More Than Words, Volume 6

by Joan Johnston

  “It’s just dinner, Annie.”

  Oh, it was much more than dinner, she thought, and she knew that he was aware of that fact, too. There was so much tension between them, she could hardly draw a breath. She was very much in danger of breaking her own solemn vow not to become involved with a man until Kara was older. And if she did, she could very well be risking the job she needed to keep the home they both loved.

  But how could she say no to making him dinner when he’d been nothing but kind to both her and her daughter?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Noah looked around the small, tidy kitchen and smiled to himself. Annie’s house was just what he would have expected. A cottage, filled with homey furniture, colorful rugs and pillows and a sense of welcome that had reached out to him the moment he walked through the door.

  “I hope spaghetti’s okay,” Annie was saying as Noah took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “Sounds great,” he said, shifting his gaze to the backyard, where Kara played on a swing set. “I like your house.”

  Annie laughed a little and gave the sauce another stir. “Thank you. It’s small, but it’s perfect for Kara and me.”

  It was small, he thought. He could probably fit the entire cottage inside his house three times over. His place was everything he’d once dreamed of owning. A showplace that proved to him he’d finally arrived. But somehow he’d never noticed that the big, expensive house was really pretty much an empty shell. It was nothing like this place, filled with warmth and life and— He cut that thought off fast. No point in being dissatisfied with the very thing you’d always wanted. But the sound of Kara’s laughter spilling in from the yard put the lie to that.

  He needed to turn his thoughts somewhere else. To focus on something other than the way Annie Moore looked as she stood at the stove in faded jeans, a T-shirt and bare feet. “So tell me about Kara’s friend. The one who started this whole thing.”

  “Gracie,” she said, moving to the refrigerator, where she pulled out a pitcher of iced tea. While she spoke, she set the pitcher on the table and went to get glasses. “As soon as we moved here, Gracie and Kara became instant friends. The kind of best friend you only seem to make when you’re a child.”

  She smiled, poured them both tall glasses of tea, then sat down opposite him. “Moving is hard on children, you uproot them from the familiar and settle them down in a place where they have to make new friends.”

  Noah knew all about that. He remembered all too well the anxiety of never knowing which day might be his last with his current “family.” “Yeah,” he said simply, “it can be tough.”

  Her eyes met his briefly, and he saw questions written in their depths. He ignored them. “So Kara and Gracie became friends.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling again. “Every day after school it was ‘Gracie said this. Gracie said that.’ Then…” Annie sighed a little and cupped her hands around the glass. “Before we moved here, I knew all of Kara’s friends. But since coming to Crescent Bay, I’ve been so busy trying to get us both settled into our new life, I haven’t had the time—” She broke off and shook her head. “No. I haven’t made the time to get to know our neighbors and the kids at the school. If I had, I might have seen this coming. Because, Kara being who she is, I’m not surprised at all that she decided to ‘fix’ Gracie’s problems herself. That’s what best friends do, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose,” he said, enjoying the ease between them. Truthfully, he was enjoying being here, in this warm kitchen with a pretty woman opposite him and a child playing in the yard.

  Strange, but in the years since he’d set out to make his fortune, he’d never really taken the time to realize what he’d been giving up by being so solitary. He’d been so attentive to his career, to the life he’d wanted to build for himself, that he’d never noticed that the luxurious world he’d constructed was an empty one.

  “Mrs. Higgins—at the shoe store—” Annie qualified.

  “I know who she is.”

  She nodded. “When I took Kara there for her to apologize, Mrs. Higgins told me that there were other children in town doing without decent shoes. Apparently Gracie isn’t alone in this. And I just…”

  “You just what?”

  She turned her head to look at her daughter, shooting down the slide. “I hate to think that there are children out there with no one to help them. I hate thinking about parents who are forced to make their children do without.”

  “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “there’s nothing you can do about the problem. Sometimes a thing just is.”

  “I don’t believe that.” She whirled back to look at him, her gaze meeting his almost defiantly. “And I don’t think you do, either. If you did, you wouldn’t have given Kara a chance to earn the money to buy those shoes.”

  “That was different. That was helping a little girl who was crying. I can’t change the world, Annie. Neither can you. And if you try, you’ll only end up breaking your own heart.”

  “If everyone felt that way, nothing would ever be solved.”

  He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “I admire the fire behind the words,” he said, couching his own words carefully. “But you don’t know what it’s like. A new pair of shoes isn’t going to make a big enough difference in a child’s life to worry about. Their families will still be struggling. They might still be hungry. What does a new pair of shoes change?”

  “Everything,” she said, and he could literally see the sparks of challenge dazzling her eyes. “Kara said the other kids made fun of Gracie.”

  “Kids are cruel,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, unfortunately they are. But don’t you see, when Gracie gets those shoes, there’ll be nothing obvious for the other children to make fun of. She’ll be happier. More alert. More confident. She’ll go to her classes with her head held high and…”

  “And what?” he asked, leaning toward her over the table. “Grow up to be president, all because of a new pair of shoes?”

