Chapter Two
I TWISTED THE KEY IN the ignition of Dad’s old cherry red 1971 Hemi ’Cuda convertible. The low purr of the engine lingered for a moment before settling into silence. It had been a long, strange day in the ER, and I needed a moment to process. So, I sat there in the drive, staring aimlessly at the rustic yet modern lake house with large windows and a wraparound deck—where one could admire the pristine view of the lake—and enjoyed the feeling of the gentle breeze and the late-evening sun on my face.
The house had always been my family’s happy place, from the time I was a small child and we’d rented it every summer. Later, we ran to it seeking refuge after Dad died—when I was sixteen and my kid sister was thirteen—and made it our year-round residence until Mom remarried ten years ago.
The best memories of Dad lived at the lake house, so it made sense that we wanted to make it our home. That was twenty-three years ago. It hardly seemed possible. A lot had happened in those years, including college and medical school. And ... Erica.
“Erica,” I whispered her name, feeling the ache of her absence. She was the real reason I found myself back at the lake house. When Mr. Salinger, the man we rented the house from, finally put it on the market the year before, I knew it had to be mine. So I’d sold my half of the practice I owned in Seattle and moved, hoping to find the happiness this place had once brought me .
Happiness had so far eluded me, but at least I had found some solace. Perhaps solace wasn’t the right word. I’d purposefully taken the position at the ER, knowing the hours would be grueling, giving me less time to be by myself and think about Erica.
However, this summer, I wouldn’t be alone. My sister Eden and her ten-year-old daughter Sophie were spending it with me. Eden, recently divorced, had decided the best place for her and Sophie was Aspen Lake. So, they were staying with me until Eden could find a place of her own. It would be nice to have the company. And every kid deserves a summer at a lake house.
I’d often dreamed of bringing my own kids there someday, but ... well ... that dream had died along with Erica. I tightly gripped the steering wheel of the car I’d helped Dad restore, feeling unsettled and guilty. For the first time since Erica’s passing a little over a year ago, a beautiful woman had caught my attention. A patient, no less. An odd patient, to say the least.
I smiled to myself, thinking of her rambling. No. I shook my head, grabbed my backpack, and flew out of the car, trying to escape the image of Brooke Crawford’s gorgeous green eyes. It reminded me of how foolishly I’d behaved, fleeing her presence and asking a colleague to finish examining her.
When she’d suggested I be her summer fling, something in me snapped. The last thing I was looking for was a fling, or any type of relationship, for that matter. Yet ... for a split second, I entertained the thought of a night out with the beautiful, albeit strange, woman. I wasn’t ready for that. I couldn’t do that to Erica. She deserved better.
It was a moment of weakness. The loneliness was just getting to me.
I jogged up the stone pathway to the deck stairs, needing a distraction. I would pull the car into the garage later. Maybe my niece would want to shoot some hoops or roast some apples over the firepit on the deck. She always had some funny story to tell me.
As I walked up the stairs, memories flooded back of sitting on these very steps with Dad. It was there he’d imparted some of life’s greatest lessons—the importance of being a person of my word and that success in life required unwavering integrity. Dad had practiced what he’d preached. He’d started as a janitor at a car dealership and worked his way up until he owned that dealership and five others. He’d worked hard, but he believed in playing just as hard. It was why my parents brought us to the lake every summer.
It was on this very deck that I’d told Dad I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. He’d made me believe I could achieve it. I often wished he were still around to comfort me and tell me there would come a day when I wouldn’t roll over in bed, aching to see Erica wrapped up in our comforter. Her beautiful face and fiery red hair—that matched her personality—barely peeking out. The woman was the biggest cover stealer around.
“Uncle Logan!” Sophie popped her cute head out of the double glass doors. She looked so much like her Italian father, with her olive skin and long dark wavy hair. But her sweet countenance and bright-blue eyes were all Eden’s.
It was a shame Luca had turned out to be such a prick. Eden had barred me from saying it out loud, at least in Sophie’s presence. But any man who cheated on his wife—with her best friend, no less—deserved to be called that and more. However, I understood Eden’s desire to be a good coparent with the prick . So, if ever anyone mentioned Luca’s name around Sophie, I would clench my fists and plaster on a fake smile. It wasn’t like I hadn’t told the guy off in private. I now regretted asking him to be the best man at my wedding five years earlier.
