“And what is that?” he asked softly, sex in every syllable.
“Not that! You missed that boat at our house! What I want today is for you to be my Nate, not the sullen, silent bear you’ve been since I got back.”
“A bear, huh?” He was teasing.
She didn’t smile as she looked at his arms bulging in the T-shirt. “You look like you’ve been doing very heavy weights.”
“You don’t like it?” He flexed a bicep.
She still didn’t smile. “I think a person’s body should do all forms of exercise: weights, aerobics, stretches. They should—” When he started to frown, she quit. “I know the whole story from the beginning. Want to hear what Della Kissel did?”
The humor came back to Nate’s face. “And I have to behave to hear it?”
“Well, you don’t have to be exactly angelic,” Stacy said as they crossed the bridge to the lake. She started to tell him to go left, but he turned beside a house and went down an alleyway she’d never seen before. He certainly did seem to know his way around the lake. “Once upon a time...” she began, “Sheriff Chazen and Princess Della Kissel were engaged to be married. However, no one thought they were in love.”
“Then why in the world would he want to marry her?”
“Because Princess Della’s much-older brother, King Kissel, owned the lake and all the land around it. It was a very rich kingdom.”
Nate smiled at her fairy-tale spin on the story.
“But the poor king’s beloved wife had passed away and he was ill. Sheriff Chazen wanted to marry Princess Della because she would inherit everything.”
“Nice,” Nate said. “So what was this, uh...princess like when she was young?”
“She wasn’t really a fairy-tale princess because she wasn’t at all nice, and even the king knew she wasn’t. The problem was that King Kissel didn’t want to leave his kingdom to her and the sheriff, but he didn’t know what to do.”
“I know this part. He met Brody and Jake in a restaurant.”
“The king knew Sir Jake to be a hardworking, reliable young knight, and Sir Brody was recommended to him. Together, they planned to build a new kingdom that would house many of the deserving citizens. But there was a prob
lem.”
“Let me guess. Della met Brody,” Nate said. “Even now she never takes her eyes off him.”
“Oh yes, the princess saw the young, handsome, virile Sir Brody and decided she had to have him. She had no doubt that she would get him, for she was used to a life of being given whatever she wanted. On the first day she saw Sir Brody, she went to Sheriff Chazen’s office, returned his ring and said she was going to marry someone else.”
“Della must have been livid when Brody met Leslie.”
“Ah yes, the beauteous commoner, a stranger in town, the maiden Leslie. They saw one another across a room and—zap!—true love claimed them. Without thought of the consequences, they married and she was instantly in the family way.”
“But in this case, there was no happily ever after,” Nate said.
“I guess not.” Stacy looked out the window. “The fairy tale ended abruptly on one dark and stormy night.”
Nate parked behind a house, then turned to look at her. “Did Leslie’s, uh...leaving cause the hatred between the town and the lake?”
Stacy’s voice lost its storytelling tone. “Dad said that’s what set it off. Sheriff Chazen was angry about all of it. He told people that Brody was trying to con the dying Mr. Kissel out of millions. When Leslie ran away, he said that was proof that Brody Rayburn was no good. Unfortunately, a lot of people believed him.”
She looked at Nate. “Dad said the sheriff kind of went crazy with his hatred of all things to do with the lake. If a town kid got caught speeding, he’d be sent home with a warning. But if a lake kid was caught, he’d be put in a cell in the back of the office and have to wait for his parents to show up.”
“Why didn’t the people stop him?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe it was the times. People didn’t stand up to authority. And if they did protest, Sheriff Chazen tended to get revenge—like not showing up when he was needed. But Dad said that he did more good than bad. Until...”
“Until what?”
“The Fourth of July weekend when I was twelve, the whole town was getting ready for a parade and a fair. We were going to have rides. A couple and their sixteen-year-old daughter had rented a house at the lake for that month, but something made them have to go back home on the fourth. Their daughter begged to be allowed to stay here and they said okay. It was only for two days.”