A Better Father (Harlequin Super Romance) (17 page)

“Morning,” he called, before temptation could undermine his
better sense. “I take it the CSI team has finished their investigation?”

She straightened slowly, turning with a self-conscious smile
and a slight blush that told him her thoughts were probably mirroring his. That
certainly didn’t go far toward keeping his intentions honorable.

On the other hand, there was nothing dishonorable about a
good-morning kiss or two.

He moved in closer. Her eyes widened. She took a deep breath
and raised a hand.

“Hang on. We need to talk.”

Talking had its points. Look what it had led to the night
before. But he had a feeling Libby wouldn’t be quite as pliant in the light of
day.

Course, he would never know if he didn’t try.

“You’re right. Absolutely.”

Ha. She hadn’t expected him to agree.

“But this is probably the kind of discussion that needs
privacy,” he went on. “No one’s going to venture into that cabin with the smell
and all. What do you say we—”

“Nice try, Catalano.” Her words were stern and her clipboard
was tight against her breasts—lucky damned hunk of wood—but the rolling of her
eyes told him she wasn’t nearly as immune to his charms as she would like him to
believe.

“Two things. First, the easy one. I don’t think there was a
real skunk anywhere near here last night.”

“You want to tell that one to my nose? ’Cause it’s having a
hard time finding the ground between what you’re saying and what it smelled last
night.”

“But that’s the thing. You smelled a skunk last night, right
away.”

“Still not seeing where you’re going with this, Lib.” Though he
was mighty happy to watch her mouth purse while she was thinking.

“When a skunk first sprays, it doesn’t smell like what you
expect. It’s more of a burnt rubber, electrical kind of scent. That
characteristic skunk smell comes later.” She frowned. “I was here less than a
minute after Tanya screamed. It already smelled like skunk. That’s just not
right.”

“Maybe it’s not right, but how—”

“Fake scent.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“They make it for hunters. You know, to mask their own odor
while they’re in the woods. Goes on strong but it fades faster than the real
thing, which would explain why it’s not so bad today.” She sighed. “You’re a
guy. You used to live around here. Do you mean to say you never went into a
hunting supply store and looked around?”

“Nope. I didn’t have time for that, and all my friends were
hockey players, so they were in the same boat. But how did you learn about
this?”

Her cheeks pinked up adorably. “Oh, a friend,” she said, far
too casually.

Logically, he knew that she hadn’t spent the past dozen years
twiddling her thumbs waiting for him, but watching her mention this “friend”
brought out his inner caveman to a degree he would never have anticipated. She
was his, dammit.
His.
The thought of someone else
laying claim to those lips hit him in the gut strong enough to make his breath
hitch.

He turned to inspect the wall of the cabin. Better to focus on
the daddy longlegs crawling up the side than to keep looking at Libby when he
felt this confused.

“So you think Tanya got hold of some of that stuff and sprayed
it around to make the cabin uninhabitable.”

“Bingo.”

He risked a peek in her direction. “She doesn’t strike me as
the sort to hang around hunting supply stores.”

“She wouldn’t have to. Her, um, her uncle owns one.”

Again with the forced casualness. The way she suddenly wouldn’t
meet his eye heightened his suspicions.

“And would this uncle be the same reason you know about this
stuff?”

“I don’t think that’s pertinent.”

The hell it wasn’t.

“How well do you know him?”

“That’s none of your business.”

His stomach dropped.
None of your
business
was code for
I slept with him but I
don’t want to talk about it.
At least he was pretty sure that was
what it meant.

She had a past. She had a life outside him. He, who had broken
her heart and then brought a child into the world in their years apart, had no
right to be bothered by the thought of her having other relationships.

But he was anyway.

“I wasn’t asking because I wanted to know about your love
life,” he lied. “I just wondered if you would feel comfortable giving him a call
and asking if he had done any special orders for his niece.”