“What’s up, kiddo?” Her presence had me feeling more settled and able to shake off any thoughts of Brooke Crawford.
Sophie swung the doors open the rest of the way, smiling widely, showing off her new set of braces. “I made you dinner.”
I ruffled her hair on my way into the house. “You didn’t need to do that.” Not to say I didn’t appreciate it. Sophie, like her mom, was already an excellent cook. Maybe someday she would be famous for it, just like Eden.
“It’s a new recipe I made up myself,” she said proudly. “A creamy risotto with fresh vegetables.”
“Sounds terrific.” The last thing I’d eaten was a veggie wrap around noon, and that was hours ago.
Sophie sidled up to me as we walked through the open-concept house with high ceilings and exposed wooden beams. It was mostly barren of furniture. Most of our things were still in storage. The thought of walking around the house and seeing constant reminders of my life with Erica sounded like torture.
I didn’t need the flashbacks of happy days walking through every furniture store in Seattle, picking out the perfect pieces together, playfully arguing about function versus fashion. I was more about comfort, while Erica was always about style. It was why we’d ended up with chaises instead of couches in our great room. Anything to make her smile, even if it was more comfortable to sit on the floor than on those half-chair, half-couch monstrosities.
For now, Eden had placed her couch and a couple of armchairs in the great room.
I put my arm around Sophie and gave her a squeeze. I knew she missed her father. While he’d been a louse of a husband, he was, by all accounts, a good dad. He hadn’t wanted Eden and Sophie to move across the country. But after his betrayal and rush to remarry, Eden thought it was best to leave her upstate New York home, and Luca had acquiesced. I was trying to do what I could to fill the void in Sophie’s life, but I knew from personal experience that there was no filling the hole a father left.
“I really appreciate you making me dinner. After we eat, what do you say we shoot some hoops or maybe roast some apples around the firepit?”
Sophie leaned more into me. “That’s sounds fun, but I’m helping Mom tonight.”
The kitchen and Eden came into view. Eden was busy preparing ingredients on the butcher block counters.
“Are you filming some new content tonight?” Social media had made Eden famous. She and her ex had been dance partners. They were so good, they’d won the Open World Swing Dance Championships twice.
In a stroke of genius, Eden had decided to combine her passions for dancing and food and started a social media account called A Dance in the Kitchen. She and Luca would do one dance number before Eden would bake or cook something. Then she would feed bites to Luca, and he would praise Eden about how amazing her latest creation tasted.
People ate it up. They’d racked up millions of followers across several social media channels. It had shocked their fans when they announced their divorce. But thankfully for Eden, she was able to keep the rights to A Dance in the Kitchen, and her fan base rallied around her. Now, she just did solo dances before whipping up something in the kitchen. And instead of feeding Luca, she took a bite herself and gave sage advice about how you should keep dancing through life, even if it’s by yourself. She was more popular than ever.
Eden adjusted her stand mixer and gave me a mischievous smile. “Not tonight,” she sang. “I’m giving a baking lesson to your new neighbor for the summer. She’s a fan of mine,” Eden rightfully bragged. People often recognized her.
I guessed the little stone cabin, as we always called it, had finally found a tenant, at least for the summer. An older couple, the Kesslers, used to live there. When I was in high school, I used to help Mr. Kessler shovel his drive in the winter.
Sophie pranced over to her mom. “She’s so fun and pretty ,” she emphasized. “She played Frisbee with me on the beach today, even though she’s really bad at it.”
Eden and Sophie both laughed like they were sharing an inside joke.
“Okay. I’ll grab my dinner and leave you ladies to it.”
“Don’t you want to meet your new neighbor?” Eden was quick to ask. Too quick.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Not particularly.”
“She’s really pretty. Like so, so pretty.” Sophie batted her blue eyes at me.
“So you mentioned.” I saw where this was going, and I wanted no part of it. It irked me that Eden would even go down that road. She, more than anyone, knew I wasn’t ready to date again. We’d had this discussion more than once.
