Love and Death in Blue Lake Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Cynthia Harrison’s

  Love and Death in Blue Lake

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  Before he knew what he was doing,

  he had taken her into his arms. It just happened. And she stayed, one second, two, three. He kissed the side of her forehead, just rested his lips on her skin, not a real kiss, not what he wanted to do. As if she knew and wanted it too, she lifted her face to his, and he brought his mouth to hers. Holding back, trying not to tear into her mouth with all the passion moving through him, he kissed her soft lips, slicked with a hint of summer rain.

  She had been huddled inside his arms, but now her hands slid around his shoulders, and she was holding him like she used to, pulling him closer, kissing his mouth open, still soft, still sweet, but yearning for more. She felt it too, then. He knew she must. He would not be signing those papers because she would not be leaving town. He just couldn’t let her go. Not again.

  Another clap of thunder must have brought her to her senses because she put a hand on his chest and pushed him away with the lightest touch, as if she were as reluctant to release him as he was to let her go.

  “Want I should drive you home?”

  They were inches apart, and their eyes held each other, telling stories neither would say aloud.

  “Okay.” Her eyes shifted to her bare feet, toenails painted peachy-pink something. His Courtney always wore black nail polish. This was somebody new, but she was also the same.

  “We can sit and talk for a while, see if it slows down.” He wasn’t sure if he meant the rain or his madly beating heart. Maybe both.

  Praise for Cynthia Harrison’s

  Blue Lake Series

  “[In LUKE’S #1 RULE] I loved the character of Chloe who puts her children first and, despite her love for Luke, won’t let him treat her as second best.”

  ~Ali, A Woman’s Wisdom

  ~*~

  “I cried three times while reading [LUKE’S #1 RULE], they were good tears, and I knew it would somehow all end well.”

  ~Nikki Carrera, Nikki Carrera Author

  ~*~

  “[LUKE’S #1 RULE] would be enjoyed by anyone who likes a contemporary family drama, slightly edgy, with a bit of romantic, sexy stuff thrown in, in the form of Luke, the man with the rule he’s so determined not to break…”

  ~Terry Tyler, Terry Tyler Book Reviews

  ~*~

  “BLUE HEAVEN wrapped me up and didn’t let go until I finished the final chapter, blinking my way past tears in order to make out the final words.”

  ~Melissa Snark, The Snarkology

  ~*~

  “[BLUE HEAVEN] captivated me right from the start and I couldn’t put it down. In fact, I read it in one sitting, ignoring everything else on my ‘to-do’ list.”

  ~Barb Han, author

  ~*~

  “Harrison has a wonderful tale [in BLUE HEAVEN] to tell in a great setting…an enjoyable light summer read.”

  ~Georgia Rose, Georgia Rose Books

  Love and Death

  in Blue Lake

  by

  Cynthia Harrison

  Blue Lake Series

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Love and Death in Blue Lake

  COPYRIGHT © 2015 by Cynthia Harrison

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Angela Anderson

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2015

  Print ISBN 978-1-5092-0475-5

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-0476-2

  Blue Lake Series

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Ben & Owen

  Chapter One

  She walked in the door, a slice of light from outside illuminating her curvy frame. His Courtney had never gotten Hollywood skinny, even after all the years she’d lived there. She was like an angel. Glowing. Her heels clicked across the old wood floor as Eddie stood motionless behind the bar, soft cloth and a half-polished wine glass held loosely in his hands until he felt the glass start to slip. Then he gripped it too hard, and before it shattered, set it down on the bar. He threw the polishing towel over his shoulder and watched her walk to him, acutely aware that they were alone but at any moment another customer could walk through the door.

  He hadn’t expected her. The last time he saw her, she’d been wild with grief and he’d been drunk. Back then, summer of 1994, they’d been young and out of their minds in love.

  They had a fight, then she was gone. She’d left behind all her baby doll dresses and chunky-heeled strappy shoes, left with nothing but the clothes on her back and big dreams he had known next to nothing about. At least this time he’d been prepared. Or thought he was, remembering the rough punch to his gut when she walked through the door of his bar.

  He’d known she was coming in for the twenty-year Blue Lake High School reunion; the town buzzed with the news. This was the woman who had styled rock stars and designed lush video shoots with exotic animals and abundant food and outrageously frocked pop stars. To him, all this time later, she looked like his same sweet Courtney, but without the smile. They hadn’t said a word to each other yet.

  She took a seat at the highly polished wood bar and slapped down a large-sized legal envelope, thick with pages that spewed out the open top. No. Not after all this time. She wouldn’t.

  “Hello, Courtney.”

  “Hello, Edward.”

  She was the only person on the planet who called him that, and her voice with the name took him back in 1992 and their wedding day. He thought his heart would bust with love for his little rebel. They had to be together, more than high school sweethearts were allowed to be in Blue Lake, so they waited until they were legal, told nobody, and married at the courthouse in Port Huron. So they could live together and make a life, the life they’d been dreaming about and talking about and wishing for since freshman year of high school.

