Think About Love (8 page)

"I'll try putting her down," Sam said. "Make yourself comfortable in the living room."

She disappeared and he almost called out for her to watch her step, because she'd strung the charger cord from her computer across the archway into the kitchen. But she stepped gracefully over the wire and disappeared into a hallway to the right of the kitchen.

He prowled into the living room, studied an aging, overstuffed sofa and chair, a big window looking out on a shadowy stand of cedar trees, a set of split log stairs leading up into a loft.
 

She'd grown up on Gabriola Island. Here, in this house? Or was this someone else's house? The next of kin listed in her employment records was Dorothy Marshall, at this address. He hadn't checked the phone book to see if Dorothy Marshall really lived here. This house could belong to someone else.
 

The baby's father, perhaps? Sam's parents?

Whose baby was Sam putting to bed? Who owned the Honda outside? And what the hell had happened to the Sam he'd appointed to Tremaine's board of directors?

Sam returned without the baby. "I think she's really asleep this time."

"I've never seen your hair down before."

"It's not businesslike."

"The computer industry has a pretty loose dress code."

She shrugged and that half smile appeared. "People say I look about sixteen with my hair down. It's hard to get people to take you seriously if you look like a teenager."

She looked all woman, and she wasn't wearing a bra. The sweatshirt was thick, loose, but when she moved he saw the motion of her breasts.

He jammed his hands in his pockets again. The last time he'd felt so uncomfortable in a woman's presence he'd been fifteen.

"Do you want coffee? A soft drink? Dorothy doesn't keep alcohol in the house."

"I want an explanation. Who's Dorothy?"

"My grandmother."

"So there is a grandmother."

When she brought the coffee into the living room, she found him staring at Dorothy's collection of pictures and certificates in the stairwell leading up to the loft. He pointed at a picture of a young girl sitting on a tall horse. "You?"

"My mother. She was fifteen there." The picture had been taken less than a year before her mother met an American drifter on Drumbeg Beach, fell in love, and ran away with him only weeks later.

"You look very much alike."

"Looks can be deceptive."

He shot her a penetrating glance, then moved to the next frame, a document certifying that Moonbeam Jones had successfully completed the beginner's swimming class.

"Who's Moonbeam Jones?" he asked as he took the steaming mug from her hand.

No one had called her Moonbeam in so many years, except her mother of course, and her grandmother occasionally slipped.

She took her own coffee mug and settled on the big armchair. At this point, keeping her private life to herself was the least of her worries.

"My mother named me Moonbeam and my sister Star. I had swimming lessons here one summer." The first time Dorothy rescued Samantha and Susan from foster care, at the ages of ten and eight.

"Samantha M. Jones. M for Moonbeam."

"There's something I need to tell you. Can you sit down? You're making me nervous."

"You're never nervous."

She wasn't answering that one.
 

She waited until he settled on the sofa, until he'd taken a sip of the coffee. What she had to tell him wasn't going to improve his mood.

"I can't leave until tomorrow afternoon. I'm keeping tabs on preparations from here, though, and I've got a web conference set up first thing tomorrow. If you can fly me with the chopper, we can get to Tremaine's mid-afternoon."
 

"And?" he asked. "There's more, isn't there?"

"I'll need to leave early, before the open house is over. I have to get back to Nanaimo tomorrow night before the last Gabriola Island ferry sails at ten fifty-five."

She heard Cal set his cup on the end table.

She stared at the floor, not at him, and said, "After that, I need two weeks off."

Some hair had fallen forward over her face. She pushed it back with her free hand and muttered, "I should have put my hair up."

"I need an explanation, Sam."

She was a businesswoman. Time to stop sounding like an airhead and give him the explanation he deserved.

"The baby is my niece. My grandmother is her guardian, but Dorothy's been hospitalized. I know it's bad timing." She gestured to the computer. "I am in touch. Telephone. Web conferencing."

"So you said. Where's your sister?"

"She and her husband died in an air crash last December."

"Last December?
Five months ago?"

"Yes." She swallowed. "Two days before Christmas."

He shoved a hand through his hair. "You came back from your holidays and I asked you if you'd enjoyed yourself. You said it was good to be back. Just that. Your sister died, and you returned to work as if nothing happened?"

With the exception of last Christmas with Dorothy, Samantha hadn't cried in front of anyone since she was ten years old. Tears threatened now, but she mustn't cry in front of Cal.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I... I just didn't."

He raked his hand through his hair again, then picked up his mug and took a big swallow. "So—so, this baby? You're looking after her while your grandmother's sick?"

"Maybe permanently. My grandmother might be going into a nursing home."

He took long seconds to consider that. "Is there some reason you can't look after the baby in Seattle?"

"It depends on the judge."

"The
judge
?"

"I'm applying for custody, but right now I can't take Kippy out of the country. The judge gave permission for me to look after her, but I'm being... supervised. I have to stay here."

He looked as if he wanted to pace. She wished he'd leave.

"Supervised?" he demanded. "By whom?"

