Past Nancy’s Place, the road began to wind into the woods. The subtle light felt cool, almost sensuous as she drove slowly under the trees, savoring the woodsy smell. The woods were dim and secret, and when she shivered, it wasn’t just from the chill of leaving the sun. There’s something...exciting about the woods, she thought. Maybe something will happen here. Maybe I’ll fall in love. Maybe everything will work out here. Jessie said all I have to do is choose. Well, I choose to be happy and successful and...and unafraid. I’ll be like Jessie. Absolutely fearless. I’ll even get up early tomorrow and find the lake, and I’ll swim in the nude. I really will.
Then she rounded the last turn, and thought, Oh, maybe not.
The resort stood before her looking like a log cabin with a thyroid problem. Much larger than it had seemed in the brochure, it rose up in ranks of clustered cabins, carefully stacked like children’s blocks at slight angles to one another, each with a private natural-wood deck. Abraham Lincoln’s place crossed with Tara, midwifed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Oh, no, Kate thought. It’s too big.
Even worse, there seemed to be at least a thousand people milling around. If she went skinny-dipping in the morning, she’d probably turn up in vacation slides all over the Midwest—“And here’s a shot of that crazy woman who used to go swimming buck naked every morning. Notice how her breasts are startin’ to droop?”
She sighed and pulled up next to the hotel entrance.
I hate this! Kate thought. She steeled herself and walked through the big carved double doors into the lobby, looking cool and efficient in her silk suit, detached from everyone around her. One of the generic distinguished-looking men Jessie had promised her held the door for her as she went in, but she was concentrating so hard on maintaining her image that she noticed him as a possibility only in passing. Later. One thing at a time. Where had all these people come from?
The desk manager smiled at her as she signed the register card. “Welcome to The Cabins, Miss Swanson.”
“Svenson.”
“Of course. I’m Will Templeton. We’re really glad you’re here.”
Kate repressed the impulse to ask why. Will Templeton was tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome, and he was glad to see her. It would take a woman with an extremely bad attitude to assume that what this man was truly glad to see was her Visa card.
“You’ll want to see my Visa card,” Kate said.
“No, no, that was all taken care of when you reserved by phone. You’re in cabin 9A. Up past the tennis courts there and beyond the croquet lawn. You can park your car right behind the cabin.”
The croquet lawn. Well, it could be worse. They’d have to stop knocking balls around when the sun went down. And at least she wasn’t staying in that rabbit warren of a hotel with God-knows-who....
From behind her, a lilting soprano bubbled, “Was that cabin 9A, you said?”
The manager said, “I certainly did, Miss Craft,” and Kate turned.
Miss Craft, young, blond, and built like a Barbie doll, had eyes of cornflower blue, a tilted-up nose, and a genuinely sweet smile on her lovely full lips. She looked about nineteen.
Great, Kate thought. My competition. I bet nothing on her droops. I bet she doesn’t even wear underwear.
“I’m Penny Craft,” the Barbie doll said, holding out her hand to Kate. “I’ll be right next door in 9B.”
“Oh, good,” Kate said.
“And I was wondering, if you’d mind, could you possibly give me a lift to the cabin? With my luggage? The bellboys here are real busy....”
“No problem,” Kate said. “I’d be happy to.” She took her key from Will and tried hard to ignore him when he called after them. “Don’t you ladies forget the luau tonight.”
“Oh, we sure won’t,” Penny Craft squealed back.
Luggage said a lot about a person, Kate realized as she walked Penny to the car. She herself had one charcoal-gray suitcase and a briefcase. Penny had three pieces of pink luggage. Guess which one of us has more fun, Kate thought as she helped Penny load her bags into the car. Then she began the drive to the cabin, going slowly to avoid all the people who dodged in front of her on the way, evidently having such a good time that they wanted to die where they stood.
Kate glared at one of them. “This place has too many people.”
“Oh, no.” Penny waved to someone. “I love people.”
