“Oh, may we, Dad?” Amelia asked, looking as if she would be crushed if he refused.
Ian looked trapped for a moment but ultimately shrugged. “If you’re sure it’s no trouble, I’m sure Mrs. Gilbert will be happy if she doesn’t have to wake early. Someone here likes to be up at first light.”
Thomas raised his hand with an unashamed grin, making all the adults smile.
“I don’t mind if you’re up early, either of you,” Henry assured his grandchildren. “I wanted to take a hike to that waterfall you were telling me about in the morning. As you’ve already been there with your father and Samantha, you can point me in the right direction.”
She hoped Henry knew what he was doing, relying on the children as his wayfinders. As she remembered, Amelia and Thomas hadn’t paid much attention to where they were going and had constantly wanted to explore some of the side trails during that trip. She had to hope they all didn’t end up hopelessly lost.
“We’ve things they can sleep in,” Margaret said. “Don’t worry about that. And we can run them back around lunchtime tomorrow.”
“All right,” Ian said. “Good night, darling children. Don’t keep your grandparents up all night.”
Amelia and Thomas both giggled as they hugged their father.
Only as she and Ian headed out to his SUV did Samantha realize the children’s sleepover with their grandparents would mean Thomas and Amelia wouldn’t be available to provide a buffer between the two of them on the drive home. It was only a short distance, she told herself. She could handle being alone with Ian for the time it would take them to make the trip.
His entire family walked them to his vehicle, as if the two of them were heading out on a grand trek instead of merely driving across town.
He hugged his children again, admonishing them once more to behave for their grandparents, and shook his father’s hand.
Samantha was astonished when Margaret hugged her as if they were old and dear friends.
“I’m so happy you could come to dinner,” Margaret said. “It’s been a delight getting to know you better. What a stroke of luck that Ian ended up renting a house next door to yours.”
Good luck or bad? She wasn’t sure about that yet. “Thank you for including me in your family dinner,” she said.
“Nonsense. It was all in honor of you, for that beautiful dress.”
After another round of goodbyes, Ian opened the vehicle door for her and she slipped past him to climb inside, chiding herself for the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat as the scent of him tantalized her senses.
When he climbed into the vehicle, she was again reminded that they were alone, truly alone, for the first time since that devastating kiss the day before.
“Thank you for making time to have dinner with my family,” he said as he backed out of the driveway and began driving around the lake. “I know how busy you are. I think it meant a great deal to my mother to be able to raise a glass to you in thanks for your work on Gemma’s gown.”
“I’m the grateful one,” she assured him. “If not for your mother’s dinner invitation, I would have been stuck with a frozen dinner and then likely would have spent the evening at my sewing machine and cleaning up after puppies otherwise. This was a vast improvement.”
“You work extraordinarily hard.”
Was that a criticism or merely an observation? She couldn’t quite tell. She decided to take it as the latter. “I feel incredibly lucky to have clients who need wedding dresses and who have asked me to design and sew them.”
“Can’t you hire someone to help you? Don’t you worry about burning out from the sixteen-hour days?”
“Right now, I’m happy to have the business. I have to hustle while I can. It’s probably the same reason you’re working on research while you’re here with your family.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something but they reached her driveway before he could, making her wish she lived a little farther away from Gemma.
He started to turn into her driveway but she held out a hand to stop him. “No need to drop me off here. Park where you usually do and I can walk next door to my house. It makes more sense than you having to move your car again in five minutes.”
He appeared reluctant but did as she suggested, parking in his driveway, then walking around to let her out. The night was soft, sweet. Intimate. She found she didn’t want to go inside just yet to deal with puppies and work and reality.
He seemed to feel the same reluctance for the night to end. Instead of walking directly next door to her house, they both seemed to move as one toward the dock between their houses.
“Forgive me if this question is out of bounds,” he said after a moment. “You can tell me it’s none of my business. But do you and Josh have some kind of past?”
“Did he say something to you?” she asked, suddenly mortified.
“No. Nothing,” he assured her. “I just thought I picked up some kind of vibe. You were almost overly polite when you talked to him, if that makes sense. You seemed comfortable talking to everyone else but him. But that might have been my imagination. I could be completely misinterpreting the situation. I’m not always the best at picking up social cues.”
She shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweater. “You didn’t misinterpret anything. I suppose you could call it a history. Josh and I have friends in common, sort of. In a small place like Lake Haven, people around the same age tend to socialize in the same circles. His cousins Katrina and Wynona are my best friends.”
“Ah.”
She might as well tell him the rest of it. “Yes. Josh and I dated a few times. It was never anything serious.”
“Things didn’t work out between you? Since the man is about to marry my sister, I would like to ask why. You don’t have to tell me, if you feel like it’s none of my business.”
