Carolina Man (8 page)

Her lips quivered in a smile. But then she shook her head. “Whatever. The fact is, you’ve been gone a long time. You’ve returned to a new and stressful family situation. Under the circumstances, it’s natural for your emotions to be heightened.
All
your emotions.”

He looked at her in amused disbelief. “You think I asked you out because of my ‘heightened emotional state’?”

“I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“I’m not insulted.”
Much
. “But if you think I’m only hitting on you because I’m at loose ends or looking to get laid, you’re selling yourself short.”

Her face turned red. “I only meant . . . When most people come into my office, they’re in crisis. It’s my job to guide them through some of the most difficult personal decisions they’ll ever face, decisions with lasting consequences, at a time when their lives are a mess and their emotions are making things worse. I can’t help them, I can’t do my
job
, if I let my personal feelings get in the way.”

“I’m not your client.”

“No, you’re Taylor’s father.” She waited a beat, to underscore her point. “And I’m the executor of Dawn’s estate. You’re in the middle of a social services investigation, facing a permanent custody hearing in two weeks. Taylor has to be your top priority.”

“She is.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, battling frustration. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are. I appreciate everything you’re trying to do for Taylor. I want to help. Which is why . . .” She drew a deep breath. He thought maybe she found it harder to ignore her personal feelings than she let on. Anyway, that’s what he wanted to think. “We should focus on identifying what Taylor needs.”

He regarded her wryly. “You’re not just talking about a picture of her mother, are you?”

“No.” Another smile, another hint of the humor that lurked beneath her buttoned-up attitude. He liked both sides, he decided, the warm woman and the cool lawyer. “But that’s a good start.”

 • • • 

K
ATE’S HEART HAMMERED.

She’d told Luke to back off, and he’d backed off.

Situation dealt with, she told herself. Problem solved.

Except . . . He turned, his hard, lean body in boots and fatigues, his blue eyes level under straight, thick lashes, and everything inside her purred and yearned. Her hormones were still in an uproar because he’d kissed her.

Yikes. She did not trust him. Or rather, she didn’t trust her own breathless attraction to him.
Daughters need their fathers to develop a positive self-image and healthy relationships with the opposite sex
, she had said.

And if you never had that . . .

She was on her own here. Making things up as she went along. Not a good place for her. Especially not with a man like this.

Luke glanced at her face and gestured towards the open carton marked
TAYLOR—BEDROOM.
“Okay to take this?”

“Of course.” Hastily, she rearranged her features in a smile. “‘Travel light’ is fine if you’re a Marine. It sucks if you’re in a Marine’s family.” She was the survivor of too many moves, of too many things broken, abandoned, and left behind, books, bikes, neighborhoods, friendships.

“I guess it never bothered me. My mom used to say . . . Well.” He picked up the box.

Kate raised her brows. Apparently he was the strong, silent type. She was taking a hiatus from dating at the moment—okay, maybe longer than a moment, a couple of years, at least—but she preferred men who gave you some clue to what they were thinking. Writers, academics, other lawyers, men who discussed their feelings instead of letting them build behind a wall of macho silence until they erupted in alcoholic fury. Men as different from her father as she could imagine.

“What did your mother say?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Mom used to tell us that as long as we had each other we had everything.
Back to back to back
. That was kind of our motto, Matt and Meg and me. Only in Afghanistan . . .” He hesitated, shifting the weight of the carton in his arms.

She really wasn’t interested in his personal life, she told herself.

Except she was.

“In Afghanistan,” she prompted softly.

He shrugged. “You start to appreciate things. Like care packages. You’re grateful for the eye drops and drink mix and socks, but it’s the other stuff everybody keeps. Letters. Pictures. Stuff to remind you of home.”

Something turned over in Kate’s chest, like a key in a lock, like her heart. “So you decided Taylor needed stuff.” That was so sweet. What a decent guy.

“Her own stuff.” He nodded. “Yeah. Especially when we move into our own place.”

