The Family Man (10 page)

Murder redirected Sara’s main focus back to her job. It took two days to figure out who had killed eighty-seven-year-old Betsy Turnbow in her little house at the edge of the county and another to find her grandson where he was hiding out in Crestview. Sara felt a decade older when she came home after his arrest. She wondered why she was always surprised when some new ugliness passed through her jurisdiction.

When she got home and pulled in to the driveway, she spotted Tana chasing Lilly with the spraying garden hose, both of them laughing. Ruby sat on the porch, knitting needles in hand and a wide smile on her face.

For the first time, she wondered if a different job choice would have been wiser if she wanted a family. A job that wasn’t so steeped in the worst part of humanity.

The sorrow of what she’d seen the past couple of days prodded her to back out of the drive and not contaminate the happy scene before her, but she
didn’t. As she sat, marrow-weary, someone parked behind her. A couple of fatigued moments passed before she realized it was Adam. Even with the extra jolt of adrenaline seeing him gave her, it still proved a colossal effort to drag herself from her car.

“Hey,” he said as he rounded the back of his car and opened the trunk.

“Hey. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

He pulled a bright pink-and-purple butterfly kite from the trunk. “I saw this at the kite shop downtown. I thought Lilly might like it.”

For a brief moment, an air of awkwardness enveloped him. He glanced at the kite as if he couldn’t believe he’d bought it.

“Hope you don’t mind,” he said as he met her gaze again.

She stared for a moment, trying to figure him out, but she honestly didn’t see an ulterior motive in his eyes. Something shifted inside of her, something that made her want to cry at his thoughtful gesture. “No, of course not. She’ll love it.”

The nearly overwhelming desire to walk into his arms, to soak in the fact that there was indeed goodness in the world, made her cross her arms and look toward where the girls came running from the opposite direction.

Lilly stopped and stared at the kite. Her mouth formed an O of wonder. “It’s bootiful,” she said, her words filled with awe.

Adam took a few steps. “I’m glad you like it because it’s for you.”

Lilly looked at Sara for confirmation, for permission. The moment Sara nodded that the wonder-kite was indeed hers, Lilly sprinted forward with a squeal of glee.

“Can we go fly it, Mommy? Please!” Lilly’s little body wasn’t big enough to contain all the excitement flowing from her.

Sara didn’t care how tired or drained she was, she wasn’t going to deny her daughter’s fondest wish—to fly her new kite.

“Sure, sweetie. Just let me change, and we’ll head over to the beach.”

“Will you come, too?” Lilly asked Adam, an uncharacteristic shyness in her voice.

Adam met Sara’s eyes. “If your mom doesn’t mind.”

“No, it’s fine.” An attack of nerves sent Sara fleeing for the house.

When she reached her room, she sank onto the side of the bed. She expected someone to follow her inside, but no one did. Instead, they stayed outside with Adam. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Big mistake. Dark half-moons under her eyes and the lines of fatigue stared back at her. It was a wonder Adam hadn’t fled at the mere sight of her.

But he hadn’t.

He’d brought a kite to her daughter—and a smile of purest joy to her face.

Sara rose and made quick work of washing her face, brushing her hair and pulling it into a fresh ponytail, and changing into a yellow tee and white shorts. It wasn’t a shower or twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, but at least she felt marginally better. She could have put on makeup to camouflage the dark circles and remnants of the bruise on her cheek, but she decided if this…whatever it was…with Adam had the remotest hope of working, he had to see the real her. The one who sometimes worked long hours and came home spent and a little worse for wear. At least she’d know the truth of his supposed interest.

When she made her way back outside, she found both of the girls at the edge of the lawn talking to Adam. She watched them, wondering if that could become a forever type of image.

“Give him a chance,” Ruby said as she stepped up beside her.

Sara watched for a moment more, trying to keep herself from judging Adam against the model of perfection she’d had in her mind for years. “I am.”

After tearing the girls away from Adam long enough to get them buckled into the car, Sara glanced at Adam. “We’ll follow you.”

The drive to the nearest public beach access only took five minutes, but Sara’s heart thumped in anticipation the entire way there. She barely heard anything the girls said.