  “Divorce papers?” He nodded his head slightly in the direction of the packet.

  “It’s time.”

  Her heart-shaped face hadn’t aged a day. How could that be? And those deep rose lips, slicked with gloss. For him? He wanted to kiss her, not divorce her.

  “You getting married or something?” He knew about the kid. Not his. She was, what, fourteen now. Scarlett. No, Ruby. Like the belly ring Eddie had bought for Courtney on their wedding day. Because they could never be like everyone else. And that’s why…oh man, he hadn’t thought about her or any of this in a long time. He knew how to block that shit out. And not by drinking. That worked for a few years, but then he got the
bar and just stopped. Saw too many drunks, he guessed.

  He took up tai chi and did the discipline that filled his head with nothing but the next movement in the flow. It worked…until now. Now he remembered that she’d begged him for a baby, but he thought they were still too young, and they didn’t have any money, and he didn’t want a hand-out from her folks. Also he was still trying to be a real musician then. He still had dreams of his own then. And they didn’t include any babies. Courtney had tried for a year to talk him into it, but he kept saying no, and it broke something in her, and she left.

  “Yeah,” she said, like divorce papers after twenty years were no big deal. “Got any Chardonnay worth swilling?” She pointed at the half-polished glass. It was that time between lunch and dinner, between beach and dancing. He still had her alone. But for how long?

  He took his time finding just the right bottle. Blue Lake had become a destination vacation for people with boats who loved big water and knew about wine, so he’d had to educate himself in the last few years. He’d even had a wine cooler installed, maybe just for this day. He opened the wine without flair, held the cork, looked at her. She shook her head but took the bottle from him to study the label before he could pour her a taste.

  “Go ahead. Nice choice.” He poured and thought about getting another glass for himself. It wasn’t like he never took a drink. Just not at work. And he was always at work. “Now I’ll just sip this while you read that, and you can sign before the shindig Saturday.”

  “We’ve been married for twenty years.” He said the first thing he could think of, anything to stop this from happening. “You could at least give me the weekend to think it over.”

  Before she could take a sip of wine, she slapped a hand over her mouth, then laughed her same laugh, the one that tinkled and was throaty at the same time. God, Court, don’t do this to me. Because once again he was back, this time 1993, the first time she brought up kids. It was after they’d gone at it until they were senseless and his bones had felt like jellyfish. He held her and kissed the side of her face. “Never thought much about having kids,” he confessed. Hell, they were still kids themselves.

  “But you want them, right?” She pulled away a little to look at him.

  “You’re still the joker, I see.” Present again. He thought fast. How to make her stay? How to burn the papers in his big stone fire pit out by the river?

  “It’s so good to see you.” He came from the open-heart thing the tai chi guy always yapped about.

  She lifted the glass, but then didn’t sip, instead setting it down, looking right into his eyes, getting a read, she used to say. She swallowed. He could watch her neck for ten hours and not get bored.

  “Good to see you, too, Edward.”

  Ah, she’d softened a little. Her hand went to a small stone around her neck. An unconscious twist of gold chain and he glimpsed a little chip of deep ruby red. Not pierced in her belly, but still a part of her. Relief, hope, sadness tumbled through him.

  “Tell me about him. My rival for your affection.”

  She snorted. Another cute habit that would fling him back to the past if he let it.

  “Still with the words, too, I see. Do you play? Here?” She swiveled in her stool toward the big side of the building he only opened summers, with the stage and the dance floor.

  He felt dizzy. This was not good, seeing her like this. Too much. All at once.

  “You answer my question, then I’ll answer yours.” Lame, but it bought him time. Her wine level looked untouched. Probably not the right year or the right grape or something. He’d seen her sniff it and set it aside. Like she’d set him aside.

  “Fair enough. His name is Xander. We’ve lived together for six years. He’s the only father Ruby’s ever known. He doesn’t like it that Ruby and I are Fass and he and the boys are Stein.”

  “The boys?”

  “Your turn.”

  “No. No place.” He didn’t elaborate, and he saw that she wanted to ask him more but decided not to. There wasn’t anything to say. He quit playing guitars and started playing with women the day after she left town.

  “Ten and twelve, from his former marriage. We’re a family. He wants to make it legal. Have a child of our own. I said yes.”

  Eddie glanced at her ring finger. No rock. And she “said yes” not “I want that, too.”

  “Do you love him, Court?”

  The door opened, and a group of twenty-somethings straight from the beach tumbled into the dark cave of his bar like a litter of puppies.

  While he checked IDs and served the kids, she walked out. Tight jeans hugged her butt, swaying over the highest heels this side of Chicago. The boys in the group looked at her, still dead sexy. She didn’t look back, just waved her hand. As he drew a pitcher of beer, he noticed she hadn’t touched her glass of wine.

