Freefall

Was it that obvious how much he dreaded dealing with the thousand details awaiting his attention? Her invitation held undeniable appeal. It was far too tempting.

He glanced at the small mountain range of paperwork. “Thanks, but I’ve got to put some order to at least some of this chaos by Monday when I’m meeting with Peter’s attorney.”

She straightened from the desk, her lithe body unfurling like one of Manny Reyes’s flowers. “Okay. But we’ll save some popcorn for you if you change your mind.”

To his vast relief, she headed for the door.

“Thanks,” he said before she reached it. “Oh, and I’m, uh, sorry for jumping on you like that earlier.”

Her eyebrows lifted a little at his apology, then she offered him another swift, dazzling smile and walked out.

He gazed at the closed door for a long time after she left. For a moment there, she had reminded him so painfully of the woman he had known a decade ago. The girl, really. She hadn’t been much more than that, barely twenty.

He had been twenty-four, new to the Coast Guard and stationed in Juneau, Alaska. His two-week furlough happened to coincide with Ali’s birth so he’d flown to the peninsula to meet his new niece and spend a few days at Seal Point.

He had expected a quiet, uneventful trip home.

Instead, he’d found Sophie and had fallen for her like a Sikorsky with a bent rotor.

He hadn’t expected the instant and fierce attraction between him and the sister of his kid brother’s sweet new wife. But she had been completely irresistible—fresh and exuberant and intoxicating.

He had fought his attraction to her for days, reluctant to start what he knew could only be a fling. What else could it have been? She lived in New York, he’d been stationed in Alaska. Besides the five thousand miles between them, he wasn’t looking for a relationship, especially not with a twenty-year-old kid just beginning to explore the world.

But then he’d kissed her on a dawn-drenched cliff overlooking the Pacific and all the arguments he had spent days constructing collapsed like a sandcastle at high tide.

He had fallen for her hard, hadn’t been able to help himself.

He thought she had returned his feelings. She had kissed him and laughed with him and shared her dreams, her soul, her body.

And then she had left him without a word, only hours after they made love for the first and only time.

Tom jerked his mind away from that particular memory, of silky skin and soft sighs and eager kisses. He didn’t need to dwell on something so transitory, so ephemeral.

Their moments together had been one tiny slice of time. Something that obviously had little meaning to her or she wouldn’t have walked away so abruptly or offered excuse after excuse not to talk to him when he tried to contact her after she returned to New York.

He should be doing his best to keep a safe emotional distance between them, not dredging through the murky waters of their past.

It wouldn’t be easy, he was very much afraid. Not when something about Sophie Beaumont still called to him as strongly as ever.

Chapter 5

This wasn’t a bad way to spend a few hours.

Sophie leaned back in one of the deep leather sofas in the media room of Seal Point and tucked a brightly patterned quilt around Zoe. The child nestled closer on her lap but didn’t take her eyes off the animated Disney video showing on the huge plasma-screen TV.

The controversial swim had accomplished exactly what Sophie had hoped. The physical activity seemed to have relieved the restlessness that had made the children cranky and out of sorts.

Now they appeared relaxed and snug and were even laughing at some of the funnier bits of the movie.

As soon as she returned from speaking with Tom, Zoe had crawled into her lap while Ali and Zach had claimed the floor, propped on a mountain of pillows they’d pulled from a corner of the room.

The media room was the perfect retreat and looked as if it could easily accommodate a crowd of a dozen or more. The couch she and Zoe used was one of four arranged at angles on the sloped floor so occupants all had a clear view of the screen.

Shelly had designed the media room, Sophie was sure of it. It was exactly her twin’s style—cozy and comfortable and warm. A place designed for family and friends to enjoy time together.

She could feel her sister’s presence here in the plump pillows and the campy old movie posters framed on the wall and the fountain drink dispenser near the back wall.

Zoe cuddled closer and Sophie smiled and pressed a kiss to the little girl’s blond curls. Not a bad way to spend a few hours at all.

How often had Shelly done this with her children? she wondered. Snuggled with them and watched a movie on a rainy evening? It seemed routine enough to the children that she had to assume it had been a frequent enough occurrence.

Peter had enjoyed the Monterey social scene, she knew. But she imagined Shelly would have been much happier spending her evenings here with her children than out at cocktail parties and gallery openings.

She sighed, wondering how she would ever nurture the children as their mother had, as they deserved.

Shelly had been a natural at the whole motherhood thing. All she had ever wanted was a home and children of her own.

When they were kids, she had gone everywhere with a pitiful little ragtag cloth doll Sharon had picked up at a yard sale. Shelly would have even tried to slip it into her backpack to take to school if Sophie hadn’t caught her and talked her out of it.

That part of her sister had baffled her, she had to admit, since it was one she definitely hadn’t shared. Sophie hadn’t been the least interested in dolls or playing house or dressing up. She preferred climbing trees or roller-skating or lying on her stomach in the grass and watching a colony of ants bustle across a summer sidewalk.

She remembered thinking when they were kids how odd it was that she and Shelly could look so much alike but be so very different in their personalities.

The one passion they both shared was books. No matter where Sharon dragged them, the first thing she and her sister did was find a library and apply for brand-new cards.

She supposed a therapist would easily decipher that by escaping into books, both girls were looking for any way they could find to cope with the uncertainty and chaos of life with Sharon.

Maybe that’s why the idea of parenting three young, needy children terrified her so much, why she’d never really even considered having children of her own.

