Temporary Father

“I can’t take money from you.” Nor could she look at him. She fished the jersey out and put it in the pile with Eli’s dark-colored sweatshirts. “I have my own two feet to stand on.”

“Why do I have money if not to help my family?”

Touched by the offer of his last dime, she hugged him before she realized he might wonder why. “Thanks, but I can’t. You know how it is. Campbell thinks steady work is a bad habit. He’s no example to our son. I have to get a business loan from someone who doesn’t love me.” She piled her jeans and Eli’s on the end of the table and then started loading light colors into the wash. “But I was thinking…” She wouldn’t be human if she couldn’t see safety in a venture capitalist. “Is Aidan Nikolas here to do a deal with you?”

“With me?” He stared at her, and then he looked away. He was hiding something, as surely as Eli. “What could Aidan do for me?”

She watched detergent spin into the water. “Good.”

“Good, what?”

“Good that he’s not here because of your business.” Dark eyes in a pale face floated into her memory. He could save her lodge, with an amount that would be nothing to him. “Jonathan Barr only wants to offer me enough to rebuild the lodge as it was. I told him I wanted to make improvements so that families would come instead of just fishermen. He thinks I won’t be able to repay it.” She shut the washer lid, trying to hide her frustration. “My typical visitor will continue to be a guy who can’t stay long and won’t pay much for the bare essentials. I have to get ahead, Van.”

He touched her arm. Did she imagine the unease in his eyes? “That’s why you’re glad Aidan’s not here to work with me?”

“I’d like to ask him for—”

“No, Beth. Didn’t you see he’s been sick?”

“What are you talking about?” His wife had died a year ago. She vaguely remembered that, but the news hadn’t mentioned anything about him except his successes. “I have to ask for help.” She opened the utility closet and took out a broom to sweep grass that had fallen from Eli’s jeans onto the tile floor. “He’s my match made in heaven. I need investment. He helps businesses that can’t make it on their own.”

“He takes those businesses over. He doesn’t give people money and expect nothing in return.”

“I’ll pay him back. You’ve seen my projections.” Her spreadsheets were an inch thick. “What would he want with a lodge in Honesty, Virginia?”

“That was my next question. Any small return you can offer him isn’t worth his effort. He looks for profit, not the golden glow of having been generous.”

She stared at her brother, hoping he wasn’t speaking from experience. “I just have to make him care. It takes devotion to make a business work. And determination. I have both.”

Van got a dustpan and held it for her. “When did you start believing in fairy tales?”

“Since my banker let me down. I need a fairy godmother, and don’t try to talk me out of it. If he’s not here to work with you, you’re too late and I’m too desperate.”

“He had a heart attack, Beth.” Van dumped the dustpan into the wastebasket and took the broom from her. “Aidan came here to recuperate. Do you want to kill him?”

CHAPTER TWO

“KILL HIM? He’s in his early forties.” Returning to the kitchen, she glanced toward the cottage. “Although he was coughing when I ran into him.”

“Coughing?” Van picked up newspapers from the counter and put them in the recycling box. “I never heard of that as a heart attack symptom.”

She went to the fridge and took out a bottled water, which she offered her brother. He shook his head so she opened it herself. “No problem, then. I’ll call him in the morning and make an appointment to present my business plan.”

“No, you won’t. He doesn’t want his shareholders to know what’s happened until he’s ready to tell them. He doesn’t want the press telling them so I offered him the cottage.”

“Are you saying you think I’d call the papers?”

“Beth, listen to me. Don’t bother Aidan Nikolas. You are not a woman who can risk another person’s health and be okay with it later.”

Damn him. “I want to be that woman.” She leaned into the back stairs and took a deep breath, using it to make her voice seem normal. “Eli?”

“Okay, Mom—I’ll take a shower,” he promised in the snarl of a stranger. Uneasily, Beth let his temper pass.

Van gestured toward the second floor. “Is that why you’re desperate?”

“He’s not himself. He ran away to live with Campbell after the fire, and he’s smart enough to sense Campbell was glad when I brought him home.”

“You really are scared.” With both hands on her shoulders, Van steered her into the family room, switching to big-brother mode. “Tell me exactly what Jonathan Barr said today.”

