Carolina Man

by Virginia Kantra

  “You’re making her feel wanted. You’re making her feel secure. Children, particularly children like Taylor who are recovering from a loss, need four things: routine, security, honesty, and love. As long as you can give her those, she’ll be fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I see a lot of parents and children in my office. Most of them are recovering from some sort of trauma. A lot of them are in counseling. And from what I see of you and Taylor, I believe you can do this.”

  She sounded so sure, when everything around him was uncertain. So determined, like she would make him be up to the job through sheer force of will. Without really thinking about it, he leaned forward, and she was there, her eyes wide and startled, her lips pink and parted, he was glad she was there, he was grateful she was with him, and then he was kissing her, which was better than thinking and a hell of a lot better than talking.

  The taste of her was a surprise, the heat under the sweet, like cinnamon candy. He went abruptly hard, the blood rushing in his head, pounding in his veins, as she kissed him back, as her fingers brushed his shoulders, touched the back of his neck. He licked deeper, eating into the sweetness and softness of her. She tasted good, better than good, and she made this little sound in her throat that shot straight to his groin. His mind blanked. His hands slid down, found her hips and pulled her close. Oh, God, yes, like that.

  She jolted as their bodies came into hot, tight contact.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered. He moved his hands back to her waist. Safe territory. Just let me kiss you. Let me hold you. Let me . . .

  She pushed at his shoulders. He raised his head. Her eyes, more brown than green, were dark and dazed. “What’s this about?”

  He wasn’t sure. But he wanted it again. “How about ‘thank you’?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Thanks for being here. For everything you’re doing for me and Taylor.”

  “Oh. You’re welcome.” She swallowed, easing away from him. His body protested the loss of her softness. “Maybe next time, you can write me a note.”

  He grinned, going with his gut. “How about I take you to dinner instead?”

  Her fugitive smile flickered before she shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  He cocked his head. “Why not? Unless you’re seeing somebody.”

  She licked her lips, which made him want to kiss her again. “That’s really none of your business.”

  “So, no,” he said with satisfaction.

  Her breath escaped in a huff of laughter before she caught it back. “You can’t know that.”

  “Calculated guess,” he informed her. “I figure you’d come straight out and tell me to get lost if there was somebody else. Plus, you kissed me back.”

  “All right, fine. I won’t deny that I’m attracted. And flattered. But—” She held him off with one hand. “You just got home. You’re understandably feeling unsettled. This is hardly the right time for you to be . . . for us to be doing . . .” She waggled her fingers in the air between them. “This.”

  His grin broadened. “I’m not sure I recognize your hand sign. You mean dinner?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. Any sort of personal contact—relationship—between us would be terribly complicated.”

  “Only because you’re thinking like a lawyer.”

  “I am a lawyer.”

  “Right. You’re used to complicating things. Marines keep it simple. Identify your long-term objective, execute the steps to achieve your objective.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Do you honestly expect me to believe your objective is to have dinner with me?”

  “No,” he admitted. “Dinner would be more like the short-term strategy.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Getting to know you would be the objective,” he explained.

  Her lips quivered in a smile. But then she shook her head. “Whatever. The fact is, you’ve been gone a long time. You’ve returned to a new and stressful family situation. Under the circumstances, it’s natural for your emotions to be heightened. All your emotions.”

  He looked at her in amused disbelief. “You think I asked you out because of my ‘heightened emotional state’?”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “I’m not insulted.” Much. “But if you think I’m only hitting on you because I’m at loose ends or looking to get laid, you’re selling yourself short.”

  Her face turned red. “I only meant . . . When most people come into my office, they’re in crisis. It’s my job to guide them through some of the most difficult personal decisions they’ll ever face, decisions with lasting consequences, at a time when their lives are a mess and their emotions are making things worse. I can’t help them, I can’t do my job, if I let my personal feelings get in the way.”

  “I’m not your client.”

  “No, you’re Taylor’s father.” She waited a beat, to underscore her point. “And I’m the executor of Dawn’s estate. You’re in the middle of a social services investigation, facing a permanent custody hearing in two weeks. Taylor has to be your top priority.”

  “She is.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, battling frustration. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are. I appreciate everything you’re trying to do for Taylor. I want to help. Which is why . . .” She drew a deep breath. He thought maybe she found it harder to ignore her personal feelings than she let on. Anyway, that’s what he wanted to think. “We should focus on identifying what Taylor needs.”

  He regarded her wryly. “You’re not just talking about a picture of her mother, are you?”

  “No.” Another smile, another hint of the humor that lurked beneath her buttoned-up attitude. He liked both sides, he decided, the warm woman and the cool lawyer. “But that’s a good start.”

  • • •

  KATE’S HEART HAMMERED.

  She’d told Luke to back off, and he’d backed off.

  Situation dealt with, she told herself. Problem solved.

  Except . . . He turned, his hard, lean body in boots and fatigues, his blue eyes level under straight, thick lashes, and everything inside her purred and yearned. Her hormones were still in an uproar because he’d kissed her.