Eden had the decency to pretend to be abashed for half a second before she said, “I just thought you would want to meet Brooke in the name of being a good neighbor. ”
A loud buzzing noise sounded in my ears. “Did you say Brooke?” It couldn’t be, right? There were plenty of Brookes in the world.
“Yeah,” Eden responded. “Brooke Crawford. She’s from Nebraska. She has quite the interesting story about why she’s in Aspen Lake.”
“I know,” I said without thinking, an irrational, juvenile panic building inside of me—one that a man my age should have outgrown by now—at the thought of the beautiful woman. Among her ramblings in the ER, she’d already told me why she was in Aspen Lake. What were the odds she was renting the house next door?
“How do you know?” Eden questioned.
“I can’t say.” Patient confidentiality forbade it. “But she can’t come here.”
Eden tilted her head. “Are you all right? Your face is all flushed.”
I cleared my throat, feeling like an idiot. “I’m fine. She just can’t come here,” I repeated, not wishing to admit the reason why. It had nothing to do with me treating her earlier.
The doorbell rang.
Eden’s eyes lit up as she walked around the island. “Too late.”
I gripped the nearest barstool, trying to get my act together. I would have bolted for my bedroom, except Sophie was staring at me like she didn’t recognize me.
“She’s really nice, Uncle Logan,” Sophie tried to comfort me. What did it say about me that I needed comfort from a ten-year-old?
“I’m sure she is.” Unfortunately, she probably was. But there was an equal chance she might be psychotic. That said little about my judgment, seeing as I had thoughts of wanting to ask her out. However, I had married the most incredible woman, so my judgment couldn’t be all that bad.
Within seconds, I heard Brooke Crawford’s lyrical voice drifting through my house. “You are the sweetest. Thank you. I can’t believe I get to bake with Eden Russo.” Eden kept her married name for Sophie’s sake. “My best friend, Claire, is flipping out knowing I met you. We are your biggest fans, even though neither of us can really cook. A few months ago, we totally botched your lemon poppy seed Bundt cake. We couldn’t even get it out of the pan, and we almost needed a saw to cut through it. ”
Eden giggled. “Before the night is over, I’ll have you baking like a pro.”
I held my breath, waiting for Eden to appear with Brooke. My plan was just to mumble something incoherent and hole up in my room until she left. After that, I would forbid Eden from inviting her over—like I could forbid her from doing anything—and do my best to never run into Brooke Crawford again.
It was the most immature plan I’d concocted since I was fifteen and placed an air horn under Gillian Prescott’s chair during Geometry, hoping to get her attention so I could ask her to homecoming. It got her attention all right, but for some reason she didn’t find it as romantic as I thought she would, and she had flat out turned me down.
Eden and Brooke appeared, talking animatedly until Brooke noticed me. She froze, her smooth cheeks flaming red. “Uh ...” She bit her supple lip, coated in a lovely shade of peach gloss. “Dr. Summers, what are you doing here?”
Instead of using any of the words I had in my vast vocabulary arsenal, all I did was stare at Brooke in her pink sundress, her shapely, toned legs on display, still sporting bandages. A few strands of honey-blonde hair escaped her messy bun, softly framing her gorgeous face. I hated myself for these thoughts, but I couldn’t stop myself from being attracted to her.
Eden helped me out and said, “Dr. Summers is my brother, but we just call him Logan around here. He’s the one I told you we were staying with for the summer.”
“You live here?” Brooke yelped. “Oh, my gosh. I word vomited all over you in the ER today.”
Eden spat out a huge laugh. “Word vomit?”
Brooke nodded. “When I get nervous, I can’t stop talking. I feel it coming on right now. Lots of word vomiting.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe the woman was crazy, but she was also adorable. I needed to stop thinking like that.
“You don’t need to be nervous here.” Eden patted Brooke’s back. “Right, Logan?” Eden gave me a poignant look.
I nodded before walking off toward my bedroom. I would eat dinner later .
“Dr. Summers,” Brooke called. “I’m so sorry I intimated that I wanted you to be my summer fling.”
Eden’s laughter rose to an out-of-control level.
There was a time I would have found it funny too, but I honestly wished she had never intimated it. Because part of me liked the idea, and I hated myself for that.