  “Maybe.” Her features went stiff and her eyes flashed. “Why not?”

  “Don’t you get it? It’s not that easy.”

  “I didn’t say it was easy,” she told him quietly.

  Noah knew he should shut up now. Just drop this whole conversation, but damned if he could stop the words from pouring from his throat. “A pair of shoes won’t feed a kid. Won’t make him feel wanted. Or needed. It won’t change his life.”

  “It could change the way that child feels about himself, and sometimes I think that’s enough.”

  He scrubbed one hand across the back of his neck and took a long drink of his iced tea.

  “Noah…” She reached out, laid one hand over his and asked, “Who are we talking about now? Gracie? Or you?”

  He laughed harshly, a scrape of sound against his throat. In the past few days he’d unwillingly done more thinking about his own past than he had in years. And of course his memories were getting in the way, coloring his reactions. He’d never told anyone else about his childhood, but looking into Annie’s eyes, he let the words come.

  “Got me. Okay, yeah. I know what it’s like for Gracie and the other kids like her. Hell, they’ve probably got it better than I did. I was a foster kid,” he said, sliding his hand from beneath hers, despite missing the warmth of her touch almost instantly. He stood and walked across the small kitchen. Standing at the counter, he stared out the window at the yard and the gathering dusk. It was easier than meeting Annie’s eyes as he tore open an old wound. “I know all about old clothes, hand-me-down shoes that don’t fit. Everything I had was donated by someone, somewhere, to the county. And nothing changed for me until I changed it.”

  He hated remembering what it had been like to be a child powerless to help himself. He hated the shame of knowing what he wore was ill fitted and old. Maybe that was why the situation with Kara had hit him so hard. Had drawn him in so quickly. So deeply.

  A long-buried part of him was standing up demanding to be recog
nized.

  “And you had no help at all?”

  Blowing out a breath, Noah looked out at Kara, swinging now, shooting her little legs out and up to the sky as if half expecting to actually fly. “There were a couple of families who tried, yes. But it didn’t make a difference.”

  “Are you sure?” Annie stood up, too, and walked toward him. He heard her footsteps on the linoleum and turned his head to look at her, bracing himself for pity he didn’t want.

  But she surprised him. She didn’t offer sympathy.

  “Could it be that maybe those families who tried are what gave you the determination to succeed?” she asked and waited until he looked at her before continuing. Her eyes were sharp and clear, without the shadow of pity. “What if it was those people who fed your confidence enough so that you believed you could make something of yourself?”

  Noah hadn’t really considered it before, but he supposed it might be true. A couple of times as a child, he’d worn new clothing. New shoes. And he had felt different. He’d felt as if he belonged. As if he were just like every other kid. And as he realized it, he looked at Annie and nodded slowly.

  “All right, maybe you’ve got a point.” He turned his back on the window, leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. “I hadn’t thought of it like that because, frankly, I’d rather not remember that time at all.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said.

  He laughed shortly. “Would you want to remember?”

  “It would be hard to ignore a part of what made me who I am today.” She shook her head and added, “I had a family. A nice home. So maybe I can’t understand what you went through. What kids like Gracie are going through now. But everyone has problems, Noah. No one gets through life walking under a rainbow. We all have things we’d rather not think about or dwell on. It’s what we do with our lives in spite of those memories that counts.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “Oh, it’s not,” she allowed with a rueful smile. She turned her gaze out on her daughter and sighed a little. “When Kara’s dad died, I was terrified. I was alone with a baby to take care of. Those days can still come back to haunt me,” she added as she looked up at him again. “But I made it through. We made it through. And we’ve got a nice life now. Isn’t that what matters most?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Noah nodded thoughtfully. He had shared things with her that he’d never told anyone else. He was feeling something for her that he’d never known before and he realized that for him, there would be no going back. “You know, Annie Moore, you’re really an amazing woman.”

  She smiled at him. “Noah Fielding, are you flirting with me?”

  A tight, cold band around his heart loosened as he admitted, “Looks like I am. What do you think about that?”

  She gave him a slow smile. “I think I like it.”

  “WHAT’S THIS?” NOAH came up behind her desk the following afternoon and looked over her shoulder at her computer screen.

  A bubble of excitement danced through Annie as she turned her face up to his. “I found this Web site online. It’s for an organization called Shoes That Fit. They’re in Claremont—just a couple of hours from here.” She looked back at the screen, at the flashing images of smiling children. “This whole situation with Kara and Gracie and the new shoes has had me thinking for days about possibilities. After all, it’s not just the O’Malley family having trouble. A lot of people around here are.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said.

  “Well, look what I found.”

  “Shoes That Fit,” Noah mused, leaning over her for a better look at the screen. “They donate shoes to kids in need?”

  “Not just shoes, but backpacks filled with school supplies,” Annie told him. “And school uniforms. Pretty much everything a child needs to feel confidence in himself.”

