Summer at Willow Lake - Lakeshore Chronicles 01 by Susan Wiggs

Author:Susan Wiggs
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-02-08T20:37:33+00:00

During dinner, he learned that she went to some snooty-sounding New York prep school, one she insisted everybody should have heard of. Her mother was a lawyer who practiced international law, and her father was a landscape architect who had taken the summer off to renovate Camp Kioga.

All right, that was annoying, thought Julian. Bragging on your parents. Who did that? Not him, that was for damn sure, and the nosy blonde had better not ask him about his family.

Fortunately, she dropped the subject when Dare brought out dessert—thick slices of peach pie with vanilla ice cream. The pie was so good, Julian almost wept. He looked around the table and everyone else clearly felt the same way. They had the closed eyes and ecstatic expressions of people in the throes of a religious experience.

“The pie’s from Sky River Bakery,” Dare said.

“No, it’s from heaven,” Greg amended.

The only flaw in the perfect dinner was that Julian and Daisy had to do the dishes. Even that wasn’t so bad. The big, industrial kitchen had walk-in coolers, tall steel racks and a commercial dishwashing system. They made short work of everything, laughing and teasing as they scraped, soaped, rinsed and dried everything. By the time they finished, it was dark outside. Freddy took Max and the little mutt called Barkis to the rec hall for a game of Ping-Pong. Connor and the others sat around drinking coffee and looking over plans and schedules. It was all so frigging wholesome, Julian wanted to puke.

“Can we go make a fire on the beach?” Daisy asked.

“You and Julian?” her father asked.

“Duh. Yeah, Dad. Me and Julian.”

So here was something interesting, Julian observed. Some sort of power struggle between Daisy and Greg Bellamy. Julian decided to speak up. “I promise I’ll be on my best behavior. Sir.”

Girls’ dads were suckers for “sir.” One little syllable, and they acted like their daughter was dating Dudley Do-Right.

“He will,” Connor said. No further words passed between them, but Julian caught a repeat of the warning: Don’t fuck up.

“I guess it’s all right,” Greg said. “I might come out to check on you later.”

“Sure, Dad,” Daisy said with forced brightness. “That’d be great.”

Olivia handed her a box of kitchen matches. “Just keep it in the fire pit, okay?”

Making a fire was actually harder than it looked on Survivor. They used up the whole box of matches before their pile of twigs finally caught, creating more smoke than fire. Trying to avoid the thick billows of smoke, Julian found himself wedged comfortably next to Daisy. Score.

“So what’s your story?” she asked.

Julian thought about inventing some high-class-sounding boarding school just to impress her. He was too damn tired to make up a story and stick to it, though.

“My mother’s an out-of-work performer—sings, dances, acts,” he said, and decided not to explain about his father. When people heard what happened, they got all sympathetic and mushy, which Julian hated.

“I got in trouble with the law in May,” he confessed.

The truth worked like an aphrodisiac.

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