Once they reached the beach, her concerns and anticipation stepped aside as her mothering instinct took over. She retrieved the new kite from the trunk and helped Lilly get it airborne.

“Oh, Mommy, look! The butterfly’s flying,” Lilly said as she ran as fast as her little legs would carry her.

Sara hugged herself and watched as Tana took her spot and helped keep her little sister’s new toy flying high. The steady sea breeze made the pink and green streamers at the base of the kite dance in the air.

“She seems to like it,” Adam said next to her.

“Yeah.” She looked over at him, trying to figure out what other hidden parts of Adam Canfield lay beneath his flirtatious and supposedly carefree exterior. “Thank you.”

He glanced at her and smiled. “You sound surprised.”

“Do I?”

He laughed a little. “Not that I blame you. Can’t say I thought I’d be buying a kite today when I got up.”

“Why did you? Buy a kite.” Had it simply been a ploy to get into her good graces? Something told her no, probably the honesty in his expression when he’d said he’d been as surprised by his act as she was.

Adam slipped his hands into his pockets and watched the girls laughing as they ran with the kite, making it snap against the salty wind. He shrugged. “Don’t know. I saw it and thought of Lilly. They just seemed to go together.”

She returned her gaze to her daughters, and her heart swelled. This man, the one she’d deemed totally inappropriate for their lives, had made two girls laugh and smile so wide their cheeks must surely hurt.

“Want some lemonade?” he asked.

A moment passed before Sara pulled herself out of the heady realization that Adam was carving a place for himself not only in the girls’ hearts, but also in her own. Honestly, it scared her, but she felt powerless to stop it. She looked in his direction and noticed he was indicating the frozen lemonade stand down the beach.

“Sure. Sounds good.”

She watched as he walked toward the stand, and her heart performed a series of flips any gymnast would envy.

“You like him,” Tana said in a singsongy, teasing voice as she came close. “I knew it.”

“Okay, fine, I like him. Are you happy?”

Tana’s smile grew even wider. “Why, yes, I am.”

Sara laughed and pulled Tana next to her, tickled her until she squealed and wriggled free. Tana dropped to the sand and sat back on her heels a couple of feet away.

“He’s nice. Cooler than other guys you’ve gone out with.”

“Hey.”

Tana gave a matter-of-fact shrug. “It’s the truth.”

Sara rolled her eyes and turned her attention to Lilly’s kite-flying efforts.

“Are you going to go out with him again?” Tana asked.

Sara lowered her gaze to the sand. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“You should. You two look good together.”

Sara raised her eyebrow. “And you have so much experience matchmaking.”

“Just common sense. Some people look good together. Some don’t.”

“Looking good together isn’t the most important thing.”

“Doesn’t hurt.”

Sara spotted Adam returning with the lemonades. No, it certainly didn’t hurt.

“You’ve got it bad,” Tana said before she jumped to her feet and ran back toward Lilly, leaving Sara to admit to herself that her oldest might be right.

The moment she acknowledged it, a flood of yearning washed through her. If she and Adam were alone, she wasn’t the least bit sure she wouldn’t push him back in the sand and kiss him senseless.

“Thanks,” she said when he handed her the icy lemonade. She took a long drink, enjoyed the tartness on her tongue and the cool feel of the ice sliding down her throat. “That’s just what the doctor ordered.”

“Tough day?” he asked as he settled beside her in the sand.

She nodded.

“The Turnbow case?” He sounded hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure he really wanted to ask the question.

“Yeah.” She didn’t even try to disguise the fatigue and sorrow she’d carted home with her.

“Makes you wonder how humanity has lasted this long when we go around killing each other, doesn’t it?”

Something in the way he said it, like he was tapping an unthinkable memory, made Sara look at him, examine his strong, attractive profile. He turned, locked his eyes with hers.

“What makes you say that?” Did her voice sound breathy, or was that only in her head?

He broke eye contact and turned his attention to the waves rolling onto the edge of the shore. “Just seems like that’s all that’s on the news anymore.”