“I thought you were staying with your parents.”

He carried the box to the Jeep. “I’m renting one of the guest cottages out back, at least for now. That way Taylor won’t have to switch schools again this year.”

So he’d thought of that, too. That was pretty sensitive of him.

Darn it. Here she was, priding herself on her ability to listen and assess, to consider the facts dispassionately and offer her clients objective counsel. And yet with Luke, she’d allowed herself to make the kind of snap judgment she normally scorned. Why? Because he was a Marine, like her father? Because her own hello-there-sailor response to him made her uncomfortable?

That wasn’t fair.

Guilt burned in her chest, her face. She could not offer him her apology without explaining just how badly she’d misjudged him. But she wanted to make it up to him. To help him somehow.

She trailed him to his vehicle. “What about furniture?”

He slid the box in back, muscles flexing. He really had great arms. And shoulders. Great everything, really. “What about it?”

“You’ll need some if you’re moving.” She glanced away—
oh, God, had he caught her staring?
—toward the open storage unit. “And there’s plenty here.”

“Thanks, we’re good,” he said. “The cottage is furnished.”

“Maybe a bookcase for Taylor?”

“Maybe.”

She didn’t understand his reluctance. She was trying to help. “You could come back with a truck if you don’t have room right now.”

His gaze met hers briefly. His jaw set. “I don’t need . . . It doesn’t feel right taking Dawn’s things, okay?”

A guy with scruples. How attractive. She didn’t see a lot of those in her line of work.

“They’re Taylor’s things now,” Kate reminded him. “It’s no different from using her trust.”

He didn’t say anything.

She gnawed her lip, a suspicion growing in her mind. Since Dawn’s life insurance company would not pay out directly to a minor child, Kate had set up a trust for Taylor, managed by the bank. Dawn’s death benefit was paid into the trust so that Taylor’s guardian—Luke—could draw on the money to pay for her expenses.

“You’re not having any trouble accessing her funds, are you?”

“I don’t think so.” He met her gaze and shrugged. “I haven’t tried.”

“What about Taylor’s Social Security benefits?”

“It’s all there. In her college fund. Her account,” he corrected. “Maybe she’ll decide college isn’t her thing when she gets older. But the money will be there for her. She won’t have to bust her butt like Meg did or take out loans.”

“You shouldn’t have to bust your butt, either. Dawn paid into that policy so that you would have that money for Taylor’s expenses.”

He rolled those impressive shoulders in another shrug. “She bought the policy for Taylor. If there’s something Taylor needs that I can’t afford, fine. Otherwise, the money will be there for her when she grows up.”

“Wow. That’s very . . .”
Principled? Impractical?

“Fair,” he said. “Dawn carried all the costs of the first ten years of Taylor’s life. Now that I’m finally in the picture, seems she should be my responsibility.”

It was more than fair, she thought. It was decent.
He was a decent guy. Not a lot of that going around. Plus, there were those arms. Those eyes.

She tried to take a normal breath. “Well. If there’s nothing else you need . . .”

“I didn’t say that,” he interrupted, that intense blue gaze on her face.

She could pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. She stuck out her chin instead. “You know, I don’t normally go around kissing men in storage lockers.”

Or at all. There was that whole dating hiatus thing she had going on. Not to mention the do-not-leap-before-you-look thing. The tired-of-disappointment thing. The I-don’t-want-to-loan-you-money, talk-about-your-ex, listen-to-you-hedge-about-our-relationship thing. She was not jumping into something just because the man had nice arms and seemed to want to do the right thing by his daughter.

He smiled. “You got something against kissing?”

“Not against kissing. Per se. But . . .”

“Latin.” He moved in, still smiling. “Very hot.”

Her heart raced. It was just a kiss, she rationalized. She’d kissed men before. Not recently, true, but she didn’t need to invest this kiss, this man, with any special significance.

To prove it, she stood on tiptoe, twined her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.

See? she told herself. Not a prob—Oh, God, the man could kiss.

