The Best-Made Plans

by Leigh Michaels

  There was no one on the big deck, though the barbecue was at work; she could see an occasional puff of smoke and hear the sizzle of fat dripping onto the hot coals. She stopped and looked around, down to the sandy beach and the lakeshore, lit only by the occasional glow of fireflies.

  Perhaps he wasn’t entertaining, or else he was doing so inside. Despite her best intentions of minding her own business, Kaitlyn looked up at the sleeping porch, which was cantilevered out over part of the deck. It, too, was dark.

  “What brings you out here?” said a lazy voice from behind her. Kaitlyn spun around, and Schnoodle excitedly pulled her toward the mulberry tree beside the house. A big rope hammock was strung from the trunk of the huge old tree with the other end anchored to the deck rail, and in it lay Penn. His feet were crossed at the ankle and his hands were folded behind his head.

  “Hi,” she said. Her voice was little more than a squeak.

  Great line. How original. Just the way she had sounded when she was sixteen and trying to make an impression on him in the lunch line — the day she’d dropped her tray of tuna casserole on his toe.

  Well, these were not the old days. And that was part of the problem – for she wanted those old days back again, the days when it had seemed perpetual summer.

  The days when Penn had been the center of her life.

  CHAPTER 8

  More fool you, if that’s the truth! she told herself unsympathetically. Longing for those lazy days of summer was simply asking for a repetition of that awful hurt she’d felt – because, though Penn had been the center of her life, she had never been the center of his.

  No, she didn’t truly want anything of the sort. This was only an attack of general nostalgia. It must have been building for weeks, brought on by the sale of the house she’d grown up in, and compounded by exhaustion and tension and hunger and a touch of uncertainty about where her future lay, now that Marcus was no longer in it.

  Don’t let yourself get maudlin about how wonderful things used to be. It was easy to look back and see only the good. And even more important, she shouldn’t let herself be overcome by the difficulties she faced at the moment and start thinking that Penn had anything to do with this sudden attack of loneliness. Because he didn’t.

  “Are we playing charades?” he asked with a note in his voice that was almost exasperation. “Sorry, but it’s a bit too dark for it, Kitten.”

  She grasped at the reminder with relief. “That’s my problem exactly. I’m looking for a hundred-watt light bulb and a ladder of some kind so I can install it. It’s awfully dark at the moment over at Jill’s cabin.”

  “Let me think where we might find one.” He closed his eyes. To all appearances he was asleep.

  “Don’t think too hard,” she said, with a tinge of irony. “I wouldn’t want to burn out your brain. If it’s too much trouble to find a ladder, a grappling hook might work; I can try to snag the lantern chain from the loft.”

  Penn didn’t react to the gibe. “I’ve got it. The ladder’s in the tool shed.” He rolled out of the hammock in one easy, catlike motion. “I’ll bring it over. It’s too heavy for you.”

  He not only delivered the ladder but installed a new light bulb as well, and when it blinked into life he sat down on the top rung and looked around. Even the high-wattage bulb didn’t send light into every inch of the big room — the small nooks and corners still had an intimate dimness — but it was ample to see the mess, and Penn examined it with interest.

  “We’ll be neighbors for a while,” Kaitlyn said, trying to make it sound careless. “Just until I can find a place in town.”

  He didn’t answer, and she moved back to the kitchenette and started to unpack the bags of food. He seemed in no hurry to leave.

  Finally Kaitlyn said, “Don’t forget your steak. It smelled too good to let it burn to a crisp.” Her mouth was watering just thinking about it, and with determination she rummaged till she found the jar of peanut butter.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. “It should be perfect in three more minutes.” He eyed the peanut butter and added, “There’s more than enough. Come on over, if you like.”

  Kaitlyn didn’t look at him. “I wasn’t hinting.”

  “I know.” He folded up the ladder and carried it out, whistling.