She suspected there was more to his observation, but she didn’t question him. Instead, she took another drink of her lemonade and focused all her thoughts on the cold, refreshing taste. She let the simple pleasure of drinking lemonade on the beach with a good-looking man at her side while her daughters enjoyed flying a kite replace all the ugliness of the past couple of days.

“So, you going to let me take you out sometime, without the girls tagging along?” He asked it with that familiar flirtatious tone in his voice.

She smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well, that’s better than a no,” he said, then laughed as the kite fell right on top of Lilly’s head.

H
E WAS TEMPTING FATE
, but Adam didn’t care. From the moment Sara Greene had dived off that pier after him, his brain hadn’t been functioning properly anyway. To his surprise, she showed up at the Beach Bum after work the day following the girls’ kite-flying excursion. They did nothing more than sit and have a drink together, but it was nice and easy. For the first time, he thought back to how much work all the flirting had been. He’d never realized it, especially since he’d tried to work as little as possible.

The next day, they met for lunch. By the end of the meal, he’d captured her hand atop the table. And she didn’t seem to mind.

When the day after that she invited him to a cookout at her house, he had to admit the woman had invaded not only nearly all his thoughts, but also his very bloodstream. That part of himself that had sworn never to get serious about a woman again berated him for allowing this to go so far, but he sent those thoughts back into the dark corners of his mind. Hard to do when the Turnbow case had been all over the news and he’d suspected she’d helped to solve it.

Being with Sara gave him a sense of happiness he hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since those hot, dusty but intoxicating days with Jessica.

That thought caused him to hit the brakes on his car, eliciting a lot of horn honking behind him. He pulled in to a parking lot, realized he’d broken out in a cold sweat. He couldn’t do this, not again. God, what had he been thinking?

“Hey, what are you doing here?”

Adam started, jerked out of those faraway memories by Zac’s voice. His best friend stood outside the car, a bouquet of multicolored flowers in his hand. A couple of seconds ticked by before he realized he’d pulled into the parking area for Hearts and Flowers Florist.

Darn small town. Ran into people you knew everywhere you went, and usually when you didn’t want to.

“Are you okay?” Zac leaned over, took a closer look.

Adam wanted to jerk the car into gear and race from the parking lot, drive full out until he escaped the memories that refused to let him find any peace.

That’s when he realized he hadn’t dreamed of Jessica in…not since the night before the kite flying on the beach. When had he ever gone that long without some form of the dream torturing him?

He nodded. “I thought the car was overheating, but the light just went off.” The excuse sounded lame, but it was the best he could do with his jumbled-up brain.

“Uh-huh.” Zac sounded like he knew exactly what was bugging Adam.

Not likely since Adam hadn’t uttered a word
about Jessica, about the dreams, about the real reason he’d left the army. Since he and Zac had known each other, all Adam had been was the carefree beach bum, the incurable flirt.

The hollowness of the past few years slammed into him, which didn’t make any sense. That’s what he wanted, right? To not have to be responsible for anything or anyone, to simply float through life until he came to the end of it.

Images of David and Sara filtered through his mind. Damn if he wasn’t reverting back to the person he’d been before that bomb had scarred him in more ways than were visible.

“I gotta go.” Adam didn’t offer any explanations. Maybe he’d explain someday, maybe not. Right now, he just had to get away from Zac and his questions, from that cursed glow of newlywed bliss.

He ignored the guilt that gnawed at him more the farther away from Sara’s house he drove. He might be a bit of a dog when it came to women, but he’d never stood one up. And worse, he felt like he was standing up Tana and Lilly, too.

It wasn’t his fault they’d latched on to him.

No, he’d just taken them out for pizza, bought Lilly a kite, bought chocolate from Tana for her art club’s fundraiser.

Adam gritted his teeth as he nearly took out his mailbox while swerving into his driveway. His neighbors would likely think he was drunk, but he
didn’t care. After he got out of the car, he slammed the door so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised if it had come flying out the other side of the car. The door to the house got the same type of abuse. Once inside, however, Adam just stood in the middle of the living room, wondering what he could possibly do to make himself feel better about ditching on Sara’s cookout without a word.