Best for the Baby (11 page)

He manipulated the metal device with the skill of a master magician. Unearthing a pencil, he made small marks on the wall. The measurements were finished in no time.

Alaina leaned back against the kitchen table. She crossed her arms, admiring Zack’s work. “You’re very good.”

He came to stand beside her. Giving her a cryptic glance, he said, “You’re being sarcastic, right?”

“No. I’m really impressed.”

“You’ve never hung pictures before?”

“Sure, but not with any expertise. Mostly I just keep pounding nails until it looks right. If you were to lift any picture I’ve ever hung, you’d see a lineup of nail holes like a woodpecker’s been at the wall. Ask Maggie.”

Zack laughed. “It’s not that difficult once you get the hang of it. And I’ve spent a lot of years measuring things.”

She turned her attention to the three pictures behind her. They were colorful vintage crate labels that she’d found stuck in a drawer upstairs. They would look great on the wall beside the fridge.

She scooped up the plastic box of nails and a small
hammer that sat beside them. “I can take it from here,” she told Zack.

He plucked the hammer out of her hand. “After what you just confessed about your ability? I don’t think so.”

“Fine.” She withdrew three nails from the box. “But I’m not hopeless. You hammer, I’ll hold.”

She went to the wall, reached up and placed the nail at the highest pencil point Zack had made. He came up behind her. She moved closer to the cream-colored stucco.

“Hold it still,” he said.

His breath, soft and warm, puffed against the back of her neck. He seemed to loom over her, powerful and insistently male. It came again, that unbearable skittering of her pulse. This might not have been her smartest suggestion.

He pounded the nail in with a couple of good whacks. “Next one,” he said.

She gave a vague nod and placed a nail on the second pencil mark. Maybe the best thing to do was get this over with as quickly as possible. At least this nail would be at eye level, and Zack wouldn’t have to stand over her.

Oh, but he was still so close. Her heart rate quickened even more. His skin exuded heat, and deep inside her body, desire unfurled like soft flower petals opening to the sun.

What was taking him so long? Why didn’t he just hammer the damn thing? Tucking in her chin, she closed her eyes, wishing she had the nerve to push him away, and knowing that wasn’t what she wanted to do at all.

Do it,
she wanted to shout.
Finish it.

Finally he tapped the nail head a few times, then banged it in with a final blow.

Instantly, pain shot through her fingers. “Owww!” she yelped, and dropped her hand to her breast protectively.

Zack swore. “I’m sorry, Al. But damn it, you moved at the last minute. You should have let me do this by myself.”

“I did not move,” she retorted. “You might be good at measuring things, but you’re lousy at hammering.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes!”

“Let me see.”

He tried to take her hand, but she snatched it away. “Don’t touch me.”

He caught her wrist and wouldn’t let go. She opened her hand. Both the thumb and forefinger were red, but there didn’t seem to be any real damage.

“It didn’t even break the skin,” he said, sounding relieved, and a tiny bit amused.

“It still hurts.”

He smiled at her as he rubbed her fingers gently. “Better?”

“No. I’ll probably never be able to knit again.”

“I remember the scarf you made for me that Christmas. I don’t think it will be a huge loss.”

She sniffed to show her displeasure, but mostly she wished he’d release her hand. It was a mistake, letting him touch her like this. She would rescue her fingers from him. Any moment, she would pull away.

She felt mesmerized. She blinked as she watched him slowly lift her hand to his lips. He placed a kiss against the pad of each injured finger, and she did nothing to stop him.

“How about now?” he asked in a soft voice that sounded like a caress.

She couldn’t say a word. His gaze held hers for long,
thick moments of silence before dropping to her mouth. He brought his hand up to brush one finger across her lower lip. Something inside her felt pulled in two directions, slowly being ripped.

“Zack…”

“Damn it, Al,” he whispered. “How am I supposed to stop wanting you?”

“This is just physical,” she said a little desperately.

“I don’t see the problem with that.” He lowered his head until his lips hovered over hers. Dropping a kiss against the corner of her mouth, he slid away the hair at the side of her face. His breath came against her ear. “Physical can bring a lot of pleasure.”

Barely able to think straight, Alaina dipped her head away. “It would be a mistake. Like the other night. And you said there wouldn’t be a repeat of that,” she reminded him. “You promised.”

She heard him chuckle. “That’s right. There won’t be a repeat of the other night. We were both in too much of a hurry. This time we’ll take it slow and easy. This time we’ll savor every moment.” He nudged aside the collar of her blouse so that he could kiss her shoulder. “How is it possible that I don’t remember this little freckle?”