Beth sat on the sofa. In front of her, on a tufted, square ottoman, a pile of towels and linens she’d washed after dinner waited. She picked up a towel, her hands actually shaking.

“I’ve told you before, you don’t have to do laundry.”

“And I’m telling you again, I don’t love housework, but Mrs. Carleton has enough to do without cleaning up after Eli and me.”

Van shook his head. “Why won’t you let anyone help you?”

“You mean you? You’ve helped me all my life. I can do this myself, if someone will just take a chance that I’ve done my projections correctly.”

“But that won’t be Jonathan Barr?”

“He said I want too much money and I’m not a good risk.”

“His reasoning?”

When he was upset, Van tended to talk to people as if he were querying computer files.

“I should have known Campbell hadn’t paid the insurance, and I can’t argue with him there. I thought the divorce decree required him to pay it.” She took out her anger on the towel, slamming it into folds. “What made me think he’d meet one responsibility?”

“Let me give you the money,” Van said. “Eli will never have to know unless you tell him.”

“No,” she said so sharply Van noticed. She couldn’t let him know what Jonathan Barr had divulged. “I can’t.”

“You won’t, and you want me to let you and Eli suffer because you’re too proud to take a loan from someone who loves you.”

She shook her head, ruefully, to prove it didn’t matter when it most definitely did. “Oh, I’m hot for a handout.” She folded another towel. “But for Eli, I have to do this the responsible way.”

“Pride won’t feed you.”

“Or clothe us, but you’re my brother, not my guardian angel.”

She almost asked him if Jonathan Barr had been right, but she stopped herself in time. Van wouldn’t tell her the truth. To him, he was still eighteen, and she was ten, and their parents had just died, leaving her his responsibility.

“I’d expect you to pay me back,” he said.

“It’s not going to happen.” Avoiding his gaze, she went for a sheet. There was Eli’s father—refusing to take part in raising his own child—and her brother—trying to help when helping might hurt him. She had to consider asking Aidan Nikolas. “What burns me is Barr, talking at me as if I were still in kindergarten. Eight years of making the lodge pay counts for nothing.”

“With him. I know you’re good for the money.”

“Then why do you care if I ask Aidan Nikolas to help?”

“I told you he’s here to rest.”

“The entrepreneur who runs small businesses with a single thought, chases new opportunities with steel will? The guy who manages to hide his personal life from twenty-first-century paparazzi?” She stood to finish the sheet. “Don’t you think he can protect himself?”

Van looked troubled. She tried to remember him before he’d taken the world on his shoulders. First, he’d had to protect her long enough for her to reach adulthood. Then his marriage had ended because of his guilt after his wife had been attacked while he’d been away on a business trip. She’d like to relieve Van of his sense of duty toward her and her son.

“I don’t intend to chase the man around his desk—just present my business plan.”

“You won’t, because it might hurt him.”

“I’m not sure I can afford to be noble.”

Van’s eyes, green like their father’s, were so serious she couldn’t look away. “Who are you? And what have you done with my sister?”

She smoothed the edges of one towel. “I’m divorced and a single mom.” She started folding another. “I own a lodge that barely qualifies as rubble, and I’m on the edge of bankruptcy. My son is acting odd, and a guy who has money to invest just landed on your doorstep.”

Van took a pillowcase off the pile of linens and started to fold it. His silence troubled her more than his warnings.

“Are you sure he’s sick? Aidan, I mean? Mr. Nikolas.” Her skin felt too warm. She stared at her hands, trying to imagine tall, dark and thriving Aidan Nikolas as an invalid.

Van stood. “It was a minor heart attack, but he’s supposed to change the way he lives.”

She added another folded towel to the tottering stack, mostly to avoid her brother’s watchful eyes. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, and she’d sensed a vulnerability that had seemed uncharacteristic in a man like Aidan.

How long had it been since a man had made her want to know anything about him other than his fishing habits? “I don’t want to cause more problems for your friend, but I need money.”

Van’s big-brother frustration covered her like a fog. “If only you’d checked on that policy,” he finally choked out—and she realized Jonathan Barr must be right about Van’s financial trouble. Van had never made her feel bad about her mistakes. She’d learned at his knee to do what she could to mend and move on.

