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  In the meantime, there were those clothes. And that lake. And the elegant house. Julie’s life. Her father’s life. Maybe hers someday. Lives that fascinated as much as they repelled her. Just for a week. Or two. Then back to reality and more important things.

  “You absolutely promise your brother will be there with his girlfriend, and that this is not some elaborate seduction ploy?”

  “I absolutely promise.” He spoke firmly, without hesitation.

  Allie turned away from Julie’s warning look. “Okay, Erik. I’ll go.”

  * * *

  JONAS SAT IN the conference room at Boston Consulting, tapping his capped pen on his thigh. Same old meeting, same old client, same old problems. Same old management consulting team suggesting the same old solutions. Give the employees a suggestion box. Combine a few positions into one. Develop more efficient means of bringing the product to market by reorganizing the physical space and eliminating redundant steps.

  Yeah. That would help slow down, possibly reverse, the slide the company was in right now. For today, tomorrow, next year, the year after that. It would be good enough, stop the worst of the bleeding. But to become one of the future leaders of the industry, they’d have to do more. Make harder choices, shake up corporate culture to a degree that would panic everyone, at least for a while. When the changes took hold, when employees could walk into the building not just with an absence of bitterness and dread, but with a real sense of team spirit and enthusiasm, then BC would have really done its job.

  But Boston Consulting execs didn’t think that way. Jonas knew that, because once he rose through the ranks of consultants to a level where he had the power to make recommendations, he’d made several, all of which he’d been excited about, all of which would have meant real progress for the companies they served, real progress for them. But he’d been shot down every time.

  Too expensive. Jonas, the client is looking for us to save money, not spend more.

  Too radical. It will never fly.

  Jonas was thinking more and more that he didn’t belong there.

  Yeah, okay, he’d been thinking that for the past year, and he still hadn’t done anything about it. The first six months, he’d been a basket case after breaking up with Missy. The next six months...he had no excuse but his own passivity.

  The meeting droned on. Jonas’s pen tapped harder. He maintained his expression of interest, automatically turning toward whoever was speaking, but took in only enough that if his opinion were asked, he’d be able to contribute coherently. Automatic pilot. Robo-employee.

  He wanted out of there.

  As if God had heard his prayer, his cell phone started vibrating. Erik. Immediately he got up, waving his phone apologetically at the stony faces in the room, and bolted. Very important call. Have to go. So sorry. If it wasn’t urgent...

  “Hey, Erik, what’s up?”

  “I need you to come to Lake George this weekend. And all of next week. And maybe the week after that.”

  Jonas gave a brief laugh. His brother shouldn’t be able to surprise him anymore, but he still managed. “Yeah? What for?”

  “Allie McDonald.”

  “What about her?” He’d met Allie last December. He’d joined her and Erik for dinner when he’d been in New York on business. She’d been different from the artificial blondes Erik usually went after—Allie had seemed more genuine. She had the same sophistication, intelligence and beauty of Erik’s girlfriends, but it hadn’t seemed as if she’d been trying to impress anyone. Jonas remembered that night as a landmark: it was when he’d really begun to believe that he’d survive Missy’s betrayal. “You’re still dating her?”

  “Still trying to.”

  “Still trying over six months later? Is this a record?” It was beyond him how his brother scored with as many women as he did. Jonas’s theory was that he wore them down by being so persistently charming that they eventually gave in, hoping he’d leave them alone. But this was a new level of chase.

  “Allie’s different.”

  “Uh-huh.” Behind him, the meeting door opened. Jonas strode down the hall toward his office so his team wouldn’t realize his important call had to do with whether or not his brother could get laid. “Different because she’s turned you down longer than anyone else?”

  “This trip to Lake George is my best chance yet. I think she’s weakening.”

  “Really.” Jonas pushed open the door of his office. Ten years with the company and he finally had a door, which at times he was very happy to be able to close. “Then why do you want me there?”

  “I promised you’d be around. To chaperone.”

  “That’s your best chance? With a woman who doesn’t want to be alone with you?”