Her first impulse was to make some kind of excuse about how people didn’t always click romantically, even after two or three dates. It was true, as she certainly knew.
That wasn’t the whole truth, though, and Samantha found she was reluctant to lie to Ian.
Having grown up with a mother who always spoke her mind, no matter how harmful her thoughts, Samantha had been the recipient of enough slings and digs to know that honesty wasn’t always the best policy. Still, she didn’t want to hide things from him, especially when he would likely find out the truth, anyway.
She curled her fingers together inside the pockets, choosing her words as carefully as she would thread. “I’ve already told you that I’ve made some poor choices when it comes to relationships. I’m not proud of my history. In the past, I’ve had a terrible habit of jumping from Nice to Meet You to Let’s Get Married in about five minutes. That’s what happened with Josh, much to my chagrin. We dated a few times after his cousin Wynona’s wedding a few years ago and I...wanted things to go faster than he did.”
Her face felt hot, her skin stretched tight over her cheekbones. She wanted to disappear into the darkness. Why had she answered him with such blunt honesty? She should have kept her mouth shut and simply answered that after a few dates she and Josh realized they didn’t suit.
“You must have cared for him a great deal,” Ian said gently.
She couldn’t back out of the conversation now. “I thought I did. I imagined I was in love with him, which seems so ridiculous now when I think of it. But unfortunately that wasn’t the first or last time. I think I’ve always been more in love with the idea of being in love, if you know what I mean. It’s always provided a kind of escape.”
He gave her a sharp look and she again wished she had kept her mouth shut. She didn’t need to reveal that to him.
“An escape from what?” he asked, his voice curious.
She sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it matters very much,” he said quietly. “I woul
d like to know, if you would like to tell me.”
The darkness provided a certain freedom. If not for the night, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to tell him the truth.
“I told you that my relationship with my mother wasn’t an easy one. Since college, I’ve dreamed about leaving and going to work somewhere else.”
“But you stayed. You didn’t even go away for university.”
“I did for one semester but it didn’t work out. I’ve always felt a great sense of family obligation since it was only the two of us. She was a single mother for most of my life after my father died and worked very hard to take care of me, and I suppose I felt as if I owed her somehow.”
“You have that backward. Children don’t owe their parents. It’s the other way around.”
She could see that now but her mother wouldn’t have agreed.
“How old were you when your father died?” he asked after a moment.
“Eight.”
“That’s a tough age to lose a parent.”
“Yes. I don’t think I was nearly resilient as Amelia and Thomas seem to be. I’m not sure I’ve ever really gotten over it.”
“How did he die? Do you mind me asking?”
She debated how to answer him. Usually she gave the same sort of answer her mother had given her, that he had been ill. It was easier than explaining what had really happened.
“He killed himself,” she said quietly. “My father suffered from clinical depression. One summer night he came out here to this very dock with a handful of painkillers from a surgery he’d had a few years earlier. He swallowed the pills with an entire bottle of gin, passed out and never woke up.”
“Oh, Samantha. I’m so sorry.” The compassion in his voice made her want to cry suddenly, to howl out her sorrow and loss as she hadn’t done for her father in a long time.
He looked as if he wanted to embrace her and she suddenly wanted to sink into his arms, lean her head on his chest and give in to the jagged pain.
Instead, she swallowed hard and took a few steps away from him, sliding down onto the bench where she often came to remember her father.
“As you can imagine, losing her husband like that was hard on my mother. Her personality changed. She changed. It must have been so difficult for her, losing the love of her life that way. I can only imagine how betrayed she must have felt.”
“You stayed because you didn’t want to abandon her, as well.”
She stared at him, struck by the truth of his words. “I... I suppose you’re right. I’ve never really looked at it that way. I stayed. And, quite frankly, I opted for the path of least resistance when it came to dealing with her. It was easier to do what she wanted than deal with the guilt of disappointing her. I suppose that makes me sound horribly weak.”
“Not weak,” he corrected gently. “You sound like a loving daughter who simply failed to see that the number one job of parents is to prepare their children to go out and conquer the world without them.”
“Whether they want to or not.”
“Especially if they don’t want to,” he answered.
That was the sort of parent she wanted to be, if the time ever came when she had children. Loving and supportive, yes, but wise, as well.
“That might be a parent’s job but it can’t be an easy one. How did Henry and Margaret cope when Gemma said she was moving to take a job in another country, especially now that she’s making it permanent by marrying Josh?”
He was quiet. “They miss her, especially after losing David. But it’s obvious that being here, working at Caine Tech, has been the best thing possible for her.”
“It’s good that you’re only a few hours away from your parents.”
“For now,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re moving closer to them as soon as we return to England.”