“You know I won’t stop you. But if we do this—”

“It will be wonderful. Stop thinking about the future. Just think about me, touching you in all the right places.” He tugged her close to his body, cupping her rear end, urging her upward until she felt his arousal. “God, you are so beautiful. Do you feel me wanting you, Al? Say you want me, too.”

Her heart was pumping, and she knew she could not let him go. The life she had once wanted with him and
the loss of it reached her in waves. “Yes…” she said in a trembling voice. “Zack, I do. Yes…”

She felt his mouth stretch into a smile against her throat. “That’s my sweet girl. Let it go. Let it all go….”

He pushed her slowly until her spine was against the wall. She tightened her arms around him. There was nothing in the universe except her body and Zack’s mouth, filling her with such acute and perfect pleasure that she wanted to purr. She ducked her head, nipping at his shoulder through his shirt, and was rewarded when she heard him suck in a sharp breath.

The sound of the doorbell ringing brought both their heads up. Alaina’s heart was thudding, and Zack’s frustrated groan seemed to come all the way from the bottom of his feet.

“That’s probably the tile delivery,” Alaina gasped out. “They’re late.”

“Let them come back.”

“No, we can’t do that. They’ll take it back to Atlanta and we’ll have to reschedule.”

“I don’t care.”

“Zack.”

“Damn it!” he growled, swinging away from her. “Why do you have to be such a practical woman in the most impractical times?” He gave her a playfully threatening glare. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll make this the fastest delivery they’ve ever had.”

She nodded, but knew that it didn’t matter how long the delivery might take. The insanity of letting Zack kiss her, the possibility of where it might have led—that window had slammed shut the moment the doorbell rang.

And maybe that was a good thing.

W
HILE
Z
ACK OVERSAW
the tile delivery, Alaina scooped up the keys to the car. She had to get out of the cottage. She had to put distance between them. It might be the only thing that could keep her from making another huge mistake.

She had already opened the back door when she glanced over her shoulder and saw Zack at the end of the hallway. “I’m going into town for a while,” she called. “I’ll be back late.”

“Al!” Zack said. “Wait.”

“No need to stay up.”

Leaving became more of an escape than an exit, but she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.

E
VEN IN TOURIST SEASON
, Lake Harmony rolled up most of its sidewalks by dusk.

The Creekside Diner was open. So were a few coffee shops and bars on the outskirts. But in the town square, where Alaina found a cool, empty bench, the stores were already dark. The plants and clearance merchandise had been taken in.

In the center of the grassy park stood the statue of an anonymous World War II soldier. He looked appropri
ately fierce and brave, but his efforts were wasted tonight. Except for Alaina, the square was empty.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Drawing a deep breath, she tried to will herself to relax, to take in the subtle sounds and sweet breezes of small town America. She and her sister had always come up to Lake Harmony in summer, never in fall, since school was going full tilt by then. But since she’d been here she’d realized that autumn in the Georgia mountains was spectacularly beautiful.

Gold, red and orange leaves lay piled in corners like forgotten confetti, or skittered down lanes and driveways. Scarecrows stood stiff-legged guard duty in most yards and doorways.

Fall in Miami was dull, uninteresting. Florida was usually brown or brilliant green, with very little in between. But here, everything brought such a visceral reaction.

With her eyes still closed, Alaina rubbed her stomach. “What do you think, kiddo?” she asked softly. “Do you think we could live here?”

If Jeffrey never came back, what then? When the cottage project was over she’d have to make some decisions. Was she really going to be able to go back home, throw herself on the mercy of her parents or Maggie while she got back on her feet? With a new baby to care for, how long would that take?

A cool breeze swirled around her legs, bringing goose bumps for a moment. She should go. But where? Somehow it just seemed like too much work to come up with an answer. She felt overwhelmed, overcome with some debilitating inertia that kept her right where she was.

“Mind if I join you?”

Alaina opened her eyes to see Sheriff Moran standing in front of her. He was in uniform, and the badge on his breast pocket flashed under the streetlamp.

She patted the bench beside her. “Not at all.”

He was silent for a while as they both stared up at the sky, watching the last of the light disappear behind the mountains.

“This should be a nice, clear night,” the sheriff said. “Should be able to see plenty of stars.”

“It’s very pretty already.”

“You out here by yourself?”

“Yes. Just me.”

“Humph. I kinda got used to seeing you and Zack traipsing around town together. Just like old times.”

She gave him a vague, noncommittal smile. “Not tonight.”