  She fought a very brief battle with her conscience and lost, because the breathtaking aroma of that steak seemed to have wafted all the way down the lane and through her windows. So she followed him, bracing herself when she rounded the corner of the Caldwell cabin for whatever pointed remark he might make.

  But Penn only smiled, gave her a plate and waved a hand at the barbecue, where an enormous sirloin still sizzled gently. It had been neatly cut in half.

  “I thought you had a guest,” she said.

  He locked around as if to make sure. “Just me.”

  “You’re a two-vehicle person?”

  “No. The truck’s borrowed.”

  “Oh. Well, you’re right about having plenty of food.”

  Penn shrugged. “It’s a nuisance to light the coals, so I’ve been cooking in quantity and then warming up the leftovers in the microwave the next day.”

  “Warming up a steak in the — Penn, you cretin, it’s an indignity to zap a beautiful piece of meat in a microwave.” Then, too late, she remembered that it wasn’t prudent to insult her host.

  Penn only shrugged. “See what horrors you’ve saved me from by eating half my dinner? Would you like a beer? Soft drink? Lake water?”

  She chose the beer, and he opened a bottle and handed it to her. “I thought you had a wedding to manage this afternoon.”

  “Don’t remind me.” She sliced off a bite of her steak and savored it. “You’re a jinx, Penn.”

  “Now wait a minute. I saved you—”

  “Yes, and then warned me about protecting myself from tornadoes and other acts of God.”

  Penn eyed the sky, which was perfectly clear. The evening star had appeared, hanging low over the pine trees at the horizon. “Your wedding got hit by a tornado?” he asked warily.

  “Slightly different kind of whirlwind, but just as damaging.”

  He fed a scrap of meat to Schnoodle, who had been abasing himself on the deck, his nose quivering. The animal snapped up the treat and watched eagerly as Penn cut the next bite.

  “You’re teaching him bad habits,” Kaitlyn warned. “It isn’t good for his teeth.”

  “I feel sorry for the poor fellow. I’ve never seen him on a leash before.”

  “It’s just until he finds his way about and learns his limits. He’s getting to be half-blind, you know, and I wouldn’t want him to fall in the lake. Besides, if I took the leash off right now, he’d think he belonged here.” She sliced her baked potato open. “You’re absolutely certain you don’t want a dog? If you’re going to be in Springhill for a few months while you build a house…”

  For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard. Then he said almost absently, “I knew I should have kept my mouth shut till the deal was firm.”

  The breath caught in her throat, and she almost choked on a bite of lettuce. If he hadn’t bought the Delaney place, he wouldn’t have a lot on which to build a house in Springhill, and so he wouldn’t stay at all. It’s relief I’m feeling. It must be.

  “You mean it isn’t firm?” she managed to say, after a moment. “You made it sound as if it was all signed and delivered.”

  “Last-minute problems.” But he obviously didn’t want to discuss them. “What happened to your wedding, anyway?”

  “Last-minute problems,” she repeated wryly, and told him about the bachelor party. She was annoyed when his only response was laughter.

  “All right,” she said irritably. “Call me a prude if you want, but I consider that to be ample grounds for breaking off an engagement. I suppose you think Laura’s mother was right? If you tell me that all bachelor parties have strippers or dancers or bimbos jumping out of cakes, Penn, and all men grab that sort of o
pportunity whenever it’s presented, and so Laura should just have shrugged it off—”

  “Now, wait a minute. I didn’t say that. It’s a bit insulting to the entire species of men to lump them all together in a category.”

  “I’d call them a sub-species, if that’s the way they all behave.”

  “Oh, not all of them. I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about with Marcus.”

  The earnest reassurance in his voice made Kaitlyn want to hit him over the head with the remainder of her steak.

  “Still,” Penn mused, “I don’t think Jack Bailey got what he deserved.”

  She set her plate aside and leaned forward. “All right, perhaps I’m naive. But if you’re honestly suggesting that Laura should have simply put up with that sort of behavior—”

  “Oh, no. If Jack still has a juvenile fascination with exotic dancers, she was wise to get rid of him. But if only she’d asked me, I’d have suggested she wait till today. She could have simply explained at the altar in front of their assembled guests why she wasn’t interested in continuing the ceremony.”