“Deep down where it doesn’t take any effort, Campbell loves his son,” Beth said. “How could I guess he’d screw us?”

“He screwed you in every way a man could, and then he started screwing his office manager.”

She crossed her arms. She’d felt different talking to Aidan, more feminine, stronger, because someone as responsible and successful as he had been interested. Though she lived with the constant companionship of anxiety and distraction, she was still a woman. She wasn’t wrong about the way Aidan had looked at her.

But he didn’t know her son was troubled and her business needed financial CPR. Aidan Nikolas wouldn’t waste another second of his high-powered life on a woman with her problems. She’d learned that women who made bad decisions had to fight for respect when they tried to start over.

“I don’t care what Campbell did.”

“If you were a little more honest with Eli, maybe he’d stop running to Campbell and making things worse for himself.”

“Honest? I had the man arrested for nonsupport and I turned him into some sort of Robin Hood figure for our son. He thinks Campbell’s the victim. Campbell even had him convinced they could have shared that cheesy seventies superstud apartment after the fire if I hadn’t dragged him away.”

“Let him stay a few weeks and see what happens. Campbell’s too busy—” Her brother stopped as if any truth about her ex-husband could still hurt her. “He would have lived off the perks of being a high school football star his whole life if he hadn’t gotten you pregnant. He won’t want to take care of Eli.” Van added the towel that knocked over the pile, which they both restacked into two columns. “Eli’s eleven years old. He has to face the truth about his father.”

“Not if it makes him more depressed.” She stood up to fold a fitted sheet. “How serious is a minor heart attack?”

“Would Aidan let a doctor maroon him in the Virginia countryside if he had a choice?”

“Would he show up just when I need him if I wasn’t supposed to—”

“Kill him? A second attack could be massive.”

“How long is he staying?”

“You think you’re helping if you give him a few days’ rest before you send him back to the hospital?”

“I have a doctor’s appointment myself tomorrow. While I’m quizzing Brent about what might be wrong with Eli, I’ll ask him if offering Aidan Nikolas a business opportunity could kill him.”

“I’m sure Brent Jacobs is dying to consult with you on the health of every citizen in Honesty.”

She made a face only a brother deserved.

BRIGHT AND EARLY the next morning, Beth dressed and then went downstairs to pour cereal for Eli. Mrs. Carleton called while she was slicing strawberries to say her sister was sick and she’d be in D.C. for the day. Beth left the berries in a sealed container beside Eli’s bowl. Then she wrote a note, telling him she’d be back by noon and that the housekeeper wasn’t coming.

Even though she’d probably be back before he climbed out of bed.

A quick drive across rolling country lanes, a turn onto a tree-bordered bypass road, and a bridge over the dark green lake that had been part of her livelihood, and she reached town—kind of sleepy on a spring break Monday morning.

The hospital, funded by one of the universities in Washington, D.C., had built towers, like fingers above the trees around the old-town buildings. Her childhood friend, Brent Jacobs, kept an office in one of the complexes connected to the hospital by glass-covered walkways. Beth parked in a lot and hurried to make her early appointment.

In the end, she had to wait. She dove into a cooking magazine. Eli might make it out of bed before she got home after all. A lousy cook, she was trying to soak up instructions for raisin-specked, honey-drizzled bread pudding when she was called to the treatment room.

She recognized one of Brent’s colleagues in the room across from hers. And she recognized the man who said, “Come on” with a force Eli could hardly have matched. “Two more weeks? You gotta be kidding me.”

The receptionist pulled Aidan Nikolas’s door closed. “Dr. Vining always forgets to close the door after he looks over results, and heart patients rarely want to hear they have to take it easy a couple more weeks.”

Too busy silently swearing to speak, Beth only nodded. She followed the other woman inside and nodded again at instructions to take off her clothing and put on a paper gown.

She couldn’t ask a sick man to work on her behalf.

She donned the gown, and for the first time in her life, was too preoccupied to be nervous.

THE LAST PERSON Aidan wanted to see was standing outside a sporting goods shop beside the pharmacy where he had to refill his prescription for beta blockers. He stuffed the medication, bag and all, into his jeans pocket.

“Beth,” he said, involuntarily.

She turned, her face flushed, her eyes focusing anywhere but on him. She knew—somehow.

Small towns. Gossip through osmosis.

