“A degree he never used,” Kat pointed out quietly.
They walked without speaking for several moments, remembering the day four years ago when Kat’s husband drowned after a storm swept him off his fishing trawler.
“Anyway,” Kat continued. “That’s all in the past. As to Rogan, I’ll rephrase. He found you. And who’s to say he isn’t a treasure, right, Addie? If Lee likes him, she should go for it.”
“Agreed,” Addie said. “You need a bit of fun, Lee. All you ever do these days is work on that plane.”
“I have bills to pay,” she protested, wishing they would get off her case. “Just like you, Kat.”
“I also have a child who’s asthmatic. That tends to scare off a lot of guys.”
Before she could think it through or analyze the consequences, Lee muttered, “So do pregnant, unmarried women.”
A songbird trilled in a nearby tree, and somewhere beyond, a squirrel scolded.
Addie cast Lee a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She exhaled a shaky breath. “I’m pregnant…and it’s Oliver’s.”
“Omigod, honey.” Kat, always the soother, stroked Lee’s hair. “When? How?”
“Last time he was home.” Her smile wobbled. “And, in the usual way.”
“But, you were always just friends…”
“This time it changed,” Lee explained “Don’t ask why or how. It just…did.”
They reached a bend in the fog-patched trail leading past the weathered fence that enclosed the small pasture comprising the Riley farm. Rogan’s farm now, Lee thought, breathing the briny ocean air sifting through the shoreline trees. Rogan, who had asked about Oliver yesterday and wanted to protect her against Lucien.
“Please,” she said. “Do not tell Mom. I couldn’t handle her yammering about how I should’ve taken more care, and how I’m old enough to know better, yada, yada.” The last thing she needed was Charmaine ranting as she’d done with Addie fourteen years ago. “I will tell her,” Lee continued. “Just not yet, okay?”
Addie hooked their arms. “Got it. We won’t say a thing. How are you feeling physically?”
“Woozy this morning because I forgot to take my meds.” Lee explained Wednesday’s session at the Renton medical clinic, how amazed she’d been after years of trying, after years of irregular menses. “I don’t want to lose this baby,” she whispered.
“We’re here, honey,” Addie said. “Every step of the way.”
They continued along the wooded path. Above the trees the morning sun struggled to poke beyond the haze; slowly Lee’s fear subsided. Kat and Addie would be there.
Breathing deeply, she let her mind relax. Beyond the band of evergreens to the right, sea flirted with shore. The constant resonance induced an abrupt rush of love in Lee for her sisters. Here on the island, they had grown up, then separated after high school to begin other lives, endured heartaches, but always stood at each other’s backs. It couldn’t get any better than this.
She was about to say as much when Addie cried out.
“Addie!” Lee rushed to hold her sister. “What is it?”
“Is it the baby?” Kat asked, clutching Addie’s waist.
“No, a—cramp in my leg.”
“You need to sit down,” Lee said.
Gently, they lowered Addie to the soft, cool earth.
Lee removed her sister’s gym shoe. “I’m going to push the ball of your foot upward very slowly,” she said. “It’ll help unclench the calf muscle. Try to move your foot with me, okay?”
Addie groaned. “Glad one of us got some first-aid training.”
Lee maneuvered the foot carefully until Addie’s features were no longer pinched and she opened her eyes with a relieved breath. “Thanks,” she whispered.
Once they had Addie standing again, Lee said, “I’ll call Skip.”
“Don’t be silly,” Addie said. “I’ll be okay.” But she winced when she set her foot down and attempted to gain her balance.
Lee scowled. “Never mind. I’ll call him.” But when she tried, the call wouldn’t connect. “I’m walking back to where I can get through.”
“What about Rogan’s place?” Kat suggested. “He’s probably got his land line hooked up already.”
Lee looked back down the trail they had traveled, back to where it ran alongside his property. Skip would be able to fetch Addie there easier than if he walked a mile through the woods.
“Go,” Kat said. “Rogan won’t mind.”