  “She agreed to spend the week with me, didn’t she?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Jonas pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He was developing a headache named Erik. His brother’s life was a restless and relentless quest for a type of fulfillment Jonas was convinced Erik hadn’t yet identified, which obviously didn’t stop him from trying to achieve it. Erik changed styles, cars, apartments, jobs and women as if nothing held his attention for longer than a season. He drove their steady, regimented German father completely up a wall. Sometimes Jonas thought Mom and Dad had moved to Munich not only to care for Dad’s parents, but so they wouldn’t have to watch their younger son play hummingbird through his life.

  “I’m doing us both a favor. She got laid off.”

  “Tough break.” He went to his window—with a view of the building next door—and pictured Allie sitting across from him at the restaurant, cheeks pink from the wine, hazel eyes bright under girlish wheat-colored bangs, talking about her design-career hopes and ambitions with every ounce of the passion he no longer had for his. Being laid off would have hit her hard. That depth of excitement had been one of the sexiest things about her.

  What he hadn’t seen in Allie was even the slightest trace of sexual interest in his brother. Unless Jonas’s radar had misfired, he’d say he had more chemistry with her than Erik did, though a lot could’ve changed in seven months. Was she really “weakening”—Erik’s typically charming choice of words? It was disappointing to think she might fall like the rest of them.

  “She’s incredibly talented. You should see the costume designs she did in school. I told her about Grandma Bridget and Great-Grandma Josephine’s clothes and how Mom wants to get rid of them. She was practically drooling.”

  Aha. So Allie could be more interested in the clothes than his brother. Jonas relaxed his shoulders, unaware of how tightly he’d been holding them.

  “So you’ll come?”

  “Erik, I can’t just take a week off work.”

  “Sure you can. You just don’t think you should.”

  Jonas suppressed a jolt of irritation and tapped a pencil on his desk. His brother always made him out to be a somber slave to duty like their father. Maybe compared with Erik’s hedonistic lifestyle he was the more responsible one, but nothing extreme, and typical for an oldest child.

  He could go up for the weekend. It had been a while since he’d been to Lake George. Two years, since the last time the family got together there before his parents’ move.

  “A long weekend, then,” Erik said.

  “Quite a drive for a weekend.”

  “C’mon, help me out, brother.”

  Jonas rolled his eyes. He usually did give in to his brother, sometimes against his own instinct. But Erik was family, and that seemed to win out. Jonas rarely asked for anything in return—but there was one thing he did want from his brother now. “Tell you what. I’ll go up for a long weekend if you drop your objections to selling the house.”

  There was a long silence. Jonas had expected an immediate refusal. Either Erik had been considering changing his mind anyway, or he wanted this time with Allie more than Jonas thought. “For that, you’d owe me a whole week.”

  Jonas peered at his BlackBerry, checking the next
week’s schedule. He could move his Monday trip to Wednesday afternoon and take Monday and Tuesday off.

  “Half a week. I’d have to leave Wednesday morning.”

  “Deal.”

  Jonas lowered his brows suspiciously. His brother had been persistently vocal in his objections to selling Morningside. “Just like that?”

  “Look, you, Mom and Dad all want to sell. I’m outnumbered, I get that. This is sooner than I’d planned to cave, but I’ll do it for Allie.”

  “Okay.” The victory left Jonas less triumphant than he’d expected. With their parents abroad, the house had been sitting empty except for Erik’s brief, infrequent visits. Upkeep was expensive. With money from the sale of the house, Jonas would rather buy a retreat of his own, closer to Boston, maybe in Cape Cod. A place he could use year-round.

  “Bring Sandra.”

  “Jeez, Erik.”

  “I told Allie—”

  “Well, un-tell her. I’m not involving Sandra in your schemes.”

  “This isn’t a scheme. I think Allie could be the one.”

  Jonas turned from the window. He’d never heard Erik talk like that. Size of boobs, lushness of ass, depth of sexual depravity, sure, but marriage? “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. I’m crazy about her. She’s everything I want.”

