Lakeside Cottage Read Online Free

“Oh, yeah?” she asked. “What makes you so darned sure?”
    “Because you’re freaking out,” he informed her.
    “I am not freaking out,” said Kate.
    Oh, but she was. She absolutely was. At night, she walked the floors and stared out the window, often staying up so late she could see the lights of Seattle’s ferry terminals go out after the last boat came into the dock.That was the time she felt most alone and most frightened. That was when Kate the eternal optimist gave way to Kate in the pit of despair. If she had any interest in drinking, this would be the time to reach for a bottle. L’heure bleue, the French called it, the deep-blue hour between dark and dawn. That was when her relentlessly cheerful façade fell away and she engaged in something she hated—wallowing. This was her time to reflect on where she’d been and where she was going. This was when her lonely struggle to raise Aaron felt almost too hard to carry on. By the time the sun came up each morning, she snapped herself out of it and faced the day, ready to soldier on.
    “We should get stuff marked with the WIC sticker,” Aaron advised, pointing out a green-and-black tag under a display of canned tuna.
    She put back the can of albacore as though it had bitten her. “Why on earth would you say that?”
    “Chandler told me his mother gets tons of stuff with WIC. Women, Infants and Children,” he explained. “It’s a feld…fed… Some kind of program for poor people.”
    “We are not poor people,” Kate snapped.
    She didn’t realize how loudly she’d spoken until a man at the end of the aisle turned to look at her. It was the same one she’d stared at in the parking lot, only he was much closer now. Beneath a five-o’clock shadow, she could make out a strong, clean jawline. He had traded the shades for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, one side repaired with duct tape. In the split second that she met his gaze, she observed that his eyes had the depth and color of aged whiskey. But duct tape? Was he a loser? A nerd?
    She whipped around to hide her flaming cheeks and shoved the cart fast in the other direction.
    “See?” Aaron said. “This is how I know you would never quit your job. You get too embarrassed about being poor.”
    “We are not—” Kate forced herself to stop. She took in a deep, calming breath. “Listen, bud. We are fine. Better than fine. I wasn’t getting anywhere at the paper, and it was time to move on, anyway.”
    “So are we poor or not?”
    She wished he would lower his voice. “Not,” she assured him.
    In reality, her salary at the paper was barely a living wage, and the majority of her income came from the Seattle rental properties left to her by her father. Still, the job had defined her. She was a writer, and now that she’d been let go, she felt as though the rug had been ripped out from under her. “This means we get to spend the whole summer together, just the two of us.” She studied Aaron’s expression, spoke up before he turned too forlorn. “You got a problem with that?”
    “Yeah,” he said with a twinkle of mischief in his eye. “Maybe I do.”
    “Smart aleck.” She tugged the bill of his Seattle Mariners baseball cap down over his eyes and pushed onward. Lord, she thought, before she knew it, her little red-haired, freckle-faced boy would be as tall as she was.
    The storm of his mood struck as it always did, without warning and no specific trigger. “This is stupid,” he snapped, his eyes narrowing, the color draining from his face. “It’s going to be a stupid, boring summer and I don’t even know why I bothered to come.”
    “Aaron, don’t start—”
    “I’m not starting.” He ripped off his hat and hurled it to the floor in the middle of the aisle.
    “Good,” she said, trying to keep her voice emotionless, “because I have shopping to do. The quicker we finish, the quicker we get to the lake.”
    “I hate the lake.”
    Hoping they hadn’t attracted any more