Falling for the Single Dad (2 page)

His little girl snuggled in the arms of one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen in his life. Head bent over a picture book, the woman softly read aloud to his daughter.

Weston took a moment to calm the staccato beating of his heart. To settle his fear. And to be honest, to enjoy the scene before him the way you would take pleasure in an exquisite painting.

The woman's elegant, long-sleeved white silk blouse was overdressed for the casual fishing hamlet. As were the navy trousers and sling-back pumps in a place where the preferred attire was flip-flops and shorts. A bun at the nape of her slim neck, tendrils of reddish brown hair framed the woman's oval face.

“Mahogany.” With the woodworking he'd done of late, he should know. Her hair was the color of mahogany.

He hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud until the woman's gaze lifted.

Izzie scooted out of the armchair. “Daddy!”

The woman's eyes narrowed. Lustrous, chocolate eyes. He remembered the women at church talking about the new librarian Kiptohanock hired after old Mrs. Beal retired. But she was unlike any librarian he remembered from his boyhood days in Richmond.

The woman frowned. He'd been staring, mouth open. He closed his mouth with a snap and flushed.

Izzie flung herself at him, clasping him around the knees. He staggered and wrapped his arms around her torso as much to steady himself as to drag his eyes away from the new librarian.

“Where were you, Daddy? I've been waiting...”

The woman's lips tightened.

“I'm sorry, little lady.” He kissed the top of Izzie's curly hair. “My watch stopped. I was at the Sandpiper going over the last of the remodeling plans, and I lost track of time.”

The woman rose. Five foot sevenish to his six-foot height, he estimated. Folding her arms across her chest, she tapped one slim foot against the hardwood floor. Disapproval radiated from her set features.

“Izzie's father, I presume?”

Not a great first impression. He grimaced. Since when did he care about impressing a woman? Especially one so...so sophisticated. Because that had turned out so well for him before.

“She's been waiting a long time.” The woman gestured at the now-deserted library. “All the other children went home with their mothers ages ago.”

He winced. “As I said, I'm sorry.”

The woman raised her chin. “Anything could've happened to the child. A father shouldn't be too busy to take care of his family.”

Anger surged at the woman's arrogant assumptions. He bit off the harsh retort that rose to his lips. The desire to put the new librarian in her place.

Beautiful, maybe. Unfriendly, for sure. Strange, a woman like her would choose the public-pleasing profession of a librarian. 'Cause this woman had the social skills of a barracuda.

With his anything-but-stellar track record in the romance department, this was why he kept it just him and Izzie. Were all women as hard-hearted as Jessica? Or was it his misfortune to only run into those types?

“I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you...” He allowed his gaze to rake her face and the armchair full of books. A look he hadn't utilized since he commanded Coasties before Jessica's death prompted his abrupt career change. “Don't let us keep you from your shelving.”

The woman's eyes enlarged. “I'm not—” An interesting blush stained her cheeks.

Izzie tried to climb up his legs. Bending, he scooped his daughter into his arms. She was getting heavy. Too big to hold.

But he'd hold Izzie close as long as he could. Because besides Izzie and a run-down lighthouse, what else did he have in his life?

Izzie captured his face between her small, warm palms and wrenched his attention from less pleasant thoughts. “She's Caroline. We had fun.”

At her words, the woman—Caroline Whoever—uncoiled a notch.

He reminded himself he'd been in the wrong. Not her job to babysit his child. He took a deep breath. “I apologize again. I'm doing the best I can.”

That hadn't been enough for Jessica, though. And in Caroline's equally cool appraisal of him, he felt his every deficiency flayed bare.

His lips twisted. He'd never been enough for anyone.

Izzie squeezed her legs around his waist and hung her arms around his neck.

Except maybe Izzie.

Izzie lunged, and he almost dropped her. “My books, Daddy.”

Caroline What's-Her-Name blinked. “Oh.” She snagged hold of the seen-better-days library bag Izzie dragged along on every outing.

Weston took the bulging bag and sagged beneath its weight. “Leave any for the other children?”

His daughter giggled. “Daddy and I will see you next week, Caroline.”

“I'm not...” Caroline's face did a fair imitation of Izzie sucking lemon rinds.