“You are? But what about Oxford and your salmon research?”
Ian looked out at the water. “I’m leaving my work behind. My father needs me to help him with the, er, family business.”
She stared, sensing there was something he wasn’t telling her. “But you love what you do. You can’t just walk away from your research, simply to make your father happy.”
He gave a stiff-looking smile. “It might seem that way from the outside but the reality is not nearly as clear-cut. My father needs my help.”
They were in very similar situations. She could so relate to what he was saying. No one else could understand unless they had experienced it.
Kat, for instance, had been telling her for years to move out and leave her mother behind in Haven Point, but even her best friend hadn’t understood all the complicated reasons she had stayed, the murky reality she had been wading through for years.
That fear of abandoning her mother as Lyle had done, which she was only now beginning to realize.
“That’s what I always told myself. My mother was older and had health problems. I told myself I was only being a dutiful daughter. If I left, she would have no one. So I stayed, unhappy and dreaming of a different life than the one I had. I suppose dreaming a handsome prince would come and take me away from it so I wouldn’t have to make any hard choices on my own.”
The stark self-scrutiny made her want to cry again. She blinked the tears away.
“And then she died and I realized I was almost thirty years old and my life has been wasted, waiting for something else.”
“Not wasted,” he corrected softly. “You have created a good life here. Friends you care about. A thriving business. Puppies.”
“You’re right. It is a good life, even though it was designed for me from the time I was a girl. I didn’t buy my own clothes until I was in college, if you can believe that. My mother had a very strong personality and I let the force of her consume me. It just seemed easier to go along with what she wanted, all these years.”
If her father hadn’t killed himself, maybe that overbearing aspect of her mother’s personality wouldn’t have come out so strongly. Or maybe she and her father together might have been able to keep it in check.
She couldn’t believe she had blurted all this out to Ian. She wasn’t sure she had ever really been so transparent with anyone, even Kat.
What must he think of her?
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all of this on you.”
“I asked. And I’m glad you told me, that you feel as if you can talk to me.”
He reached out and grabbed her hand, his fingers warm against her. She found deep comfort in the contact of skin against skin and wanted to lean her head on his shoulder.
She was doing it again. Falling in love at the drop of a hat.
This time felt different somehow. Ian was different.
He was a good man. A kind one. She had loved seeing him surrounded by his family. His teasing of Gemma, the deep affection for his mother, the clear respect he had for his father.
She could love him very easily.
And end up with her heart broken, she reminded herself, when he walked away in a few weeks to return to his life overseas.
She stepped away from him, hoping a little physical distance would help her regain her equilibrium. His boat brushed against the dock and she seized on the distraction.
“What time do you usually leave in the morning? I often see the boat is gone before I leave for work.”
She hoped he didn’t guess that she always looked out the sunroom window first thing to see if she could see it moored here.
“Early,” he answered. “I try to reach the Chalk Creek mouth before sunrise but don’t always make it.”
“You must be a very dedicated researcher for that kind of commitment. I hate thinking about you just...walking away from something you obviously care about a great deal.”
He shifted in the moo
nlight and she saw reluctance and a hint of sadness in his eyes. “I don’t have a choice, Samantha. I wish I did.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not this time. As I said, as soon as we return to England from this trip, the children and I are moving to be closer to my parents. The wheels are already in motion.”
He kept his voice carefully impassive but she thought she could hear a strain of sadness underneath.
“You don’t want to leave your work, do you?”
“It’s not about what I want.” His mouth was firm, resolute.
“Ian. Please don’t make the mistake I did, going along with what was expected of me simply because it was the easier route.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“If you don’t want to work with your father, stand up for yourself. You love studying salmon and working with your students. Do you really want to throw that away to work in some stuffy office without a window?”
A little smile quirked at his mouth, though she saw it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Whoever said I was heading to a stuffy office without a window?”
“Wild guess. Am I right?”
“Not exactly. But close enough, metaphorically, I suppose.”
“If that’s not what you want, you need to tell Henry. You only have one chance at life. Why spend it living someone else’s dream? Take what you want.”
Before the words were out, before she realized what he intended, Ian was reaching for her, his mouth fierce and passionate on hers.
For an instant, she froze, not quite sure where the kiss had come from. This was a side to him she didn’t recognize. Fierce, wild, passionate.
Wonderful.
His mouth was firm, determined, on hers, leaving no doubt as to what he wanted. Samantha kissed him back, her heartbeat racing and desire lapping at her like water against the dock.
So much for emotional equilibrium. All her emotions were raw and close to the surface.
She wanted him. Right here, right now. The attraction she had felt for him before had seemed powerful enough but this wild rush of her blood consumed her until she could think of nothing else but being with him.
Summer at Lake Haven Page 18