  Kaitlyn gasped.

  “Just think of it,” Penn said earnestly. “It would have been far more entertaining than the average wedding. Besides, if she’d done it my way, all that work and money wouldn’t have gone to waste. She could at least have had one hell of a party to celebrate her return to sanity and the single life.”

  Kaitlyn gathered up her plate and beer glass and stalked into the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind her. “Don’t you have any sympathy for anyone?” she asked when she heard him come in. She didn’t turn around; she was swishing hot water and detergent into foam in the sink as if her life depended on getting the best possible bubbles.

  “Of course I do.” He sounded surprised. “I just don’t see the benefit of crying into my beer tonight because Laura’s unhappy.”

  She had to admit the sense in that, but the episode still annoyed her, and she scrubbed the dishes with more than the necessary force. Why did he seem to have to turn everything into a joke?

  It is not your problem, Kaitlyn, she reminded herself. He started a pot of coffee and then dried the dishes, and by the time everything was cleaned up the scent of the brew was drifting through the kitchen. Kaitlyn carried her cup toward the deck and stopped beside the kitchen table, which was heaped with papers. Sketches, she guessed, and floor plans, and without thinking she reached for the top one to take a closer look.

  Penn turned from the refrigerator, where he was putting away the last of the food, and stood watching her with his hands planted firmly on his hips.

  Kaitlyn looked up, belatedly feeling the weight of his gaze. “Oh. I’m sorry. This is private stuff, I suppose.” She put the sheet back carefully on top of the stack, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, once they were out on the deck, “That isn’t the house you were planning to build on the Delaney place, is it?”

  He shot a suspicious look at her. “Who said anything about the Delaney place?”

  “Oh, come on, Penn. It’s no secret that’s the piece of property you’re dealing on; you said yourself this town doesn’t need a newspaper.”

  “Granted. But why don’t you think this is a house I plan to build?” He’d stopped halfway across the deck, and he stood there, very still. “Or do you think I make it all up as I go along? Pick up a board and then decide where to nail it?”

  She giggled. “Sort of like playing the piano by ear? Not at all; of course you have a plan. But you can’t mean to plant that elaborate house on that trashy lot. It will never sell.”

  He came across to lean against the deck rail beside her. “That lot may be trashy at the moment, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. And it’s right on the edge of a very good neighborhood.”

  “With only an impassible ravine dividing them,” she scoffed. “It will never work.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” But he didn’t sound particularly interested in whether she was or not, and so Kaitlyn fell silent. It wasn’t her business, no matter what he built — or where.

  The full moon was rising above the horizon, orange-gold and brilliant, its reflection wavering slightly in the still lake. It looked as though the water was the surface of an antique mirror, ever so slightly concave here and convex there, throwing irregularities into the image. The light sent mammoth shadows creeping across the beach and the paths and the cabins.

  The silent drama of moonrise on the lake had always had the power to catch at Kaitlyn’s throat with its sheer perfect beauty, whether she was watching it from a canoe out on the water, or from a blanket on the beach, or from the deck of the Caldwell cabin, with Penn’s arm around her—

  She turned her head a little, and her breath began to come more quickly, in tiny, almost painful gasps. No, it was not her imagination. It had been so natural — the way he’d moved closer, the gentle brush of his arm around her shoulders — that she hadn’t even been aware of his touch for a moment or two. But she was standing in the circle of his arm, a mere heartbeat away from him. If she wanted him to kiss her, all she had to do was raise her face to his.

  Don’t be a fool. But then a question rose from the back of her brain: why shouldn’t she enjoy the moment? The moon, the beautiful night, the quiet lake, a man and a woman — all the proper ingredients. And though there was not and never again could be anything between them, there was no reason not to indulge in a simple kiss.

