A Little Learning

by Margot Early

  Can they be a family?

  Raising four kids on his own doesn’t leave widower Seamus Lee much time for cultivating new relationships. Which is just how he wants it. But Rory Gorenzi, the unconventional wilderness instructor at his children’s mountain school, has other ideas.…

  Ever since their arrival in the snowy Colorado town, Rory finds the Lee clan impossible to resist. But it’s obvious that Seamus is hiding something. Can Rory break through his defenses to learn his secret—and to help him become the father his children need?

  Dear Reader,

  Home, family, community and love. These are the values we cherish most in our lives—the ideals that ground us, comfort us, move us. They certainly provide the perfect inspiration around which to build a romance collection that will touch the heart.

  And so we are thrilled to offer you the Harlequin Heartwarming series. Each of these special stories is a wholesome, heartfelt romance imbued with the traditional values so important to you. They are books you can share proudly with friends and family. And the authors featured in this collection are some of the most talented storytellers writing today, including favorites such as Roz Denny Fox, Margaret Daley and Mary Anne Wilson. We’ve selected these stories especially for you based on their overriding qualities of emotion and tenderness, and they center around your favorite themes—children, weddings, second chances, the reunion of families, the quest to find a true home and, of course, sweet romance.

  So curl up in your favorite chair, relax and prepare for a heartwarming reading experience!

  Sincerely,

  The Editors

  Margot Early

  has written stories since she was twelve years old. She has sold over three million books with Harlequin Books; her work has been translated into twelve languages and sold in dozens of countries. Ms. Early lives high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains with two German shepherds. She has studied herbalism and martial arts, and she enjoys the outdoors, spinning dog hair and dancing with Caldera, a tribal belly-dance troupe. You can find her on Facebook.

  Margot Early

  A Little Learning

  For Chris

  “The story of one’s life as it is written into the body can be retold and understood in the intense moment of dancing.”

  —Grandmother’s Secrets by Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi, translated by Monique Arav

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sultan, Colorado

  January

  RORY GORENZI WAS on time for the 10:00 a.m. meeting with her father. She was usually punctual and she’d never lost a job because of absenteeism or tardiness. She’d lost none of her previous jobs because of incompetence, either. Instead, she had lost them for speaking before thinking—or, rather, for speaking her mind as her thoughts occurred.

  It was imperative that she keep her mouth shut now. She wouldn’t say anything unless her father required her to speak.

  But she would focus on the conversation at hand, rather than dwelling on her recent loss or on the other minor problem in her personal life. The problem wasn’t really her problem: a disagreement among her fire-dancing/belly-dancing troupe regarding a living creature in the household they shared. A living creature that had long since ceased to be useful to their troupe, a living creature that no zoo or reptile rescue facility had so far agreed to adopt.

  It was a bad situation, but Rory couldn’t think about it now.

  Nor could she think about her beloved pet, Gandalf, now, or she would break down in tears. The vet had put down the old dog after a long illness only the day before. Now, he was out of pain, at last, and she mustn’t cry about that.

  In his office at the Sultan Mountain School, Kurt Gorenzi sat behind a scarred walnut desk, a remnant of Sultan’s earlier mining days. His hair was thick, gray-flecked, wavy, a little long. Rory’s curls, sun-lightened brown and reaching to her waist, had come from him, from her father. As had her nose—straight, lightly dusted with freckles. And her brown eyes.

  It was unlikely that her personality had been influenced by him, however, since she’d had little contact with him over the years, despite having grown up in the town of three hundred where he lived.

  Kurt Gorenzi wore a plaid flannel shirt, Carhartts and Sorels. The driving force behind Sultan’s recently reborn economy looked like the unapproachable mountain man he was. He stood when she entered, considered her formally, did not invite her to sit—and did the talking. “You’ll be forming the program for Seamus Lee’s family,” he said. “I’ve given them the Empire Street house, and they’re bringing a dog.”

  A dog.

  Gandalf had been fourteen, old for a German shepherd.

  She blinked away the thought of Seamus Lee’s dog. Rory was unlikely to have another of her own—not now, in any case. She lived with the two other members of Caldera, one of whom was allergic to both dogs and cats and had put up with Gandalf only because Rory had refused to live there without him.

  “Seamus Lee is a cartoonist and animator,” Kurt continued. “He employs five people full-time in Telluride and is considering moving his business and family to Sultan. He has four children.”

  Rory understood the importance of all this. Four children was four children’s worth of funding for the public school. Five full-time employees meant population and economic growth.

  “He and I have known each other for—well—a while. We were skiing buddies years back, during a winter I spent in Telluride. He wants to get his kids out of there because he thinks they’re being corrupted by the…” He chose his words carefully. “Atmosphere of affluence.”

  She pressed her lips tightly together, finishing his sentence in her mind. The atmosphere of affluence that you hope to bring to Sultan. Her self-restraint made her proud.

  “But none of that is relevant. In fact, the family’s enrollment at the school wasn’t his idea. He received an anonymous gift package and he’s agreed to take it.

