you going to put these on the mantel?” There was no missing the hint of accusation in her voice. “Or did you plan to leave them in the box and hope I didn’t find them?”
With her long dark hair and engaging blue eyes, she was every bit as stunning as her media-darling mother, and that scared him more than he liked to admit. It also hurt, more than a little, that she thought he would try to erase her mother from her life. He was a bigger man than that, or at least he wanted to be.
“I had no intention of hiding that box of photographs. Tell you what, why don’t you unpack as many as you want and put them on the mantel right now?”
Kate rolled her eyes as only a teenager could. “Maybe later. I’m looking for my shoes, remember?”
How could he forget? And what had become of the little girl who used to hang on every word he said? Huh. Who was he kidding? Long before her fourteenth birthday last month, his little girl had been morphing into a beautiful young woman with a personal sense of style and a mind of her own. He watched her shift boxes, tear flaps open, peer inside and purposefully move on to the next.
Never get between a woman and her wardrobe, he reminded himself. If he’d learned nothing else about women during his marriage to Georgette, he’d learned that.
“All right!” Kate’s gleeful exclamation indicated the all-important shoes had been found. Before she picked the box up, she returned to the photographs. “Can I have this one of Mom for my room?”
“Of course.” It was important that she maintain a connection with the mother who’d moved halfway across the world, he knew that, but he worried that daily phone calls wouldn’t be enough.
She set her mother’s photograph in the box and closed the flaps. “Did you give her the phone number here?”
“I did. Emailed it yesterday along with the address and our new cell phone numbers.”
“Good.” She picked up the coveted carton of footwear and made her way upstairs, leaving the unasked question hanging in the air. When would Georgette call? She had initially promised to call every day but that was impractical, given her hectic travel schedule, but she did her best. She always called on Saturday, though, and he knew Georgette wouldn’t let Kate down. He hoped. She seldom did, and she had to understand what an important day this was for their daughter. If she didn’t call by dinnertime, he would send a text message reminder. If that was too late for her, well, that was too bad.
He went back to opening boxes and moving them to the rooms where they belonged. As he did, his thoughts drifted, searching for the exact moment his marriage had run off the rails. The reality was that there hadn’t been a moment. He and Georgette had spent most of their marriage slowly growing apart. He’d gradually become accustomed to being the very-much-on-the-sidelines husband of Vancouver’s most talked-about news anchor, and she had eventually stopped trying to turn her “I’d rather be at the gym” husband into a tuxedo-wearing socialite. Even after they knew it was over, they’d both spent several agonizing months coming to grips with it and helping Kate adjust to their new reality.
The real end had come in the form of a European businessman named Xavier who had swept Georgette off her feet and onto his Paris-bound private jet. She had agreed to Jon’s having full custody of their daughter and generous child support in exchange for summer visits. The first visit should have happened at the end of the last school year. It hadn’t. Then Kate was supposed to join her mother for a week in Rome, but that had fallen through. Instead Georgette had promised to be in Vancouver several weeks ago, and that, too, had fallen through at the last minute. Now it was going to be Thanksgiving. He knew Georgette loved their daughter and wanted to make her a priority. He just wasn’t sure Kate knew that.
The doorbell rang as he was contemplating, for something like the millionth time, the overwhelming difference between being a divorced guy with shared custody and a single dad with total responsibility for a rebellious teenager.
Jason Oliver, the real estate agent who’d rented the house to him, had said he would drop by sometime today. Given that Jon didn’t know anyone else in Serenity Bay, it had to be him. Grateful for the distraction from demoralizing self-doubt and disorganized packing boxes, he wound his way through the clutter and opened the front door to a beautiful woman with a paper plate of cookies in her hands and a teenage girl by her side.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Sarah Stewart. My daughter, Casey, and I live next door and we wanted to welcome you and your daughter to the neighborhood, to Serenity Bay.”
Jon’s heart sank, and not in an entirely good way. The real estate agent had mentioned that a widow lived next door. This was the widow? This expensively dressed and stunningly beautiful woman whose poise and self-control reminded him of Georgette.
“These are for you.” Sarah held out the plate.
“Thanks. I’m Jonathan Marshall. Jon.”
“We baked them,” the girl said. She looked to be about Kate’s age, but the similarity ended there. This girl’s blond hair was pulled back in a casual ponytail, and Kate wouldn’t be caught dead in faded jeans, high-top runners, and a red-and-white T-shirt with the letters L-O-V-E across the front. The O was a soccer ball.
He accepted the offering, backed away from the door, and called upstairs. “Kate? Come down and say hi to our neighbors.”
“Be there in a minute.”
He gave them what probably looked like an awkward smile. It sure felt awkward. “My daughter’s minutes tend to be a little on the long side. Would you like to come in?”
“Oh, well, okay.” Sarah cautiously stepped inside and glanced around. “I have to work this afternoon and you have your hands full here so we won’t stay, but we would like to meet your daughter.”
“Of course.” There was an awkward pause. She had beautiful gray-green eyes, and he wished he hadn’t noticed. “So...where do you work?”
“I own a clothing boutique downtown.”
He’d checked out the town before putting an offer on this house. Serenity Bay’s shopping district on Shoreline Boulevard consisted of three or four blocks of high-end shops, art galleries, bistros and coffeehouses, which hardly qualified as “downtown.” Her occupation explained the elegant outfit, though, and justified his wariness. Over the years his ex-wife had become more and more fixated on appearances, until finally his appearance in her life was no longer important.
Sarah’s daughter was a different matter. “You’re a soccer fan?” he asked, referring to her T-shirt.
The girl and her mother shared a knowing look and a quick grin, which was both puzzling and just a bit odd.
“I love soccer! I play on the girls’ team at school.”
“You do? Then I’ll be your coach.”
“Cool,” Casey said. “Me and the other girls on the team were wondering—”
Kate’s descent down the staircase ended the conversation. “Princess is hiding under my bed. I’ve been trying to get her to come out.”
She’d swapped the pink sneakers for black sandals that had three straps buckled around her ankles and open toes that showed off the black-and-white-striped pedicure she’d insisted she needed before being dragged away from civilization.
“Princess is our cat,” he said for no particular reason. “Kate, this is Sarah and her daughter, Casey. They live next door.”
“Hi.”
The two teens eyed each other self-consciously.
“Kate’s going into ninth grade,” he said to break the ice.
“Me, too.” Casey sounded a lot more eager than Kate looked. “I can show you around if you’d like, introduce you to some of my friends. I’ve lived here forever so I know everybody.”
Jon