Loe raamatut: «Their Unfinished Business»

CHAPTER ONE

THE sun was hot for mid-May, but Ali tipped back her head as she knelt in the small flower bed that ringed her mailbox and took a moment to enjoy the way it felt on her face. Northern Michigan’s winters were always long, especially when lake-effect storms were added in. This winter had felt interminable. Just a few weeks earlier the last of the snow had finally melted from the woods that bordered the northern edge of her property. Trillium, the three-petaled flower for which the Lake Michigan island was named, bloomed there now, offering a much warmer carpet of white.

It was Sunday, which meant she had just three days to reconcile herself to seeing Luke again. She was over him, no matter what Audra seemed to think. But he’d been Ali’s first love, which made him impossible to forget. And he’d left her behind after three years of dating without a second thought, which made his desertion impossible to forgive. So of course the prospect of seeing him again had her on edge. That was only natural.

It didn’t help that Audra had ideas for this reunion that clearly went beyond business. In the past week, her twin had hinted broadly that Ali might want to do something with the shoulder-length hair she always wore pulled into a simple ponytail. And she had tried to convince Ali to wear more fashionable clothing than the conservative button-down blouses and straight, below-the-knee skirts that populated her wardrobe.

Ali ignored the unsolicited advice. This was business, not a social call. She wasn’t going to doll herself up for Luke Banning’s return. No, indeed.

Indifference, that’s what Wednesday’s meeting called for. Nonchalance.

Ali yanked a weed out of the flower bed and tossed it atop the small heap of wilting interlopers next to her, warming to her strategy.

She would be ruthlessly polite and exceedingly casual when she and Luke were finally face-to-face. She would show him, Audra and everyone else who thought otherwise that the past was ancient history, and that the fact he’d spent the past decade in New York City growing wealthy and respected and enjoying the tabloid-documented attentions of supermodels and liposuctioned socialites was of absolutely no concern to her.

She snatched up her gardening trowel and hacked at the hard ground with its daggerlike metal point.

On Wednesday, she would be professional and businesslike. She would be cordial, but in a detached—hack! hack!— and disinterested—hack! hack!— way.

She swiped at the sweat beading on her brow and then set aside the trowel so she could wrap her fist around the base of another weed. As she knelt there locked in an intense tug-of-war with a deep-rooted dandelion, she heard the motorcycle. The mere sound of the engine reeled her back in time, as it always did, resurrecting the bittersweet memories she’d just convinced herself were safely buried and of no threat to her emotional well-being.

Even as her heart seemed to kick out an extra beat, she told herself she was being foolish. It wasn’t Luke. It couldn’t be Luke. She still had three days, nearly seventy-two hours, before she would see him again. Besides, he wouldn’t still be driving a damned motorcycle after all these years. He probably traveled in a limousine, a stretch one so long it would barely fit on the ferry that brought vehicles over from the mainland.

But as she shielded her eyes from the sun with one grimy hand, a Harley Davidson Sportster crested the hill and rumbled into view.

In the years he’d been gone, sightings of Trillium Island’s most famous son seemed to be about as common as sightings of Elvis, and they’d proved to be as reliable. There was no mistaking the Harley rider’s identity, though, especially since he was flouting state law by forgoing a helmet.

Even with the space of thirty yards and the span of more than a decade separating them, Ali knew him at a glance. Wind ruffled the almost-black hair she’d once run her fingers through. He was wearing it shorter these days, looking more like a respectable adult than the rowdy teenager and young man he’d been. Aviator sunglasses obscured his eyes, but she remembered that they were the same shade of blue as the cool waters of the great lake that surrounded the island.

A dozen feet from her driveway the bike slowed and all hope that Luke would somehow fail to spot her evaporated.

Indifference, she reminded herself.

Disinterest.

Nonchalance.

And yet all she felt was mule-kicked when he brought the bike to a stop in front of her mailbox, grinning for a long moment in that sexy way that had haunted her dreams and taunted her heart.

Finally he switched off the engine and swung one denim-encased leg over the seat.

“Hi.”

The sparseness of his greeting jolted her back to her senses. He’d been gone nearly a dozen years and the first word out of his mouth was hi? She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, but he didn’t even have the decency to look contrite or uncomfortable or babble his way through an apology, which she would of course decline to accept. No. He was smiling, as handsome and overconfident as ever, and acting as if he hadn’t sped away on that same damned Harley more than a decade earlier without so much as a backward glance.

Studying him, Ali wondered what she had ever seen in the man…beyond his staggering good looks. Those, she noted sourly, had only improved with age. It wasn’t fair. He should be balding or overweight, but the photographic images she’d seen of him over the years hadn’t been airbrushed or otherwise doctored. His hair was still thick, his physique lean and muscled, and his face chiseled and gorgeous.

It dawned on her then that she was still on her knees gazing up at him like the same starry-eyed girl whose heart he’d broken.

