Free His Surprise Son by WENDY WARREN Page A

he can come back here like the prodigal son. I’ve seen him all over town, shaking hands like he’s running for mayor. I don’t know how long he plans to stay, but we are not going to make it easy for him.”
    Holliday lowered her hands. “Now you’re talking, Wild Bill,” she said. “Let’s take him out to the stockade.”
    Derek glared. “I don’t endorse a mob mentality, which you would know if you ever bothered to come to a town meeting. I’m talking about loyalty and invoking a sense of community on Izzy’s behalf.”
    “Or we could babble him to death.”
    “Now look—”
    “I love you two.” Watching her bickering friends, Izzy felt a burst of thankfulness for them both. “But I don’t want you to do anything. Maybe Nate didn’t love me the way I loved him, but he was a good person at heart.”
    “Except when he cheated on you the first chance he got,” Derek reminded her furiously. “While you were pregnant.”
    Yeah, except for that, which was so out of character. Izzy frowned.
    “Izzy,” Holliday interjected quietly, “what do you want?”
    Nate’s face, the way it had looked today in the library, lodged in Izzy’s mind. He had been intense, earnest...interested? Yes, he’d looked interested in her, in the way that had always made a flight of butterflies rise and swirl inside her.
    What did she want? What she had always wanted, she supposed. A white picket fence. A husband, a few kids and a dog. A yard filled with laughter, a house filled with love. And a future that seemed predictable even if it wasn’t, really. She wanted all the things she’d thought would never be hers until she’d met Nate Thayer and started to believe that a future was possible.
    * * *
    “Come on, jump in. What are you waiting for?” Grinning, water glistening on his shoulders and dripping from his hair, Nate bobbed in the swimming pool at The Summit Lodge and challenged Izzy. “I’ll race you. Winner gets a neck rub in the hot tub.”
    Izzy stood at the edge of the pool in the perfect light of an early summer evening and shivered. She wasn’t cold—she was nervous.
    Nate’s father was the head of housekeeping and janitorial services at The Summit, a seventy-five-year-old lodge built of giant beams and rough stones, hundreds of which formed a fireplace and chimney so wide and deep that Santa, his sleigh and eight reindeer could have fit into it all at once. Constructed during the pre-WWII years, The Summit nestled at the base of Thunder Ridge and had been the site of numerous movies and, in its day, celebrity weddings. Now it was a tourist destination, hosting skiers all year round. Izzy had never been here before.
    Working for his father in the summers throughout high school, Nate cleaned the pool area and mopped the lobby floor at four in the morning. He was perfectly comfortable in the lodge and absolutely at home in a pool.
    “Nate, I don’t... I’m not really...” Oh, just say it. “I’m a terrible swimmer. I never learned, not really, and I...I’m kind of afraid of the water.” In fact, she felt a little sick just standing at the edge of the deep end of the pool.
    Surprise altered his features. Diving beneath the surface, he swam to where she stood, then emerged, looking like a merman, somehow otherworldly and more perfect than real life. Pushing himself out of the water, he stood before her.
    “You sure look good in that bikini.”
    Izzy shivered again as his gaze embraced every bit of her body not covered by the purple triangles.
    “Trust me?” he asked, and she nodded yes. Because she did. Over the past several weeks she had begun to trust Nate Thayer more than she’d ever trusted anyone.
    Taking her hand, Nate walked with her to the shallow side. There was no one in the pool, save for the two of them. With snow clinging tenaciously to the side of the Ridge, most of the lodge guests were still skiing. The magic of swimming while the late-afternoon sun glistened on the water and on the