He moved to stand beside her. “Skateboarding?” he asked, as he studied the colorful boards. “I never realized they didn’t come all in one piece.” Sets of wheels gleamed as they never would after their first use.

“Me, either, until my son started skating.” Beth lifted her hand to the height of a black board, printed with a bulky, dark green cartoon character in midleap. “This part is the deck.”

“Are you buying it? You know you work too much when you don’t recognize cartoons.”

“I can’t affor—” She stopped on a deep breath. “Eli had one something like that before the fire.” She looked him up and down and stepped back. “I need to go home.”

“Let me take you to lunch.” What had she seen? Weakness? Women normally wanted to spend time with him. For once, he’d make time to linger.

“It’s barely after eight,” she said.

“Oh.” His rage at the continued restrictions returned. She followed his hand as he shoved the medicine deeper into his pocket.

“And Eli’s on spring break. I scheduled my—an appointment I had—early so I could spend the day with him.”

“Okay.”

“Come up later, though. Join us for hot dogs or something. Mrs. Carleton—she’s Van’s housekeeper—she’s off today so we’re fending for ourselves.”

There was a dare in her tone. “I might do that.” She couldn’t scare him with hot dogs and family fun. He loved the simple stuff.

The frown between her eyebrows told him he’d read her right. “You probably aren’t supposed to eat junk food,” she said.

He took his hand out of his pocket. “Van told you?”

“About the heart attack.” She pushed her finger around the loose collar of her shirt. “He mentioned you’d had a minor problem.” She made a huge production of looking at her own watch. “I need to get home. Nice to see you again. Come on up if you get the time. I always make a salad for myself when Van and Eli pig out on the bad stuff.”

A MAN—a decent man, no less—had asked her to lunch. By herself. Not because he wanted something from Van, or he taught her rowdy son Social Studies and they needed to brainstorm “solutions” to Eli’s behavior.

She’d had to say no. With her heart beating near the back of her throat, she glanced back down the sidewalk. Aidan had already gone. Good.

Thinking he might be attracted was one thing. Feeling attracted to him was exciting because she hadn’t cared for any man in—who knew how long?

She’d forgotten the thrill of a caught breath, the tingle of flushing skin, the excitement of a maybe.

But Aidan Nikolas was used to women with no ties except to their clothing bills. She’d already made enough mistakes in her life.

Falling for a handsome, successful man in town only until he felt healthy again would be par for the course for a woman who’d lost her heart and too many years to the captain of the high school football team.

Eli was her responsibility, Eli with his moods and needs and their lack of a home to call their own. So why had she invited Aidan to join them in a hot-dog fest?

She wiped her palm across her forehead. Had the temperature grown warmer today, or had she backed herself into a hot corner? Lunch would be safe, with Eli and Van to keep an eye on her. Aidan, way out of her league, would see she had other priorities.

She took her phone out of her purse and dialed Van’s home number. In a second, her son answered, but she could tell his mind was elsewhere. He must be slaying aliens.

“Hey, buddy,” she said.

“Can’t talk, Mom.”

Alien massacres for sure. “I asked Uncle Van’s friend over for lunch, and I wanted to warn you guys. Will you let your uncle know?”

“I’m not sure where he is.” His movement made Van’s leather sofa grumble. “I think I hear him in his office. He might be on the phone, too. I’ll tell him if he comes out.”

“Good enough. See you in a little while.”

“Okay.” He started to hang up. The phone hit the receiver, but then he was talking again. “Mom, did you go by Gross’s Sporting Goods?”

Her heart broke. She lied to her son because she couldn’t stand telling him no again. “I forgot you wanted me to, son. Maybe we can look together sometime this week.”

“It doesn’t matter. We can’t afford what I want anyway.”

She was failing her son, and all avenues of escape seemed to be disappearing. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Mom?”

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She gritted her teeth. “It’s normal to be upset you can’t have what you want.”

“I understand why, though.”

Something was wrong. All the more reason not to play sighs-and-smiles with her temporary neighbor.

AIDAN SKIPPED the hot-dog fest. Not that he didn’t want hot dogs or another few minutes with the first woman who’d made him feel alive in eighteen months.