  His mouth was tender, warm, mobile, gentle. It was a soft kiss, without a hint of force or domination, and equally lacking any hint of pleading or begging. It was as if he was confident that she had made her choice as freely as he had, and that she was enjoying this in very much the same way — without compulsion or fear, and without promises or guarantees....

  Only then did she recognize the wave of feeling that had come over her when she’d realized he might not stay in Springhill, after all. It had not been relief; it had been fear — a fear so deep-seated that she hadn’t recognized it, and so strong that it was just short of panic. Fear at the idea of losing him once more.

  She’d tried for ten years to tell herself that Penn no longer mattered. She’d come very close to believing it. She’d put her life back together after he’d rejected her, and she’d found someone else to love – at least for a while.

  But it had all been pretense. Even on the night when Marcus had proposed to her, she had known, deep in her heart, that it was false; that was why she’d hesitated instead of giving him an answer.

  The reassuring tale she had created for herself had been just like the tissue-paper wrapping on a gift. As long as one didn’t look too closely, a single layer of tissue could hide a lot. But once it was subjected to inspection, its power of concealment melted away, and the contents lay plainly — and sometimes unpleasantly — in view.

  There was no denying now that she still loved Penn — and that she had wasted all the effort she had spent over the years in convincing herself that she did not.

  She drew away from him awkwardly, almost with a jerk.

  “Scared?” he whispered.

  He sounded ever so slightly off balance, as if things had gone just a little beyond what he had intended, as if he had stepped just a fraction of an inch beyond some predetermined line of safety.

  And that was the second unpleasant truth which lay open to her now. It was a truth that was as undeniable as if it had been a rattlesnake curled at her feet, this knowledge that she was no more important to Penn now than she had ever been.

  If he had cared about her at all, it would have mattered to him that she was going to marry Marcus. But it obviously didn’t, or he wouldn’t dream up gifts, or tease about her wedding night or volunteer to manage her reception.

  And now that she wasn’t going to marry Marcus—what was Penn likely to think of that?

  Nothing at all, she realized. He’d simply shrug and make some sort of joke of that, too.

  And that, she told herself drearily, will truly bre
ak my heart.

  *****

  She made her escape with the excuse of being tired and refused his offer to walk her back to Jill’s cabin. It was only a step away, she told him without looking up, and she had the dog. Schnoodle might not be much protection, but he would warn her if anything was amiss. Besides, Penn could see the cabin lights come on and be assured that she was fine.

  He didn’t argue about it, and she went off alone with Schnoodle’s leash wrapped around her wrist.

  He’s probably glad I’m not going to be the clinging-vine kind of neighbor, Kaitlyn told herself. Borrowing ladders and light bulbs was one thing, but insisting on being walked home and watched over and protected would quickly get to be a nuisance.

  Her rubber-soled shoes crunched in the gravel on the old path. It brought back with unbearable clarity the memory of another moonlit night when she had left the Caldwell cabin alone, well after dark. But that night she had been running, chased not by wild animals but by the demons in her own mind.

  She turned the cabin lights on. What was a reasonable length of time to leave them burning, so it would appear she had settled down for the night? She didn’t want Penn to think she was too agitated to sleep. Or, conversely, that she was sitting alone in the dark, just thinking.

  Then she snapped the lights off firmly. Penn wouldn’t be watching. If she seriously believed that he was likely to sit over there observing her every move and trying to figure out what she was thinking — well, that was just one more symptom of her obsession, and she had better get rid of it right away, for the sake of her mental health.

  She curled up on the couch before the empty fireplace, her feet up, her fingers half-consciously stroking Schnoodle’s soft fur. She watched the moonlight creep across the room and allowed herself to reconstruct that other moonlit night, so long ago now. It was a memory that still had the power to wound her, and she had long since buried it deep in the back corners of her mind. She had hidden it away so well that it was not easy any more to dredge up the details of a time when the easy, lazy promise of summer had been abruptly torn away from them all....