An Unlikely Father

Ethan looked at his watch. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. I’m only going to give them another few minutes.”

“I guess I’ll go on home, then,” Jack said. “You going to the hotel?”

For some reason, Ethan looked at Helen as if she could contribute something to his answer. “I think I’ll wait out here a little longer,” he said. “Tell Claire hi for me.”

“Will do.” Jack started to walk away. “Oh, by the way, Helen, Claire said if I saw you, I should remind you about Thanksgiving dinner. She’s planning to cook up a feast, and obviously she’s counting on you and Finn to come.”

Thanksgiving? Right now, the holidays were the furthest thing from Helen’s mind. “When is it?”

“Same as always, I suppose,” Jack said. “Fourth Thursday of November.”

“Oh, right. And what’s today?”

Jack chuckled. “The third Thursday. Gives you a week to mark the calendar.”

He said goodbye to Ethan and headed toward his vehicle. And Helen thought how lucky Claire was to have found someone like Jack. Solid. Dependable. And very rare.

After a moment, she turned toward Ethan. “Good luck with getting that rental car delivered. In a way, I feel somewhat responsible for you standing out here waiting for it.”

He smiled. “No offense, Helen, but once the new car arrives, I’m going to stay as far away from that truck of yours as I can.”

“No offense taken.” They stood without talking in the gloomy silence of a battlefield littered with beer cans. Helen figured she ought to start picking up the mess she’d created, but before she took a step, she heard the subtle squeak of the foam restaurant container.

Ethan held it out to her. “Do you like chocolate cake?”

ETHAN DIDN’T VERY often feel as if he walked a thin line between boardroom executive and idiot, but that’s exactly how he felt right now. What was he doing, standing here with a peace offering for a woman who’d been doing her best in the last two days to destroy two perfectly fine modes of transportation?

She peered over the edge of the box. “You’re giving me your dessert?”

He shrugged an indifference he didn’t feel and said, “Seemed like the quickest way to soothe the angry beast. I have to wait out here for my car. You’re here, too, and there are still a few cans in that trash bin.”

Her lips twitched. He hoped it was a hint of a smile and not the beginning of a snarl. And then she said something that in his experience was a predictably female reaction. “I’d do most anything for chocolate.” She stuck her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans and nodded down the street. “Come on. I’m not eating standing up.”

He followed her a block to where her Suburban was parked. She stepped up on the front bumper, turned around and sat on the truck. He noticed a slash of flesh through a slit in the knee of her denims. She patted the hood beside her and said, “There’s room.”

He looked at the seriously faded steel, taking in the gritty remains of road dirt, and, considering her occupation, who knew what else, and stared down at his perfectly pressed beige Dockers. And he remembered that during his tour of Heron Point today he hadn’t seen a business that was essential to a Manhattan male’s lifestyle—a dry-cleaning establishment.

She must have correctly interpreted his reluctance because she sort of smiled again and then gripped the edge of her shirt cuff and wiped a small circle beside her. “Don’t worry, Princeton,” she said. “In all my years in Heron Point, I don’t recall anyone ever catching something from the hood of a truck.”

Princeton? He thought about correcting her and saying he was a Harvard man, but didn’t think that would earn him any points. And that’s what he was here for, after all—to establish a good working relationship with the locals. For some reason, his father, head of Anderson Enterprises, had decided to invest in this quirky Florida island by buying an old, run-down resort, and he’d sent his son to see that the renovations went smoothly.

It helped that Archie Anderson’s chief security officer, Jack Hogan, had been in town a month longer than Ethan and had become something of a superhero to the two thousand people who lived here. In fact, Jack had even decided to stay once he’d fallen for the town’s mayor. But Ethan needed to relate to these people on his own, one at a time, if he had to, and despite the way he and Helen had met, he didn’t mind starting with her first.

He placed the toe of his Italian loafer on the bumper, hoisted himself up to the hood, and admitted to a grudging admiration of the old truck. The metal didn’t even groan when he sat his clean chino-covered posterior on top of it.

He handed the box to Helen. She took out the fork, poked through a quarter inch of creamy icing and brought up a wedge of cake to her mouth. While she chewed, she handed him the utensil. “There’s only one fork,” she managed to say. “I can always light a match and sterilize it between bites.”

