by Sandra Field
“Splat,” said Tomas.
“Exactly,” Katrin said. “Off you go, and look both ways before you cross the road. I’ll be up in a minute.”
The two children, forgetting they were tired and hot, ran for the house, obediently stopping on the grass verge and checking for traffic. By the time they were out of earshot, Katrin had turned her back on them to face Luke. Her smile had vanished. “How dare you invade my private life?” she blazed. “You’ve got no right to be here, forcing yourself on my children like that.”
A cold fist squeezed his heart. “So they’re your children?”
“Who else’s would they be?” she retorted. “I don’t want you anywhere near here—I keep my work life and my personal life totally separate. Besides, I told you to leave me alone, remember?”
He said reluctantly, “They’re fine kids.”
“Yes, they are. And if you think I’m going to have some kind of a two-day fling with you and jeopardize my whole life, you’re crazy.”
Luke’s tongue felt thick, and his brain seemed to have stopped working altogether. Katrin was married, the mother of two children. What the hell was he doing here? He swallowed, clearing his throat. “Let’s keep something straight. I’ve not once suggested I wanted a fling with you.”
She flushed, shoving her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “Don’t insult my intelligence—I can read the signals.”
“Then you’re quite intelligent enough to know that some very basic chemistry’s operating between us. It’s not just me.”
“It is just you!”
Her cheeks were now a bright pink. Luke drawled, “We could have one of those exchanges best suited to Tomas and Lara. It’s not. It is. It’s not. It is…is that what you want?”
“I want you gone from here. And I don’t want you to come back,” she said with deadly precision.
He had the same sinking feeling in his gut that had overcome him ten years ago when he’d been outwitted by a broker whose financial wizardry had been exceeded only by his lack of morals. Now, as then, there was no way to recoup. His only recourse was to get out as gracefully as he could and accept his losses. He said with a sudden raw honesty that took him by surprise, “Okay. I’ll leave and I won’t come back. But I won’t find it easy to forget you…don’t ask me to explain that, because I can’t. And don’t for one minute think I make a habit of hitting on women when I’m at a conference. Nothing could be further from the truth—and that holds whether they’re waitresses or CEOs.”
He’d run out of words. There was nothing else to say that could make any difference. Game over.
As though he were taking another photograph, Luke found himself trying to memorize every detail as Katrin stood before him: the elegant lines of her cheekbones, the sudden uncertainty in her sky-blue eyes, the push of her breasts against her thin green top. Storing it all in his brain against the time when he’d be gone from here. When he’d never see her again.
She said stiffly, “Give me one good reason why I should believe you.”
“I can’t! Either you believe me or you don’t. And what does it matter anyway?”
“You’re right, it doesn’t matter.” She bit her lip. “Please leave now, Luke—I should go up to the house and make sure the kids are all right. Besides, Erik will be home shortly.”
The last person in the world Luke wanted to meet was Katrin’s husband. The man who shared her bed. The father of her children. With one small part of his mind he realized that this was the first time Katrin had called him by name, and would also be the last. “Goodbye, Katrin,” he said, turned on his heel and wound through the poplars toward his car, remembering on the way to snag his camera from the apple tree.
Just as he opened the car door, Lara and Tomas emerged onto the front step of the house, each clutching an icecream cone. They waved at him. “Bye, Luke,” Lara called.
“Goodbye, Lara. Bye, Tomas,” he called back, turned around in the road and drove north along the shore. In his rearview mirror he watched Katrin cross the road and walk toward the house.
Game over, indeed.
Except it didn’t remotely resemble a game. Rather, Luke felt like that little five-year-old boy in Teal Lake who’d finally realized his mother wasn’t going to come back home; that she hadn’t just gone to the store, or into Kenora for a visit. Then, as now, he had the same sensation that the earth had shifted, that there was nothing firm to stand on.
Katrin was married, the mother of two children. No matter how much he desired her, she belonged to someone else.
Once Luke was out of sight of the pale yellow house, he pulled up by the side of the road and gazed out over the lake. Its serenity mocked him, so placid was it, so much in harmony with the graceful willows that draped its shoreline.
