Moonlight on Butternut Lake

by Mary McNear

  She tried to brush away these thoughts, though, as Allie introduced her to all the guests, some of whom were already familiar to her. There were Jax and Jeremy Johnson, who owned the hardware store in Butternut, and their four adorable daughters, who ranged in age from four to sixteen, and whose names, like their parents’ names, all began with the letter J. The oldest of their daughters, Joy, looked very happy to be toting Brooke around with her everywhere, and Brooke, it seemed, was very happy to be toted around by her in return.

  And then there were Jack and Caroline Keegan, who owned Pearl’s and whom Lonnie—who liked to gossip about Butternut’s residents, though never in a malicious or mean-spirited way—had told Mila about over coffee at the breakfast table one morning. Apparently, Jack had left Caroline and their daughter, Daisy, almost twenty years before, when Daisy was only three, only to return again last summer and work his way back into their lives and their hearts. According to Lonnie, he and Caroline had gotten remarried in the winter and had a small wedding reception with only their family and closest friends in attendance. As Allie introduced her to them, Mila looked for signs of their tumultuous past, but she couldn’t find any. Jack was as handsome as Caroline was pretty, and they both looked happy and relaxed, holding hands and smiling at each other as if they’d never been apart before. Or maybe, she thought, they looked that way because they had been apart before, and now, after all those years, they had a true appreciation of what it meant to be together again.

  “I was at Pearl’s today,” Mila told them, after she’d shaken hands with both of them. “And I had the best vanilla milk shake I’ve ever had.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” Caroline said, smiling. “I like them, too, but I prefer chocolate. Drinking them, though, is an occupational hazard for me, so I try to save them for special occasions.”

  “Speaking of special occasions,” Allie said, “Jack and Caroline’s daughter, Daisy, called them today to say that she and her boyfriend, Will, are engaged.”

  “Oh, congratulations,” Mila said.

  “Thank you,” Jack said, looking pleased. “We’re very happy for them.”

  “We are happy,” Caroline said, in a qualifying tone. “But unlike Jack, I’m also a little worried. I mean, Will’s stationed in Virginia, and Daisy will be going to graduate school in Michigan, and I just think it’s going to be hard for them to be engaged to each other when they’re so far apart.”

  “They’ll be fine,” Jack said reassuringly. “And in the meantime,” he told Allie and Mila, “I’ve got my eye on a little cabin for them. I’d like to fix it up and surprise them with it after they get married here next summer. That way, if they don’t have time for a real honeymoon, they’ll at least have a place of their own to stay the weekend of their wedding.”

  “Jack, that is so sweet,” Allie said, beaming at him. “And, as wedding presents go, I think a cabin’s going to be much more useful to them than a juicer. Now, if you’ll excuse us, I need to introduce Mila to the rest of our guests.” With that, she dragged Mila away to meet some more families. And Mila tried to be polite, and tried to seem interested, but the truth was, she was intensely preoccupied by Reid’s impending arrival. And just when she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore, Allie looked up from the conversation they were having and said, “Oh look, here they are now.”

  Mila’s eyes followed hers to the driveway, where the van was pulling up, and she felt her nerves ratchet up another notch. I can’t stand this anymore, she thought, and though the night was warm, she realized her palms were sweating, and she tightened them around the icy can of Coke she was holding. She followed Allie over to the van, though, and only hung back a little as they got close. Then she watched as Walker got out and opened the passenger-side door. Positioning a pair of crutches beside it, Walker helped Reid out of the van and assisted him in hooking the crutches under his arms. And that was when Reid looked up and looked straight at Mila.

  She didn’t walk right up to him, though. She waited until Allie had congratulated him on getting his cast off, and until Walker had made sure Reid was comfortable on his crutches. And then, once they left him and went to put the chicken and ribs on the grill, Mila walked over to him, almost reluctantly. Reluctantly because all the Red Bulls she hadn’t drunk that day were really kicking in now, and between her excitement and her nervousness she didn’t quite trust herself to behave naturally around him. Especially since he looked so different on his crutches than he had in his wheelchair. He was taller, for one thing, several inches taller than Mila, and he was somehow more dynamic, too, and more in control.