  She reached for his hand and held on. “I called them while you were on that conference call with the lawyer. I actually spoke to the executive director, Roni Lomeli, and she was terrific. She told me so many wonderful stories about how they’ve helped children in hundreds of communities in California. And it’s all done in a way that not only saves face for the kids’ families, but for the kids themselves. Oh, Noah. Just listening to her, I wanted to rush right out and make the kind of difference she has.”

  He eased back and sat on the corner of her desk. “You’ve really given this a lot of thought.”

  “I really have. And talking to Roni just sort of solidified everything for me. You know, this organization helped more than 100,000 children last year in dozens of states. That’s amazing. It shows what can happen, how change can ripple out from one person helping another.” Annie looked up into his eyes and said, “Going over this Web site, reading the thank-you letters from children whose lives have been changed, has really motivated me, Noah. We could do this. Here. In Crescent Bay. We could help by starting our own Shoes That Fit chapter right here.”

  Noah smiled at her and stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “I’m guessing you’ve got a plan.”

  She grinned. “Just the start of one. It’s going to take some refining.” Turning back to study the bright, cheerful Web site, she admitted, “But the Shoes That Fit organization is really helpful and they’ll go out of their way to assist us if we’re interested in starting up a chapter.”

  “We?”

  Annie heard the questions tucked into that one word and held her breath as she looked back at him. His features gave away nothing of what he was thinking. She couldn’t tell if he was amused or irritated. If he was going to be the Noah she’d come to know and care for—or if he was going to retreat into the too private, distant man she’d always thought him to be.

  She held her breath, hoping that he wouldn’t pull back. Wouldn’t turn from this. From her.

  “I thought,” she said slowly, “that with your help, it would all go much faster.”

  “Is that the only reason you want me involved?”

  “What other reason is there?” she asked, refusing to admit to wanting him as her partner in this until she knew how he felt, too.

  As if understanding exactly what she was thinking, he stood, pulled her to her feet and tipped her chin up with his fingertips. His gaze locked with hers, and Annie felt heat sweep through her. His eyes weren’t distant and cold. Instead, they were shining down at her with all the warmth she’d ever dreamed of.

  “Do I really need to tell you the other reason?” he asked.

  “No,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “No, you really don’t. But you could show me.”

  Smiling, he dipped his head to hers and kissed her, a delicate, gentle brush of his lips to hers. And it was enough to send sparks dazzling through her system.

  Here, she thought, is everything I’d hoped to find.

  When she opened her eyes to look up at him, his gaze moved over her face as tenderly as a touch might have.

  “I think, Annie Moore,” he whispered, “we’re destined to be a great team.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Noah sat at his desk the following afternoon and marveled at the changes in his life over the past week. He never would have believed that anyone’s world could transform so completely in so little time. But maybe, he thought, it was because he’d been ready for it, whether he’d known it or not.

  From the outer office came the sound of something crashing to the floor. Noah grinned.

  “Sorry!” Kara’s voice was singsongy as she picked up her mother’s desk phone from the floor, where she’d knocked it in her dusting efforts.

  “Are you all right?” Since Annie was downstairs at the mall, taking today’s mail to the post office, he and Kara were alone in the office.

  “I’m fine. I knocked the phone off the desk.”

  “Again,” he said when she stuck her head around the door to give him an impish grin.

  “Again,” she agreed, pushing strands of blond hair out of her eyes.

&nbs
p; Noah had never really cared for children much, but being around Kara had opened his eyes to what he’d been missing. It had opened his heart to the possibilities that existed if he would just reach out for them.

  “I’m all done, Noah,” Kara announced as she walked into his office and leaned on his desk.

  “You must be pretty close to being able to buy Gracie’s shoes by now, aren’t you?”

  She walked around the edge of his desk, trailing slightly grubby fingers across its surface. “After you pay me today, I can buy them,” she said proudly. “Then Gracie can go on the field trip with me on Friday and nobody will laugh at her ever again.”

  The heart that had so recently been awakened inside Noah’s chest ached a bit—with pride, with love—for the shining little girl looking up at him with adoration in her eyes. A hell of a responsibility, he thought, accepting a child’s love. And he made a promise to himself never to let her down.

  “You’ve done good work here this week, Kara,” he told her as he reached into his wallet for a five-dollar bill. “I’m proud of you.”

  Her grin brightened even further. “You wanna help me count the money?”

  Amused, he asked, “Don’t you already know how much is in your safe box?”

  “Yeah, but it’s fun to count it!” Without waiting for a response, she raced out to her mother’s desk, sneakers slapping against the floor in her rush. In a blink she was back, setting the small wooden box on his desk.

  “Here’s your pay for today,” he said. She nipped it from his fingers. Then she opened the box reverently, looked inside and went perfectly still. “It’s gone.”

  “What?” He sat up, looked into the box and saw she was right. It was empty.

  The little girl turned big blue eyes swimming with tears up to him. “Noah, where’d it go? Gracie’s shoe money’s all gone and I worked so hard and now I can’t get the shoes and Gracie won’t be able to go on the field trip with me. Noah, where is it?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” he said, irritation spiking inside him. Annie wouldn’t have moved the money without telling her daughter. And he hadn’t done it. The only other explanation was that someone had stolen it.