He gave the librarian a nice view of their backs. See her next week? He'd sit on the library porch while Izzie enjoyed story time if it meant avoiding another less-than-pleasant encounter with the stone-cold Caroline.

Who had the face of a Renaissance Madonna and the disposition of a killer shark.

Chapter Two

W
hen she'd looked up from the pages of the book and found his smoldering blue eyes fixed upon her, Caroline's heart leaped in spite of herself.

Midthirties, she guessed. From his sweatshirt and his dark brown military buzz—close cut on the sides—probably an active duty or one-time Guardsman. A 'come here, not native-born to the Shore.

Through the library window, she watched the ruggedly handsome man tuck Izzie into the green Chevy Colorado parked beside the diner across the square. His broad shoulders under the gray Coast Guard Academy sweatshirt bunched as he leaned to fasten Izzie's seat belt.

Notwithstanding Caroline's fifteen-year absence from Accomack County, she didn't recognize him. She heaved a sigh. She didn't think she would've forgotten him had they previously met. Her gaze flicked toward the now-empty chair.

She'd enjoyed cuddling with Izzie. Who would've foreseen that? Not Caroline or anyone who knew her, she guessed.

Definitely not mother material. But no more stalling.

Caroline glanced at the mounted wall clock behind the librarian's desk. Guests typically left the Duer Lodge midmorning in pursuit of their day's activities.

She'd scheduled a lunch meeting with her longtime colleague at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to finalize their grant-funded summer pilot program. If things went as well as she expected at the family homestead—which was to say, not well—she had someplace else to be.

Caroline turned her head toward the babble of voices at the top of the ornate staircase. Kiptohanock's real librarian emerged on the landing with a sixty-something matron Caroline—unfortunately—did recognize.

“Caroline Victoria Duer.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Escape so close and yet so far.

“Is that you? After all this time?”

A lot of water under that proverbial bridge, but some things—like some people—didn't change. Including Mrs. Davenport, otherwise known as the Kiptohanock Grapevine.

Mrs. Davenport, plumper after fifteen years, descended the staircase like a bygone movie queen. “As I live and breathe, Seth Duer's second oldest come home at last.”

Other Kiptohanock bookworms popped out from between the stacks across the hall to get a look. The twenty-something librarian's eyes blinked behind her fashionable horn-rimmed glasses.

Time, like sand in an hourglass, had run out for Caroline.

If she didn't beat the village blabbermouth to the punch, her father and sisters would learn of her arrival before she could get to the house. She couldn't hide any longer.

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Davenport.” She wrenched open the oak-paneled door. “The black sheep has come home at last.”

* * *

Caroline drove around the square. Past the Sandpiper Café. The post office. The Coast Guard station. Recreational and commercial fishing vessels bobbed in the harbor. Fair-weather flags fluttered in the breeze. Beyond the inlet, barrier islands emptied into the vastness of the Atlantic.

The white clapboard church hugged the shoreline. Its steeple pierced the azure sky. Leafed-out trees canopied the side lanes, where the gingerbread-trimmed Victorian homes fanned out from the center of the town square like spokes on a wheel.

Driving out of town, she averted her gaze from the cemetery on a high slope overlooking the marina. She'd finally found the courage to face her father and sisters. She didn't know if she had the courage to face the graves. Maybe she'd never have enough courage to face them.

Leaving the coastal village behind, she headed down Seaside Road, which connected the oceanside villages. Her heart pounding in her ears, she pulled off the secondary road into the Duer driveway. A simple sign at the turnoff read Duer Fisherman's Lodge.

Caroline stopped at the top of the driveway. Her hands white-knuckled the wheel. She paused to reorient herself with her childhood home. To prepare for the changes the devastating hurricane eight months ago had wrought. But on the surface, everything appeared the same.

She scanned the white, two-story Victorian with the wraparound porch. The picket fence still rimmed the shade-studded perimeter of the yard. The silvery surface of the tidal creek glimmered behind the house. She released her death grip on the wheel.

Home to seven generations of proud Duer watermen, including her father, Seth Duer, possibly the proudest of all. In the last century during the days of gilded grandeur, Northern steel magnates had “roughed” it at the Duer fishing lodge. Her ancestors had served as hunting guides in winter, oystered, crabbed and run charters in summer. But those days, like the steamers traveling the waters between New York City and Wachapreague, had long since passed.