“I sensed that.”
Penny smiled at her. “They say it’s a lot quieter near the cabins.”
Kate looked at her curiously. “I’d think you’d prefer the hotel.”
“No.” Penny waved to someone else. “I’m planning on seeing all the guys I can while I’m here, and you know how nosy people in hotels are.”
“What do you mean, ‘seeing’?”
“Oh, you know—dance, talk, laugh... Have as much fun as possible,” Penny said cheerfully. “I’m getting married next month. This is my last chance.”
“Oh,” Kate said after a pause. “Well, good luck.”
“Thank you.” Penny turned and looked at her. “Why did you come here?”
Good question. She was going to strangle Jessie. “Oh, you know—to dance, talk, laugh.” Kate glared at all the people swarming around her car. “Maybe swim naked in the pool.”
“Are you allowed to do that?”
Kate closed her eyes. Penny really was as dumb as a rock. “If you get up very early,” she said.
“Oh. I thought maybe you were writing a travel article or something.”
“A travel article? Why?”
“Well, why else would somebody all businesslike like you be up here?”
“To meet men?” Kate suggested.
“Oh, sure,” Penny said and giggled.
❖ ❖ ❖
Cabin 9, when they found it after two wrong turns, was several yards from the croquet field, and Kate cheered up when she saw how private it was. She was even happier when she took her briefcase inside. The bedroom, paneled in knotty pine, was compact but cozy, and Kate dropped her briefcase on the patchwork-covered double bed with a sigh of relief. This was going to be fine. She needed a rest, and this was lovely. Even if she didn’t meet anyone...
She stopped. Of course, she was going to meet someone. She had a plan. She squared her shoulders and went outside to unload the luggage.
Kate was putting the last of Penny’s suitcases on the ground when a man strolled down the path with his hands in his pockets.
“Need any help?” he asked lazily as he came near her, and she was forced to turn and look at him. He was big, broad, and slow-moving, dressed in plaid flannel and denim. His hair was thick, dark and untrimmed, his black-brown eyes were lazy, and his nose had definitely been broken at least once in the past; it lurched slightly to the left over his full, neat mustache. But the finishing touch for Kate was his generous, cream-colored Stetson hat. A cowboy hat. Unbelievable.
Then he smiled at her—a friendly, no-come-on smile—and she almost smiled back before she caught herself. Absolutely not, she told herself. You are not going to fall for some dumb, macho, good-looking good old boy. You have a plan. He is not part of your plan. Besides, he looks like a cowboy, and you’re not interested in cowboys. Especially not this far north of the Rio Grande.
“I think I can manage.” She turned to pull her suitcase out of the car. “Thank you.”
“Well, hello.” They both turned at the sound of Penny’s voice to see her standing at the top of the porch steps, slender and lovely, vibrating with pleasure at seeing a man.
“Penny, this is...?” Kate faced him.
“Jake.” He touched his hat to Penny.
“Jake, this is Penny,” Kate said. “Jake has offered to help with the luggage.”
“Well, you sweet thing, you,” Penny cooed. “I’d adore your help. Mine’s the pink stuff down there.”
“Coming right up,” Jake said, and he bent to pick up all of Penny’s remaining pieces of luggage.
“You must
be so strong.” Penny beamed at him.
“Nope. Just too lazy to make two trips.” He ambled up the steps to the porch.
Well, there’s the start of a beautiful relationship, Kate thought, and took her suitcase into the cabin.
A few minutes later, Jake went down the path shaking his head. All those macho guys who said women were all alike had never met Penny Craft and Kate Svenson. When he’d first seen the two trim blondes from a couple of hundred yards down the path, he’d assumed they were sisters. On a closer look, he’d decided they couldn’t possibly belong to the same family. Now, after spending five minutes with them, he wasn’t sure they belonged on the same planet.