Of course he wouldn’t mind if she used his telephone. In the ten days she’d come to know Rogan Matteo, she had discovered he was a man with principles and decency. A man she could fall for—if she wasn’t careful.
Right. Judging by the last two men she’d fallen for, she held the track record for finishing last.
With Rogan…The fact she’d flown for Abner Air and might have been partly responsible for what happened to his family were reasons enough to put her clear out of the running.
Still, she broke into a run down the path toward his property with irrepressible hope in her heart. Raced when she should be turning in the opposite direction, away from him and this silly eagerness rushing through her veins.
Think of Addie, only Addie.
However, when she stood in the pasture, in view of his house and his vehicle, her heart pounded not for her sister but for the man who, if he knew the truth about her, would never speak to her again.
Chapter Five
R ogan watched her climb the pasture fence. Well, now.
Mouth twitching, he stacked the clothes box from his truck onto the reconstructed front porch and wondered what Miss Lee was up to today. Oh, yes, he knew the woman walking across the rise of the meadow was his pilot. He’d recognize that curly red ponytail at any distance, even one layered in several hundred yards of fog.
Poking his head into the open door of the house, he called in to his son. “Dan, you going to be all right here for a minute? I need to check on something in the pasture.”
“Wait, Daddy,” the boy yelled back and Rogan heard small feet on the second floor beating a path to the top of the stairs. “I wanna come with you.”
“I’m not going to see Juniper and Pepper.” He wished his son were a bit more independent, that it wasn’t unease driving him to cling. “It’s just Ms. Tait, buddy. Seems she’s come to visit.”
The boy ran across the living room and, typical seven-year-old, slid to a halt on the hardwood in front of Rogan.
“You know,” he said, “you could finish fixing your room, show it to Ms. Tait when you’re done.”
“Uh-uh. I want to see her, too.”
In other words, I don’t want to stay in this scary old house alone. Not that the house contained ghosts of former owners. No, Danny’s ghost was his own anxiety, anxiety that had settled in hard and fast following the deaths of his mother and sister. Thankfully, the island’s school counselor understood the trauma and behaviors of her charges. Better, Rogan believed, than the overworked therapist at his son’s previous school in Renton.
Danny walked out of the house, tripped down the porch steps, then ran ahead to swing open the gate by the small barn fronting the meadow where the mare and foal were pastured.
Momentarily lost in thoughts of his son, Rogan followed.
The horses were almost invisible in a far corner of their ten-acre domain. Lee, on the other hand, stood in its center, facing the woods and the walking trail, cell phone pressed to her ear.
Danny’s hand slipped into Rogan’s. “Why’s she standing there, Dad? Doesn’t she know we’re here?”
“Guess not.” He observed the tension in her body, the stiffness of her shoulders. Her hand clasped the back of her neck and she bent her head, attentive to her listener.
Rogan slowed his stride, allowing Lee privacy to complete the call. After she shut the mobile, he called out softly.
She spun around. “Rogan.”
The timbre of her voice, that voice h
aunting his daydreams as well as those in the night, almost had him sprinting for the hills. If her voice could put his pulse in a state of flux, what would happen if he ever kissed her? The last time he’d tried, the heat between them had been palpable.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“I was coming to use your landline because my sister Addie has a leg cramp. But—” she held up her cell phone “—I was able to get through to her husband after all.”
Skip Dalton, the man Rogan met at the seaplane base in Renton.
“Addie’s the pregnant one?”
“Yes. She’s in a lot of pain and can barely stand.”
Rogan put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Danny, I want you to go back to the house, get a few washcloths from the box by the foot of the stairs, then fill the kitchen sink with hot water—hot as you can touch—okay?”
Danny shook his head hard. “I don’t wanna go back there.” Alone.
“Dan, there’s a lady who’s hurt. I need you to be a brave boy now, okay? I’ll be right back, but first I have to see what I can do for Mrs. Dalton.”