She took a deep breath and released the brake. The car coasted toward the circle drive. The grand old lady, freshly painted and restored from the ravages of the storm, appeared better than ever under her youngest sister's watchful restoration. Caroline parked and switched off the engine.

Restoration... Her fondest hope.

She whispered a quick prayer and got out of the car as a tall, Nordic blond man in jeans and T-shirt stepped around the corner of the house from the direction of the old cabin. A phone shrilled inside. Then stopped.

He advanced, hand outstretched. “I didn't realize more guests were arriving today. I'm—”

“Sawyer Kole. Honey's husband.”

He dropped his hand, confusion written across his craggy features. As if recognition teased on the fringes of his memory. The front door squeaked on its hinges.

Sawyer Kole's eyes went glacial at the same moment Honey gasped, “Caroline.”

Caroline's gaze flitted to the honey-blonde woman poised on the porch steps. Whom she'd last beheld when Honey wasn't much bigger than Izzie. Now a lovely woman in her midtwenties and soon to be a mother. Caroline's eyes fell to her youngest sister's rounded abdomen. Caroline thought of little redheaded Izzie, and something stirred in her heart.

With great deliberation, Sawyer moved between them. Blocking Caroline's view of her sister. Protecting his wife. From her.

Voices drifted from the dock at the edge of the tidal creek. A carrot-haired boy, maybe Izzie's age, ran ahead. The strawberry-blonde woman, Caroline's younger sister Amelia, bounced a dark-haired baby on her hip as she strode up the incline from the water.

Catching sight of her, Seth Duer, their father, came to a dead stop. As fit as she remembered, though his hair beneath the Nandua Warriors ball cap and his thick mustache were more salt than pepper. His gray eyebrows bristled.

Oyster shells crunched beneath the little boy's sneakers. “Hey, Aunt Honey!” He waved. “Mimi, Granddad and I showed my baby how to bait a line.”

The expression on her father's grizzled face froze Caroline to the marrow of her bones.

Amelia squeezed their father's elbow. “Daddy.” The baby squirmed in her arms.

Seth and Marian Duer's third-born daughter. The tomboy son Seth had never had, but longed for. Renowned illustrator. Married to Braeden Scott, senior chief at Station Kiptohanock.

Amelia's face had shuttered with neither pleasure nor foreboding. Unable to get a read on her sister, Caroline glanced at the redheaded boy. Max. An old ache resurfaced.

Her older sister's boy. Born moments before Lindi died after a head-on collision with a drunk driver on Highway 13. Adopted and raised by Amelia, Max's beloved “Mimi.” And Amelia was now also the mother of the toddler in her arms, Patrick Scott.

The silence roared between them until Max in his innocence broke it.

“Who's that, Mimi?” His eyes were so like Lindi's. “She looks like the other sister in the picture above the fireplace. The one you told me not to mention around Granddad.”

Caroline flinched.

Seth's blue-green eyes, the color of Amelia's, too, flashed. “Don't worry about learning her name. She probably won't be around long enough for you to get used to using it.”

Caroline and Honey had inherited their mother's dark brown eyes. Caroline frowned at the thought of her mother and pushed yet another memory out of her mind.

Amelia shifted the baby to a more comfortable position. “First, let's see why she's here.”

“Please...” Caroline whispered.

Her father snorted. Then the tough, old codger scrubbed his face with a hand hard with calluses. “Come to rub our noses in her highfalutin jet-set lifestyle.”

She lifted her chin. “You don't know anything about my life.”

“Whose fault is that, girl?”

He'd yet to say her name, Caroline couldn't help noticing. As if he wanted no part of her. Her insides quivered. She wrapped her hand around the cuff of her left sleeve.

Seth crossed his arms over his plaid shirt. “There's two kinds of people born on the Shore, Max, my boy. Best you learn now how to identify them both.”

Caroline gritted her teeth.

“Those who don't ever want to leave...”

She knew if she didn't get out of here in the next few minutes, she was going to implode into a million, trillion pieces.

“And those, like my runaway daughter.” Seth speared her with a look. “Who can't wait to leave and who never return.”