In no time at all, he’d opened her lips with his, his tongue in her mouth and his hands in her hair. Her brain fogged as he kissed her, progressively slower, deeper, wetter kisses. Her skin steamed with lust.

She had to . . . She couldn’t. They shouldn’t.

Shaking, she pulled back. “I told you . . . The timing . . . This is a bad idea.”

He kissed her hot cheek. She tried not to melt. “Yeah, I heard you.”

She swallowed. “Then, why—”

His eyes were bright and impossibly blue against his desert tan. “I didn’t say I agreed with you.”

“Then we have a problem.”

His mouth quirked. “Maybe we can talk about it later. I want to be there when Taylor gets home from school.”

He gave her another hard, brief kiss before he tugged down the overhead door and left, taking the boxes with him.

She watched his Jeep drive away, her lips tingling and her heart in turmoil.

Oh, yes, they definitely had a problem. Not because he wasn’t listening. Because she wasn’t sure she wanted him to.

P
LANNING HAD SEEN
Tess Fletcher through countless moves as a military wife. As long as she stayed organized, as long as she kept busy, everything would be all right.

She ran down the list on the kitchen counter, crossing off items as she removed them from the refrigerator. Milk, butter, orange juice,
check, check, check
, loaded into the box.

The back door creaked as Tom returned from carrying the last carton from Taylor’s room upstairs. Not that there was much up there to pack.

Tess sighed. When Taylor first came to live with them three months ago, Tess hadn’t planned on raising another ten-year-old. But all her doubts had melted away the first time Taylor looked at her with Luke’s blue eyes. She’d been full of hopes and plans for this surprise granddaughter, this unexpected blessing in their lives. It hadn’t always been easy. It had taken Taylor a while to learn to trust them. Tess’s own accident had derailed so many of her plans. And now . . .

The list blurred. Tess blinked fiercely and refocused on the shelves.
Eggs, apples
 . . .

“What are you doing?” Tom asked.

Tess kept her head turned toward the refrigerator. Nothing terrified poor Tom like the threat of tears. “Stocking the cottage fridge for Luke and Taylor. The home visit’s tomorrow.”

“Babe, social worker’s not going to look in the fridge to see if Luke’s feeding her properly.”

He was probably right. Still . . . “She might.”

“Then he should buy his own groceries. The boy can guide a Marine patrol in enemy territory; he can probably find a grocery store.”

Tom was right. Of course he was right. But Tess needed to do something. To feel useful somehow. “It’s just some basic supplies to get them started.”

“Fine. Maybe it will keep him from mooching your cooking all the time.”

Tess sniffed.

Tom eyed her in alarm. “What?”

“I’m going to miss him.”

“Luke?”

She eyed him with exasperated affection. “Of course Luke. And Taylor.”

“They’re moving across the backyard, not overseas.”

Tess swallowed. “I know.”

It was different for Tom, she acknowledged. All those years he was the one who went away while she stayed home and made sure the children had what they needed, new shoes, vaccinations, dinner on the table every night, signed permission slips. In their division of duty, the family was her billet.

She felt her usefulness slipping away, her children slipping away, even as their needs grew.

“You need a break anyway,” he said, trying to help.

“I’m fine. It’s the kids I’m worried about.”

Tom raised his heavy eyebrows. “All the kids?”

“Well, not Matt,” she admitted.

Matt was busy organizing the new watermen’s association, deeply in love with his Allison, and happier than she’d seen him in years. The young, idealistic teacher was exactly what her son—and the island—needed.

Of course, once they married, the two-bedroom cottage Matt had shared with Josh for the past sixteen years would be too small for all three of them. They would move to a larger house, and Tess would no longer have her grandson growing up practically on her doorstep.

Which was a good thing, she told herself. But in her heart she felt it as another change. Another loss.

“Nothing wrong with Meg,” Tom said, his gruff tone failing to hide his pride in their only daughter.