  “They’re signed up for a three-month program, and I need you to plan activities that will give the kids each three months’ worth of school credit. Except for the youngest, who’s just four.”

  “Four?” echoed Rory. The Sultan Mountain School provided an outdoor education, as well as academics, for children as young as kindergarten age and up to grade 12, and, in certain cases, even offered university credit. The academic work was tailored to complement outdoor programs and provide school credit for the periods enrolled children would be absent from their regular schools. The longest SMS program lasted three months.

  “In this packet—” Kurt handed her a thick ten-by-thirteen envelope “—you’ll find background to fill you in on the Lees’ skills and interests.”

  “Is the dad supposed to get school credit, too?” That didn’t sound the way she had intended it to sound. “I just mean,” she said, “what is he looking for?”

  “Exactly what the Sultan Mountain School offers. Backcountry experience, tutorials in free-heel skiing and ice-climbing, natural history, mountain science…”

  And more. The Sultan Mountain School was dedicated to “increasing appreciation for the mountain environment through education and experience.”

  Of course, SMS wasn’t the only local enterprise that bore Kurt Gor
enzi’s fingerprints. He was a town council member and he’d even helped create the Sultan Childhood Learning Center—ironic, thought Rory, considering how much he’d had to do with his own child’s early life. He’d led the push for the Sultan Recreation Center and had brought a chairlift to Silver Slope, the town’s small family ski area. He’d helped restore a historical mining tramway up into Eureka Gulch for the use of sightseers and had promoted kayaking and river rafting on the Sultana River. He’d done everything he could to keep the town of Sultan, elevation 9,632 feet, from dying. But this was the first time he’d made Rory part of one of his projects.

  He hadn’t sought her out. She’d applied for the job of instructor and assistant director of the Sultan Mountain School. Her father had interviewed her, had made no comment regarding her extensive and varied work history and then he’d hired her. It was the first time in her life she’d ever asked him for anything. She couldn’t remember her mother, who’d died when she was small; she’d been raised by her mother’s mother. Her father had simply cut himself out of her life, although she knew he’d given Gran money every month to support them both financially.

  And now, as during her interview, she was grateful to him for not mentioning the reason she’d been fired by the State of Colorado—which the entire town knew. She’d been an avalanche researcher with the misfortune to be in the field when a United States senator from Colorado accompanied a Realtor and a land developer into a backcountry area just outside Sultan. The group of visitors had stopped to ask about her work and she’d demonstrated the volatility of current avalanche conditions, using a snow pit she’d just dug. After they told her their destination, listened to her strenuous advice to avoid the area because of extreme avalanche danger and started forward anyway, she’d said, Are you on crack? Which was probably not the most tactful way to comment on their foolhardy behavior.

  The senator, to his credit, had tried to prevent her from being fired—he was a politician after all and no doubt wanted her vote. But the Realtor also had friends in high places, and he had been massively annoyed.

  Her previous job had been with the local towing company. Speaking too frankly to customers who told her how to use equipment they’d never been trained to use had cost her that job. Well, actually, it was one snowy night when she’d finally said, Fine. I’ve got other calls. Dig it out yourself.

  She had taught skiing at Silver Slope until she’d told one parent that he was spoiling his daughter and turning her into a brat.

  She’d taught avalanche-awareness classes over the mountains in Telluride until a wolf dog she was watching for a boyfriend destroyed four beacons and two shovels she’d left in her car. He’d also consumed the passenger seat, but since the avalanche school didn’t own that, it hadn’t figured in the complaint. Rory’d replaced the equipment, which had left her in debt, but it hadn’t mattered.

  This time, however, nothing was going to go wrong. She reached for the packet. “Sounds good. When will they be here?”

  His lips smiled slightly. “Today.”

  Rory nodded. “I’ll get right on this, then. Thank you.” She didn’t say for what, because her gratitude took in so many things. Thank you for giving me a chance. Thank you for believing in me.

  Thank you for noticing me.

  She was at the door when her father spoke. “Where is the snake?”

  Rory bit her lip. Of course her father knew about Lola; everyone in Sultan knew. He probably didn’t know Rory had just put down Gandalf. “At the house,” she said. “She’s…contained.”

  “Maybe,” her father suggested, “you three should simply move her home outside.”

  “Yes,” was all Rory said. Let Lola freeze? At the moment, and despite Rory’s recent loss, the suggestion was not entirely unappealing. Besides, snakes were different from dogs, and Rory could not believe that Lola had any feelings whatsoever for her human family. Finally, she said simply, “She’s not my snake.”

  Just a member of her household.

  *

  SEAMUS LEE HAD a career, money, four children and a recent ex-girlfriend who had left him burdened with a wealth of accusations he was having trouble clearing from his mind.

  Every girlfriend you’ve had since Janine died has just been a glorified nanny.

  Unfair. He’d always employed an au pair, in addition to Fiona Murray, who was essential to his household, far more than just a nanny or housekeeper.

  And it’s not as though you’re any kind of a father. They might as well be orphans, Elizabeth, his ex, had continued.