“I could,” she said thoughtfully, and he had to fight back the
urge to grab her then and there and kiss her until she was incapable of
remembering that guy’s phone number, place of work or even his name. “But, you
know, that part isn’t so important. What really matters is why she would have
done it.”

“The supposed crush.”

“Sam, you walk into the room and her IQ drops by about thirty
points. I don’t think we can call it a
supposed
crush anymore.”

He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Not doing anything to
encourage it, I swear.”

“I know you’re not.”

Damn, the world was a brighter place when Libby believed in
him.

“I had Phoebe talk to her, but I guess that wasn’t enough.”

“I have an idea.” He moved in closer. “The whole camp thinks
there’s something between me and you already. How about if we—”

“No.” The word was crisp, clear and far too certain for his
ego.

She must have realized that she’d been too decisive, for she
closed the gap between them and placed a hand on his arm. “Look, Sam. I’m not
going to lie. I had a very nice time with you last night, and yes, you are very
tempting. But I can’t... Things are really uncertain now. I have to figure out
what’s happening next. What’s best for me. I need a clear head to do that, and I
might regret telling you this, but you have a tendency to mess up my logic, you
know?”

She peeked up at him almost bashfully. His gut contracted with
want.

“Running around and convincing everyone that we have a real
relationship might be a good strategy for dealing with Tanya, but it’s not
something I can do. It would be too easy to confuse make-believe with reality,
and I can’t.... I just can’t.”

“What if it wasn’t all make-believe?” The words were out before
he could think better of them, his hoarse whisper hanging in the air like a
magnet that could either pull him and Libby together or push them apart
depending on which way it flipped.

Her eyes were big but filled with regret as she answered, “That
would make it even harder.”

“It wouldn’t have to—”

“Sam. Please.” She turned away, but not before he saw the death
grip she had on the clipboard. “I understand what happened when we were kids.
But there are still things that you...no, things that I need to decide. So for
right now I need to keep it light.”

“Friends.” Good thing she couldn’t see the way his hands fisted
when he said the word.

She nodded, then turned back with a grateful smile. “I would
like that very much.”

It wasn’t enough. He wasn’t sure what the hell was growing
between him and Libby, but while it undoubtedly included friendship, he was
pretty sure there was a lot more to it than that.

He didn’t want to encourage her. Didn’t want to fall for
anyone, not now when so much of his own life was still settling into place. But
he also knew that he and Libby had a shot at something wonderful, and he wasn’t
ready to give up on that. Not yet.

She had said last night that she would have liked the chance to
help him when things fell apart with his family. Maybe, if he opened up a little
to her—not about the most intense stuff, but if he asked for her help on some
other things—maybe that would be a way to pull her closer without scaring either
of them off. A trial run at a different kind of intimacy.

He closed his eyes for a second and pictured it. Him and Libby,
sitting on his porch on that cushioned swing Brynn had bought to replace the
bum-bruising chairs, talking about... About what? Not the custody suit. Not the
camp, either. But there was a hell of a lot more throwing him for a curve these
days.

“Can friends give each other some advice?”

She blinked, regarded him with puzzlement for a second, then
nodded slowly. “Sure. Why not?” A flash of her old mischief lit her face as she
added, “Heck, we both know I love bossing you around anyway, so why not make it
official?”

“Well, then, friend. I have a question for you.” He lowered
himself to the slate step and patted the space beside him. She eyed him with all
the skepticism he would expect, then sat primly on the far end, leaving a good
six inches of stone between them. He made sure she didn’t see his grin.

“It’s about Casey. He sure seems to me like he’s settling in
okay, but the kid’s been through the wringer lately, what with losing his mom
and coming to live with me and then moving not once, but twice.” He was pleased
with how easy it had been to gloss over the whole Sharon aspect. “I think he’s
doing a great job of handling it, but you know more about kids than I do. Does
anything seem off to you?”

She lowered the clipboard to her upraised knees and tapped her
finger against the papers. “It’s been a long time since I took developmental
psych, but he certainly seems to be on target for most things. Since kids
usually regress when there’s a major upset in their lives, that’s an encouraging
sign.”