What did she know about being a loving mother? Her only frame of reference for a parent-child dynamic had been with Sharon. Not exactly the most healthy of relationships. She couldn’t bear the idea of ever treating a child with the kind of careless negligence she and her sister had endured.

She didn’t necessarily have to repeat old patterns, she reminded herself. Shelly hadn’t taken after their mother—she had found her own way of parenting.

And though Sophie hadn’t understood this part of her sister—this maternal, nurturing side—with this beautiful child warm and soft in her arms, she was beginning to get a glimpse into Shelly’s heart. In the past few days she had discovered a sweet kind of peace surrounding her when she was with the children, settling into her soul.

She could do this, could take over where Shelly had left off. It would be the biggest challenge of her life but she would do her very best for Ali and the twins. No matter what Tom thought of her.

Ah, Thomas. She sighed loudly enough that Zoe sent her a chiding look for distracting her from the movie.

“Sorry,” Sophie whispered. She tried to focus on the screen but her thoughts inevitably drifted back to him like loose kelp finding the shore. As foolish and futile as she knew her attraction to him was, she couldn’t seem to control it.

She couldn’t believe that even with an entire decade and a million frequent flier miles between them, there was still something—some undefinable, inexplicable spark—that buzzed and popped between them whenever they were together.

She had been intrigued by the thrilling power of it ten years ago when she had been too young and foolish to know any better. Now she was terrified by it.

He was older now and far more potent to her psyche and she had a feeling he could leave her heart broken and bloody if she let him.

As if conjured by her thoughts, the door suddenly opened and Thomas walked into the media room.

“Hi, Uncle Tommy,” Zach said from the floor. “Did you come to watch the movie?”

He grinned down at his nephew and Sophie groaned at her reaction, wondering how something as inconsequential as a simple smile toward a little boy could send her stomach dipping and fluttering like a bumpy landing on a 747.

“I tried as long as I could but I finally couldn’t resist the smell of that yummy popcorn. Is there any left?”

Sophie held out the huge bowl Mrs. Cope had popped. “Plenty. Sit down and watch.”

She expected him to take one of the other three couches in the room but instead he surprised her by sitting next to her and Zoe. She swallowed hard, trying fiercely not to notice the distinctive, tantalizing scent of him that reached her even through the buttery aroma of the popcorn.

He favored the same aftershave he had used a decade ago, some undoubtedly expensive mix of leather, citrus and some other woodsy scent she couldn’t identify. Juniper, maybe, or cedar. She wasn’t any good at figuring out fragrances; she only knew that once she had smelled that same cologne in a Nice market and had stood at that stall for what felt like hours, her nose in the vial and her mind reliving every incredible second on that warm Seal Point beach with him.

She wanted to close her eyes and just savor that smell and the heat of him next to her but she forced herself to keep them rigidly open.

After a moment, Zoe abandoned her and climbed into her uncle’s lap. He drew her close and settled deeper into the sofa while Sophie tried not to let it bother her.

The children naturally felt closer to Tom—he lived in the area and saw them far more frequently than she did. They shared a bond she would have to earn. Still, it smarted, she had to admit.

With effort, she put away her hurt and tried to focus on the movie. After a few moments she reached for a handful of popcorn in the bowl next to her on the couch. By some quirk of fate, Tom reached for a handful of his own at exactly the same time.

Their fingers brushed inside the bowl and a quick spark sizzled between them. Her gaze flew to his and she found him watching her, raw hunger in his eyes.

She had a sudden, almost painful awareness of her blood pulsing through her veins, of her lungs slowly working to draw air, of her body stirring to life.

She wasn’t sure how long her gaze stayed locked with his, the movie and the popcorn and the children forgotten. Suddenly she was twenty again, young and foolish, swallowed up by that wild, terrible flush of first love.

Some loud noise in the movie jerked her back to the present and her surroundings and she quickly looked back at the screen with a fierce attempt at concentration that she was sure fooled no one.

“Aunt Sophie, look! I went all the way to the end of the driveway and didn’t fall down once!”

She smiled at the pride in Zach’s voice. “You’re doing great! I knew you could do it.”

“And me too,” Zoe chimed in, still tightly clutching Sophie’s hand as if she’d be sucked away by the lightest of breezes if she dared let go. “I can skate, too.”

Sophie wobbled a little on the pair of inline skates she had found jumbled together in a box tucked into a closet of the children’s big playroom. “You’re both fantastic. I would have fallen on my behind a dozen times if you weren’t holding me up.”

Zoe squeezed her hand even more tightly, nearly cutting off her circulation. “I won’t let go, I promise.”

“Good.” Sophie tried not to wince at her aching fingers and headed back down the driveway.

Though the weather was still cool, the four of them were enjoying a temporary break in the clouds to play on the curved asphalt driveway at Seal Point. It was the perfect surface for learning to skate, as silky smooth as sea-polished stone.

All day she had tried to keep them busy with one activity after another. She was learning distraction was important to the children in these first painful days of trying to cope with the loss of their parents.

Even though their grief was always present—like the low murmur of the sea below them through the trees—the children were beginning to smile a little more often. It would be a long, painful process, she knew, but they were headed on the right path.

She watched Zach and Ali skate ahead of them, their arms waving wildly to help them keep their balance. She would have liked to photograph all of them right here, with their faces rosy and the afternoon sun slanting through the coastal pines to brush their hair gold.

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