  Yikes. She did not trust him. Or rather, she didn’t trust her own breathless attraction to him. Daughters need their fathers to develop a positive self-image and healthy relationships with the opposite sex, she had said.

  And if you never had that . . .

  She was on her own here. Making things up as she went along. Not a good place for her. Especially not with a man like this.

  Luke glanced at her face and gestured towards the open carton marked TAYLOR—BEDROOM. “Okay to take this?”

  “Of course.” Hastily, she rearranged her features in a smile. “‘Travel light’ is fine if you’re a Marine. It sucks if you’re in a Marine’s family.” She was the survivor of too many moves, of too many things broken, abandoned, and left behind, books, bikes, neighborhoods, friendships.

  “I guess it never bothered me. My mom used to say . . . Well.” He picked up the box.

  Kate raised her brows. Apparently he was the strong, silent type. She was taking a hiatus from dating at the moment—okay, maybe longer than a moment, a couple of years, at least—but she preferred men who gave you some clue to what they were thinking. Writers, academics, other lawyers, men who discussed their feelings instead of letting them build behind a wall of macho silence until they erupted in alcoholic fury. Men as different from her father as she could imagine.

  “What did your mother say?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  “Mom used to tell us that as long as we had each other we had everything. Back to back to back. That was kind of our motto, Matt and Meg and me. Only in Afghanistan . . .” He hesitated, shifting the weight of the carton in his arms.

  She really wasn’t interested in his personal life, she told herself.<
br />
  Except she was.

  “In Afghanistan,” she prompted softly.

  He shrugged. “You start to appreciate things. Like care packages. You’re grateful for the eye drops and drink mix and socks, but it’s the other stuff everybody keeps. Letters. Pictures. Stuff to remind you of home.”

  Something turned over in Kate’s chest, like a key in a lock, like her heart. “So you decided Taylor needed stuff.” That was so sweet. What a decent guy.

  “Her own stuff.” He nodded. “Yeah. Especially when we move into our own place.”

  “I thought you were staying with your parents.”

  He carried the box to the Jeep. “I’m renting one of the guest cottages out back, at least for now. That way Taylor won’t have to switch schools again this year.”

  So he’d thought of that, too. That was pretty sensitive of him.

  Darn it. Here she was, priding herself on her ability to listen and assess, to consider the facts dispassionately and offer her clients objective counsel. And yet with Luke, she’d allowed herself to make the kind of snap judgment she normally scorned. Why? Because he was a Marine, like her father? Because her own hello-there-sailor response to him made her uncomfortable?

  That wasn’t fair.

  Guilt burned in her chest, her face. She could not offer him her apology without explaining just how badly she’d misjudged him. But she wanted to make it up to him. To help him somehow.

  She trailed him to his vehicle. “What about furniture?”

  He slid the box in back, muscles flexing. He really had great arms. And shoulders. Great everything, really. “What about it?”

  “You’ll need some if you’re moving.” She glanced away—oh, God, had he caught her staring?—toward the open storage unit. “And there’s plenty here.”

  “Thanks, we’re good,” he said. “The cottage is furnished.”

  “Maybe a bookcase for Taylor?”

  “Maybe.”

  She didn’t understand his reluctance. She was trying to help. “You could come back with a truck if you don’t have room right now.”

  His gaze met hers briefly. His jaw set. “I don’t need . . . It doesn’t feel right taking Dawn’s things, okay?”

  A guy with scruples. How attractive. She didn’t see a lot of those in her line of work.

  “They’re Taylor’s things now,” Kate reminded him. “It’s no different from using her trust.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She gnawed her lip, a suspicion growing in her mind. Since Dawn’s life insurance company would not pay out directly to a minor child, Kate had set up a trust for Taylor, managed by the bank. Dawn’s death benefit was paid into the trust so that Taylor’s guardian—Luke—could draw on the money to pay for her expenses.

  “You’re not having any trouble accessing her funds, are you?”

  “I don’t think so.” He met her gaze and shrugged. “I haven’t tried.”

  “What about Taylor’s Social Security benefits?”

  “It’s all there. In her college fund. Her account,” he corrected. “Maybe she’ll decide college isn’t her thing when she gets older. But the money will be there for her. She won’t have to bust her butt like Meg did or take out loans.”

  “You shouldn’t have to bust your butt, either. Dawn paid into that policy so that you would have that money for Taylor’s expenses.”

  He rolled those impressive shoulders in another shrug. “She bought the policy for Taylor. If there’s something Taylor needs that I can’t afford, fine. Otherwise, the money will be there for her when she grows up.”

  “Wow. That’s very . . .” Principled? Impractical?

  “Fair,” he said. “Dawn carried all the costs of the first ten years of Taylor’s life. Now that I’m finally in the picture, seems she should be my responsibility.”

  It was more than fair, she thought. It was decent. He was a decent guy. Not a lot of that going around. Plus, there were those arms. Those eyes.

  She tried to take a normal breath. “Well. If there’s nothing else you need . . .”

  “I didn’t say that,” he interrupted, that intense blue gaze on her face.

  She could pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. She stuck out her chin instead. “You know, I don’t normally go around kissing men in storage lockers.”