At around dinnertime, he’d stood on the weathered gray deck of the cottage, scenting the delicious aroma of a grill at work—wanting to go—but Beth obviously hadn’t wanted him to show up.

In the end, he’d lost himself in the business channels on the satellite, pretending that catching up on the news he’d missed was just as much fun. Which probably explained why he’d fallen into a deep sleep on the fat, blue-and-white plaid sofa.

Something thudded into the door a little after six in the morning. Aidan’s eyes opened and he gasped a deep breath. He rolled his head on a sofa cushion, not recognizing the tick of the clock, the rough scratch of the upholstery or the deep, thick silence of no-one-else-at-home.

He’d hardly slept since the heart attack. Not that he was avoiding Madeline’s accusing face in his dreams. He did try to sleep.

He pulled on sweats and padded to the front door. Outside, The Honesty Sentinel lay on the rug. He picked it up, sliding it out of its plastic sleeve.

His father was the one who’d persuaded the nurses to hide newspapers from him. Aidan had put his foot down the day his mother had tried have his television removed. No CNN? No CNBC? She and his father had retired from running the business eight years ago, but they still kept in touch with the business world.

She was trying so hard to cut him off from it, she must want him dead.

He caught up on the print news of the past ten days, licking his lips every so often in a craving for coffee. The hospital staff had cut him back to one cup a day.

After a caffeine headache that had lasted the first half of his hospital stay, he anticipated the lone, large, rich cup. Every lunchtime, he sipped, making the treat last.

Putting that boon off took all his concentration. He checked his watch. At seven on a Tuesday morning, his mother would be up, also scouting for coffee before she went to the office. He dialed, and a severe British voice answered.

“I’m not sure Mrs. Nikolas is available. May I deliver a message for you to your mother?”

“Tell her she won’t avoid my questions about the business by pretending she’s asleep.”

“Oh, let me have it, Simon.” His mother’s impatience stabbed at the quiet. “You’re supposed to be resting, Aidan.”

“What goes on with the Skyliner deal? It’s not in the papers.”

“How’d you get a newspaper?”

“Mother, I ran Nikolas Enterprises by myself until—” Even the memory of that day made him feel mortal. “Tell me what’s happening. Dragonlawn—have they agreed to our terms? I want to start R&D on the redesign of their residential lawn mower. That’ll be a quick profit.”

“Aidan, I cannot listen to this. Put down the newspaper. Turn off your TV. Lay off the coffee, and go for a walk.”

“I haven’t touched caffeine, and obviously you haven’t, either. Tell me what’s going on or I’ll browbeat the staff into filling me in.”

“You’d have to fire them. Your father and I have warned everyone in the building they’re not to worry you about work.”

“I’m bored out of my mind.” He tightened his grip on the phone. “If somebody doesn’t tell me what’s happening, I’ll fire the whole damn company and start over with loyal associates.”

“I’m sure they’ll be terrified. God knows I am.” His mother turned away from the phone. “Thank you, Simon.” She sipped loudly in Aidan’s ear. “Ahh, that’s better. Look, we’re fine. Work’s going well. I’ll let you know if your empire starts to crumble.”

“Let me talk to Dad.”

“Sorry. He’s already headed to the car.”

“Tell him to call me on his cell.”

“No.”

“No?”

“And I’ll tell him not to answer if you call. Between Madeline and a heart attack, we’ve been on the verge of losing you for the past year. I’m tired of being afraid, and I don’t care that you’re forty-two. You’re still my child. Have a good day, darling.”

Aidan pressed his fist to the granite counter. The expensive bag of coffee beans he’d stashed in the cupboard above the fridge sang a siren’s song. Bourbon would be even better.

Anything to dull the humiliation. He saw his car keys on the table. There must be a SuperComputer store in town.

They sold laptops.

SMOKE. Eli kept smelling smoke. In his hair, on his shirt and his jeans. Standing in the tall grass at the edge of his uncle’s yard, he slapped at his clothes and his head. The smoke followed him like a shadow. It wouldn’t leave him alone.

No one else ever noticed because it wasn’t real.

He smelled it because he felt guilty—and that scared him bad.

Lucy jumped up, whining as she clawed at his arm. He pointed toward the edge of the lake where the grass grew taller. That shouldn’t stop a Lab. “Your ball is over there.”