car, helping the children out of the back, looking over the house and the overgrown lawn. Eddie and Emma pranced along on either side of him, talking nonstop.
“Who’s that?”
Gracie stood near the car door as Sophie let herself out. Beside her was Kayla Spoonby, her best friend. Kayla’s father was the hospital administrator, and her mother, a schoolteacher.
Sophie recounted the story of the afternoon’s adventures for Gracie and Kayla.
Gracie watched Sawyer Abbott with suspicion and hostility. “They’re such dweebs. We don’t need a dad.”
“It’s nice to have a dad,” Kayla disputed. She was a short, plump redhead with a sparkling personality. Gracie was tall and slender, with her father’s blond good looks but Sophie’s shyness. “And Sawyer’s really cool. He’s a friend of my dad’s. Hi, Sawyer!” she called, running around the car to greet him.
He opened his right arm for her, Eddie permanently attached to his left. Emma, obviously feeling left out, began to do cartwheels for attention.
Gracie stayed well out of the way, though Kayla called her over to introduce her. She gave Sawyer a half wave but took a step back when he started toward her.
He stopped, returned the wave, then braced himself as Emma cartwheeled right into him. She and Eddie tried to pull him toward the house. He resisted.
“Thank you so much,” Sophie said hurriedly, peeling her children off him. “It was very kind of you not to be angry at them for ruining your evening. What do you say, Eddie?”
“That he’s The One!” Eddie replied.
She should have known better than to be nonspecific. “What do you say to Mr. Abbott?”
“You’re the—” he began.
“Eddie!”
Eddie held out his narrow hand. “Thank you,” he said dutifully.
“And…” she prompted.
“And…I’m sorry?” He turned to her questioningly.
She nodded approval.
“I think,” Eddie went on, “that it’d be really nice if we asked him to stay for dinner.”
“Well, if we had something nice to feed him,” she replied, relieved to have an excuse not to, “we’d do that, but our groceries are still at the store.”
“Maybe he isn’t fussy,” Emma said, still holding his hand. She squinted up at him. “We have egg sandwiches when we don’t have other stuff. Do you like that?”
Sophie would have countered with another excuse for why he couldn’t stay, but Sawyer mercifully handled that for her. He got down on one knee, still holding each child’s hand. “I really appreciate the invitation,” he said with apparent sincerity, “but I promised to meet my brother for dinner and I’m already a little late. I’d really like it, though, if you invited me again sometime.”
“How ’bout tomorrow?” Eddie offered quickly.
Sawyer smiled up at Sophie. “Maybe we should let your mom pick the time. She can call me when it would be convenient. Okay?”
“She won’t do it,” Emma said with a condemning glance at Sophie. “She’ll say ‘someday,’ but she’ll forget.”
Sawyer grinned at that stain on her character, then said, “Well, I’ll just count on you two to remind her, okay?”
“Okay.” Eddie shook his hand and Emma strangled him with a hug.
“Now, make sure you don’t scare your mom anymore by disappearing on her,” he said, looking at each of them solemnly. “And don’t fib about her kidnapping you, even if you think you have a good reason. Lies are never good, okay?”
They nodded in unison.
Sawyer straightened, waved at Gracie again, wished Sophie good luck and went to his car.
Sophie felt a surge of relief as he drove away, then, when he was out of sight, a strange disappointment. He was the kind of man who could make her long for one in her life again. But she had too much against her now to know how to be happy with one. Bill had finally managed to convince her that it couldn’t be done.
Gracie came to stand beside her as she stared at the empty road. It, too, could be a metaphor for her life.
“You don’t like him, do you?” Gracie asked.
Sophie didn’t even want to focus on that question sufficiently to answer it.
“He was very kind to us,” she replied. “Most people would have been angry, but he brought us home, instead.”
“He runs his family’s foundation,” Kayla said knowledgeably. “So, he kinda works for charities. He’s nice all the time.”
“Nobody’s nice all the time,” Gracie argued, turning toward the house.
Kayla patted Sophie’s arm in a very sisterly way. Sophie often wondered how much of their personal history Gracie had shared with her best friend. “Once she knows how nice he really is,” she said authoritatively, “she’ll see that even though he’s a man, he’s not the way her dad was, and she’ll get to like him, also.” Then she grinned winningly at Sophie. “So you can fall in love if you want to. It’s going to be okay.”
Chapter Three
Brian’s General Store and Boat Rental was a six-hundred-square-foot building typical of East Coast waterfront construction circa 1880. Its bright green board-and-batten front had faded to a comfortable mossy color. The natural-wood window boxes that graced the four-over-four windows were devoid of flowers at the moment. When Brian had bought the building, he’d removed the dead stalks that had been all that was left of the previous flowers, and hadn’t found time yet to replace them.
Two benches, flanked by pots of flowers, stood on the porch on either side of an old carved front door. Sawyer remembered the cigar-store Indian that had stood there, a beautiful wooden carving that had fascinated the local children and tourists. But in the interest of political correctness, he’d been donated to the museum and replaced by a wooden fisherman in full Gloucester gear.
Sawyer climbed the wide steps and let himself into the store, ignoring the Closed sign. He knew Brian had left the door open for him.
Inside, the goods were arranged on shelves as old as the building. In the middle of the floor was a potbellied stove with chairs pulled up to it. The former owner had used it to display sale merchandise, but Brian planned to use it for its intended purpose come winter.
Blue-and-white café curtains graced the windows and provided privacy for the small cubicle that served as a fitting room at the back. Near it in two old wooden wardrobes were a few items of clothing—Losthampton T-shirts and sweatshirts, a few light jackets for those who visited unprepared for the sometimes cool nights. In the open drawers at the bottom was an assortment of the usual souvenirs—spoons, mugs, pencil cases. The same blue-and-white fabric also concealed a small office-cum-stockroom at the back.
Brian walked out from behind it as Sawyer rapped on the old wooden counter, also original to the store. A yardstick was nailed against the edge on the clerk’s side from the days when yard goods were sold.
Sawyer had loved this store as a child, and couldn’t quite believe that the brother he hadn’t even known about in those days now owned it.
“Hey!” Brian greeted him, holding the curtain aside for him to join him in the back. “You get paroled?”
Brian was lean and long-legged, with the same dark blond hair and blue eyes Sawyer had, but with an angular line to chin and cheekbone that reminded Sawyer of Killian.
Sawyer knew there’d be jokes on the subject of his