The Summer He Came Home (Bad Boys of Crystal Lake 1)

“Yes, I do,” she said drily.

“So”—Michael bit his lip—“is he, like, your boyfriend?”

Okay, she hadn’t been expecting that. For a second Maggie was speechless, and though her first instinct was absolute denial, she watched her son closely and spoke, deciding honesty would be the best bet.

“I’m not sure. Would it be weird if he kinda was?”

Michael’s face screwed up. “Weird? No”—he shook his head—“Richard Masterson’s mom has three of ’em.”

“Three?” She blinked, thinking she’d heard him wrong. He was quite serious, though, and nodded, his damp curls bobbing against his forehead.

“Yep, but it’s supposed to be a secret, because one of them is married to another lady.”

All right then. Maggie tousled his hair. “Well, you’d better keep that to yourself. Time for bed.”

Michael gave her a hug, and she held his body close. She didn’t want to let him go, and when he began to squirm, her arms fell away reluctantly. “You want a story?”

His tired eyes brightened. “‘Cozy Land’?”

Maggie grinned and nodded as he slipped from her arms and dashed toward his room. Cozy Land was a magical place that little boys and girls went to just before Sandman grabbed them and pulled them into slumber.

A child could be anywhere in the world…or be anything. In a pirate boat out on the Caribbean Sea. A whale rider off the coast of Australia. A tea party on a bank of clouds. Every night in Cozy Land was different. It was a product of her imagination and had grown as her stories evolved. So much so that she’d started to write them down and draw accompanying illustrations.

Michael loved the stories, and it was her secret ambition to get them published one day. Just one dream in a long line of yearnings.

That would be her Cozy Land.

Maggie followed him to bed, and they snuggled together for almost forty-five minutes until his head bobbed forward and didn’t recover. She would tell him the rest of his Cozy Land adventure the next night. She was pretty sure he’d want to know what happened after the tree house in the Amazon rain forest had begun to float into the air.

She tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead before closing the door to his room.

The quiet of her home was deafening, something she hadn’t noticed for a while. She wasn’t in the mood for television, and even the thought of writing or drawing didn’t excite her. She was out of sorts. Restless.

She closed her eyes and reached for the throw blanket. God, she felt like a dark cloud was hanging over her.

Maybe it was just a cloud of self-pity. Or maybe she just missed Cain.

Maggie rested her head back and closed her eyes. She’d never been in an adult relationship before. Her marriage didn’t count. That relationship had been unhealthy. The only good thing that had come out of it was Michael. So the notion of give-and-take was a little foreign to her. She understood Cain’s frustration with her, but it wasn’t easy for her to open up.

No one knew the details of her marriage, of her life…of the many disappointments and losses she’d endured. Some of them had speculated. Lauren and Raine certainly knew her past wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. But they didn’t know.

Did Cain deserve that sort of trust? She’d let him into her home, into her bed, so why was it so hard for her to open up to him?

What was the point? That was the real question.

Maggie sank into the sofa and tried to find some warmth. She’d never be free of her past, and she knew she should break it off with Cain before things became more complicated than they already were.

She must have dozed off, because when she woke later, her house was in darkness. She stretched and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, groaning softly as her stiff muscles protested. A soft knock sounded at her door, and she froze.

It was Cain. She knew it.

Her body shifted inside; it felt like a dose of shock therapy had been discharged. She was all kinds of excited, sick, and scared—at the same time. This was her body’s reaction to Cain. It was like radar, only instead of producing a blip, she got nauseous.

Her heart pounded so hard, a wash of heat rushed over her skin, but she tossed the blanket aside and crossed to the door. She opened it before she had the chance to chicken out.

Cain stared down at her in silence. He filled the space around her, and though he hadn’t even touched her yet, she felt him like a physical force.

“Maggie, I…”