there’s lots of company . . . which hasn’t happened for a long time,” she added almost sadly. She used to love it when they had lots of company on the island. She missed those days. She missed a lot of things. Having a family. Having . . . someone of her own.
“Where do those doors lead?” Mac asked, gesturing to the three doors in the wall on the right.
CJ hesitated, and then led him to the first door and opened it to the larger of the two bedrooms in the cottage. It was where her foster parents used to sleep. She’d taken it over after they’d died and left the cottage to her. It faced out on the lake, which eliminated the need for curtains. It was a beautiful view to wake up to in the morning, she thought, and watched him peer around at the pale silver-blue walls, the king-sized brass bed, and the pine bedside tables and dresser. When his gaze settled on the large white quilt with the red and blue star pattern on the bed, she shifted uncomfortably and turned to leave the room.
The middle room was a small bathroom. CJ opened the door and then moved aside so he could step in and look around. It wasn’t a very impressive bathroom. Built when her parents first bought the cottage in the ’80s, it was older than she was and it showed. The room was also tiny with just a small sink, a toilet, and a shower Mac would have trouble using without knocking his elbows black and blue. CJ had considered remodeling it a time or two, but she was also considering the possibility of somehow making it a little bigger too, and until she figured out a way to do that without taking too much room from one of the bedrooms on either side of it, she didn’t want to remodel.
The last room was a smaller bedroom than the front one. It was where CJ used to sleep as a child and still had a single white captain’s bed with drawers, white end tables, and pink shaded lamps. Three of the walls were painted a creamy white, while the fourth wall was covered in wallpaper with pretty pink roses on it similar to the duvet on the bed. It was a young girl’s room. Too young for a fourteen-year-old “almost woman,” her mother had decided and had been planning on redecorating it before the car accident that had taken her life.
Pushing the thought away, she said, “My parents added on the two bedrooms. It was just the main room and the loft before that.”
“No bathroom?” Mac asked with surprise.
CJ shook her head. “Outhouse. We were all grateful when the bathroom was done,” she added dryly, and then turned to leave the room, heading for the kitchen.
“Would you like some iced tea or a soda?” she asked when she sensed him following her.
“Tell me about your childhood.”
CJ stopped walking. This was her dream. She was supposed to be in control and that was not a subject she wanted to discuss. On the other hand, she was here, in a home where she’d spent some of the happiest weeks of her childhood every year, with her first foster parents, who had been more real parents than foster. Her life had been secure and happy with them until the last few months before they’d died. She often wished she could return to that time in her life and live everything after discovering she was a foster child again. She’d make so many different decisions if she could. But she wasn’t the first person in history to regret decisions made in her past, or to learn the hard way that some mistakes could not be undone or fixed and had to be lived with, or eventually died with as the case may be.
“My childhood,” she murmured, and then continued on into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There was a large pitcher of iced tea inside that looked much like one she’d seen in a magazine ad a while back. It was larger and prettier than any she’d made in real life, with slices of lemon floating in the ice cubes at the top of the pitcher. Nice.
CJ poured them both a glass, handed him one, and then leaned back against the counter and eyed him solemnly while she took a sip. As she’d noticed before, Macon Argeneau was a good-looking man. With thick, dark hair and