Bright, ambitious Meg had had a rough couple of months, getting fired from her well-paying job in New York, selling her condo with its view of Central Park, breaking up with her long-term boyfriend. But now . . .

“She does love being her own boss,” Tess agreed, adding wickedly, “and Sam would make any woman happy.”

“He can make Meg happy. You’re a married woman.”

She smiled. “With three grown children. And two grandchildren. If only Luke—”

“Don’t worry about Luke. He’s home, Tess. First Christmas in two years,” Tom said.

“He is. I’m so glad. I just wish,” she said, and shut her mouth.

I wish I knew what was going to happen with Taylor. I wish I could fix things.

When their children were little, when Tess was younger and strong, they had believed she could make anything better. Maybe for a while, seeing herself in their eyes, she had believed it, too. It hurt, recognizing there were bruises she could not soothe, problems she could not solve, issues they had to work out for themselves.

“I just want them all to be happy,” she said.

“They’re fine.” If he was upset at all about tomorrow’s visit, about a stranger coming into their house to question their care of their granddaughter, he didn’t let on. His stoic acceptance was deeply reassuring.

And the tiniest bit annoying, Tess admitted to herself.

“You worry too much,” he said. “And you do too much.”

“Not as much as I used to. When Matt came home with Josh—” He was only twenty, Tess remembered. Her first son, her firstborn, so determined to meet his responsibilities, reeling from his wife’s desertion and lack of sleep . . .

“Sixteen years ago, babe. We’re not that young anymore.”

Tess narrowed her eyes in amusement. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m sure as hell not trying to make you feel worse. You’ve been knocking yourself out taking care of everybody else as long as I can remember. I didn’t say anything back then because you wouldn’t have it any other way.” Tom linked his long arms around her waist to nudge her closer. “But you’ve got to take care of yourself now. Let the kids handle things for a while.”

She let her head rest against his lean chest, breathing in the familiar scents of salt and shaving cream. She’d just graduated from her walker to a cane. His support felt good in more ways than one. “Matt did everything while I was in the hospital. Ran his charter business and the inn, took care of Josh and Taylor. And when I got out of rehab, Meg came home to help. But I’m better now.” Tess lifted her head to meet her husband’s eyes. “I should be able to do more.”

“Doctor said you need to take things slow. You do too much, you’re going to wipe yourself out.”

“I did close the inn for the holidays,” she reminded him. “We don’t have any guests until Sam’s sister’s wedding at New Year’s. We’ll just be family for Christmas.”

“So you’ll only be stuck with running around for, what? Seven people?”

“Nine,” Tess said. “With Allison and Sam.”

She was delighted to welcome Matt’s new love into their home and their hearts. And Meg’s Sam, bless him, had been part of the family since before they were in high school.

“Anyway, Meg is taking over the baking this year. Allison wants to help with decorating,” Tess said.

Tom grunted, clearly unimpressed.

Tess couldn’t help herself. Straight-faced, she added, “And I thought you could buy everybody’s gifts this Christmas.”

His jaw slackened. “You want me to . . .”

“I can write you a list,” she offered helpfully, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

He braced like a man going into battle. “Sure. Whatever you . . .” He bent down to study her face. “You’re kidding,” he said in relief.

She smiled and patted his cheek. “I finished all the shopping online two weeks ago.”

Tom chuckled. “Good one, babe.”

“Thanks.” Her grin spread. “Let me know if you want to help with the wrapping.”

His hands slid to her butt and gave an affectionate squeeze. “Why don’t I take you out to dinner instead?”

“Oh, Tom, I’d love to. But it’s Taylor and Luke’s first night in their new house.”

“So they can get their own dinner.”

“Or they could come with us,” Tess suggested.

Tom met her gaze straight on. She was reminded suddenly of the first time she saw him, forty years ago, striding into her family’s restaurant in Little Italy, straight as a rifle and cocky as hell. Two weeks later, they were married.

Maybe he didn’t want to go out with the kids.