  Or at all. There was that whole dating hiatus thing she had going on. Not to mention the do-not-leap-before-you-look thing. The tired-of-disappointment thing. The I-don’t-want-to-loan-you-money, talk-about-your-ex, listen-to-you-hedge-about-our-relationship thing. She was not jumping into something just because the man had nice arms and seemed to want to do the right thing by his daughter.

  He smiled. “You got something against kissing?”

  “Not against kissing. Per se. But . . .”

  “Latin.” He moved in, still smiling. “Very hot.”

  Her heart raced. It was just a kiss, she rationalized. She’d kissed men before. Not recently, true, but she didn’t need to invest this kiss, this man, with any special significance.

  To prove it, she stood on tiptoe, twined her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.

  See? she told herself. Not a prob—Oh, God, the man could kiss.

  In no time at all, he’d opened her lips with his, his tongue in her mouth and his hands in her hair. Her brain fogged as he kissed her, progressively slower, deeper, wetter kisses. Her skin steamed with lust.

  She had to . . . She couldn’t. They shouldn’t.

  Shaking, she pulled back. “I told you . . . The timing . . . This is a bad idea.”

  He kissed her hot cheek. She tried not to melt. “Yeah, I heard you.”

  She swallowed. “Then, why—”

  His eyes were bright and impossibly blue against his desert tan. “I didn’t say I agreed with you.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  His mouth quirked. “Maybe we can talk about it later. I want to be there when Taylor gets home from school.”

  He gave her another hard, brief kiss before he tugged down the overhead door and left, taking the boxes with him.

  She watched his Jeep drive away, her lips tingling and her heart in turmoil.

  Oh, yes, they definitely had a problem. Not because he wasn’t listening. Because she wasn’t sure she wanted him to.

  Seven

  PLANNING HAD SEEN Tess Fletcher through countless moves as a military wife. As long as she stayed organized, as long as she kept busy, everything would be all right.

  She ran down the list on the kitchen counter, crossing off items as she removed them from the refrigerator. Milk, butter, orange juice, check, check, check, loaded into the box.

  The back door creaked as Tom returned from carrying the last carton from Taylor’s room upstairs. Not that there was much up there to pack.

  Tess sighed. When Taylor first came to live with them three months ago, Tess hadn’t planned on raising another ten-year-old. But all her doubts had melted away the first time Taylor looked at her with Luke’s blue eyes. She’d been full of hopes and plans for this surprise granddaughter, this unexpected blessing in their lives. It hadn’t always been easy. It had taken Taylor a while to learn to trust them. Tess’s own accident had derailed so many of her plans. And now . . .

  The list blurred. Tess blinked fiercely and refocused on the shelves. Eggs, apples . . .

  “What are you doing?” Tom asked.

  Tess kept her head turned toward the refrigerator. Nothing terrified poor Tom like the threat of tears. “Stocking the cottage fridge for Luke and Taylor. The home visit’s tomorrow.”

  “Babe, social worker’s not going to look in the fridge to see if Luke’s feeding her properly.”

  He was probably right. Still . . . “She might.”

  “Then he should buy his own groceries. The boy can guide a Marine patrol in enemy territory; he can probably find a grocery store.”

  Tom was right. Of course he was right. But Tess needed to do
something. To feel useful somehow. “It’s just some basic supplies to get them started.”

  “Fine. Maybe it will keep him from mooching your cooking all the time.”

  Tess sniffed.

  Tom eyed her in alarm. “What?”

  “I’m going to miss him.”

  “Luke?”

  She eyed him with exasperated affection. “Of course Luke. And Taylor.”

  “They’re moving across the backyard, not overseas.”

  Tess swallowed. “I know.”

  It was different for Tom, she acknowledged. All those years he was the one who went away while she stayed home and made sure the children had what they needed, new shoes, vaccinations, dinner on the table every night, signed permission slips. In their division of duty, the family was her billet.

  She felt her usefulness slipping away, her children slipping away, even as their needs grew.

  “You need a break anyway,” he said, trying to help.

  “I’m fine. It’s the kids I’m worried about.”

  Tom raised his heavy eyebrows. “All the kids?”

  “Well, not Matt,” she admitted.

  Matt was busy organizing the new watermen’s association, deeply in love with his Allison, and happier than she’d seen him in years. The young, idealistic teacher was exactly what her son—and the island—needed.

  Of course, once they married, the two-bedroom cottage Matt had shared with Josh for the past sixteen years would be too small for all three of them. They would move to a larger house, and Tess would no longer have her grandson growing up practically on her doorstep.

  Which was a good thing, she told herself. But in her heart she felt it as another change. Another loss.

  “Nothing wrong with Meg,” Tom said, his gruff tone failing to hide his pride in their only daughter.

  Bright, ambitious Meg had had a rough couple of months, getting fired from her well-paying job in New York, selling her condo with its view of Central Park, breaking up with her long-term boyfriend. But now . . .

  “She does love being her own boss,” Tess agreed, adding wickedly, “and Sam would make any woman happy.”