  “Hi,” she said, feeling her face flush.

  “Hi,” he said, and then, “I like your dress.”

  “Thanks,” Mila said, and then without thinking she blurted out nonsensically, “Darla made me buy it.”

  But Reid only smiled. “Well, then you should send Darla a thank-you note.”

  CHAPTER 16

  So you never told me what you thought of this,” Reid asked, running his hand across his newly smooth jawline. He’d said hello to the other guests, and then he’d asked Mila if she’d come sit down with him on a bench that overlooked the lake. He’d told her that he wasn’t used to being in social situations like this anymore, and that he needed some space, but the truth was, he wanted to be alone with her.

  “I like it,” she said, smiling. “What about you?”

  “Me?” he asked, and he realized he’d already forgotten what they’d been talking about. He was having trouble thinking tonight. Or thinking clearly, anyway. And it was the sight of Mila that was confusing him. Confounding him, really. She looked . . . she looked so different tonight. She always looked good, of course, but right now, at this minute, she looked nothing short of incredible. There was the dress she was wearing, for one thing. It was so pretty, and so feminine, and what it revealed of her—from the soft curve of her breasts, to the narrow tapering of her waist—made him realize how little of her her other clothes had revealed. And then there was her auburn hair, which fell in a smooth and shiny curtain to her almost bare shoulders, which were tanned a lovely golden brown. She must have gotten that tan during her swimming lessons, he mused. It gave her complexion a warm and healthy glow and set off her amber eyes, with the golden flecks of light in them. But there was something else about her eyes . . . had she curled her eyelashes, he wondered, or put on eyeliner? He really didn’t know much about these things, but whatever she’d done, it made her eyes look especially bright and luminous tonight.

  “Do you like not having a beard?” Mila prompted him now. “Or are you going to miss it?”

  He shook his head. “No, I won’t miss it. I mean, I’ve gotten out of the habit of shaving every day, so that’ll be an adjustment. But at least I won’t look like a terrorist anymore, as my brother so helpfully pointed out.”

  Mila laughed then, and as soon as she stopped, Reid wanted to make her laugh again. She didn’t laugh nearly enough, he decided. Neither of them did. But his eyes must have lingered on her for too long, because she seemed suddenly self-conscious, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Reid saw the problem. When she crossed her legs, her sundress rode up a few inches above her knees. So she left her legs uncrossed now and, pressing her knees together, tugged ineffectually at the hem of her dress, trying to make it cover those knees. But it wouldn’t. Reid smiled. Her knees were adorable. She was adorable.

  Still, in an effort to rescue her from her self-consciousness, he asked, “Are you having a good time here?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, looking around. “It’s nice. I don’t know any of these people that well, except, maybe, your brother and sister-in-law, but they all seem so nice. So . . . so normal.”

  As opposed to what? Reid almost asked. But he stopped himself. He knew Mila well enough by now to know she wouldn’t elaborate on that comment.

  “It is nice,” he said instead, looking around, and he was surprised to realize that he meant it. “It’s funny,” he went on, �
��I used to think things like this were a waste of time.”

  “Parties?”

  He shrugged. “Anything like this. I didn’t really see the point of it, I guess.”

  “Well, to eat and to drink,” Mila said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, but it’s a lot of trouble to go to, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be faster and easier to eat and drink at home?”

  She shook her head, amusement and disbelief mingling in her expression. “Well, then, to be with other people. To not be alone,” she added.

  Reid nodded. “Yeah, that was the part that was the hardest for me to understand. The being with other people. All the useless small talk, and the polite banter. I thought, ‘who needs it, really?’”

  “Well, these people, for one,” Mila said, her eyes traveling over the assembled guests. “And as for the useless small talk, Reid, I don’t really think that’s what’s happening here, do you? I mean, I think these people care about one another. Quite a bit, actually.”

  Like I care about you, Reid thought. But he got her point. Something like this felt different for him now that he was here with Mila.

  “What about you?” he asked, suddenly. “Do you like things like this?”

  She nodded and then smiled, a little sadly he thought. “I do. Maybe because, as a child, I was never invited to them. And even if I had been, my mom would never have taken me.”

