That Summer Place Read Free

before you came in. They want the presentation meeting scheduled for the first Tuesday in July.”
    Now Myrtle appeared to be stunned silent, looking as surprised as Catherine had been this morning when she’d heard from Letni.
    Catherine tried not to smile when she said, “John Turner’s been fired.”
    Myrtle did smile, one of those wicked cat-in-the-cream kind of smiles.
    “With Turner gone we actually have a chance to beat out Westlake for the first time.” Catherine could hear the excitement in her voice. “The company needs a big account. This is the chance we’ve waited for.”
    The largest computer chip manufacturer in the world, Letni was expanding into two states, moving from the high tax locations of California to better locations in Washington and Arizona. Thousands of employees would be moving over the company’s ten-year plan.
    Her heart raced a little at the thought that this deal could really happen. “The relocation accounts alone could keep us in the black for the next ten years.”
    The desk phone buzzed and began to flash yellow.
    Myrtle glanced down at the phone at the same time as Catherine.
    Within seconds four more lines lit up.
    Catherine closed her eyes and leaned back against her chair with a sigh of disgust.
    Myrtle crossed the room and opened the door. “I’ll take care of those lines. For the rest of the day, I promise I’ll only put through the most urgent calls.”
    Catherine gave her a weak smile as the door snapped closed, then sat there feeling lost and preoccupied and confused, as if she didn’t know where to start. After a stretch of seconds where the only sound was the wall clock ticking away, she grabbed a pile of research files, put on her bifocals, and opened the first file folder.
    The words grew foggy and a handsome face from her youth flashed across her mind. For one rare and tender moment, just before she began to read, she wondered what had ever happened to Michael Packard.

Two
    H e stood at the end of a long dock. The breeze off the water whipped through his hair the same way it had thirty years before. He was fifty now, and though his hair was still dark, there were streaks of gray near his temples, ears, and just above his brow. Each and every one of those gray hairs had been earned over two decades of international flight miles.
    His eyes were ice blue, and those who were foolish enough to have crossed him over the years could tell you that there was a sharp and coldly decisive mind behind those eyes, the mind and strength of a man who could put you in your place with a single hard look.
    Deep in the corners of those cool eyes were laugh lines that his few close friends saw often. But those same lines also showed anyone who shook his hand for the first time that he’d lived, long enough to know exactly how to get what he wanted.
    His stride was easy and loose, the gait of someone comfortable with the power he possessed. The old dock creaked every so often, as if the wood protested him walking on it. He headed for the boathouse, which stood at the end of the dock and was more gray and weathered than he was.
    The boathouse had been there a long time. It had been there the first day he’d stepped foot on Spruce Island, when he was thirteen and orphaned and angry at a world where parents could be sitting around the breakfast table one morning and die in a car crash that same night.
    His first day on the island he had walked past the old boathouse with his pride on his sleeve and a chip on his shoulder. He was on his way to meet a grandfather he’d only heard of the few times his father had talked about his past.
    At thirteen Michael had thought the island was just some backward hayseed place stuck out in the tulles. To him his grandfather was a stranger who lived in a strange place, someone he didn’t know, yet who had the power to control his life. The island seemed like Alcatraz. And Michael had been scared.
    But now, standing on the dock, he was older and