Penny was every young man’s dream—cute, friendly and undemanding. Being nice to Penny would be no hardship, although listening to her babble for more than fifteen minutes might test a man’s patience. He grinned. Probably only his patience; any other man would listen to her if she spoke Swahili, as long as he could look at her. He must be getting old. Penny was a dream come true, all right, but she was someone else’s dream, not his.
If Penny was somebody else’s dream, Kate was his own personal nightmare. Who the hell would come to the country wearing a silk suit? And she had her blond hair yanked back so hard in that twist that her eyebrows slanted. He remembered the way she’d looked at him as he’d walked toward her—sizing him up and then dismissing him with those icy blue eyes. “Thank you,” she’d said and walked away. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees around her cabin.
He shuddered. Kate reminded him of Valerie and his ex-wife, Tiffany. Women like that always got what they wanted no matter what it took, not caring who they trampled on to get their way. Efficient. Calculating. Manipulative. Most likely she’d come to the resort to sharpen her golf game, get a tan, snare a husband, and improve her stock portfolio. God preserve me from a woman like that, he thought, and grinned again. God wouldn’t have to preserve him from a woman like Kate Svenson. She’d made it very clear that she wasn’t interested.
Forget her, he told himself, and wandered down the path to troubleshoot the luau.
Penny came to pick Kate up for the luau at six, and Kate steeled herself for the ordeal ahead. This is the only way you’re going to meet men, she told herself. Jessie’s right. Just relax and have a good time. Stop whining. Be a woman.
Penny had dressed by wrapping a turquoise flowered sarong over a tiny yellow bikini. Her earrings were turquoise, with yellow parrots on swings—the parrots made of real feathers. She was too much of everything, and yet, in her obvious happiness, she was just right.
I could never wear an outfit like that, Kate reflected. Not unless I was very, very drunk. She was feeling very, very superior until a traitorous little voice inside her added, Maybe that’s why I don’t have any fun.
“Put on your bathing suit,” Penny said to Kate. “Maybe we’ll get thrown in the pool.”
“We can only hope,” Kate said. Her bathing suit was an old black one-piece, years out of style but hardly worn. She put on white slacks and a white shirt over it, tying the shirttails in a knot on her stomach.
“That’s it?” Penny asked.
“That’s it.”
“That’s kind of plain,” Penny said.
“That’s the kind of woman I am,” Kate said. “Plain. Let’s go.”
Penny hesitated, frowning. “Don’t you want to let your hair down or something? I mean, this is a luau.”
“No,” Kate said evenly. “I like it up.”
“Well, you don’t look very relaxed.”
“This is as relaxed as I get,” she said.
“Okay,” Penny said, shaking her head. “Maybe you’ll feel better after a couple of drinks.”
“Don’t count on it,” Kate said.
The luau, when they got there, was everything she’d feared and more.
The grounds around the hotel were packed with people in various stages of excitement and inebriation, dressed in various interpretations of what the well-dressed vacationer should wear to a luau. Hawaiian shirts dominated, but there was also a healthy contingent of sarongs and one grass skirt. The guy in the grass skirt didn’t have the legs for it.
People clustered at round redwood tables, laughing uproariously at each other’s jokes. Small children ran by, shrieking, chasing each other with pineapple-punch drinks. Overfriendly couples danced badly to the Beach Boys. A huge dead animal was turning on a spit as people lined up to accept chunks of its overcooked flesh. The air smelled of suntan lotion and burned meat.
“Isn’t this terrific?” Penny glowed with excitement.
Kate looked around, horrified. “Where did all these people come from? They can’t be all from the hotel.”
“They come from all around.” Penny waved to someone. “The hotel does this every month during the summer on the third Saturday night. Isn’t it great? See the tall guy with the dark hair over there beside the pig roast?”
“That’s a pig?”
“That’s Will. Remember? From the desk? I thought he was just a clerk, but he’s the owner. I think he’s dishy.”
“Go for it,” Kate said, looking around for a bar. There had to be one. People couldn’t be behaving this badly without alcohol.