He felt cheated. As though he’d caught a glimpse of beauty beyond his imagining, only to have it snatched away before he could grasp it.
A couple of teenage boys were slouching along the road toward him. Luke edged off the shoulder and drove on. But five minutes later, when the tearoom came in sight, he slowed down again. He didn’t want to go back to the resort and be convivial. He didn’t want to play golf or lift weights, and he’d already jogged this morning. While tearooms weren’t priority on his list, he could do with something cold to drink. And maybe a piece of chocolate pie, he thought wryly. The basic cure for a bruised ego.
Because that’s all this was. It wasn’t a major tragedy. He’d merely made a fool of himself for reasons he didn’t want to analyze, with a woman far too acute for his own comfort. Yeah, he thought, turning into the driveway between rows of pink and scarlet petunias. Chocolate pie. That’s what I need.
The tearoom wasn’t designed with six-foot-two men in mind: the tables were small, the curtains frilly, the wallpaper with more flowers than a Hollywood funeral. But in the cooler by the door there was a chocolate torte with thick layers of dark chocolate icing, and the proprietress gave him a friendly welcome. Luke smiled back. “I’ll have a big slice of the torte,” he said, “and iced tea with extra lemon, please.”
“Coming right up,” she said, her brown eyes twinkling at him. Her name tag was inscribed in such elaborate calligraphy that he had difficulty deciphering it; he was almost sure it said Margret. Her hair was the orange of marigolds, her eyeshadow blue as delphiniums, and she had no pretensions to youth. But something in her smile said that a tall, athletic-looking man could brighten her day anytime.
Luke picked up a newspaper from the stand by the door and sat down by the window. Six women were sharing a table on the far side of the room, and two more were seated nearer to him; he was the only man. Feeling minimally more cheerful, he unfolded the paper. When his iced tea arrived, he took a sip; it was exactly as he liked it. Then Margret arrived with a flowered plate bearing a huge slab of torte surrounded by swirls of chocolate sauce, sliced strawberries and whipped cream. He grinned. “No calories in that.”
“You’re in fine shape, you don’t need to worry,” she said, giving him a flirtatious wink. “You must be staying at the resort?”
“That’s right, there’s a mining conference going on.” Deliberately he added, “I was just driving through the village and met Katrin, who’s our waitress in the dining room.”
“Katrin Sigurdson, that’s right. She lives in the pink house two down from the church.”
Luke’s fork stopped in midair. “No…she was at the very end house in the village. Playing with her kids.”
Margret frowned. “Kids?”
“Lara and Tomas. Blond like her.”
“Katrin doesn’t have any children.” Margret’s brow cleared. “Those are Anna’s children.” In a carrying voice she addressed one of the two women seated nearby. “Anna, is Katrin looking after your kids today?”
Anna, who had a cluster of blond curls and light blue eyes, smiled at Margret. “She offered to take them to the beach for an hour so Fjola and I could meet here and have an uninterrupted visit.” Her smile en
compassed Luke. “Katrin’s such a lovely person. So kind. And the children adore her, they’d do anything for her.”
Anna, he could tell, was the sort of woman who’d grown up in a small place and trusted everyone, including himself. Striving for just the right touch of lightness, he said, “Then it’s to be hoped she has children of her own someday.”
Anna chuckled. “First she has to find a husband.”
Luke’s heart jolted in his chest. “She’s a pretty woman,” he said with deliberate understatement. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“But Katrin is very choosy, too choosy for a little village like Askja.” Anna shrugged. “She is talking of leaving here. That will be our loss, but no doubt her gain.” She gave Luke another of her generous smiles. “Now, if you will excuse me…”
She went back to her conversation with her friend Fjola. Luke said, “Margret, I’ve heard that a fisherman called Erik Sigurdson takes tourists out in his boat, is that right?”
“Erik? Yes, but only on weekends. He’s too old now to do it every day, he says.” Her smile had a touch of malice. “Too fond of the rum bottle if you ask me.”
“Too bad…I’ll be gone by the weekend.”