“But, Dad—”
“It’s okay, Rogan,” Lee interjected. “I’ll see to my sister. If you could point Skip in this direction when he arrives…”
He glanced over. “I have a first-aid kit. Warm cloths will help ease the tension in the muscle.” Hoping to impart his intentions—that his son needed to shoulder a bit of independence—he held her gaze for an extra beat before continuing, “Dan, this is serious. Please hurry.” He turned the boy toward the house. “Go.”
The child’s bottom lip quivered. “Daddy—”
“There’s nothing to be afraid about. Quick, now.”
Lee stepped forward. “I’ll go with you, Danny.”
“That isn’t necessary.” Oh, Rogan understood what was going on with his son. He understood the unease, the need to cling to the familiar. Hadn’t he gone through an identical edginess five days ago boarding that seaplane?
“Actually, it is necessary,” Lee said around a smile that said I know this, I’ve seen it in you. “We’ll be right back.”
Taking Danny’s hand, she walked toward the farmhouse
Frustrated, Rogan debated whether to order her back, but Addie Dalton was in pain and he had never avoided those in need. Assisting the underdog, the helpless, timid, wounded and vulnerable, they were the reasons he’d gone into law.
“Do as Ms. Tait says,” he called as they walked away, through strips of fog.
Lee lifted her hand in response and an unfamiliar emotion crashed into his chest. Not wanting to scrutinize its cause, he turned and broke into a run toward the fence, wondering with every step if he was racing to Addie…or running from Lee.
Lee understood exactly what was going on with Rogan’s son. It was easy to read the apprehension in the child’s voice, the tension in his bony shoulders. She had witnessed the same sort of trepidation in his father climbing aboard her plane—that facing-the-unknown apprehension.
Whether Danny cloned Rogan’s demeanor wasn’t the issue. Rogan had to change his own behavior before he should expect it of his son. Except she wasn’t a psychologist—just a pilot. And Rogan Matteo wasn’t her boyfriend, husband or significant other. He was an acquaintance, that was all.
Climbing the steps of the wide porch, she asked, “So, do you like your new home, Danny?”
“Sorta. I like Juniper and her baby Pepper best.”
“The horses?”
“Uh-huh. They’re in the pasture over there.”
Yes, Lee had heard about the previous renters claiming they no longer wanted the animals, leaving them behind when they moved to Spokane. Eve Riley, owner of the property and living in Oregon for the past twelve years, had agreed to keep the horses, then sold them as part of the farm.
“I love horses.” Lee trailed Danny inside.
The three words were a hit.
Chattering about his favorite animals, the boy searched out the washcloths as she headed for the kitchen, which local contractor Zeb Jantz had reconstructed into a spacious country affair with Quaker cupboards, green wainscoting and yellow-patterned tiles. The floor space beside a tall, wide window looking out across the pasture held an ancient oak table and four ladder-backed chairs. Rogan clearly enjoyed furnishings of past eras.
But what caught her eye was the corner sink where a greenhouse window drew in an abundance of natural light. Her heart tugged at the sight of a lone dandelion in a glass of water on the wide sill. Danny, she thought and imagined his small fingers plucking the weedy flower to cheer up his father in their new house.
Here in this kitchen, a woman could dream and for a moment, just a moment, she let the dream slip into shape. She saw herself cooking at the modern replica of a 1930s-style stove. She pictured Rogan and Danny eating at the scarred table.
Making memories. With her.
“Is this enough?” Danny hurried into the room, snapping the dream shut.
He held at least ten washcloths.
“Perfect.” Hiding a smile, she stacked them on the counter beside the sink, plugged the drain and ran the water until steam drifted off its surface.
“Do you know the sick lady?” A lock of blond hair fell into Danny’s brown eyes as he studied the rising water.
“I do. She’s my youngest sister.”
“I used to have a sister older’n me. She died.”
“Yes, honey.” Lee glanced down at his earnest face. “Your daddy told me.”
“Sophie was kinda bossy sometimes. Do you boss your sister?”