“Until now, Dad. Caroline's come home.” Always the peacemaker, her sister Honey. Far more than Caroline deserved from the baby sister she'd abandoned.

Caroline examined the set expressions on her family's faces. What had she expected? What else did she deserve?

“She never returned after her mother died,” Seth growled. “Not for her sister's funeral. Not during Max's chemo. Not after the storm almost leveled our home.” He clenched his fist against his jeans. “Not for a wedding. Or a birthday. Not even a postcard, much less a phone call.”

And Caroline suddenly understood that nothing she could ever say would erase the damage she'd inflicted. Nor wash away the hurt of the past. This... This illadvised, ludicrous attempt at reconciliation was for naught. She spun on her heel.

“Don't go,” Honey called.

“Let 'er go,” Seth grunted. “Let 'er run away like before. It's what she does best.”

“Daddy... Stop it,” barked Amelia.

Caroline wrested the car door open and flung herself into the driver's seat. Whereas she'd found mercy and forgiveness in God, with her family there'd be none of either. She jerked the gear into Drive.

In a blur, she fishtailed onto Seaside Road. She pointed the car south and drove until the shaking of her hands wouldn't allow her to drive any farther. She pulled over on the other side of the Quinby bridge and parked.

Her shoulders ached with tension. Spots swam before her eyes. She leaned her head on the headrest, and struggled to draw a breath as her throat closed.

This had been a mistake. A terrible, perhaps unredeemable, mistake. She felt the waves of the darkness she'd spent years clawing her way out of encroaching. Like an inexorable tide, ever closer. A headache throbbed at her temples.

Her breathing came in short, rapid bursts. Hand on her chest, she laid her forehead across the steering wheel. Willing the anxiety to subside and the blackness to erode.

But the waves mounted and towered like a tsunami. Cresting, waiting to consume her whole. To drag her under for good this time into the riptide of blackness.

God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Where was her purse? She fumbled for the tote bag in the passenger seat. The pills. It'd been so long since she'd relied on them.

She hadn't suffered an anxiety attack in several years. But with her so-called reunion facing her this morning, surely she'd had the foresight to tuck them inside her purse in case of an emergency.

Digging around through the detritus that filled her life, she came up empty. She slammed her hands on the wheel. Of all the days not to...

She breathed in through her mouth and exhaled through her nose in an exercise she'd learned from the counselor. And she repeated the Scriptures she'd memorized at the suggestion of a friend, a marine biologist working in the Bahamas.

Until the dizziness passed. Until her vision cleared. Until the pain in her lungs subsided.

Dripping with sweat, she took a few steadying breaths before shifting gears. Lesson learned. Despite the size of Kiptohanock, she'd avoid contact with her family.

One summer. The two-month pilot program. She'd lie low. Something she was good at.

And like Thomas Wolfe had said, you couldn't ever go home again. Or at least, not her.

* * *

“Daddy! Come quick! Daddy!”

Weston dropped the hammer and raced out of the former lightkeeper's cottage. He ran toward the beach, where the incoming tide lapped against the shoreline. Where he'd left his nine-year-old daughter alone... The librarian pegged him rightly. He was a terrible father.

“Isabelle!”

Panting, he plowed his way to the top of the dune. “Answer me.” The fronds of sea oats danced—taunting him—in the afternoon breeze.

On the beach below, she windmilled her arms to get his attention. He willed his heart to return to a semblance of normal. She'd gotten his attention, all right. He scrambled down the dune toward his daughter.

She clutched the straw hat on her head. “Look, Daddy.” With her free hand, she gestured to a set of tracks stippling the sand from the base of the dunes to where they disappeared around the neck of the beach. “Turtle tracks.”

Izzie bounced in her flip-flops, a redheaded pogo stick. “Maybe turtle eggs on our beach, too.” She clapped her hands together. The hat went flying.

He sighed, and watched it blow out to sea.

“We could have babies. Just like Max.”

His gaze flickered to his daughter. “If there are eggs, they won't belong to us. Best thing we can do is leave them and their turtle mama alone.”

Izzie's face fell.

He tickled her ribs. “Even Max will tell you to give new mamas a wide berth. They're touchy. And ornery.”