  “Because she didn’t have the time?”

  She nodded. “No time, and no family or friends, either.”

  “No friends?”

  “Not really. Not real friends. More like drinking buddies, I guess you’d call them.”

  “But you must have had friends,” Reid pressed.

  “I . . .” She hesitated. “There was someone I was close to when I was growing up. But we lost touch and . . .” Her voice trailed off. She shrugged then and seemed to suddenly become interested in watching a game of capture the flag the kids were playing.

  And Reid surprised himself by saying, “Well, maybe your family didn’t go to things like this, but you’ll have your own family one day, won’t you? And then you’ll go to as many parties as you want to. You can have them yourself, every day, if it makes you happy.” As he was saying these words, he realized how badly he wanted her to be happy.

  She looked at him, a little strangely. Then looked away again. “I’m not going to have a family,” she said.

  “Really?” Reid said. “Because it . . . it seems like it would be a natural thing for someone like you to do. You know, someone who’s obviously so good at taking care of other people.”

  As he said this, though, her expression became one of sheer, almost heartbreaking wistfulness. But then that disappeared and in its place was Mila’s usual expression. Guarded, reserved, and neutral.

  “I don’t think having a family would be right for me,” she said carefully.

  “How could you know that now?” he asked.

  “Some things you just know,” she said, looking away. “Marriage and children aren’t for everyone. Some people, like me, should probably just go it alone.”

  “Mila Jones against the world?” Reid asked gently.

  “Something like that,” she said, and, for a moment, her guard slipped again and the sadness was back. And Reid felt a sudden urge to take her in his arms and kiss her, kiss away her sadness, and her fear and her doubt and anything else, for that matter, that stood in the way of her being perfectly happy. He imagined doing it then. He would start with her eyelids, he decided, her closed eyelids, and he would kiss them as gently as he knew how to. Then he would work his way down, from her temple to her jaw to her neck, to the soft hollow at the base of her neck, to her collarbone, to her shoulders, and finally, when he couldn’t stand the anticipation any longer, he would kiss her lips, her lovely, lovely lips . . .

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said suddenly.

  Mila looked startled. “Reid, we haven’t even eaten yet.”

  “Isn’t there something we could heat up back at the cabin?” he started to ask, but at that moment, Walker came sauntering over to them. “Dinner’s ready,” he said, smiling at them.

  “Why don’t I get something for both of us,” Mila said quickly, standing up.

  “I’m not really hungry,” Reid said to her retreating back, but she ignored him.

  Walker looked after her a little quizzically. “She looks different tonight,” he said, turning back to Reid.

  Reid nodded.

  “She looks nice.”

  Nice? Reid almost said. She looks beautiful, you idiot. But Walker had caught something in his expression and was staring at him a little too intently.

  “Reid,” he said, frowning. “You’re not . . .”

  “Not what?”

  “You’re not getting too close to Mila, are you?”

  “Have you ever known me to get too close to anyone?” Reid asked.

  Walker didn’t need to think about that. “No,” he said. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, then, there’s nothing to worry about, is there?” Reid said, hoping this would put the subject to rest.

  “I guess not,” Walker said, apparently reassured. “I better see if I need to put more ribs on.” With a quick smile, he walked away.

  Mila was back then, carrying plastic forks, knives, and napkins and two paper plates laden with spareribs, coleslaw, and biscuits.

  They ate with their plates on their laps, and Reid was surprised to discover that he was hungry, and that everything tasted delicious. A soft, purple dusk had settled over the lake, and on the picnic table the candles quivered and jumped in the evening breeze. Someone had brought sparklers for the children, and they ran across the lawn with them, trailing their comets of bright sparks behind them.

  Mila and Reid had been sitting in silence as they ate, but now Mila asked, “Can I get you some dessert? I think one of Jax’s daughters made cupcakes.”

  “No, thanks,” he said.

  “I’ll be right back,” Mila said, taking their plates away. And when she came back and sat down beside him again, he resisted the urge to reach for her hand, which was what he really wanted to do.

