Lakeshore Secrets: The McAdams Sisters - Kate McAdams (By The Lake Series Book 1) by Shannyn Leah

embarrassed smile.
    “Do you ladies know if you might have some ice cream in that freezer?” He felt her hand tighten around his. His couldn’t tell if she was excited or mortified. The young Kate would have been thrilled, the older Kate he didn’t know at all.
    The shorter, more round lady stopped what she was working on, flashed them a friendly smile and said, “I think we do.” She bustled her way around the kitchen, fetching ice cream out of the freezer and bowls from the cupboard. She glanced at them. “One bowl or two?”
    “One is fine,” he answered. She handed them one bowl of heaping vanilla ice cream with two spoons, then went back to her work, casually, as though this was a common occurrence, which he was sure it wasn’t.
    There was another staircase in the back hall between the kitchen and visitation room and they stopped to sit.
    “I can’t believe you did that,” she said, passing him a spoon, a shocked grin spread across her face. He didn’t have the same passion for ice cream as she did, but he took a spoonful.
    “I wanted ice cream,” he said.
    She laughed. “I don’t really believe you.”
    He winked at her. “I guess you will never know.”
    She ate her ice cream and he could see the weight of her grief lift a little bit and the weight of his conscience lifted along floating into the air like petals escaping their stem. It was a win/win.
    “Why are you being so nice to me?” Her voice was grave.
    “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “You know why?”
    He rested his elbows on his knees and gazed down at the side of her soft face. “You were my friend Kate, long before you were my girl. I wish you would have remembered that before you left.”
    Her eyes lifted to his, so beautiful and so full of sadness. “I never forgot,” she said and they stared at each other for a long, silent moment before going back to the ice cream. He chuckled to himself watching her devour that cold mountain. Some things never changed.
    “Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked out of the blue.
    How could he forget, she took his brother, who was towering in height and age, to his knees without a doubt in her mind that she couldn’t. Marc had always been smaller than Corbin, his brother, even if there had only been four years between them. Corbin was also a bully and Marc had been an easy target. That day the two brothers had been waiting for their dad to finish in the office for supper. Marc had been reading a book and Corbin had been kicking the toe of his shoe on the floor bored when he decided he wanted Marc’s book and snatched it from him. Of course Corbin never did anything shoddy and began ripping pages out of his book and flagging them in front of him before crinkling them and throwing them at his feet. Marc asked for it back, politely, which in turn made Corbin laugh and continue tearing. Marc just stared in horror as he defaced the book he hadn’t finished unable to work up the courage to get it back. That was when Kate rounded the corner of the resort and intervened dropping her hands on her hips and giving Corbin a straightforward warning. He laughed at her just like he laughed and Marc and she took him to his knees and made him cry like a baby.
    “I do,” he said.
    She laughed. “You were so scrawny, like this skinny, geeky ten-year-old.” She laughed. “You had thin rimmed round glasses, like Harry Potter.”
    “I thought we were done with the insults.”
    She smiled.
    He thought back. “You were this wild, spark with such determination.”
    She smirked at him. “I’m sure I looked like a wild, unkempt brat,” she said. “Remember my hair?” She put her hands beside her hair making a full motion. “I bet my jeans had been ripped.”
    He nodded. “Yes, they were ripped.”
    “Probably oil on my face.”
    “Dirt down your shirt.”
    She laughed. “I don’t understand how we just clicked. You know.”
    He nudged her side lightly with his elbow. “You were my hero, didn’t