  “Since when do you want to get married?”

  “I’m almost thirty. It’s time. And I want kids.”

  Jonas took the phone and stared at it before replacing it to his ear. “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”

  “Just call Sandra.”

  “She’ll have shows this weekend.”

  “So have her come next week.”

  Jonas scowled, tempted in spite of himself. Sandra was a long-ago lover and good friend. She’d been a rock during the ugly breakup with Missy. “You’re a piece of work.”

  “I owe you one, bro.”

  Jonas hung up the phone, shaking his head. He could stand up to the highest-level executives in the company. But around his brother he became as indulgent as their grandfather, who used to bring cookies and candy from Germany when he visited, as if Jonas and Erik were still kids. Really good cookies and candy. They didn’t object.

  Taking consolation from the knowledge that if he didn’t want to make the trip to Lake George, wild horses couldn’t make him, he dialed Sandra, whom he’d known for ten years, since the night he’d gone to one of her shows on a musician friend’s suggestion. She’d spotted him in the audience and had come over to his table. They spent the intermission together, then time after the show, then made a long, hot night of it—that night and several others. For two years, if they weren’t seeing other people, they’d hook up for a night, once a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. He’d liked the uncomplicated nature of their sexual relationship and was disappointed when she ended it and broke off contact. Happily, they met again by chance a few years later, and had started a platonic friendship. Who knew, maybe they would end up together forever. They joked about it now and then.

  Sandra picked up. “Hey, hottie, what’s happening?”

  “Want to come with me to Lake George for a long weekend?”

  She gasped theatrically. “Oh, you are so speaking my language.”

  “Seriously? You don’t have a show?”

  “I’m between them, and can’t stand myself anymore. You called just as I was about to become a heroin and shopping-channel addict. I don’t know which one’s worse.”

  “Yeah?” He chuckled. She had a fairly edgy sense of humor, to put it mildly. Came from a rough childhood in South Boston. “Put down the needle and the remote and pack your bags.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “Considering the week I’m having, not soon enough. Saturday morning? I have a dinner meeting Friday.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Only you would have a business meeting on a Friday night.”

  “He’s a client in town for a conference.”

  “I’m telling you, they own your very fine Jon-ass.”

  “Ha.” He bristled at the dig. “Maybe not for long.”

  “Yeah?” She dropped the sensual lounge singer act she did so well, her voice rising to its normal sweet pitch. “No offense, but I’ve been hearing that for a while.”

  Jonas sighed wearily. “I know. But I’m getting closer. We can talk.”

  “Good deal. Saturday suits me fine. What brought this on, by the way? I thought you were going to get rid of the place.”

  “We’ve been summoned to chaperone young Erik and his latest target.”

  “Erik needs a chaperone? What’s wrong with that boy? Or more to the point, what’s wrong with the woman? Frigid? Closet gay? From a past century?”

  “I was just asking him the same thing. Between you and me, I think it’s a case of ‘she’s just not that into him.’”

  “Ah. I suppose even a master can fail sometimes. Well, after all the stories you’ve told me, I look forward to watching him in action.”

  “That makes one of us.” His voice came out more brusquely than he intended. “I’m sure he can’t teach you a thing.”

  “You got that right.” Her voice went back to the sensual purr she used in her act to great effect. Sandra had been performing since she could walk, in community theater, in equity shows and her favorite—singing jazz and show tunes in clubs around Boston. She was beautiful, sexy, magnetic and a hell of a singer. “I also look forward to hanging out with you, Jonas.”

  “That definitely makes two of us.” He hung up the phone, still annoyed with Erik and with himself for being persuaded, but now thinking the weekend might be just what he needed. A chance to get away, gain some perspective on life and work and what he wanted to do next. Lake George was a good place for that kind of deep thinking. And he’d have the chance to catch up with an old friend.

  Nothing strange about that. He always looked forward to seeing Sandra. The odd thing was his immediate follow-up thought: that he was also looking forward to seeing Allie.