Any sympathy he’d begun to feel for this teary-eyed woman who’d dropped a can in front of Jack like a guilty delinquent vanished. Helen Sweeney was about as vulnerable as a barracuda. And just as alien to a Manhattan guy who’d never been closer to a fish than the city aquarium. Unfortunately, what was unfamiliar was almost always fascinating, as well. And Ethan couldn’t take his eyes off Helen’s smart mouth as she chased a trail of frosting with the tip of her tongue.

“Never mind,” he said, taking the fork and cutting a piece of cake for himself. He swallowed, licked the fork and handed it back to her. “See? I can be as daring as the next guy.”

She huffed, dug into the dessert again, and, quite unexpectedly, Ethan found himself wondering what it would be like to share more than a plastic fork with this woman.

CHAPTER THREE

FINN WAS ALREADY in the kitchen at six o’clock the next morning when Helen padded in on bare feet. He looked up at her and frowned. “What time you get in last night?”

“A little before eleven. I had a few janitorial services to perform in town, but I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

He gave her a questioning stare before wheeling to the kitchen table with a quart of milk. “I’ve got your cereal and toast ready. I’ll cut up some fruit.”

“Thanks, but mostly I want coffee.” She responded to a scratching on the screen door and went to let the dog in. The Labrador lumbered into the room, his arthritic back leg stiff as it always was in the mornings. “Did you give Andy his pill?” she asked her father.

“Not yet, but there’s a chunk of liverwurst on the counter.”

Helen stuffed a large pain pill into the meat and molded a sort of liverwurst cocoon around it. Andy walked over to her, opened his mouth and accepted the treat without being coaxed. Helen bent down and kissed the top of his golden head. “That’ll get you through another twenty-four hours, big guy,” she said.

“I’ll fix you some lunch to take with you,” Finn offered.

Helen shook her head. Every time she had a charter, Finn asked her if he could fix her a lunch. And almost every time, she said no. “I can’t eat when I’m out there, Pop. You know that. I’ll eat when I get back.”

“I know what you say, but you should take a sandwich along just in case.”

She poured herself a mug of coffee and sat. “Look, Pop, you know what it’s like. I’m going to rig lines, cut mullet and bait hooks for four hours. It’s not all that conducive to a hearty appetite.”

“No, I guess not. Eat your breakfast.”

She stared at two bars of shredded wheat floating in a sea of milk. Her stomach turned over. Surely she wasn’t going to suffer from morning sickness. Life couldn’t be that cruel. She pushed aside a glass of orange juice in favor of a small bite of cantaloupe. It settled in her digestive tract without much of a revolution and gave her courage to try the cereal. She knew she had to eat. She wouldn’t see food again until after noon.

“How many are going out today?” Finn asked.

“Six. A group of accountants from Tampa.” She saw a glimmer in Finn’s eyes and quickly worked to extinguish it before he attempted a matchmaking scheme. “Never mind. I saw a couple of them last night in the Lionheart. Balding and overweight.”

“You can’t blame me for hoping.” He sipped his own coffee. “I heard, you know.”

Her gaze snapped to his and panic gripped her. Just what had he heard? The really big news nobody knew but her and Donny? “Oh, yeah, heard what?”

“About Donny leaving.”

She relaxed, spooned up another piece of cereal.

“Pet was over last night,” Finn continued. “She told me the rat left the Lionheart without even telling you goodbye.”

The efficiency of Heron Point’s gossip trail didn’t surprise Helen. Claire’s aunt Pet had been Finn’s special companion for six years. She worked in a café in town and heard every bit of news that circulated around the small community. Besides that, she claimed to have psychic abilities, a talent that Helen had witnessed on more than one occasion. Pet probably knew about Donny leaving town before he’d thrown the first pair of socks into a suitcase. “It’s certainly no secret,” she said, adding to herself that she’d better avoid Pet or this pregnancy might register on a psychic radar screen.

“I’m sorry, Helen. I know you fancied yourself having some sort of future with that guy. But I knew he was bad news.”

She concentrated on a slice of toast which she’d already smothered with three layers of jelly. “So you told me—many times.”

“Ha! As if I can tell you anything. But I keep trying, at least. What kind of job is singing, anyway? Fly-by-night if you ask me.”