He said it with such seriousness that she chuckled. “Sometimes. Today I made her sit and rest until her husband comes to drive her home.”
Danny dropped a washcloth into the water. His shoulder brushed her arm. “How come he wasn’t with her?”
“Because walking is something my sisters and I do by ourselves.”
“Don’t you get lonely by yourself?”
“No, sometimes being by myself gives me a chance to do the things I like and enjoy.”
“My mom liked shopping. She was always shopping with Sophie. They bought nice clothes and stuff.”
And what did your mom buy you, little guy? Lee couldn’t imagine the woman coming home empty-handed to this small replica of Rogan. Except for the light hair, the dark eyes, Danny Matteo favored his father in every way: high-boned cheeks, black lashes, straight mouth, the curve outlining his nose. And young as he was, his feet were already long and sturdy, his hands big.
He’d grow into his father’s height and size. Soon, teenage girls would giggle behind their hands, and later women would send him come-hither looks.
She had never been one of those girls, one of those women.
She’d been the girl with freckled cheeks and arms; the one playing center in the basketball court because of her ability to jump as aggressively for the ball as the center on the boys’ team.
She hadn’t dated until her final year, hadn’t had sex until her twenty-third birthday. She hadn’t wanted to follow her mother’s footsteps. Three men, three daughters.
And I will be telling my baby about her daddy.
Secreting away a father’s name as Charmaine had with Kat was wrong, completely wrong.
Lee visualized Danny’s mother—small-boned, gentle disposition, the perfect mother. Of course, she would’ve had flaws. Maybe one had been the shopping sprees Danny mentioned. But Mrs. Matteo would’ve been beautiful; a loving wife. Lee knew it, felt it as if the woman stood in this kitchen gazing over her shoulder.
Rogan had loved his wife. He missed her, mourned her.
“There’s Daddy!” The boy rushed from the sink where he’d been swirling the washcloths with a spoon in the heated water.
Lee glanced through the garden window. Rogan strode across the pasture, Addie in his arms, Kat walking quickly at his side.
Behind her, the door banged closed. The next instant, she watched Danny dash across the yard toward the barn gate, a
nd open the little wooden structure for his father.
Lee rushed out of the house. Had Addie fainted? Injured herself further? “What happened?” she called.
“Rogan’s playing hero.” Addie rolled her eyes, yet clung to his neck as he approached the porch steps.
“She couldn’t walk all the way here,” he clarified. “As it is, it’s going to be a while before the muscle feels loose and normal again.” He took the steps, shouldered through the door and walked straight into his kitchen where he helped Addie sit on one of the chairs at the old wooden table.
Crouching in front of their sister, Kat pushed up the hem of Addie’s yoga pants and began massaging her calf muscle. “Stretch it as much as you can,” she coaxed while Lee wrung out two heated washcloths. She handed them to Kat to press against the taut muscle.
“Can you point your toe upward?” Rogan asked. “That’ll soften the knot and alleviate the pain to a degree.”
“We did that on the trail,” Lee informed him.
“Good.” With Addie sitting and Lee and Kat hovering, he seemed at a loss as to what to do with three women in his house. “I’ll wait outside for Skip. C’mon, Dan.”
“He’s a nice guy,” Addie whispered when the door closed behind the Matteo pair. “You won’t go wrong with him, Lee. If you’re interested.”
“I’m not,” she retorted, rinsing out another cloth.
Kat snorted. “Ask if her fingers are tingling.”
“Your fingers tingle?”
“Whenever he’s around,” Kat said.
“Hush.” Lee glanced at the door. “He’ll hear you.”
Addie frowned. “You are attracted to him.”
“Not at all.”
Kat let out a chuckle. “You are so in denial.”
A vehicle rumbled outside. “Skip’s here,” Lee said. Thank God.
Addie leaned back in the chair. “I wish this hadn’t happened. He’s been after me to quit these walks for two months.”
“Because he’s crazy about you,” Lee said.
And Baby Makes Four Page 6