Pride fired Ali to her feet. She wiped her soiled hands on her jeans and inwardly cursed her habit of not wearing gardening gloves. There was no help for her dirty cuticles or her perspiration-damp appearance beneath the ball cap she wore, but she damn well wouldn’t kneel like some supplicant before Luke Banning of all people.

“Hello.”

To her relief her voice sounded normal, its tone just this side of cool, but he was smiling as if he thought she were delighted that he’d rumbled down her lane, disturbing her peace and nature’s quiet on this sunny Sunday afternoon.

“God, you look the same as I remembered…give or take a dirt smudge.”

Laughing, he reached out and touched her cheek, presumably to wipe away some errant soil. His smile dimmed when Ali backed up a step and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Believe me, I’ve changed.”

“I guess we all have.” He slipped off the glasses and she felt lost in those blue eyes until he added, “Ten years will do that.”

“It’s been eleven.”

He nodded and one side of his mouth crooked up. “Eleven. How have you been, Ali?”

“Fine.”

“I read in the paper last year that Audra had married again. When I spoke to her on the telephone a couple weeks ago, she seemed very happy.”

“Yes. Apparently the fourth time is the charm,” Ali replied. And because the words seemed somehow disloyal given the vast metamorphosis her twin had gone through, she added, “Seth’s a great guy. I think this one will stick.”

“I’m glad for her. What about you? Anybody special in your life these days?”

She hadn’t expected him to come right out and ask her such a personal question, and so she spluttered, “I—I’m seeing someone.”

Did one date actually count as “seeing”? Bradley had asked her out again since then, twice in fact. But she’d put him off. Standing in front of Luke, she decided there was really no reason she shouldn’t take Bradley up on his offer of dinner the following Saturday.

“Is he an islander?”

“No. In fact, he’s relatively new to the area. He lives on the mainland, just outside Petoskey.”

Luke nodded. “Speaking of the mainland, there’s a lot of new development along the waterfront. I barely recognized parts of it when I flew over.”

When Ali glanced in bafflement at his bike, Luke caressed the motorcycle’s handlebars. On a shrug he said, “One of the perks of having my own aircraft is that I always have room for my Harley.”

His priorities apparently hadn’t changed, but she kept that thought to herself. No reason to dredge up the past. Indeed, she planned to keep the conversation as impersonal as possible.

“Those new developments on the mainland are giving Saybrook’s some stiff competition, which is why we want to buy the property adjacent to the resort and add a golf course as soon as we can manage it.”

Luke shook his head and grinned again. “I still can’t believe you guys bought the resort.”

The comment rankled, so much so that her determination to remain impersonal began to waver. After all, he wasn’t the only one who had made something of himself. Ali had graduated cum laude with a degree in business and was now part owner of one of the Midwest’s most storied resorts.

“It’s prime real estate and despite the fact that the previous manager drove it to the brink of bankruptcy, it’s already starting to rebound,” she said. “A couple of good seasons and we’ll be operating in the black. But then I’m sure you already know that or you wouldn’t be considering entering into a partnership with us.”

“I’m not questioning the soundness of the investment,” Luke said, holding up a hand. “It’s just that back when we were kids who would have guessed that the Conlans would someday own Saybrook’s?”

“Yes, and who would have guessed that a high school dropout would go on to be called Entrepreneur of the Year by a respected national business journal?” she replied.

The words came out snide rather than tinged with the begrudging admiration she felt. Ali could tell Luke realized that. He slipped his sunglasses back on, his happy-go-lucky grin receding into a taut line of compressed lips.

“Yeah. I guess the kids at Trillium High who voted me most likely to wind up incarcerated are eating their words about now. Makes me almost sorry I didn’t make it for the last class reunion.”

Ali felt too small for reminding him of his rocky adolescence to point out that since he hadn’t graduated, technically he would not have been invited to any of his class’s reunions.

“That was a long time ago,” she murmured, realizing even as she said it that she certainly hadn’t let go of the past.

It was a moment before Luke broke the awkward silence. “I did get my diploma, you know.”

She blinked in surprise as much at his words as at the quiet pride with which they were spoken. He’d dropped out of high school during his senior year, and although Ali was three years his junior and they hadn’t started to date until she was nearly a senior herself, his lack of a diploma had been the cause of more than a few arguments. She had urged him repeatedly to go back to night school or earn a general equivalency degree. He was too smart not to, she’d told him.

“I didn’t know,” she said. Then, “I’m glad.”

“I took adult education courses after I left. It didn’t take me very long.”

“What made you decide to do it?”

He shrugged and glanced away. “It was just after I’d made my first million with the dot-com I’d founded. I guess I didn’t want people to think I was a fluke or…stupid.”

“I never thought you were stupid.”

“No.” The grin was back in a flash of white teeth. “You just thought I was reckless and impulsive. I still am, by the way.”

And because the grin had sent a shower of sparks through her system, she retorted crisply, “I can tell. You’re driving that damned Harley without a helmet. That’s illegal, you know.”

