Kiss Me in the Summer - Barbara Dunlop Page 0,7

nothing but ocean.”

We swung around a curve, and the back end of the car broke loose. Wrestling the steering wheel, Madeline didn’t seem worried at all.

“The road ends?” I asked, my voice sounding unnaturally high-pitched as I wondered how to tactfully ask her to slow the heck down.

“Where were you going?” she asked as we settled back to straight.

“Nowhere specific—I’m on vacation, a driving vacation.”

“Oh. Where’re you from?”

“New York City.”

Madeline gave me an arched look. “Really.”

I’d seen that look before. There wasn’t a lot of love lost between some New Yorkers and some small-town Americans. “Afraid so,” I said.

“And what do you do in New York City?”

“I’m a lawyer.” I braced myself for her reaction to that too. Not all lawyers were noble, and the unscrupulous ones tended to show up in the press. I didn’t blame people for being cynical.

“Good for you,” she surprised me by saying. “I say that if all the lawyers were women, this country would be a whole lot better off.”

I smiled at that. It was a narrow view, but I did like a lot of my fellow female lawyers.

“I’m a lawyer too,” she said.

“Seriously?” The question was out before I realized it was rude.

“Boston College. Class of 1971.”

“And you live here?”

“I’m mostly retired. And there’s nothing wrong with here. Here is nice. Rutter’s Point is a fantastic little town.”

I really regretted my words. Rutter’s Point might be wonderful. And she’d been nice enough to offer me a ride. Sure, we were careening down the road at a frightening speed, and there was another curve coming up, and I might not live through it. Still, I didn’t mean to be rude. “How long have you lived in Rutter’s Point?” I asked.

“On and off my whole life.”

She backed off a little on the speed, and I breathed a sigh of . . . well, maybe not complete relief, because we were still going way too fast. But it was enough for my death-grip to ease up on the armrest.

“Were you born here?” I asked, cringing as we headed into another corner.

The back tires broke free from the road again. She corrected, and the car rocked back and forth as it settled. Astonishingly, she pressed down on the gas and brought up the speed.

I struggled again for the appropriate words to slow her down.

“I was born at the hospital in Brunswick. It was closest back then. You can have a baby right here in Rutter’s Point now, assuming everything goes according to plan.”

“That’s good.” I was too busy calculating the odds of survival to contribute anything more meaningful to the conversation.

We roared up a steep hill, whizzing past a jagged wall of rock that looked like it had been blasted to make room for the road. The drop was sheer on my side, a hundred feet down to the ocean.

I could swear we were airborne at the peak.

“There’s Rutter’s Point there,” Madeline said.

I took in the neat cluster of buildings nestled on an outcropping, surrounded on three sides by stretches of shimmering ocean. It was a pretty town, like something out of a magazine with lots of white buildings in the center, a spired city hall, green spaces, and bucolic residential areas along the meandering oceanfront.

I braced myself, saying a silent prayer that we made it safely there.

*

To my relief, Madeline slowed her speed significantly once we hit the streets of Rutter’s Point. Then she very generously offered to take me to her house so I could call the local repair shop.

We pulled into the driveway of a sprawling Victorian house that overlooked the ocean.

Impressed, I pushed open the heavy door and climbed my way out of the car. My legs were a little rubbery, but I was very grateful to be on solid ground. As I rose, an offshore breeze buffeted us, picking up my shoulder-length hair. The salt tang wafted up, mixing with perfume from the garden blooms.

The town had looked beautiful from every angle, but now my other senses were engaged, and it was quite extraordinary. I couldn’t help comparing the fresh air to Manhattan. This felt like a treat for my lungs.

“This is amazing,” I couldn’t help noting as I looked around the expanse of emerald-green lawns and well-kept gardens.

“I’m a sucker for a good view,” Madeline said from across the wide hood of the car.

Though the light was waning, her house looked like a showplace from a magazine on New England coastal living. I couldn’t even imagine how spectacular the view would