“With Donny it’s more like fly-by-day, but it doesn’t matter. You won’t catch me extolling his virtues any longer. I’m not sure he ever had any in the first place.”

“So why did he take off?” Finn asked. “Did you and him have a fight?”

She pressed a hand over her stomach, a gesture she’d repeated quite often the last twenty-four hours. “Actually, no. I think Donny was finding Heron Point a little too crowded.”

“Too crowded? What the hell’s wrong with that man? We’ve got room to breathe in this town. This is a paradise for anyone who doesn’t like cramped spaces.”

Helen smirked. “Yeah, well for some men, even the addition of one more person can be intimidating.”

Finn was silent a moment. “I guess I know what he means there. I’ve been thinking about the invasion of the Anderson clan myself. First, Jack Hogan…”

Helen paused, her spoon hanging from her hand. “You still don’t like Jack?”

“I don’t want to, but he’s okay when you get to know him. I guess I’ll have to tolerate him living here.”

“Now that he’s chief of police, I suppose that’s very generous of you. I think he might arrest you if you tried to have him tarred and feathered.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “But that other one, the fella that knocked the headlight out of the truck…”

Helen dropped the spoon against the side of her bowl but didn’t bother correcting Finn’s version of the accident. “What about him?”

“He’s an Anderson. That’s a whole different story.”

She leaned forward. “You know, Pop, if you ever hope to get any sympathy from me about this whole secretive thing you’ve got against Anderson Enterprises, you’ve got to give me a little more to go on. I talked to Ethan Anderson awhile last night. He’s not so bad. He’s kind of nice and polite. And cultured. He’s not like the men around here. He cares about more than the arrival of the next beer truck.”

Finn propped his elbows on the table and stared at her over his clasped hands. “You’re not getting any ideas about him, are you? I can’t see my daughter with an Anderson.”

She practically laughed out loud. “Yeah, Pop, I’m just his type. I plan on letting him sweep me off my feet and whisk me out of this town with diamonds on my fingers.”

“Don’t even talk like that, Helen. I know I don’t have much control over what you do, but I’d fight to my last breath to keep you out of the clutches of an Anderson.”

She stood and carried her dishes to the sink. “For heaven’s sake, Pop, will you please tell me what this is about? I can’t even imagine how you know these people.”

He wheeled away from the table. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you if you’ve got your sights set on this fella.”

“I do not have my sights set on him! Nothing could be further from reality than me with Ethan Anderson.”

“Well, good.”

“So you’ll tell me?”

“We’ll see.”

“Fine, but not today. I’ve got a lot on my mind that requires a good bit of thinking. As curious as I am about this little intrigue of yours, I’ve got my own problems to take care of for now. Not to mention six accountants from Tampa.”

Finn looked out the door to the porch. “Here comes Rusty. He’s a good boy. Wish he was more your age.”

“You’re hopeless.” Helen waved out the door to the kid who served as her mate on the charters. “Be right out, Rusty. You can check the rigging on the lines.” She kissed Finn on his forehead. “Is there anything you need before I go?”

“I’m good.”

“Okay, but here’s some advice. If you’re so anxious to matchmake, why don’t you think about working on yourself? Pet’s a fine woman, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed. Quit pushing me.”

“Ditto for me.” Helen scratched Andy behind his ears, grabbed her coffee and her heavy-duty sneakers and headed out the back door.

“Don’t forget to collect from those bean counters ahead of time,” Finn called after her. “They’re obsessed about getting their money’s worth. I don’t want them reneging if they don’t catch anything.”

“Right.” Helen walked toward the Finn Catcher. It was true what she’d told Finn. She had some serious thinking to do. Three or four charters a week barely kept the business in the black. She certainly couldn’t support another mouth on what she currently brought in. And what if she couldn’t keep up the strenuous work demanded of her when she was in the last months of the pregnancy? And what about when the baby was born? What would she do with an infant if she had to spend hours every day out in the Gulf? Leave it with a sixty-eight-year-old man in a wheelchair who nodded off when the wind changed direction?

The only way she could rationalize having this baby was if the charter business suddenly picked up. And that wasn’t likely to happen. Things hadn’t changed in Heron Point since she’d been born, except to maybe get worse.

Unless they were about to change now….