“Not in every state. Besides, you can’t get the full experience with a bucket strapped to your head.” A pair of dark brows rose over the top rim of the sunglasses. “Want to go for a ride, Ali? I can go real slow if you’d like, or take you fast.”

His silky tone and the double entendre implied along with his raised brows had gooseflesh appearing on her arms.

“Fast or slow, I never liked your bike,” she answered primly.

“No. But you used to like me.”

What she’d felt had gone a great deal beyond “like,” and he damned well knew it. Ali notched up her chin and let the chill seep into her inflection when she said, “So, what are you doing all the way out here today?”

She asked, but she thought she knew. Surely he had driven to this secluded shore of the island to speak with her in private before the midweek meeting at which Dane and Audra would be present. An apology would be coming any minute…an apology she still planned to decline.

Ali’s stone cottage, which had once belonged to her grandmother, sat on Trillium’s western shore, affording it a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan. It was tucked in amid a huge parcel of state land, making it the only private residence for miles. The only private residence except for…

Even before she could finish the thought, Luke was pointing to the slight rise at the northern edge of her property. Since the leaves on the trees were still sparse, Ali could just make out the pitch of the neighboring cottage’s roof and she cursed her hubris.

The place had belonged to Luke’s grandmother. Elsie Banning had raised Luke after his father, an alcoholic, had died while Luke was still in grade school. Luke’s mother had already abandoned the family by then. As Elsie’s only surviving kin, the cottage and the seven wooded acres on which it sat technically belonged to Luke.

“I thought I’d swing by the old house and see how it’s fared since I’ve been gone.” He took off his sunglasses again and fiddled with the ear pieces. Regret colored his tone when he added, “I should have had someone taking care of it over the years.”

Elsie had died just three months before he’d left Trillium. If the man had one redeeming trait, Ali knew it was that he’d loved his grandmother without reserve. Her death had devastated him.

“I’ve looked in on it from time to time,” she admitted.

She’d done more than that, actually. She’d kept the grass mowed, the carpet roses trimmed back and the cobblestone path that led from the driveway to the front door free of weeds. She’d done it for Elsie, not for Luke, or at least that’s what she’d told herself. But sometimes, after finishing the yard work, she would sit on the rear porch that faced the big lake, rock slowly back and forth in the wide swing where she and Luke had long ago shared their first taste of passion, and wonder what he was doing and if he ever thought about her.

The fact that he’d run into her today by accident seemed to answer that question now.

“I appreciate it,” he said.

“It’s no trouble to walk over,” she replied on a shrug.

Luke motioned toward the house behind her. “Does that mean you live here now?”

She nodded. “My grandmother deeded it to me when she moved to Florida with my parents six years ago.”

He smiled slowly and despite Ali’s closed posture, laid one warm hand on her upper arm and squeezed. The casual contact caused her traitorous pulse to shoot off like a bottle rocket and had her irritated all over again. He seemed not to notice, lost as he was in reminiscing.

“I think I spent as much time in your grandmother’s kitchen as I did in my own. She made the best sugar cookies on Trillium. Remember how when we were kids we would sneak them off the baking tray before they even had a chance to cool?”

Ali didn’t want to be reminded of the ways in which their lives had once twined together so sweetly since his abandonment had caused her heart to fray apart afterward. And so when he asked, “How is Mrs. Conlan doing these days?” she announced baldly, “She died last winter.”

“God. I’m sorry.” He slipped the glasses back on, making Ali wonder if she had just imagined that fleeting shadow of what had looked like self-reproach. “I didn’t know.”

“How would you?”

“Ali.” He said her name quietly, and then stroked her cheek. This time she didn’t back away, if only to prove to herself that his touch meant nothing.

A bee buzzed past and overhead a blue jay’s shrill cry rent the silence as they regarded one another.

Finally, motioning in the direction of his grandmother’s property, Ali said, “Don’t let me keep you, Luke. I know you’re a busy and important man.”

He hesitated, and she thought for a moment he was going to say something, but then he dropped his hand and straddled the bike, firing it to life with a swift downward kick of his booted foot. Over the engine’s throaty growl he hollered, “See you Wednesday.”

Wednesday, Ali knew, would come much too soon.

Luke slowed the bike as he approached the driveway to his grandmother’s cottage, but in the end, he sped past it, instead following the rutted road as it wound through the woods and then spilled back onto the main drag a dozen miles later.

He hadn’t felt up to seeing the cottage and confronting any more of his past. Not after seeing Ali.

He’d known her right away. She hadn’t changed much. Even the baseball cap snugged over her crown was the same. He snorted out a laugh that was lost to the wind. The woman just couldn’t give up on the Detroit Tigers even though they hadn’t won a World Series since 1984.

Despite her poor taste in baseball teams, she looked good. Better than good, actually, even with her dark hair sprouting from the back of the cap, perspiration dotting her upper lip and dirt streaking her right cheek. Her eyes were still a couple shades darker than caramel and she’d kept her figure, that long-legged, slim-hipped athletic build that had given him many a sleepless night in his youth.