"The Ministry of Children and Families. A social worker. They've applied for custody; there's another hearing in two weeks. I need to stay until it's settled, until I have custody, and I have to prove I'm a good mother for Kippy. Cal, it's obvious I can't give you a hundred percent, at least for a while. It might be best if I resign."

"Is that what you want?"

"No, it's not what I want. I want to keep things together. Dorothy thinks the doctor is wrong with his diagnosis, and I want to believe that, but... I also want to believe I'm important enough to Tremaine's that we can work around this… this involuntary absence."

He shook his head. Then he walked past her, to the front door, opened it, and stepped through.

Was he going to drive away without a word?

She followed him and found him on the veranda, staring at the grassy slope below the house. Bewildered, she watched as he jumped lightly down to the ground and walked away from the house, away from the car he'd rented.
 

She couldn't believe she'd offered to resign. She should have asked for an unpaid leave, but that wouldn't solve the mess he'd be in if she walked out for an unspecified time.
 

He had a business to think about, employees and clients depending on its smooth operation. Leaving might be necessary, but she needed to assure him that she'd never go without finding her own replacement.

He came back a moment later.

"I assume you have a baby-sitter lined up for tomorrow afternoon?"

"Diane, a neighbor."

"I'll pick you up here at twelve-thirty."

"I can drive into town in my rental. It's crazy for you to take the ferry over and back."

"There's room here for me to land the chopper." He jumped back up onto the veranda, and she backed two steps away from him before she stopped herself. "Twelve-thirty. You'll be ready?"

"Yes."

Then she watched him drive away, wondering what was going to happen tomorrow.
 

She'd intended to tell him on the phone, using her business voice. Instead she'd worn jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair hanging around her face like a child's. As she turned to go back into the house, she stubbed her toe on the old wicker chair.

And bare feet! She hadn't even had her shoes on.

Chapter Five

Cal parked the rental car in the lot across from the hotel and locked it.

Because he knew he'd go nuts pacing the anonymous hotel room, he headed downhill and found himself exploring a deserted waterfront mall sporting a closed cappuccino bar, art gallery, and souvenir shop.

He finally emerged on a concrete walk bordered by grassy slopes and strode north along the curve of the harbor. He couldn't see another soul, although he heard the muted sound of vehicles up on Front Street where he'd parked the car.

Sam....

He couldn't get over the memory of Sam, barefoot and rumpled, holding a baby in her arms. Sam walking into the living room of that log cabin, her breasts moving seductively under an oversize sweatshirt.

It didn't matter what she looked like with a baby in her arms. The point was that his second-in-command was talking about quitting. Somehow, between yesterday and today, his administrative genius, the person he relied on above all others, had transformed into a barefoot woman with a baby in her arms.

He couldn't afford to lose her. Sam had spoiled him, and after a year without administrative hassles, he shuddered at the thought of going back to how it had been before Samantha Jones—Samantha
Moonbeam
Jones—saved him from bureaucratic psychosis.

He certainly wasn't going to accept her resignation. From what she said, it wouldn't be more than a couple of weeks before she could return to Seattle. Meanwhile, he'd show his face in the admin offices more than usual, and she'd delegate and organize via phone and web conference—Sam was, after all, an expert at organizing, at hiring the kind of people one
could
delegate to. One way or another, they'd get through the next fourteen days until Sam returned.
 

Then, if the grandmother went into a nursing home, Sam would come back to Seattle with the kid, who would go into day care. He'd put the chopper and a pilot at her disposal for weekend visits to the grandmother. Then Sam's world—and Cal's—would go back to normal.

Which didn't explain why Cal was prowling a cement pathway through manicured grass on the edge of Nanaimo's harbor, staring at the lights across the water, worried instead of wondering what the hell those lights
were.
Not Gabriola Island, which lay at the other end of Nanaimo Harbor. Maybe Newcastle Island, which the museum exhibit labeled a historic coal mining site.
 

If that
was
Newcastle, there would be an old tunnel running under the harbor, joining it to Nanaimo. Built to carry coal from Newcastle.

Which, at the moment, he couldn't care less about.

The trouble was, Sam had turned into a woman with a baby and a potentially complicated private life, either of which could be relied on to cause future problems. Being a single parent had to be a massive task at the best of times. When he thought of the chaos he and his sister had created in their parents' lives as children, he didn't figure Sam was in for much fun with this solitary baby-tending business. Even with day care, she'd be exhausted in a matter of weeks if she tried to keep up her previous pace.

Did she have a man in her life? A woman who hadn't mentioned losing her sister over the Christmas vacation certainly wasn't going to fill her boss in on her love life.

If she did have a love life, it stood to reason that now she was a family woman, she'd be thinking about marriage, a father for the baby. She wouldn't want the child growing up fatherless.

A girl like Sam—smart, sensible, and sexy—all she'd have to do to obtain a husband was to let some suitable guy know she was in the market.

And if looking after Kippy weren't enough to wear her out and make her decide she wanted a job that was less demanding, then having a husband—and, soon, a baby of her own—would do it. That tiny, sleeping infant was the first step toward disaster for Cal. In the end, she'd leave him.