she didn’t. It wasn’t her time. This isn’t either.”

  “She was younger and she wasn’t pregnant then. She and Sean only found each other again last summer. After she miscarried their first baby all those years ago, this pregnancy is a second chance.” Mia’s voice wobbled.

  “Charlie and the baby will be fine.” Nick sent a silent prayer to a God he’d almost stopped believing in. “She needs you to be strong for her.” At the foot of the hill, he hung a left toward the lake and headed for the highway and the county hospital in Kincaid, twenty miles away across the twisting mountain road.

  “Of course I’ll be strong. She’s my sister and the baby is my niece or nephew. My only niece or nephew.”

  And family meant everything to Mia. She was still rigid beside him, but there was a new determination on her face and in her voice.

  “Can’t you go any faster?”

  “Not without the cops coming after us.” He’d been there and done that on this road on a night a lot like this one. “I’ll get you there as fast as I can. I promise.”

  Nick gripped the wheel and stared into the night, where the car headlights sliced a yellow path through the darkness. A guardrail loomed silver along the side of the road to separate the narrow highway from the jagged rocks that dropped to the water below.

  Mia clenched her hands together in her lap in silence.

  “I didn’t know you wore glasses.” Anything to make conversation, because if Nick kept talking, maybe the memories would stop circling in his head.

  “I usually wear contacts, but tonight when Sean called, I didn’t have time to put them in.”

  “They suit you.” The glasses made her more real and gave her a sexy librarian look that was a surprising turn-on.

  “Jay never liked them.” Her laugh was forced. “That’s one bonus. I don’t have to care what he thinks anymore.”

  “Why did you marry him in the first place?” Nick took his foot off the accelerator in anticipation of the place where the road narrowed more into a hairpin turn. The dark forest was on one side and vertical granite cliffs on the other.

  “I loved him and I thought he loved me. I believed him when he said he wanted us to make a family together.”

  Nick gave her a sideways look.

  Her face was sad and pale in the moonlight. “The family I grew up in wasn’t the greatest, so I wanted a new family, a happy one.”

  “You still have a family. You, Naomi, and Emma. You’re a good mom, and sometimes one good parent compensates for everything the other one can’t give.”

  “Like your mom did for you and your sisters?”

  “Yeah.” He stared out the window, where the double yellow line bisected the twisty road, and the lake loomed dark and cold out of sight below. “Why did you stay with Jay?”

  “The same reasons any woman stays with a man long after the time she should.” Mia hugged herself. “I was afraid if I left, I’d mess up my girls’ lives. I’d worked so hard to create the perfect family, I didn’t want to admit I’d made a mistake. I convinced myself Jay would change. I believed his lies and excuses, like my mom did with my dad.”

  “It’s not only women who do that.” Despite Nick’s doubts, he’d stayed with Isobel. He’d believed her stories because he hadn’t wanted to look like a fool in front of his family, friends, and colleagues. Instead, she’d run off with the senior partner, which had made him look like an even bigger fool.

  “Like you and your ex-wife?” Mia fiddled with the seat belt, and her nails clicked against the buckle in the darkness.

  “My mom told you about Isobel?” Nick navigated into the turn.

  “Only because she’s worried about you. She didn’t tell me any details, so you don’t need to think…what is it?”

  “Nothing.” He kept his eyes on the road. He wouldn’t let Mia down. Or Charlie, Sean, and their baby. Or, most of all, himself.

  “I should have remembered. The accident happened near here, didn’t it?”

  He nodded as cold sweat trickled down his back.

  “You were lucky to get out alive.” Mia’s voice was clear and nonjudgmental.

  “Lucky?”

  “Compared to your friends.”

  As if he needed the reminder.

  “It wasn’t your fault. You went along for the ride. You were seventeen and made a bad choice.”

  Except, it wasn’t okay because he’d been as drunk as the others. He hadn’t spoken up, he hadn’t taken the keys, and so two of his buddies had died.

  They’d screamed as the truck skidded off the road and through the guardrail. Then silence and blackness before he’d clawed his way out through the icy water and the twisted metal that had shredded his flesh.

  “The accident was a long time ago.” And he was a man, not a boy. “Tonight’s about Charlie and the baby.” He hadn’t been able to save his friends, but now he had a chance to help make something right for someone else.

  All these years he’d avoided feeling much of anything, apart from the guilt he alone had survived, but with Mia, he felt everything. Desire but also affection and a huge, aching sense of loss. Which went to show it was a lot safer to stay numb.

  He stole a glance at her. She was the kind of woman a guy could count on. But she’d been hurt once and, despite that kiss earlier, he wouldn’t be the one to hurt her again.

  Or make her promises he couldn’t keep.

  Mia couldn’t think about Nick. How she fel
t about him, or the way he’d come through for her tonight.

  He pulled the car into a parking space outside the white and red sign marked EMERGENCY. The hospital was on the outskirts of Kincaid, encircled by rolling hills, the 1950s brick building fronted by a new wing where glass and concrete soared skyward. Colorful flower beds sat in front of a bank of double glass doors, and fluorescent light spilled out into the night.

  He turned off the car, and Mia grabbed her purse.

  “Do you want to wait here?” She opened the car door.

  After that moment near the accident site, he hadn’t said a word the rest of the way here.

  “Like I’d let you handle this by yourself.” Nick unfolded his big frame from the driver’s side and came around the car to take her arm. He propelled her along the concrete walkway to the hospital entrance, where the automatic doors opened to let out an antiseptic smell.

  Behind the information desk, a middle-aged woman looked up. Her brown hair glinted in the overhead light, and “Donna” was written on the name tag pinned to her white sweater.

  “We’re here to see Charlotte Carmichael. I’m her sister and she came in by ambulance.” Charlie had to be okay. Maybe this was all a mistake. A bad dream she’d wake up from.

  Donna tapped on the computer keyboard below the desk. When she looked up again, her expression was guarded. “Her husband is in the small waiting room at the end of the hall. Follow the signs to Emergency, and the room’s the next one along.”

  “The waiting room?” Mia clutched Nick’s arm. “Why isn’t he with her? She’s having a baby.” Sean had been at Charlie’s side for every step of the pregnancy. He’d never have left her alone now.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t give out confidential patient information.” Donna looked back at the computer screen and avoided Mia’s gaze.

  “Come on.” Nick tugged Mia’s arm and led her along the hall, where watercolors of Vermont covered bridges hung at regular intervals on the pale blue walls.