“The dark guy in the red shirt is Eric Allingham. He’s loaded.” Penny waved to someone else. “Money all over the place.”
“Go for it.” There had to be a bar somewhere.
“He’s not my type.”
“You’re not interested in money?”
“Why would I be interested in money?” Penny asked “I’m getting married.”
Kate was startled, but when she considered it, Penny made sense, if you accepted the basic proposition that dating around a month before you got married was a sound idea.
“Sorry.” Kate shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“The blond guy in the Izod shirt is cute, though. His name is Lance something.”
“How did you learn all this?”
“Oh, I sat in the lobby and talked to people while I was waiting for the bellboy. People here are really friendly.”
“Great,” Kate said. “I don’t suppose you know where they put the bar for this event?”
“It’s out by the pool.”
“Lead me there.”
The pool was inside a high-hedged enclosure. Tiled in blue and white, it reflected the Japanese lanterns strung overhead. The bar, a long counter trimmed with grass matting, was presided over by an efficient red-haired college-age boy in a white shirt and a pink lei. He looked as if he could have done without the lei. His bar was doing a brisk business in middle-aged men who welcomed Penny as if she were a large dry martini. Penny was surrounded, and Kate waited for a turn at the bar for both of them.
“What’ll it be, ma’am?”
“Penny.” Kate reached out her hand and hauled her into the crush. “Meet the bartender. What’s your name?”
“Mark.” The bartender smiled broadly at Penny.
“This is Penny, Mark,” Kate said. “I’ll have a double Scotch. She’ll let you know what she wants.”
“She can have anything I’ve got,” Mark said.
“You sweet thing,” Penny said.
The start of another beautiful relationship. Kate shook her head. I may have to take lessons from this girl.
She took her drink and wandered over to the pool where she rolled up her pant legs and sat on the edge, dangling her feet in the water, sipping her drink, and inhaling the chlorine along with the cool evening air. I have such a bad attitude, she thought. Probably because, unlike Penny, I really don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be alone anymore, but I don’t want to go out and cold-bloodedly look for a man, either. What I really want is the fairy tale where Prince Charming just appears out of nowhere and sweeps me off my feet and takes me... where? To his condominium, conveniently located close to his thriving business? So much for romance, Kate.
She was laughing quietly at herself when a man app
eared out of nowhere and sat down on the other side of her. He was balding, overweight and overdrunk, and he was wearing six leis.
“Hello, pretty lady sitting here all alone.”
“Hello,” Kate said, edging away.
“I’m Frank,” he said, putting his arm around her.
“And Earnest, too, I imagine,” she said, removing his arm.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mark signal to someone outside the enclosure.
“I’ve been looking all over for you, honey.”
“Why?” Kate asked. “Have we met?”
“Only in my dreams.”
“Get new dreams.”
Kate stood, trying to gently but firmly push him away as she did, but Frank grabbed her hand and got up, too. It took him a while, and Kate would have wandered politely away during the struggle but he held on to her with fingers of steel until he finally lunged nose-to-nose with her.
“Do you know what you need?” he breathed. “You need a lei.” He laughed uproariously. “A lay. Get it?”
He tried to take off one of his leis and almost strangled himself.
“No.” Kate pulled her hand from his and turned to walk away. “I’m not interested in a lei.”
“You’re not saying no to me, are you?” Frank asked roguishly, catching her arm.
“Over and over again,” Kate assured him, trying to pry his fingers off her.
“Good.” He pulled her closer. “I love a feisty woman.”
Kate turned eyes like razors on him.
Jake saw Mark’s wave and came into the enclosure in time to see Frank pulling drunkenly on Kate.
Oh, great. Now he’d have her complaining to Will about the quality of the guests. He watched her try to fend Frank off and admitted to himself that she’d have a point if she did. He sighed and moved up behind them in time to hear Frank take her arm and say, “I love a feisty woman.”