“Jonas takes out tourists every day, the resort would have his phone number.”
“Thanks,” Luke said. “I’ll probably look him up.”
Three more women came in the door and Margret left to show them to a table. Luke stared unseeingly at the newspaper. So Katrin was neither a married woman nor a mother.
She’d lied to him.
For her own protection? Because she was afraid of him, and put him in the same category as Guy? Or because he’d been reading her correctly all along, and Katrin wanted him as badly as he wanted her?
The latter couldn’t be true. She’d been doing her level best to discourage him ever since they’d met.
His initial assessment of her as deadly dull had been way off the mark. So maybe when it came to her sexuality he was misreading her again.
Luke gazed at his torte, discovering that he’d entirely lost his appetite. However, he had the feeling Margret would take it personally if he didn’t finish every morsel on his plate. He picked up his fork, his thoughts marching on. He now knew where Katrin lived and that she was thinking of leaving Askja.
He could invite her to San Francisco.
Sure, he jeered. You’re really into rejection, Luke MacRae. She’d laugh in your face. And if by any chance she did agree, she’d turn your life upside down, you can be sure of that. Is that what you want?
No. Definitely not. His life was fine as it was.
The torte was moist with chocolate, the strawberries slightly tart. Luke began to eat, trying simultaneously to make some sense out of the latest financial predictions; but when he left the tearoom twenty minutes later, after a serious overdose of chocolate, he realized he was in a foul mood. Oh, he’d been all very clever the last couple of hours. Chief Detective MacRae in action, ferreting out the truth about the marital status of a waitress in a little fishing village in Manitoba. But what good did his new knowledge do him?
Katrin Sigurdson spelled danger. And what was a sensible tactic when face-to-face with danger? Avoid it. He wasn’t a reckless eighteen-year-old anymore, he had no bent toward self-destruction; and he’d proved himself often enough in the past, he didn’t need to do so again. Not with a blue-eyed blonde who could tear apart everything he’d so carefully constructed.
Stay away from her. That was all he needed to do.
It was so simple.
CHAPTER FIVE
FOR twenty-four hours Luke did stay away from Katrin. He got back to the lodge that afternoon late for a panel discussion, which did nothing to improve his state of mind. He then set up a private consultation with the Peruvian delegates in his suite, ordering room service for dinner. Afterward, he worked far into the night, fell into an exhausted sleep, and was also late for breakfast because he’d forgotten to set his alarm.
At least he hadn’t dreamed about her. He’d been spared that.
When he took his seat in the dining room, he soon discovered it was Katrin’s day off; a young man called Stan waited on them. Again Luke drove himself hard all day. But by four-thirty he’d done everything that needed to be done, and he was in no mood to drift to the bar and exchange small talk. He decided to go for a run instead.
He jogged for the better part of an hour, watching distant purple-edged clouds move closer and closer, until they merged into a dark mass that spread all the way to the horizon. When he passed the wharf below the resort, he noticed with an edge of unease that the daysailer was gone from its mooring.
The wind had come up in the last few minutes. A south wind, he realized, his unease growing. Hadn’t Katrin said that was the most dangerous wind on the lake?
It was her day off. Wasn’t it all too likely that she’d gone sailing?
What had she said? It kept her sanity?
When he needed a break from the pressures of work, he jogged, played tennis and skied. It was the same principle.
A sudden gust whipped through his hair. Fear lending wings to his feet, Luke ran back to the lodge, changed in his room into jeans and a T-shirt, and raced for his car. First he checked the resort wharf again, but there was still no daysailer. Then he drove fast to the village wharf. Again, no slim white boat with a furled scarlet sail. By now, waves were lashing the wharf, the spray driven against the thick boards.
An old man was climbing the metal ladder from his boat to the dock. Luke strode over to him, raising his voice over the gusts of wind. “I’m looking for Katrin Sigurdson—she uses a small boat with a red sail. Do you know if she’s out on the lake?”
The old man had red-veined cheeks and bleary blue eyes. “Katrin? That’s my niece…I’m Erik Sigurdson.”