“Shame about him selling the cottage. Doesn’t seem right somehow.”

“I agree. But he’s determined.”

The sheriff sighed and settled back on the bench. “One thing the Davidson men have never lacked is determination. Years ago, when Zack’s dad and I were kids, he became convinced that there was gold—” Moran flung a hand toward the World War II soldier “—buried under that statute.”

“Why would gold be buried there?”

“I probably should have asked that question myself,” he said with a grin. “But Tom was certain. He’d read all about the gold strike we had in the 1820s, and he was just sure of it. We snuck out of our houses three nights in a row to dig for it.”

“I take it you never found anything.”

“Oh, we found things. A boot, a plastic spoon and the skeleton of a mouse. Pretty exciting stuff. But we also both went home and found our parents waiting for us. I never got my allowance back, and Tom—his dad made him chop so much wood he had blisters on his hands for two weeks.” The sheriff chuckled. “And don’t you know, the next year when he came up here for the summer, he tried to make me believe we’d been digging under the wrong statue? He wanted to start the hunt all over again down by city hall. Under that old bust of Chief Nahatchee.”

“He sounds a lot like Zack when we were teenagers. He always had some adventure he was trying to talk us into.”

“Zack’s cut from the same cloth, all right. That’s why there got to be so much fussing between them the last year of Tom’s life.”

Alaina frowned at Moran. “What do you mean? Zack worshipped his father.”

“Nothing says you can’t love someone and still not see eye to eye.”

She turned to face the sheriff. “What happened to his dad? Zack told me he died last spring, but never seems willing to talk about it.”

Scratching his cheek, the sheriff glanced away, as though debating whether he should share what he knew. At last he looked back. “Tom came up here to do some repairs. The boathouse roof was in bad shape, and he climbed up there to nail some new shingles in place. He lost his balance and fell, which brought on a heart attack. Died shortly after that, from what the county
coroner says. Zack tried to call his dad most of the next day, and when he couldn’t get anyone, he asked a neighbor to go over and check.” Moran shook his head sadly. “They found Tom, but it was way too late.”

“How horrible,” Alaina said with a shudder.

“He shouldn’t have been on that roof. And that’s part of the problem, I suspect. Maybe even the reason Zack’s so interested in selling the place now.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Tom and I had dinner two nights before he died. He was madder than a rabid raccoon, because Zack was supposed to come up here with him to help, but had canceled at the last minute. He told Tom they could do it the following weekend, but Tom—he was always such an impatient cuss—he didn’t wait.”

“So if Zack had been here, he might have kept his father from getting on the roof. Or at least he might have gotten him to a hospital in time.”

The sheriff grimaced. “That’s one theory, I suppose. And I suspect it’s one that keeps circling in that head of his. Though why it should, I don’t know. The coroner said Tom had years of heart damage just waiting to catch up to him. That heart attack was going to happen, probably sooner rather than later.”

With an inward sigh Alaina said, “I think you may be right. Zack never seems to go near the boathouse, even though he’s mentioned that it needs almost as much work as the cottage.”

“That boy has no reason to be all twisted up inside over what happened. Tom had no business being up on that roof.”

“Let me ask you something, Sheriff. Last night I found
a tuxedo in the hall closet. It had your name on the inside, but when I asked Zack why it was there, he had no idea.”

“I completely forgot about that penguin suit!” the man said with a look of surprise. “It’s mine, all right, though more and more I wonder why I keep it. I lent it to Tom.”

“Why?”

“Zack won some big award from the city of Miami—something about being a rising new entrepreneur. The banquet was that same weekend he and Tom were supposed to come up here. Zack asked him to postpone the trip so they could go to the banquet together. But Tom told him no. Said it was just another example of how Zack had sold out his talent in his quest for the almighty dollar.”

“Sold out? How so?”

“You know that Zack’s father was a carpenter, a woodworker, like his father before him. Tom thought Zack should have kept the family business alive.”

“But I’ve seen the beautiful custom work his company in Miami does. He knows wood every bit as well as his father did.”

“Not the same thing as far as Tom was concerned. Too mass-produced. Too sleek and impersonal for his tastes. He felt Zack went after the money and forgot all about making individual pieces that could be handed down by a family. Told him so, too, and that didn’t set well, from what I gather.”

Alaina could imagine how that rejection must have bitten hard into Zack’s pride. “For his sake, his father should have gone to that banquet.”

“That’s what I pointed out to him the night we had dinner, but he was so mad he couldn’t hear a word I said.
That’s the way it is sometimes,” Moran added wryly. “When two people won’t meet each other halfway.”