  ****

  Courtney hoped Edward had not seen the way her body shook when she left the bar. She had not been prepared for the full force of Edward Calvin Fass aka Fast Eddie. She thought she’d been ready but had been in major denial mode. She still wanted him, damn it. She pressed the ignition button with a shaking finger and peeled out onto the highway. She drove with the window down, like it could blow away her thoughts, the ones that clung so tenaciously.

  Think of Xander in California, she told herself. Think of your life there. Her practice. He’d been her prof and advisor at UCLA when she went for a degree after dressing up rock stars got old. Nothing happened between them for the longest time. He was married, and she was studying too hard to become a life coach for any thought like that to enter her mind. In California, they took things like life coaching seriously. Still, Xander, as her academic advisor, talked her into doing cognitive and behavioral therapy training as back up credentials. It would lend her gravitas, he said. Then he arranged for her to get the hundreds of hours of supervised practice such licensing required.

  When she graduated and got certified, she took Ruby and moved to San Diego. She’d had it with L.A. With her savings from the days when everyone but she blew their money on blow, she started private practice and did just fine. Then Xander showed up six months in with a suitcase in his hand. He never left. Not that she’d minded. Not really. And things would straighten out soon. She pulled into the driveway of her parents’ enormous porched and pillared home.

  Her parents didn’t know much about Xander. She didn’t tell, and they didn’t ask. Ruby had never really warmed to Xander, called him a mooch because he didn’t contribute to the household. She parked in the garage the way her father liked and thought about Xander’s other house, the one in L.A. with the wife and sons in it, the one that took all his money, the one where he sometimes spent weekends still fixing doorknobs and such. Some weekends he stayed in Beverly Hills and other, less frequent weekends, the boys came down. Ruby ignored them, and they didn’t even see her, just ate up two weeks’ worth of food in two days, food Courtney paid for, and didn’t say thank you. Not ever.

  Things were about to change. Big time. That’s what this weekend was about. Xander was going to make the split final and tell the boys. They were going to be a real family, southern California style. As if he could read her mind, her phone pinged with a text. She stood outside the house and read “Picked up ring today. Want to rush to Michigan to put on your finger.”

  Courtney endured a family meal with Ruby, her sister Gwennie, Gwennie’s twins, aged twelve, her baby brother, Kyle, and her parents. Sunday roast on a Thursday. Courtney had not eaten beef in years, and Ruby was vegan, but they both took a small slice and pushed it around their plates, under a bite of mashed potatoes, behind a few cooked carrot slices. It’s what they did when they came to Blue Lake.

  “Everybody says you were at Eddie’s today for hours.” Gwennie smacked her lips.

  “Maybe an hour.” Courtney shrugged.

  “Is he my real dad?” Ruby asked, even though she knew he was not. Even though Courtney had shown Ruby the papers from the sperm bank w
here she had been purchased.

  Kyle made a turkey baster joke.

  “Kyle!” Mom’s neck turned red. Dad, deaf without the hearing aids he refused to wear, and no clue of the subject, asked did anyone want more beef.

  “Sorry.” But before Kyle held out his plate for another slice of cow, Courtney saw the pleasure he took in the twins’ snicker. Really, they knew that stuff at twelve now?

  It went on like that until Courtney claimed jet lag and went to her room.

  Courtney woke hours later, her daughter snoring softly in the twin bed next to her. The pine trees in Blue Lake were bad for Ruby’s allergies. She could never move back. Not that she wanted to. Well, except that she’d been dreaming of Edward and of doing just that, but dreams were not wish fulfillment, they were more complicated. Just like her own life, her own hopes, fears, and desires.

  Quarter after three. Edward would be home now. She knew where he lived. Gwennie had told her that and way too much more information about how he was the town man-whore and chose a different summer woman each morning, noon, and night. He had a special cottage at that newish resort, Blue Heaven, also a sofa in his office at the bar, where he’d disappear with them for an hour or two.

  Courtney tried not to think, just breathe. But the room was stuffy, and panic started to rise. She padded into the bathroom for a Xanax but instead put on those jeans, the only pair she owned, bought specifically for this trip. She grabbed her messenger bag with the extra set of divorce papers and slipped out of the house. She forgot to wear shoes, but by the time she noticed, panic was pulling hard.

  Her old bike was still in the garage, and she rode it out to Sapphire River Road, feeling her heartbeat stabilize and thinking back to just when these panic issues had started. She had been so strong when she was young. Strong with Edward, strong when she moved to L.A., strong when she forged a career in an emerging field, strong when she’d had Ruby on her own. The first time she remembered feeling panicky was in college. She had not been sure she was smart enough, even though UCLA thought she was. She’d hated the way her voice shook and her hands trembled when she presented in front of classrooms. For the first time, she had felt out of her element, out of control. She had shaken those episodes off for years until she wrote her master’s thesis on the anxiety/panic/phobia epidemic. She’d come up with that one after Xander had nixed many other ideas. He had loved it. The more she researched, the more she recognized herself. College was as unfamiliar to the old Courtney as the moon. Funny, she’d always enjoyed new experiences before that one. But nothing, not rock stars, not motherhood, shook her confidence like an A minus.