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He was no stranger to the lake. He knew the shore and all the little tucked-away coves the trees hid. When he was a boy, he'd ridden here on his bike to fish for trout, though he'd never caught anything more exotic than a catfish.
In his teens, he'd come out here with Ted. They'd drink beer and have what they used to call Deep Talks about the Future. Mostly, Ted had talked and he'd listened, because the future had never looked terribly fascinating.
Once he bought the Harley, he came to the lake even more often, almost always with a girl seated behind him, her arms wrapped tight around his waist. There were lots of places far from the bright lights of the inn where a boy and a girl could explore the mysteries of each other's bodies.
But after he brought Faith here, he'd never come with anyone else. Those balmy nights. Faith, breathless with excitement and nerves. Him, wanting her so badly he ached. He'd take the blanket from the motorcycle's saddlebag, spread it on the grass and lie down with her in his arms. Then he'd kiss her. Touch her. Every inch of her, turned on by the little sounds she made, by her innocence, by the way she'd put her hand over his as if to stop him from exploring her secrets and then how she'd slowly, so frustratingly slowly, loosen her grip and let him stroke her until they were both trembling on the brink of completion...
"Hell," Cole said, and turned his back to the lake.
Great. Just great. Faith would be here any minute and what was he doing? Getting himself worked up as if he were a stupid kid instead of a man who understood that some women would do anything to get what they wanted.
He took a cold ale from the minibar, opened it and tossed the cap into the wastebasket. He tilted his head back and took a long, cooling drink as he walked onto the balcony again.
The town had changed in the past nine years. There was a monster shopping mall out toward the highway and a fancy coffee bar on Main Street, but the old saying was true. The more things changed, the more they remained the same. The inn was still handsome, the town center still small. The residents of Liberty, the ones who'd lived here when it was still a sleepy village instead of an Atlanta suburb, were as clannish as ever-and gossip among them was still the town's life force.
He'd forgotten that until he checked in the other night. A clerk with an artificial smile handed him a key and a kid wearing the red jacket with the inn's logo on the pocket grabbed his one piece of luggage.
"This way, sir," he'd said.
Cole hadn't needed the kid's services. He preferred to do things for himself, but he'd once spent the Christmas holidays doing just what the kid was doing. His motorcycle had died; he'd been short a hundred bucks for the needed parts to bring it back to life. Every tip had counted-he could still recall how it felt, each time some dude pressed a dollar bill into his hand. So he'd let the boy lead him to his room and do his thing, opening the French doors onto the balcony, pointing out the view over the lake, turning on the air-conditioning, turning off the air-conditioning...
"That's okay," he'd said quickly, when the kid started to explain the phone system. "I used to work here." "Yeah?"
"Yeah," he'd said, smiling. "I lived in this town once upon a time." And he'd put a bill a lot bigger than a dollar into the boy's hand.
Big mistake.
"Wow," the kid had breathed.
Wow, indeed, Cole thought as he watched a sailboat catch the wind down on the lake.
In New York or London, in the financial capitals of the world, a bellman would have accepted the generous tip without blinking. In Liberty, the boy had probably told the story to a dozen people within the next hour. By the end of the day, Cole figured there wasn't a person in town who didn't know he was back and with money in his pocket.
"You didn't tell us you were the Cole Cameron, sir," the desk clerk had gushed.
"Yeah," Cole had replied, with a grin. "Well, that's because I've always been the Cole Cameron."
The joke had fallen flat on its face. "Absolutely, sir," the clerk had said. "And we're proud to have you stay at our establishment."
For a man who valued privacy, it was an uncomfortable situation. You could be relatively anonymous in a big city, but not here. Everybody in town had something to sell him and the kid who'd handled his luggage popped up at the door like clockwork to see if there was anything he wanted. Cole finally had to ask the clerk to screen his calls, the kid to back off.
He lifted the bottle of ale to his mouth and took another drink.
He had to admit, the irony was incredible. At eighteen, he'd been the town pariah. Now he was the town celebrity, Liberty's claim to fame in the big world beyond its borders. Too bad his old man wasn't around to see it. Or the sheriff. Or even Jeanine Francke, who'd framed him, but he'd done some discreet checking and learned her husband had thrown her out on her butt years ago. Too bad. How he'd love to have shoved his success in their faces...