She looked at the man sharply, but his features gave nothing away. She had a feeling he’d be a deadly poker player. Her heart contracted at the thought of how unpleasant it must have gotten between Zack and his father.

“But here’s the funny thing…” Moran said, tilting back his hat. “The next day, I got a call from Tom asking if I still had my tuxedo, ’cause he wanted to borrow it. He was still sounding plenty grumpy, but I sent it over to him anyway. Not too many places around Lake Harmony where you need a tuxedo, so…”

“You think he was planning to go to the banquet, after all.”

“Yep. But I never found out, because the next day he was dead.”

Alaina regarded the sheriff with quizzical interest. “Does Zack know any of this?”

“Not that I’m aware.”

“It might make a huge difference in the way he remembers those last few days of his father’s life.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Anytime I’ve mentioned his dad, Zack changes the subject. But you know, sometimes a person gets it fixed in their head that they’ve done somebody wrong, and blaming themselves begins to feel right. Like wearing a hair shirt.”

She looked at him closely, wondering if there was some pain in his past he wished he could undo. The old-fashioned streetlamps had come on now. They were like pearl brooches against a dark velvet sky. The light etched the lines in the sheriff’s face even deeper.

He stood, resettled his hat and his gun belt, then took a quick glance around the empty square. When he looked back at her, his expression was solemn, all business. “You plan to stay out here much longer?”

Alaina felt herself basking in the warmth of his concern. “No. I’m just clearing my head a little.”

“Your head need clearing much?”

“All the time, I’m afraid,” she answered with a smile.

“Heather says you and Zack make quite a couple.”

“I’m not sure I’d put it that way. We’re working on the cottage together, getting along pretty well, but we’re hardly a couple.”

“You still hoping that baby’s father will show up?”

She hadn’t expected the question, but she wasn’t afraid to answer it. She made a face. “Would I sound completely foolish if I said yes?”

“Not necessarily,” Moran replied. Then he gave her a twinkly-eyed smile. “But you know, there’s nothing wrong with grabbing the fruit you can reach.”

She knew what fruit he meant. She tried to affect a casual air as she smiled up at him. “Thanks for the advice, Sheriff. But that particular fruit may be long past picking.”

A
FTER LEAVING THE SQUARE
, Alaina ate a leisurely late dinner at the Creekside Diner. Then she drove slowly up Dogwood Mountain, found a scenic spot overlooking the valley below, and spent a long time staring into the darkness. Finally, she had no choice but to go back to Heron Cove. She couldn’t stay out here all night.

When she pulled into the cottage driveway, it was a little after midnight. Except for the front porch light,
Heron Cove was silent and black. Instead of going inside, Alaina used the moonlight to guide her around the side of the cottage, down the mulch-covered pathway to the lake. Just before she reached the boat dock, she stopped, crossed her arms and gazed out into the night again.

Darkness kept her from seeing the boathouse clearly, but she’d been there often enough to remember how it should look. It definitely needed work, but she thought she understood now why Zack had avoided tackling it. Why he’d been so reluctant to talk to her about any item she found that could remind him of his father.

It didn’t require too much imagination to picture that fall from the boathouse roof. The pitch was steep, the shingles probably just loose enough to be dangerously unstable. She envisioned Tom Davidson lying on the dock after he’d fallen, alone and hurting, already moving beyond anyone’s help.

She pushed the images away, lifting a hand to her throat because her mouth had gone so dry she couldn’t swallow. She focused beyond the dock and the lapping waves to where the mountains brooded over Lake Harmony.

Sheriff Moran had been right. The stars were as bright as diamonds tonight, and beneath them, the lake looked like liquid mercury. It was the kind of breathtaking combination of water and sky and land that you saw only in movies, and inexplicably, tears clouded her vision.

She knew it had to do with Zack, with the knowledge that their kiss in the kitchen had been leading in a dangerous direction. Sexual tension had been circling them for days, and Alaina supposed she ought to have been grateful for the delivery truck’s interruption.

So why wasn’t she?

God, life was so slippery, and she was so clumsy in negotiating all its twists and turns. How much more mixed up could her life get? She started to laugh at her own foolishness, but the sound cracked midway and turned into something else.

Disgusted by such gloomy thoughts, she swiped a hand across her eyes. Enough. She was tired, and it was starting to turn colder. There were lots of things she had to do tomorrow.

Rubbing her bare arms, she turned to head back to the cottage.

Zack stood in the middle of the path.