  But she turned to him then, and something passed between them, something so sharp and so electric that it left Reid feeling a little stunned. How was it possible to feel that charge, that current, he wondered, when you weren’t even touching someone? And then he had a thought. A depressing thought, really. What if Mila hadn’t felt it, too? What if it had been one-sided, one-sided on his side. He’d understood this so well once, this whole game of seduction. He’d been good at it too. Very good, as he recalled. But now he felt as if it were all a complete mystery to him.

  That’s because it’s not a game anymore, he told himself. It’s real. And whatever he’d thought he’d known about it had no bearing here. Except . . . except maybe he wasn’t completely wrong about Mila. Maybe he hadn’t totally imagined her attraction to him. Because in the next moment, she leaned closer to him, smiled, and said, “You know what, Reid. You’re right. Let’s get out of here.”

  By some unspoken agreement, Mila and Reid went out on the deck after they came back from the party. The sky had darkened from purple to black, and the stars were shimmering pinpricks of light. “I’ll get that,” Mila said when Reid started to lug a deck chair over, but she was amazed at the ease with which he was already moving on his crutches. He had a natural athleticism she saw; it would serve him well now that his physical therapy was due to begin.

  They sat on side-by-side deck chairs for a little while, neither of them saying anything, but both of them acutely aware of the other’s presence. Their attraction, Mila realized, was a real, palpable thing, and there was something exhausting, finally, about not giving in to it. About not doing the things she’d wanted to do all night: touch him, kiss him, hold him. Finally, when she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore, Reid turned to her and very gently brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “May I kiss you, Mila?” he aske
d.

  God yes, she wanted to say, but what she said instead was, “Do you always ask permission before you kiss someone?”

  “No. I’ve never asked anyone before. But I’m asking you now.”

  She smiled—at the seriousness of his expression, and the formality of his question. But even as she smiled, she understood the reason for his seriousness. Reid knew something about her, something she had never told him. And he understood, intuitively, how slowly he would need to move with her. How carefully.

  “May I?” he asked. “One kiss?” And since it was almost impossible for her to enumerate all the reasons why he shouldn’t kiss her, she didn’t even try to. Instead, she said, “Yes,” and closed her eyes, hoping that everything would somehow feel less real this way, and she would feel less burdened by the consequences of what she was doing. But when he kissed her, he didn’t kiss her on the lips, as she’d expected him to. He kissed her instead, first on one closed eyelid and then on the other. “These aren’t part of the official kiss,” he said, kissing her now on her left temple. “These are . . .”

  “Unofficial kisses?” Mila suggested, as the kisses traveled down from her temple to her ear.

  “That’s right,” Reid agreed, between kisses. There was a whole string of these kisses, too, marching steadily down, to her jaw, and then to her neck, and then to the little hollow at the base of her neck, and each one of them was so soft and so feathery light that she almost squirmed with the anticipation of what was to come. What was to come, of course, was a kiss on the lips. A kiss that was, as promised, just one kiss. On the face of it, anyway. But, in reality, it was actually many different kisses. There was the gentle kiss that he had started out with, a kiss that hardly left any impression on her lips at all. A kiss that was more of a preview of what it would be like if he kissed her than an actual kiss itself. And that was followed, a little later, by a teasing, playful kiss, a kiss that almost made Mila smile. It was a kiss that was an invitation to have fun, she realized, and since fun was something that had been missing in her life for so long now, it was a kiss that was almost impossible to resist. And that kiss was followed by a new kiss, an exploratory, thoughtful kiss, a kiss that made Mila think that Reid was trying to memorize, by touch, her lips, and her mouth and her tongue. After that, he started running his fingers through her hair, in a gesture that was both gentle and sensual, and his kiss deepened, his tongue stroking her tongue, luxuriantly, in a way that seemed to suggest that they had all the time in the world and nothing else to do but kiss each other like this. It made Mila’s insides quiver, and it made her bury her hands in Reid’s newly short hair and tug on it with her fingers. There was a low sound in his throat when she did that, and he took her face in his hands, and kissed her with such urgency that Mila felt a searing heat rip through her. Because if a man kissed you this way, you couldn’t help but wonder how he would make love to you. . . . She pulled, suddenly, away from him.