said.
“Well, if you don’t mind a few more pizza stains, I suggest we just pop them into their beds. I can clean them up in the morning.”
She held out her arms for the baby, who snored solidly through the transfer. Then he picked up his niece.
Who was just a little younger than his son would be.
And for the first time in his life, he put a child to bed. Tucked clean sheets around little Susie, so tiny in sleep. So vulnerable.
Who was tucking his son in tonight? Was the family who adopted him good enough? Kind? Decent? Fun-loving? People with old-fashioned values and virtues?
These were the thoughts he hated having, that he could outrun if he kept busy enough, if he never let himself get too tired or have too many drinks.
He left Susie’s room as if his feet were on fire, bumped into Dannie in the hall outside her room where she had just settled Jake.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Oh. Sure. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
She regarded him with those huge blue eyes, the eyes that expected honesty, and he had the feeling if you spent enough time around someone like her, you wouldn’t be able to keep the mask up that kept people out.
“You just look,” she tilted her head, studied him, “as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
A ghost. Not quite.
“A kind of a ghost,” he said, forcing lightness into his tone. “I’m remembering what my home looked like before pizza.”
She smiled. “I tried to warn you. I’ll have it cleaned up in a jiff.”
“No, we’ll clean it up.” In a jiff. Who said things like that? Probably people with old-fashioned values and virtues.
A little later he tossed a damp dishcloth in the sink. He was a man who had trekked in Africa and spelunked in Peru. He had snorkeled off the coast of Kona and bungee jumped off the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
How was it something so simple—tracking down all the stains and moving all the items that were delicate and breakable—seemed oddly fun, as if he was fully engaged, fully alive for the first time in a long time?
Is that what a woman like her would make life like? Fun when you least expected it? Engaging without any trinkets or toys?
Was it time to find out?
“Do you want that glass of wine now?” he asked her, when she threw a tomato-sauce-covered rag into the sink beside his. “You’re off duty, aren’t you?”
“I’m never off duty,” she said, but not sanctimoniously. Still, she was treating the offer with caution.
Which was smart. As his niece had pointed out to him earlier, he wasn’t smart. Plain old dumb.
“It’s more than a job for you, isn’t it?” he asked, even though he knew he should just let her get away to do whatever nannies did once the kids were asleep.
She blinked, nodded, looked away and then said in a low, husky voice, filled with reverence, “I love them.”
He felt her words as much as heard them. He felt the sacredness of her bond with his niece and nephew and knew how lucky his sister was to have found this woman.
But how had it happened that Dannie loved the children enough, apparently, to put her own college-professor dreams on hold, her own dreams for her life, her own ambitions?
He wanted to say something, and he didn’t. He didn’t want to know anymore about what she was giving up for other people’s children.
“I think we should go tomorrow,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I know your intentions are good, but the children really need to be someplace where they can romp. Someplace not so highly vulnerable to small hands, pizza sauce, the other daily catastrophes of all that energy.”
Her eyes said, I need to be away from you.
And he needed to be away from her. Fast. Before he asked more questions that would reveal to him a depth of love that shone like water in a desert, beckoning, calling.
“I’ll go make the arrangements,” he said coolly. “I have to return a phone call, anyway.”
“I’ll say good-night, then, and talk to you in the morning.”
He nodded, noticing she did not go back to her room but slipped out onto the terrace. He watched her for a moment as she stood looking out at darkness broken by lights reflecting in the water, stars winking on overhead. The sea breeze picked up her hair, and he yearned to stand beside her, immerse himself in one more simple moment with her.
Moments, he reminded himself harshly, that were bringing up memories and thoughts he didn’t want to deal with.
Unaware she was being watched, she turned slightly. He saw her lift the chain from around her neck, open the locket and look at it.
There was no mistaking, from the look on her face, that she had memories of her own to deal with. And he didn’t want to know what they were!
He walked away from the open patio doors, and moments later he shut the door of his home office. He waited for the familiar surroundings to act as a balm on him, to draw him back into his own world.
But they didn’t. He thought of her standing on the deck with the wind lifting her hair. The fact that he suddenly didn’t want her to go was all the more reason to make the arrangements immediately. Thinking of them leaving filled him with relief. And regret. In nearly equal proportions.
He glanced at his watch. It had been less than eight hours since she had arrived in his office.
His whole world had been turned topsy-turvy. He had revisited a past he thought was well behind him. He was feeling uncertainties he didn’t want to feel.
He needed the safety and comfort of his own world back.
He dialed Michael Baker’s number.
Michael sounded less guarded than he had in the past, almost jovial.
“It sounded like you had your hands full,” he said to Joshua.
“My niece and nephew are here for a visit.”
“My wife and I were under the impression you didn’t like children,” Michael said.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Joshua said carefully, sensing the slightest opening of a door that had been firmly closed.
“We had decided to just tell you no,” Michael said. “Moose Lake Lodge is not at all like any of your other resorts.”
Baker said that in a different way than he had said it before, in a way that left Joshua thinking the door was open again. Just a little bit. Just enough for a shrewd salesman to slip his foot in.
“None of my resorts are ever anything like the other ones. They’re all unique.”
“This is a family resort. We’re kind of hoping it always will be. Does that fit into your plans?”
To just say no would close the door irrevocably. He needed to meet with the Bakers. He needed them to trust and like him. He was certain he could make them see his vision for Moose Lake Lodge. Hikes. Canoe and kayak adventures. Rock climbing. The old retreat alive with activity and energy and excitement.
Whether that vision held children or not—it didn’t—was not something Joshua felt he had to reveal right now.
“I could fly up tomorrow,” Joshua said. “Just meet with me. I’m not quite the superficial cad the press makes me out to be. We’ll talk. You don’t have to agree to anything.”
“You might be making the trip for nothing.”
“I’m