on several questions.” Mick straightened and held out the business card. “Like I said, we have a new client.”
India tilted the card toward the weak gold and green lamp. “Leon Shipp. Power Trucks for Power Men?”
“He wants us to paint his house. We could stay another week or so.” Mick nodded at the card. “If you think we should.”
“No, I don’t.” She blushed. “But I volunteered to help with toddler story time at the library, so we have to stay until Saturday.”
Mick laughed. “Run to the familiar? I’ll call this Leon and tell him to expect us tomorrow morning. Okay?”
India tilted her head sharply to one side. “I’m afraid.”
As if she were his little girl again—and she’d been a daddy’s girl once—Mick sank onto the edge of the bed beside her and tucked her cheek against his rough shirt. “I know you won’t hurt anyone—well, except yourself, and I’m here this time to help you if you make that mistake again. I don’t want you to spend fifteen more years wondering what might have been.”
“She’s your granddaughter, too. And she’s Mom all over again.”
His chin moved up and down against her forehead. “Mmm-hmm.”
Miserably she clutched his sleeve. “I wish I could give you back everything I took from you.”
“Shh. You refused to take anything from us, India.”
“I love you, Dad.”
As she absorbed her father’s silence, she realized how long it’d been since she’d last said those words.
Mick cleared his throat. “I’d paint Leon Shipp’s house and his entire fleet of bumper cars to hear you say that again.”
India smiled. “Power trucks, Dad.”
“Whatever. Try not to ruin the moment, honey.”
AT THE TOP OF THE HOTEL’S rickety wooden steps, Jack hesitated. By the time he reached India’s door, his courage damn near deserted him. Whatever she’d said to Colleen at the library had made his daughter more receptive to him. On the way home, he’d kept silent, afraid anything he said to Colleen might only push her further away. But the moment he parked the truck, she’d announced she wouldn’t see Chris anymore unless they met within a group of her friends.
Which ought to cut down nicely on their time together. And Jack didn’t intend to look that gift horse in the mouth.
Still puzzled over India’s unexpected powers of persuasion, Jack stared at her sea-salted, pale gray door. He rubbed his palms against his jeans. Sweaty as a teenage boy’s, they bumped over the denim. If he didn’t knock now, he never would. He owed India an apology for the brusque way he’d treated her at the library, especially since she’d managed to help his daughter.
He’d shut down the moment he realized Colleen had come to see her mother’s picture. Memories of Mary sprang a truckload of feelings on him, just when he felt least prepared to deal with the past. Hayden had snapped that photo of them together the day they’d heard Colleen was coming.
Jack hated that picture. He wondered that no one else had ever seen the truth in his eyes. That morning, Mary had told him Mother Angelica had called. At the same time, she’d confessed she’d made love with another man. She’d said she couldn’t go on with their marriage without coming clean. The man had been one of the island’s summer people, and Jack hadn’t let her say his name.
“I just wanted to remember what love felt like without a purpose.”
Mary’s words still tore him apart with a deeper emotion than he’d ever felt for her again. Both desperate to have a child, they’d tried every crazy procreation theory anyone suggested. In some horrible, too-sane recess of his mind, he’d understood what she’d meant about needing a different kind of love.
In the same breath as her confession, she’d asked him to stay with her and adopt the infant girl Mother Angelica had offered them. How many times over how many years had he wished she’d kept her secret?
Able to feel such strange compassion for Mary, he’d believed he would be able to forget her betrayal. He never had. He’d loved her still, but he’d never loved her in the same way. He’d hidden from the truth behind work and behind his and Mary’s mutual joy in Colleen. She’d used him to keep the baby who’d, in a way, cost them their marriage. He’d accepted the compromise.
Why now, outside India Stuart’s room, had he lost his long-standing ability to shield himself from those memories? Impatient, he stepped forward and pounded on the door.
Startled at the shotlike echoes in the otherwise silent street, he peered at the windows around him. His resolute knock had sounded more like police on a raid. Just the kind of commotion to raise a dozen or more Arran Islanders.
Nobody answered the door. He knocked again, more gently, just in case India had ducked behind her bed at his first demand to be let in. Still no answer. He turned toward the stairs, feeling foolish. All that idiotic soul-searching, just so he could apologize to an empty room.
Glancing down the street to the bay, he saw India before he’d gone down one stair. In silky blue shorts and a white oversize tank top, she ran through the waning sunshine like a grasshopper, all arms and legs that flailed in way too many different directions.
He laughed to himself. “Exercise is exercise. I thought she’d be more graceful.”
Her clumsy stride didn’t detract from the taut line of her thighs or the sweet curve of her upper arms. Jack tightened his hand on the stair rail. Oh, my God—I just ogled her. Again he surveyed the surrounding windows. Thankfully, not a single curtain twitched. And India came toward him.
“Jack?” she panted as she crested the hill.
A stride like that ought to leave her out of breath. “India,” he returned, descending the steps two at a time. Movement made him feel less asinine, less as if she’d caught him loitering outside her door. Since she had.
“What’s up?” Her deep blue gaze narrowed. “Is Colleen all right?”
Well, at least she didn’t assume he’d come on his own behalf. “She’s fine, better even. I don’t know what you said to her, but you must have gotten through.”
India’s guilty start piqued his interest. “What do you mean?” she asked in an innocent tone he didn’t trust.
“She promised not to see Chris alone again.”
“You mean like on a date?”
He nodded. “Finally, one for our side.” Stop stalling. Say what you came to. “I’m sorry I was rude earlier.”
India backed up as if she’d stepped on a cat. “Not at all.” Color flooded her cheeks. Her gaze ducked his. “You were busy with your daughter.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I just—” She swallowed. The muscles in her throat tightened above the nest of her sharp collarbones.
“You just what?” Heeding a sudden need to know the texture of her skin, he trailed his finger through the beads of moisture that hugged her rounded shoulder. Unexpected desire raced in his blood. His mouth watered to taste her taut skin just beneath her jaw, where her pulse fluttered even faster now than when she’d stopped running.
Did his nearness affect her, too?
India looked down at his finger against her skin. Jack jerked his hand away and tried to remember what she’d last said. “You just what?”
She tilted her head, her defiant expression astonishingly like Colleen’s. “I admitted I’d used some bad judgment when I was her age that hurt my family.” The words spilled from her, as if they weighed too much to carry inside.
Jack