Chapter 15 #2
Danny was already racing to the water as Maggie bundled her clothes together and tucked them with Brendan’s and Danny’s before sitting down on the sand, her knees tucked up to her chest, unsure what she was meant to do now.
Brendan sat down next to her, his bare legs stretched out, his hand very nearly brushing hers. The sun beat down on them both, and Maggie tilted her face up to it, her eyes closed.
“Aren’t you going to go swimming?” Brendan asked, and Maggie managed a laugh, albeit a rather wobbly one. This whole situation was making her feel both nervous and uncertain… and it wasn’t just because of the water.
“I told you,” she said, “I don’t know how to swim.”
Brendan nudged her shoulder with his one, a friendly bump. “Get your feet wet, then.”
“Maybe,” she replied, somewhat repressively, and as she opened her eyes to look at him, he grinned at her, his hazel eyes glinting with playful challenge.
“I didn’t think you were a coward, Maggie O’Halloran!” he declared.
“A coward!” she exclaimed, swiping the stray strands of hair from her eyes. The accusation stung more than it should have, since she knew it was only a joke. “I’m not a coward.”
Brendan’s grin glinted along with his eyes. “Then prove it.”
She knew he was baiting her on purpose, and yet she also felt an undercurrent of something deeper she didn’t fully understand.
Was he daring her to do, or even be, something different, was he just teasing her as a friend?
Was she silly to take him up on it, to feel like even now she had something to prove, as much to herself as to him, and it didn’t necessarily have anything to do with swimming?
She thrust her chin out and then scrambled up from the sand. “All right, then.”
Danny was already splashing about merrily in the water as Maggie walked toward the lake shore, Brendan following behind.
Lake Michigan stretched in front of her as endlessly as the ocean, and for a second, gazing out at the blue-gray expanse of water, she felt the same limitless sense of possibility and hope she’d once experienced on board the SS Alaska, sailing across the sea to New York.
Everything was still in front of her. Opportunity, nebulous, nascent, was hers for the taking…
whatever it turned out to be. All she had to do was seize it.
“Well?” Brendan demanded playfully from behind her, and, stiffening her spine, Maggie waded into the water—which was surprisingly cold, considering the heat of the day—all the way up to her knees. She turned to face him, her arms folded, her chin raised in defiant challenge.
“See?” she said. “I’m not a coward.”
Brendan’s playful smile faltered, and, for a second, Maggie felt as if this whole exercise had really been about something else, something far more important than a dip in the waves. “Maggie,” he said quietly, “I never thought you were.”
Maggie stared at him, unsettled, wishing she knew how he really felt.
How she did. This had never been about going in the water, she knew, but about her own contrary and wayward heart…
and she still had no answers there. Too unsettled to respond, she turned around and walked further still, the bottom of the lake sloping gradually, until she was wet nearly to her waist. She turned back to Brendan, intending to make light of it all, only to have him look at her in alarm.
“Maggie—!” he called out, and in the next instant, she felt as if someone had shoved her hard in the back, and she pitched forward, the water closing over her head.
For a second, Maggie couldn’t see or even think as she tried to find her footing again, panic making her chest burn as she finally stood once more, coughing and spluttering, her hair in wet rat’s tails about her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” Brendan asked in concern, heading in the water toward her, and she tried to shake her head and nod at the same time, still coughing too much to speak.
Brendan drew her toward him and she came willingly, grateful for his arms about her, their wet bodies briefly pressed together in a way that was both comforting and exciting.
“These waves come suddenly, I’ve heard, due to the wind,” he murmured. “I never should have dared you.”
“I never should have taken your silly dare,” Maggie replied, her cheek pressed against his shoulder. She closed her eyes, savoring the moment, and then, Brendan stepped back, his hands firm on her shoulders as he deliberately set her down away from him.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, and there was a new coolness to his tone that Maggie found mortifying.
She’d been clinging to him, and as scantily clad as she was, it was completely inappropriate.
No wonder he’d moved away. Unable to look at him, she waded back to the shore, pushing her wet hair away from her face, a hot flush crawling over her body despite the coolness of her damp skin.
Brendan didn’t follow, for which she was paradoxically grateful and unaccountably hurt.
She should not have come today, Maggie acknowledged disconsolately as she flung herself onto the sand and drew her knees up to her chest. Her heart was too wayward for Brendan’s teasing or his seeming rejection, courteous as it had been.
She disliked the contrariness of her own response, hated how it made her feel both weak and capricious, a fickle woman who didn’t know the secrets of her own heart.
She could hardly blame Brendan for acting with gentlemanly sensibility; she was the one who was inconstant and so humiliatingly changeable, her feelings blown by every wind.
She glanced at him now, playing with Danny in the water, both of them laughing as they splashed each other, clearly so carefree and at ease.
Why couldn’t she match his careless confidence?
Why did she have to sit here, stewing in her own emotions?
The only solution, Maggie resolved, was to separate herself from Brendan entirely, and focus on establishing herself as Chicago’s newest milliner.
Anything else was a distraction—and far too dangerous.