“Regress?”

“You know. If they were, say, potty trained, they would start
having accidents again. Or in Casey’s case, maybe he would start needing a
bottle again after being weaned from it. Things like that.”

“He did that. When he first came to me. Sha— His day-care
provider told me he was down to a couple of bottles a day at that point, but
after he moved in with me, boom, it was like he couldn’t get enough of them.
Brynn said she felt like she was running a dairy for a while there.”

“And now he’s off them again?”

“Other than one at bedtime, yeah. And the pediatrician told me
to cut that out once he’s had a few more weeks here.”

“Sounds good. Other than that, he seems to be making friends
with everyone, but he definitely turns to you as his source of comfort, so I’d
say he’s pretty securely attached to you.”

“To you, too.”

Oops. He hadn’t intended to mention that. But Libby was already
staring hard at her papers, drawing absently on them with her fingers.

“I noticed.” She flashed him a quick grin. “He’s not alone in
that.”

And now he was jealous of his own kid. He thought that wasn’t
supposed to happen for another twenty years or so.

“I have wondered if it might be better for me to spend less
time with him. In case, you know.” She returned her focus to the papers. “I
don’t want to be the source of another loss. He’s had enough of those
already.”

Then don’t go.
But he couldn’t say
that to her. He’d taken enough from her already. He would not, could not,
impinge on her freedom by imposing his wishes on her. He would not be that
selfish.

“If it’s up to me, I say, don’t worry about that. He needs all
the great people he can get right now. If you leave, yeah. It will be hard. But
he’ll have me and Mrs. Collins, and he’ll start going to a playgroup in the
fall, just a couple of days a week, but enough to give him a new focus. He’s
going to have people come and go his whole life. I want him to learn that it’s
okay. The last thing I want is for people to be on eggshells around him, to get
him thinking he can’t handle it or that he shouldn’t get involved with folks
because it will hurt too much when it’s time to say goodbye. That’s no way to
live.”

He’d been thinking only of Casey when he spoke, talking freely
as he realized Libby was the first one he’d really discussed his son with since
Brynn left. Sure, he and the pediatrician and Mrs. Collins had lots of
conversations about Casey. But it was different with Libby. Freer. Safer. Kind
of like how it used to be with Robin, when they each knew that no one else in
the world would ever care about their little boy the way they both did.

But in his relaxation, he hadn’t realized that his words of
living in fear of loss could apply to Libby, as well.

That is, he was clueless until he saw the way she pulled
herself upright, sitting straighter and stiffer on the hard step while small
patches of red formed in her cheeks.

“Okay. That came out the wrong way. I wasn’t talking about you,
Lib. Honestly.”

“I never thought you were.”

Bull. But he’d bungled the moment, and he wasn’t going to make
it worse by trying to explain himself.

“Actually,” he said, “I was kind of thinking about Cosmo. Did
you know he has a thing for Myra?”

“What?”

Well, that certainly got her thoughts turning in a different
direction.

“You have got to be out of your ever-loving tree.”

“I don’t think so.” He told her about his run-in with Cosmo,
about the hints he’d picked up over the past weeks, about the way Cosmo couldn’t
make a convincing case against Sam’s theory. When he was done, Libby looked at
him with—whoa. Was that respect in her eyes?

“You know, I almost hate to admit it, but I think you’re right.
I would never have believed it, but it all fits. Why didn’t I see it?”

“Maybe because you’re too close. Sometimes it takes a fresh
eye, you know?”

“Well, you certainly have the ‘fresh’ part down,” she said
cheekily, and he gave thanks that she was still able to tease him.

He grabbed a stick from the ground and twirled it between his
palms. “The big question is, do you think Myra feels the same way?”

“Hmmm.” She slumped back against the door, staring into the
sky. He took advantage of the moment to drink in her face in profile, relaxed
and happy, the way he always wanted her to look.