She heard him coming up the path, but unlike her, he wasn't breathing hard. She shut her eyes. If she opened them, she'd just see what she already knew, that he'd stripped down to a pair of navy blue boxers before his first dive. It was painful to look at him-all those ripples, planes, and smooth long muscles. She'd been terrified-hopeful?-the boxers would come off in the dive, but he'd somehow managed to keep them on.
She reined in her imagination. This was exactly the kind of fantasizing that had gotten her in such terrible trouble. And maybe it was time she reminded herself that Kevin hadn't exactly been the most memorable lover. In point of fact, he'd been a dud.
That wasn't fair. He'd been operating under a double disadvantage. He'd been sound asleep, and he wasn't attracted to her.
Some things hadn't changed. Although he seemed to have worked past his contempt for her, he hadn't sent out any signals that he found her sexually irresistible-or even remotely appealing.
The fact that she could think about sex was upsetting but also encouraging. The first crocus seemed to have popped up in the dark winter of her soul.
He flopped down next to her and stretched out on his back. She smelled heat, lake, and devil man.
"No more somersaults, Molly. I mean it. You were too close to the rocks."
"I only did one, and I knew exactly where the edge was."
"You heard me."
"Jeez, you sound like Dan."
"I'm not even going to think about what he'd say if he saw you do that."
They lay there for a while in silence that was surprisingly companionable. Every one of her muscles felt achy but relaxed.
Daphne lay sunning herself on a rock when Benny came racing up the path. He was crying. "What's the matter, Benny?" "Nothing. Go away!"
Her eyes flicked open. It had been nearly four months since Daphne and Benny had held an imaginary conversation in her head. Probably just a fluke. She rolled toward Kevin. Although she didn't want to ruin the good time they'd been having, he needed help dealing with Lilly just as she needed help dealing with the loss of Sarah.
His eyes were closed. She noticed that his lashes were darker than his hair, which was already drying at the temples. She rested her chin on her hand. "Did you always know that Lilly was your birth mother?"
He didn't open his eyes. "My parents told me when I was six."
"They did the right thing not trying to keep it a secret." She waited, but he didn't say anything more. "She must have been very young. She hardly looks forty now."
"She's fifty."
"Wow."
"She's a Hollywood type. A ton of plastic surgery."
"Did you get to see her a lot when you were young?"
"On television."
"But not in person?" A woodpecker drummed not far away, and a hawk soared above the lake. She watched the rise and fall of his chest.
"She showed up once when I was sixteen. Must have been a slow time in Tinsel Town." He opened his eyes and sat up. Molly expected him to get up and walk away, but he gazed out at the lake. "As far as I'm concerned, I had one mother, Maida Tucker. I don't know what game the bimbo queen thinks she's playing by coming here, but I'm not playing it with her."
The word "bimbo" stirred old memories inside Molly. That used to be what people thought of Phoebe. Molly remembered what her sister had told her years ago. Sometimes I think "bimbo" is a word men made up so they could feel superior to women who are better at survival than they are.
"The best thing might be to talk to her," Molly said now. "Then you can find out what she wants."
"I don't care." He rose, grabbed his jeans, and shoved his legs in. "What a shitty week this is turning out to be."
Maybe for him, but not for her. This was turning out to be the best week she'd had in months.
He pushed his fingers through his damp hair and spoke more gently. "Do you still want to go into town?"
"Sure."
"If we go now, we can make it back by five o'clock. You'll take care of tea for me, won't you?"
"Yes, but you know you'll have to deal with her sooner or later."
She watched the play of hard emotion over his face. "I'll deal with her, but I'm choosing the time and the place."
Lilly stood at the attic window and watched Kevin drive away with the football heiress. Her throat tightened as she remembered his contempt. Her baby boy… The child she'd given birth to when she was barely more than a child herself. The son she'd handed over to her sister to raise as her own.
She knew it had been the right thing to do-the unselfish thing-and the success he'd made of his life proved that. What chance would he have had as the child of an undereducated, screwed-up seventeen-year-old who dreamed of being a star?
She let go of the curtain and sat on the edge of the bed. She'd met the boy the same day she'd gotten off the bus in L.A. He was a teenager fresh from an Oklahoma ranch and looking for stunt work. They'd shared a room in a fleabag hotel to save money. They'd been young and randy, hiding their fear of a dangerous city behind fumbling sex and tough talk. He'd disappeared before he knew she was pregnant.
She'd been lucky to find work waiting tables. One of the older waitresses, a woman named Becky, had taken pity on her and let her sleep on her couch. Becky had been a single mother with no patience left at the end of a long workday for the demands of her three-year-old child. Watching the little girl cringe from her mother's harsh words and occasional slaps had been a cold dose of reality. Two weeks before Kevin was born, Lilly had called Maida and told her about the baby. Her sister and John Tucker immediately drove to L.A.
They'd stayed with her through Kevin's birth and even told her she could return to Michigan with them. But she couldn't go back, and she knew by the way they looked at each other that they didn't want her to.
At the hospital, Lilly held her baby boy every chance she got and tried to whisper a lifetime of love to him. She watched the love blossoming on her sister's face whenever she picked him up, and saw John's expression soften with longing. Their absolute worthiness to raise her child couldn't have been more apparent, and she'd loved and hated them for it. Watching them drive away with her baby boy had been the worst moment of her life. Two weeks later, she'd met Craig.
Lilly knew she'd done the right thing by giving Kevin up, but the price had still been too high. For thirty-two years she'd lived with a gaping hole in her heart that neither her career nor her marriage could fill. Even if she'd been able to have more children, that hole would still have been there. Now she wanted to heal it.
When she'd been seventeen, the only way she could fight for her son was to give him up. But she wasn't seventeen anymore, and it was time to find out, once and for all, if she could ever have a place in his life. She'd take whatever he'd give her. A Christmas card once a year. A smile. Something to tell her he'd stopped hating her. The fact that he didn't want her near him had been brutally apparent each time she'd tried to contact him since Maida's death, and it had been even more apparent today. But maybe she just hadn't tried hard enough.
She thought of Molly and felt a chill. Lilly had no respect for females who preyed on famous men. She'd seen it happen dozens of times in Hollywood. Bored, wealthy young things with no life of their own tried to define themselves by snaring famous men. Molly had trapped him with her pregnancy and her position as the sister of Phoebe Calebow.
Lilly got up from the bed. During Kevin's growing up years, she hadn't been able to protect him when he needed it, but now she had a chance to make up for that.
Wind Lake was a typical resort village-quaint at its center and a bit shabby at the edges. The main street ran along the lake and featured a few restaurants and gift shops, a marina, an upscale clothing boutique for the tourists, and the Wind Lake Inn.