Ethan smiled. “I’m at the house.”
A high-pitched scream pierced his eardrums. “Really? How does it look?”
“It’s still standing.” Ethan heard a rustling sound behind the wall and wondered how many four-legged critters had built tiny condos in the insulation during his family’s absence.
“What about the boathouse?”
“I haven’t been down there yet.”
“What’s taking you so long?” Hollis demanded.
“I’ll walk down to the lake before it gets dark.” Ethan went over to the bank of windows that overlooked Jewel Lake. Branches littered the yard, debris left over from a summer storm, and cattails crowded the shoreline where the dock had been.
Ethan frowned. Was it his imagination or did the boathouse look closer to the water?
“You aren’t saying much. Is it . . . terrible?” For the first time a note of uncertainty crept into his sister’s voice.
“We probably could have used a little more time to get things in order,” Ethan said carefully. Like two months instead of two weeks.
“That’s why my awesome big brother is there. To make sure everything is absolutely perfect—and to keep Mom from turning the wedding into a three-ring circus.”
In spite of the neglected condition of the property, Ethan knew which of the two assignments presented the greater challenge. “No pressure there.”
“I want to be sensitive to Connor’s feelings. He’s gone out of his way to keep a low profile.”
And then the poor guy had fallen in love with Hollis, whose mother didn’t know the meaning of the words. Considering the guest list for his mom’s annual Christmas party wasn’t a whole lot smaller than the population of Red Leaf, it hadn’t gone over well when the couple broke the news that they wanted to exchange their vows with only a few close friends and family members in attendance.
“There’s still time to elope.” Ethan was kidding. Kind of.
“Hey, you were the one who gave me the idea, remember?”
“I remember mentioning Red Leaf. You were the one who decided it would be a good place for your secret wedding.”
“Funny you should mention secrets,” Hollis said sweetly.
Ethan winced. “Good-bye, Hollis.”
“Ethan? I . . . I know everything seems like it’s happening pretty fast. But Connor and I . . . we just want to start our life. Is that crazy?”
Sunlight spilled through a seam in the clouds and turned the surface of the lake to gold. Ethan felt something in his soul, something that had felt off-kilter a long time, settle back into place.
“No,” he said quietly. “Not crazy at all.”
Not when he’d waited ten years to start his.
Mac took a shortcut through the hedge of maple trees that separated the sliver of land her father owned from the Channings’ sprawling lakefront property.
Like Coach, the handful of people who lived on Jewel Lake had crafted their houses out of logs and fieldstone in an effort to blend in, rather than compete, with the natural beauty of their surroundings.
Not Monroe and Lilah Channing. They’d built their home like the third little pig in the nursery rhyme. Out of brick. It rose from the shoreline like a miniature fortress, complete with twin turrets and a wall of windows that faced the lake.
Ethan’s mother had waged a campaign against the native flora, gradually bending it to her will until the yard resembled a golf course. A large patio—also brick—fanned out toward the water, and an adorable wooden gazebo with gingerbread trim had been built on the hill overlooking the rose garden. Since no one in the family ventured that far from the house, Mac decided the gazebo was more like an expensive yard ornament, its sole purpose to fill a bare spot on the property.
Well, not its sole purpose. Shaded by a hundred-year-old oak tree whose branches stretched over the property line, the gazebo had become Mac’s favorite hideaway when she was growing up. How many times had she sneaked inside and stretched out on one of the built-in benches, listening to Hollis and her friends’ laughter as they sunbathed by the lake?
She and Hollis might have been next-door neighbors, but contrary to her boss’s assumption, they’d never been friends.
Mac traced it back to an unfortunate incident at Hollis’s seventh birthday party, when Mac had declared she’d rather eat a minnow than have Betty Sadowski from the Clip and Curl Salon paint her fingernails pink. It was the truth, but in retrospect Mac realized she could have stated her preference a little more . . . tactfully.