Helen hopped onto the boat deck. She stared out over the Gulf while Rusty chattered about tackle and bait, wind speed, and all the things that should have mattered this morning but suddenly didn’t. Her thoughts were on Ethan Anderson. Everybody in town seemed to think the reopening of Dolphin Run, and Ethan and his father were the answers to Heron Point’s financial problems. But as Helen watched a van pull up in front of the cottage and six men with large-brimmed hats and coolers get out, she wondered if Ethan could be the answer to hers.

ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Helen drove into town and parked near the Wear It Again shop on Island Avenue. The weekend crowd had started to pick up as it did every Friday. Heron Point’s quirky, anything-goes lifestyle, great seafood restaurants and unique shoreline drew visitors to the island in large numbers for a couple of days of kicking back.

Like Helen with her fishing charters, the artists and gallery owners with establishments on Island Avenue made their living from the tourists. While the two-day influx of population often cramped the styles of the permanent residents, everybody recognized that weekenders were the lifeblood of the community.

Helen looked up and down the avenue. As usual for a Friday, sale signs had appeared in shop windows, and merchandise dotted the sidewalks in pleasing displays. One of her own posters advertising Finn Catcher Charters sat in the window of Wear It Again, the vintage clothing store owned by Helen’s friend and Heron Point’s mayor, Claire Betancourt.

Helen stepped inside the shop to the welcoming tinkle of dolphin chimes. Claire’s nine-year-old daughter, Jane, scampered to the door, her bright brown eyes peering out from under the brim of a great straw hat laden with silk flowers. She twirled around in a circle. “Hi, Helen, what do you think?”

Helen put a finger over her mouth and stared pensively. “Positively divine, dahling. You’ve been invited to tea, have you?”

Jane giggled. “No. For pizza. Jack’s taking us later.”

“Even better.” Helen glanced around the shop. “Is your mom here?”

“You bet,” Claire called from the entrance to the dressing rooms. Stylish as always, her honey-blond hair pulled back into a sleek upsweep only her perfectly oval face could flatter, Claire took a hanger from a rack and handed the garment to SueAnn, the clerk who helped out on weekends. “Take this back to the second room, will you? Tell the customer I think it would look great on her.”

SueAnn left and Claire came over to Helen, slid her hand through Helen’s elbow and walked her to a pair of bar stools behind the checkout counter. “What’s up? You want to go for pizza? Jack’s treating, and I happen to know that Pet’s taking dinner to Finn from the café, so you don’t have to fix anything.”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Helen said. “Mostly I’m just here on a fishing expedition.”

“Oh, really?” Claire looked around at the dated garments that filled her racks and shelves. Many of them had once belonged to celebrities. “You suddenly have an urge to splurge on a bit of Hollywood memorabilia?”

Helen laughed and looked down at her faded scoop-neck yellow T-shirt and olive-green cargo shorts. “No, but I’m fishing for information.”

“Oh, well, that’s free—if I have any to give.”

Helen came right to the point. “What do you know about Ethan Anderson?”

Claire’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, Ethan. I know he’s rich, but doesn’t act it. And he’s handsome and can’t help it.”

“He’s not wearing a ring,” Helen said. “So I assume he’s single.”

Claire grinned at Helen. “Thirty-two and never been married. But from what Jack tells me, you know more about him than I do. I understand you gave him a rousing welcome to town the other day.”

Helen smirked. “So, the legend of Helen Sweeney lives on.”

“Absolutely. Especially since Archie Anderson told Jack to watch out for his only son while he’s in Heron Point and keep him out of harm’s way. Poor Jack. Ethan hasn’t made it easy for him to play protector. He arrived in town without telling anyone, and when he’d only been here for a few minutes, his rental car was victimized by a drive-by mangling.”

Only Claire could get away with such blatant teasing. Helen laughed. “It’s not like I was aiming for him.”

“I know that. Sometimes, honey, it just seems like bad luck follows you around.”

That was an understatement. Helen shook her head. “You don’t know the half of it. So why does the golden boy need watching over, anyway? He doesn’t seem like the type to have his own bad-luck shadow.”

Claire waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, and focused her attention on the day’s sales receipts. “Oh, who knows? Jack tells me Archie is paranoid about crackpots taking advantage of his money and power. He thinks half the world is out to get him or a member of his family.” She returned her gaze to Helen. “There’s probably some truth to it.”