“Luke MacRae,” Luke said, shaking hands. How it must have amused Katrin to posit her disreputable uncle as her husband. He repeated urgently, “I’m worried about her, surely she wouldn’t stay out in weather like this?”
“Katrin?” The old man gave an uncouth cackle. “Too smart for that. Although she likes pushing herself, I must say. I’ve said to her more than once, you’ll go too far one day, my girl, and then what’ll—”
“Then where is she?”
“You’re in a right state, young feller,” Erik said, spitting with careless accuracy into the churning water.
Luke said tightly, “Yes, I am. So why don’t you answer the question?”
“She ain’t interested in guys from the resort. Here today and gone tomorrow, that’s what she says.”
Each word dropping like a chip of ice, Luke said, “I may be staying at the resort, but even I can tell there’s a storm brewing on the lake. No one, but no one, should be out there in this kind of wind, especially in a skimpy little daysailer. So will you for God’s sake tell me if you know where she is?”
“If she’s not home and the boat’s gone, she likely docked on the far side of the island. In the lee.”
“How do I get there?”
Erik took a square of tobacco from one pocket of his flannel shirt, a jackknife from the other, and with its viciously sharp blade cut off a chunk of tobacco. “You got designs on my niece, Mr. Luke MacRae?”
“No. But I sure don’t want her drowning while you and I stand here passing the time of day!”
“Okay, okay, no need to get antsy. Get in your car, turn right, take the next left and keep going to the end of the road. And I’ll bet my entire supply of ‘baccy that she’s there.”
“I hope you’re right,” Luke snarled, and ran for his car. In a screech of tires he turned right. The first drop of rain plopped on his windshield. The limbs of the birches were tossing in the wind; clouds skudded across the lurid sky. Then he was suddenly enveloped in a downpour as a flash of lightning split the horizon in two.
Strong winds and lightning were deadly enemies of sailors. Fear knotting his muscles, Luke drove as fast as he dared through th
e rain and the gathering gloom. He should have asked how far before he turned left, he thought, furious with himself for the oversight. But he’d been so desperate to get away from Erik Sigurdson, he’d overlooked that all-important question.
She had to be at the dock. She had to be.
He shoved his foot on the brake, then backed up ten feet. He’d almost missed the turnoff, a narrow road flanked by spruce and poplar, rain pelting its gravel surface and running in rivulets into the ditches. He turned onto the road beneath shadowed trees. Slowing down, flicking the wipers to high speed, Luke drove on. Rocks rattled under his wheels.
As suddenly as it had begun, the road opened into a clearing, then snaked down a short, steep hill toward the water. Almost miraculously, the wind had dropped: the broad bay that he’d glimpsed from the top of the hill was in the lee. Lightning ripped the sky apart, followed by a clap of thunder that made him wince. He took the slope as fast as he dared, then parked beside a tangle of boat cradles and overgrown shrubbery. His was the only car in sight.
Thrusting his door open, Luke got out. Earth and rocks had been heaped to make an artificial barrier from the lake, barring his view. He ran down the last of the slope, rounded the corner and saw in front of him a dark stretch of water, pebbled with raindrops, and a small wooden jetty.
A daysailer was moored at the jetty. Katrin was kneeling on the wet boards, searching for something in her duffel bag. Her back was toward him.
She was safe.
For a moment Luke stood still, all his pent-up breath whooshing from his lungs. She wasn’t out on the lake. She hadn’t drowned. She was right here in front of him. Safe.
She was also quite alone, and without any visible means of transportation.
Slowly he walked toward her, his hair already plastered to his skull, his T-shirt clinging to his chest. Another spectacular jag of lightning lit up the whole scene; her shirt was pink, her cap a fluorescent green. Like a drumroll, thunder ushered him onto the wharf.
Enter the hero, Luke thought. Although Katrin would more likely categorize him as the villain; and she had clearly no need of rescue, which is what heroes were supposed to do. As he stepped across the first couple of planks, the vibrations of his steps must have alerted her. She lifted her head sharply, gazing right at him; for a moment he saw the exhilaration still on her face, her wide smile and dancing eyes.