After months of her being in the hospital, in rehab, in pain, they had recently, carefully, begun to make love again. In some ways, her accident had brought them closer together than ever before. But the balance between them had shifted. Like old partners learning a new dance, they had yet to find their rhythm.

“Whatever you want,” Tom said.

Tess flushed. What did she want?

I want everything to go back to normal. I want to be my old self again.

 • • • 

L
UKE DUMPED A
stack of folded T-shirts into an empty drawer. Compared to his sandbagged, mice-infested plywood hooch, this two-bedroom cottage was a palace. He had heat and hot water, a real toilet, and meals that didn’t come out of a box.

He hoped the social worker was impressed.

He tossed some socks in after the shirts, chafing as if he hadn’t changed his clothes or scrubbed under a hose in weeks.

He didn’t mind a little boredom. He was used to long stretches of mind-numbing waiting punctuated by minutes of adrenaline-fueled terror.

He could handle the busy work. That’s how he spent his downtime—repacking gear, recleaning weapons, linking machine gun rounds into his belt. You trained and prepared so that when the moment came, you were ready. You could react without thinking. And without mistakes.

But in Afghanistan, Luke knew exactly what he had to accomplish at all times. Everything was a matter of survival, of life or death. His men trusted him. And when he gave an order, they obeyed.

With Taylor . . . He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. How something as simple as checking his daughter’s homework or packing her lunch for school could blow up in his face. Or why he was fighting with a ten-year-old over which television shows she could watch or whether or not she ate her leafy vegetables. He could lead men into battle, but he couldn’t get his daughter to eat a fucking salad.

And this home visit with the social worker threatened to expose all his weaknesses.

God only knows what she suspected him of already, what kind of talk was going around the island. Kate said the complaint was anonymous, the report confidential. But that wouldn’t stop their neighbors from talking when Child Protective Services showed up at the door. Most of the talk would be kind. The Fletchers were well liked. But Luke felt terrible for bringing this trouble down on his family. His parents. Matt. Josh.

As long as you cooperate
, Kate had said,
you have nothing to worry about.

Which was the sort of thing the brass told you before they sent you without backup into a situation that was already FUBAR—Fucked-Up Beyond All Recognition.

Luke slid the drawer shut. His reflection glowered back at him from the mirror, frustration tightening his eyes and mouth.

You can do this
, Kate had said.

He wanted to believe her.

He wanted to see her. Naked would be good.

He liked her, her humor and compassion and hot, sweet mouth, liked the laughter that lurked beneath her lawyer’s mask and that little sound she made in her throat. He respected the way she battled for her clients, the way she’d had his six, her fierce focus on doing the right thing.

Taylor has to be your top priority
, she’d said, and the hell of it was, she was right.

He was Taylor’s father. He had to act like one for as long as he was around. His family expected it of him. He expected it of himself.

He didn’t know what Taylor expected. She barely spoke to him.

Give her time
, Matt had advised.

Easy for Matt to say. She talked to Matt. Matt had been there for her when the real shit went down, when Luke went back to Afghanistan, when some asshole drunk in an SUV plowed into their mother’s car. Matt had handled the nightmares, the homework, the visits to the vice principal’s office and to family court. Providing that stuff Kate talked about, things like routine, security, honesty, love.

Thank God for Matt.

Luke only heard about his daughter’s life, his mother’s accident, secondhand and after the fact, with all the gory details edited out. They all followed the unwritten contract of a deployed military family, dating from Tom’s years in the Corps:
I won’t tell you what it’s really like here if you don’t tell me what you’re going through there
. There were things he’d seen and done he had no intention of talking about ever. Not even to his dad, who had done two tours in Nam.

Maybe especially not to Dad.

You need to answer everything she asks, even questions you think are none of her business
, Kate had said about the visit from the social worker.

The thought made Luke break into a sweat.

He wished Taylor would talk more, though. Enough to let him know how she was doing. Or give him a clue to what he was doing wrong.