  He should never have gotten involved with one of his artists. Yes, she was a freelancer; and yes, she had income independent from what he provided. In fact, she was loaded and she worked because she wanted to, not because she had to. He’d wondered if she was behind the anonymous gift he’d received of a deluxe term at the Sultan Mountain School. Elizabeth had certainly approved.

  The drive to Sultan will probably be the most time you’ve spent with them since their mother died, she’d said.

  *

  AND THAT, UNFORTUNATELY, was too close to true. So he’d accepted the gift without knowing who was behind it. He would spend this time with his children.

  He would manage without Fiona.

  Well, not the entire time. His seventy-three-year-old household manager would be joining them after a month of sea kayaking in Mexico with her son and his wife.

  So alone he was taking the children out of school in Telluride, Colorado, where his own business—the empire of Ki-Rin, the manga and anime character, half-boy, half-dragon—thrived, and over two mountain passes to Sultan to spend three months at the Sultan Mountain School. There, the children would receive school credit while improving their skills as snowboarders, skiers and mountaineers and learning mountain science. The characteristics of aspens and ponderosa pines, the mechanics of avalanches, the rules of water. Four-year-old Belle would learn to ski. And Seamus would demonstrate that “we never stop learning,” by completing the three-month course alongside them.

  He would also prove that he was not the stranger to his own children that his ex-girlfriend had seemed to think he was. At least she hadn’t also become an ex-employee.

  I have no problem with your art, she’d said. It’s very accessible. But you’re not.

  Not emotionally accessible?

  Well, there might be reasons.

  As there was also a reason—a good reason—why he approached any time alone with his children with extreme caution. There was part of his emotional makeup that he definitely wanted to keep inaccessible to them, for the sake of the family’s survival.

  He drove a new Toyota SUV hybrid, the latest in nanny cars. It was his first trip anywhere in the vehicle, which had been the previous au pair’s car while she lived with them.

  Now, fourteen-year-old Lauren had claimed the front passenger seat. In the back, twelve-year-old Beau and seven-year-old Caleb took the window seats while Belle, in her special car seat, endured the position of the youngest—the middle of the backseat, with her stuffed animal, a mouse, in her lap. Behind them, in a metal dog crate, rode the family’s new pet, Seuss, a twelve-week-old German shepherd.

  The drive to Sultan took seventy-four minutes. It felt like seventy-four days, however, with Belle asking far too often when Fiona would be back.

  “I hate this town,” Lauren announced, glowering as they passed the first junk store on the edge of town—The Sultan Flea Market. “The people are, like, backward.”

  Another good reason to spend some time out of Telluride, Seamus thought. Sure, Telluride was “a great place to raise kids,” with world-class skiing, good schools, culture, of a sort, and natural beauty. But he’d noticed a tendency in his children to see themselves as intellectually brilliant and world-class athletes. Seamus, born and raised in the Silicon Valley in California, surrounded by exceptional brains, the brother of a cyclist who’d finished near the top in the Tour de France, knew his children to be simply “above average.” And
more than a bit snotty.

  They were beautiful children. Beau was the only one of the four without a horde of friends. He wore white Tshirts on which he wrote, in magic marker, obscure quotations from obscure texts, sometimes in dead languages. Beau actually might be brilliant, a thought that terrified Seamus. Already, he was studying trigonometry and his first love was chess. He had little interest in snowboarding, skateboarding or skiing, and spent too much time indoors playing video games on his computer. Now, Lauren gazed through the windshield with visible dissatisfaction. She’d been chosen homecoming princess of the freshman class that fall. She was so popular and had so many friends that she hadn’t wanted to leave—not even for three months. Caleb was a soccer star and an easy child. And Belle…

  Elizabeth’s words pounded at him again.

  He just didn’t know Belle.

  Seamus had memorized directions to the historic hotel that was the home base for the Sultan Mountain School. He would meet his old friend Kurt there and pick up the keys to the house.

  The hotel was three storeys high, with its historic name, the Hotel Ambassador, painted on the brick facade. A shingle hanging over the street, a block from Main Street, read, SULTAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL. Seamus parked.

  Beau shoved open his door. “I’m going to get Seuss out, okay?”

  “Put his leash on him,” Seamus ordered. German shepherds were supposed to be smart, but he hadn’t seen many signs of intelligence in Seuss so far. He did have a startling baritone bark—strange coming from a puppy.

  As Lauren climbed out and stalked to the rear of the vehicle, no doubt intending to criticize her brother’s behavior with the dog, Seamus headed for a wood-and-glass door beneath the shingle. It opened as he reached it and a young woman came out, almost colliding with him. She had long, thick hair, curly and tied back in a loose ponytail. Her eyes were brown, her nose straight and lightly sprinkled with freckles. The eyes widened slightly at the sight of him and his vehicle. “You’re… You’re Mr. Lee,” she exclaimed, and shifted a manila envelope, book and a huge, lumpy package, then held out her hand. “You are, aren’t you? I’m Rory Gorenzi.”