One Summer At The Lake: Maid for Montero / Still the One / Hot-Shot Doc Comes to Town

The little boy looked forward to his visits…but was he the only one? Why would anyone look forward to a visit from someone who blew hot and cold? Who was cold and remote one moment and relaxed and friendly the next?

As they approached the crossroad Alex slowed for a red light. Isandro shut down the tablet and looked through the window, dragging a hand through his dark hair. He had planned to spend the weekend in London, but at the last moment had decided to drive down to Ravenwood, reasoning he could spend the weekend reading the report without distractions. Sure, no distractions at all, mocked the voice in his head.

‘Is that…?’

Pushing away the thought, Isandro followed the direction of his driver’s nod. ‘Yes, it is, Alex,’ he confirmed.

‘Are they alone?’

Isandro, who had been looking for that glossy dark head attached to a body he had spent some time thinking about, nodded. All right, not just some time—a lot of time. He was finding it pretty much impossible to think about anything but his housekeeper, who did not know the meaning of ‘unobtrusive’.

‘It looks like it.’

Which in itself was strange. While Zoe Grace might not be about to win any prizes for her housekeeping skills, when it came to her youthful charges she took the role extremely seriously. He could not imagine her allowing the twins to wander around town unaccompanied.

‘Shall I pull over?’

Isandro nodded and unclipped his seat belt as the car drew to a halt on a double yellow. When he reached the twins they were still on the pavement. They appeared to be arguing—and more significantly there was still no sign of their aunt.

It was Harry who saw him first. Seeing the relief on his freckled face, Isandro experienced an emotional tightening in his chest.

Isandro controlled his strong inclination to hug him, aware that the boy had already measured him up as an unlikely male role model. It would be nothing short of cruel to allow the boy to become reliant and then fade out of his life.

Instead he gave the boy a manly pat on his painfully skinny shoulder. The kid could do a lot better than him for a father substitute. Did his aunt’s determination to sacrifice her own needs for her charges extend to her choice of partner? Would she choose the ‘good father’ material over a good lover? The woman was probably determined to be a martyr. She’d probably end up alone or with some boring loser whom she deemed solid and responsible.

‘We’ve lost Aunty Zoe. Actually, we ran away and now we’re lost, too.’

For which Isandro correctly read his sister had run and he had followed. There was no doubting who the dominant and reckless twin in this equation was.

‘We’re not lost,’ his sister interrupted. ‘And if you hadn’t made me come back…’

‘It was stealing!’

‘It was not stealing. We were bringing it back, and that’s borrowing, isn’t it?’ she appealed to Isandro for support.

‘Borrowing without permission is stealing. And running away from your aunt is…Have you any idea how worried she will be?’ An image of a terrified Zoe flashed into his head and he hardened his heart against their stricken expressions. ‘She will be frantic!’

The twins exchanged worried glances.

‘We didn’t think,’ Georgie admitted.

Isandro steeled himself against the quiver in her voice and struggled to maintain his stern expression as he ushered them towards the car. The sniff was too much for the ruthless captain of industry to withstand.

‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘I’ll ring your aunt and let her know—’

‘You can’t,’ they said in unison.

He shook his head. ‘Why can’t I?’

‘Her phone wasn’t charged. It died on her when Aunt Chloe was talking.’

He exhaled. If he had been in Zoe’s position—which was unlikely, because not only would he not have let his phone battery run down, he certainly wouldn’t have taken on responsibility for this pair of demons—he would now be retracing his footsteps.

The demons regarded him with the expressions that said they had total faith that he would come up with a solution.

‘Right, then, where were you when you ran away, and where were you before that?’

The terrible clawing panic in her stomach when she had turned to tell the twins to get a wriggle or the car would be clamped would stay with Zoe for ever. When she found them she would never let them out of her sight again…always supposing she didn’t throttle them.

She jogged along the pavements, retracing her footsteps, stopping occasionally to ask people if they had seen two children, oblivious to the stares that followed her progress. She kept telling herself over and over like a mantra, Tomorrow this will just be a memory. I’ll laugh about it with Chloe.

Tomorrow seemed a hell of a long way away, though, and Chloe was still in Boston!

By the time Zoe had worked her way to the boat-hire booth her heart was thudding so hard she felt as if it would crack her ribs. She was only kept going by the strong conviction that had gradually taken hold that the twins were out there on the river.

It was so obvious. Why hadn’t she smelt a rat when the wilful youngster who would never take no for an answer had not argued or even tried to cajole when she’d refused to take them out in a kayak. Now of course it made sense. Georgie hadn’t suddenly become malleable, she’d simply cut out the arguing, and she’d dragged Harry with her.

The ticket booth was closed, but before a frantic Zoe could think of what to do next a boy came around the corner carrying a padlock and a large bunch of keys. He removed the earphones from his ears when he saw her.

‘Sorry, we’re closed.’

‘I’m looking for my niece and nephew,’ she said before he could put the earphones back in. ‘They’re seven years old. I think they might have gone out in one of your kayaks.’ The effort to stay calm and not sound like an unbalanced lunatic made her voice shake, but she was pretty proud of her effort.

‘Sorry, we’re closed.’

She watched, her pent-up fear tipping over into rage, as he began to insert the earphones.

Her eyes narrowed, she stepped forward and snatched them out, drawing a yelp from the boy. ‘My niece and nephew—they wanted to go out in a kayak. Have you seen them?’ she yelled, fighting the impulse to shake the information from the stupid boy who was backing away from her.

‘I don’t know what your problem is, miss, but the public are not allowed here. There’s a sign. It’s health and safety.’ He pointed to a no-entry sign on the wall of the booth.

Give me strength! ‘I’ve been trying to tell you what the problem is. I’m looking for two children, a boy and girl. So high…’ She held her palm at the appropriate height. ‘They wanted to go out…’ She closed her eyes, seeing Georgie’s expression when she had refused their request. God, but she really should have seen this coming. ‘I think they might be out there.’ She swallowed as her eyes moved to the horizon where the grey water of the river met the darker grey sky. ‘In one of your canoes.’

‘No children allowed in the kayaks without a responsible adult. Besides, we’re closing early—there’s a storm coming.’ His phone rang and he wandered away with it pressed to his ear.

When Zoe took the situation into her own hands the youth was close enough for her to hear him say, ‘No way…outside the pub at five.’ But not close enough, thanks to a tree, for him to see her wade into the shallow water and push out a stray canoe that had not yet been dragged onto the artificial beach.

She’d been kayaking before, she reminded herself as she managed on the third try to clamber into the swaying boat. Of course on that occasion Laura had been paddling, and she’d been only five years old, but this was a detail. How hard could it be?

Five minutes later Zoe had gone several hundred yards. But she had no idea whether she was heading in the right direction. She didn’t have the faintest idea where they were! She was acting on intuition, but wasn’t that another name for blind panic?

She squared her shoulders and dipped her oar into the water. She had to stay positive.

The obvious sensible thing to do would have been to go to the police…so why was she just realising that now when she was literally up the creek? Then the rain started.

The downpour was of biblical flood proportions. Within two minutes she was drenched. Her hair plastered against her skull; the water streamed down her face, making it hard to see. More worrying than her wet clothes was the water sloshing around in the bottom of the canoe.

Trying to see past the rain that was now being driven horizontally by a gale-force wind into her face, she recalled the weather man’s prediction of light showers and laughed.