  2

  Hi Allie,

  Erik asked me to email you to confirm that I’ll be at Lake George on Saturday (the 19th)—he didn’t think you believed I was coming. Obviously you’re a smart woman. I’ll make sure he behaves, though I’m guessing you can take care of yourself.

  By the way, sorry you got laid off. The world makes no sense sometimes. I’m sure you’ll find a job soon. Mine isn’t thrilling me these days—I’m dreaming about starting my own company.

  Wow. I haven’t admitted that to anyone yet. Barely even to myself. So now you know my deepest secret.

  Jonas

  P.S. It will be good to see you again. I enjoyed meeting you in New York

  Hey Jonas,

  No, I probably won’t need your protection, but I also enjoyed meeting you last Christmas. Erik said you’re bringing your girlfriend. Was he telling the truth there, too?

  Thanks for the sympathy on being laid off. I’m sure something else will turn up. It’s the limbo that’s hard. Luckily I’ve had every crap job a teenager can land, so I won’t starve.

  As for your new company, congratulations! But if that’s your deepest secret, you need more excitement.

  Allie

  Hi Allie,

  I’m bringing an old friend. Sandra.

  As for needing more excitement, hmm. Maybe being back at Lake George will inspire me to wilder things?

  On that note, why are you stuck vacationing with Erik? I would think there’d be an army of Manhattan men clawing for your attention. Or do you just turn them all down? You should come to Boston. It’s a great city.

  Jonas

  Hey Jonas,

  Ha! The only men clawing for my attention want me to pay my bills. As for Boston, you’re seriously tempting me.

  Allie

  I bet you say that to all the guys.

  Jonas

  Only the ones who do.

  Allie

  * * *

&
nbsp; ALLIE CLIMBED OUT of Erik’s Mercedes after a long, bumpy ride down a tree-lined gravel driveway branching off a road halfway up the west side of Lake George. She inhaled the light, cool air with relief, having spent too many miles listening to Erik’s horrible music.

  The Meyers’ property and Morningside—really, they named their house?—were even more stately and elegant in person than they’d looked in the pictures Erik showed her. Determined not to betray her intimidation or awe, Allie dragged her suitcase out of the backseat, waving off the very solicitous Erik who’d come around to help. He was being the perfect gentleman—almost too perfect. Less like a concerned friend and more like a guy lulling his intended victim into complacency. On the way over, he’d taken her to a lovely bistro off Interstate 87, and had seemed a little too eager to refill her wineglass, a little too eager to compliment her, touch her arm, bump hands and shoulders when they were walking. Maybe she was paranoid, but her guard was up—to put it mildly—and she was very glad Jonas and Sandra would be arriving the next day.

  Jonas, anyway. Sandra, not so much.

  Stop! Honestly, one meeting last Christmas and a few emails and she was as giddy as a preteen with a crush, obsessing over every word he’d said. Allie was the only person he’d told about wanting to start his own company? Uh-huh. Did she remember whose brother he was? Boston was probably littered with women who were “the only person he’d told.”

  Shutting down those thoughts, she turned to face Morningside, which was lit with a soft glow from outdoor lights and the moon. The place was imposing. Eight bedrooms, Erik had said, in two gleaming white stories. A wide screened-in porch—or should she say a ver-an-da—wrapped around the north side, punctuated by a white balustrade and a lattice fence that effectively hid unsightly underparts. The south end of the house, also two stories, sat slightly lower, like a stunted afterthought. Black shutters—Dark green? Navy? Hard to tell at night—downstairs, and on the second floor, dormers relieved the whiteness. Farther north on the property and closer to the lake was the silhouette of a smaller house, begging to be explored. By the water stood a third structure, a boathouse, she’d guess. Surrounding the family compound, a fern-strewn pine and hardwood forest covered hills that came right to the water’s edge on either side of the curving sand beach. The grass around the house looked freshly mowed. She wouldn’t be surprised if the sand by the lake had been raked, too. The place had been thoroughly readied for the Lord of the Manor’s visit.