Helen sensed there was more to Claire’s simple explanation than she was letting on, but she didn’t probe. “Yeah, potential trouble is everywhere, even in Heron Point, as we learned the hard way.”

Claire glanced at her daughter. As Jane tried on hats, a haunted veil clouded Claire’s eyes. Helen had seen a similar desperate look once before on Claire’s usually placid face. No one in Heron Point would ever forget when Jane was put in danger a month ago. Though, thanks to Jack, there was a happy ending, the incident made everyone in town open their eyes to the possibility of threats, even in their isolated little paradise.

“So, why the interest in Ethan?” Claire said, returning to the more comfortable topic that had brought Helen into the shop. “Of course, I heard about Donny, the creep. Ethan’s not like that. He’s a gentleman….”

Helen held up her hand. “Stop right there. You’re as bad as Pop.”

Claire faked an innocent expression. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I’m through with men for a while, at least in the way you’re thinking. Finn’s right. I seem to lose all capability for rational thought when I’m around the opposite sex. Besides, I know better than to go after a man who probably dates glamorous New York women who make me look like something they scraped off their boots.”

Claire gave her a scathing look. “I hate when you talk about yourself that way.” She fingered a strand of Helen’s limp hair. “You’re gorgeous, don’t you know that?”

“Right. In a she’s-got-potential kind of way. But relationships aside, I would like to get to know Ethan better, for a purely practical reason.”

Claire smiled. “You need another buddy, Helen?”

“Sure, who doesn’t?” She sighed, knowing she’d have to level with Claire if she planned on enlisting her help. Claire was too smart to con. “Actually, I’d like him to see me as someone other than a fishy-smelling, hell-on-wheels delinquent, if that’s possible.”

“It’s entirely possible. And you think I can help you accomplish this goal?”

Helen rolled her eyes before returning her attention to Claire’s skillfully applied makeup and expertly chosen clothes, elegant yet fitting to a Heron Point environment. Claire had it all, and Helen needed some of it.

“Who else?” she said. “For heaven’s sake, Claire, look at you.” She swept her hands down her sides, encompassing the total ragtag package that was Helen Sweeney. “And then look at me.”

Giving Helen an exasperated look, Claire said, “No problem. I can have you looking so adorable that Ethan—”

“Stop right there,” Helen said, tamping her natural curiosity to hear the rest of Claire’s sentence. “I already told you. I’m not going the adorable route. I couldn’t if I wanted to. This is business.”

Claire sat back and studied her friend. “Okay, but I’ve got to ask, honey. If you’re not interested in romance, then what do you want from Ethan?”

Helen took a deep breath. She’d known Claire would ask this question, especially since hearing that Jack had vowed to keep Ethan safe. Besides that, as mayor of Heron Point, Claire would be concerned for the welfare of the man who could raise the tax base so the town council could purchase another ambulance, a fire truck, make repairs to the roads and better secure the shoreline. But Helen wasn’t about to whine to Claire about her problems. Because of Donny, Helen had reconfirmed her previous belief that most men were louses, and she was often too stupid to avoid them. Now, because of her current unplanned circumstances, it was time to start thinking of Helen Sweeney. She needed to safeguard her own future, and the future of the Lima Bean if she decided to keep it snuggled in her belly.

“I want a mutually beneficial relationship with him,” she said. “I want him to notice me as a serious businesswoman in this town because I intend to approach him about a financial proposition.”

“A business arrangement?”

“Here it is in a nutshell, Claire. I want the charter business Ethan could throw my way once the resort is reopened. And I figure he’s more likely to be agreeable to a business arrangement if he finds me a little more pleasing to his eyes. If you’ve taught me anything, Claire, it’s that a woman who has mastered the traits of…” Helen could hardly say the words since they were so alien to her vocabulary, her way of living. “…of grace, confidence, attractiveness, can accomplish a lot more than one who just bullies her way through life because she knows how to run her mouth. I haven’t cared much about any of that until now. But now it’s important.”

“Why now?”

If you only knew. If I could only tell you, but I can’t, because I don’t know how this story is going to end. “You know the charter business just keeps my head above water,” she said. “Finn and I aren’t getting anywhere. But Ethan and Anderson Enterprises have brought opportunity to Heron Point. Other business owners in town know that and plan to take advantage of it. Why shouldn’t I?”