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Which had happened just before she’d died. Did Angus blame him in some way for that? Ross wondered suddenly. But who could have known that Penelope would be killed in a plane crash while locked in a bitter legal dispute over the son she had never acknowledged to Ross?
For God’s sake, some strange lump was forming in Ross’s throat as he wondered if his chances with Angus were doomed. He closed his eyes only to feel them stinging. Were those tears? It was definitely time to get a grip.
“Is that your closing statement, counselor?”
But Delia wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “Please, Ross.”
“Okay, okay.” Damn! Now he’d burned himself on the pizza tray. Cursing inwardly, he held his thumb under the faucet. “Look, gotta run. Supper’s ready.”
“Just remember what I said. And relax, will you? Stop trying so hard.”
“Always have to get in the last word, don’t you?” he countered, but this time he succeeded in sounding as though he didn’t mind.
Delia chuckled. No doubt she was relieved that he’d chosen to lighten up—though in reality Ross’s heart couldn’t have been heavier. He wished she’d never called him, wished she’d refrained from overstepping professional lines to discuss such personal matters with him. “Gotta run,” he said again, and was relieved that this time his voice didn’t waver. “I’ll check in with you at the office tomorrow.”
“Not until Thursday, Ross. You promised.”
“Okay, okay.”
He hung up to find Angus lying on his stomach in front of the TV watching cartoons. Handing him a slice of pizza, Ross gestured toward the characters cavorting on the screen. “Who are they?”
“That’s Johnny Savage and his friend, Major Stanton.”
“Oh? What do they do?”
“Fight aliens. Most of the time they’re humanoid. But that one’s an octopus. He’s a bad guy. His men squirt ink on people to capture them.”
“I see,” said Ross, who didn’t. What had happened to the simple cartoons of his childhood? Elmer Fudd hunting wascally wabbits? The Road Runner foiling Wile E. Coyote?
His brother’s words came back to haunt him. What makes you think you can raise a seven-year-old?
Ignorance, obviously. Would he ever get the hang of this parenting thing? Not just learning how to look after a kid, feed him, clothe him, keep him from harm, but find common ground for a relationship? And did he have it in him after all this time to embrace a whole new culture?
Ross wasn’t sure.
And at the moment he felt very much alone.
“So,” he said with forced gaiety when the cartoon ended. “Given some thought to what you’d like for your birthday? I need ideas, you know.”
Angus’s eyes widened. “Is it Wednesday already?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“And you—you want to give me a present?”
“Why not?”
“I heard you telling someone on the phone that you’d already gotten me something.”
“When was that?”
“The morning we left to come here.”
That must have been Delia, calling to remind Ross about Angus’s birthday; offering to buy a gift and send it to their beach house in the event he had forgotten.
But Ross had already bought the model train set Angus had fallen in love with at the toy store last month. Because of its size he’d brought along only the engine for Angus to unwrap on Wednesday, plus a few other things he hoped the boy would like.
Now he frowned, wondering if he should remind Angus not to eavesdrop on telephone calls between grown-ups. Surely this was a good time to drive the message home?
But the memory of how the boy had withdrawn from him in Kenzie Daniels’s aviary earlier that day stopped him cold. Back then he’d only mentioned his dislike of pelicans, not chastised the boy for bad behavior. Still, he didn’t want to be the cause of the boy’s frustrated tears again. The thought made him ache inside.
“So obviously you know you’ll be getting presents on Wednesday,” he said instead. “So much for a surprise. But you also get one birthday wish.”
“A wish? What kind of wish?”
“The best kind. You can ask for anything you like. Within reason, of course. Something special you’ve been wanting very badly.”
“For real?”
The boy’s eagerness tore at Ross’s heart. If only it was always this easy. “Sure. My mother started the tradition when I was just a bit younger than you. Each year my brother Alex and I were allowed to make one birthday wish, which Mom did her best to fulfill. She always said it was better than blowing out candles and just hoping it’d come true.”
“That never happens,” Angus agreed.
“I know.”
“Did your dad help make those wishes come true?”
My dad was the wish, Ross thought, then cleared his throat. “He sure did. So go ahead and tell me. What would you like?”
Angus’s eyes widened. “I can wish for anything?”
“As I said, within reason.”
“Can we go out to dinner?”
“On Wednesday night? Is that your wish?”
Angus nodded.
“Sure we can. Is that all you want?”
“Um, well…” Angus looked down at his sneakers. “Can we take Kenzie along?”
“What?”
He must have spoken sharply, because Angus’s face fell.
“You said I could have a wish,” he mumbled. “And I want to have dinner with Kenzie.”
Ross set his plate aside and drew in a deep breath. The last thing he wanted was to encourage further contact with a beautiful-but-lawyer-hating woman his son seemed to be unnaturally drawn to. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Angus nodded.
“Not that inflatable kayak at the hardware store across the street?”
Angus shook his head.
“Or that fishing trip on Pamlico Sound?”
“No, thank you.” He was still mumbling and he wouldn’t look at Ross.
“Or that train set you saw at Garrison’s Toy Store?”
He saw the struggle on his son’s face and realized he was being unfair.
“Angus, wait a minute—”
“No, I told you what I wanted. I want to have dinner with you and with Kenzie.”
Those weren’t Penelope’s vivid blue eyes staring back at him all at once. They were Ross’s own, and they were too darned determined. The tilt of that chin was all too familiar, as well.
“Okay, okay. We’ll invite her to dinner.” Ross took a deep breath and struggled to make his tone lighter. “Got a restaurant in mind?”
Angus brightened. “There’s one on the sound near the place where we turned to go to the lighthouse. It has a deck on the water. Can we go there?”
“Did you happen to notice the name?”
Disappointed, Angus shook his head.
“Would you recognize it if we drove by again?”
“I think so. Does that mean we can eat there?”
“If we can find it.”
“Can we look now?”
Ross glanced out of the windows. The sun had set, but there was plenty of daylight left. He drew another deep breath. Anything to make the boy smile again. “Come on.”
Following Angus down the steps, he couldn’t help thinking how unfair it was that the one thing that seemed to make Angus happy was the one thing he would have preferred to deny him: more time in the company of one MacKenzie Daniels.
For God’s sake, he didn’t want Angus getting emotionally attached to someone he’d never see again once they returned to New York! And he himself definitely didn’t want a woman cluttering up his life, not even for the week and a half that remained of his vacation. After Penelope, it was the last thing he wanted, ever. Never mind that Kenzie Daniels seemed to be everything Penelope had never been: sweet, unassuming, very kind and generous. Not to mention funny and warm and such a natural with kids that he couldn’t help envying her that ease.
In the car, he cleared his throat. “Mind if I ask why you want to invite Ms. Daniels so badly?”
“Because I like her.”
“I agree she’s nice, but you shouldn’t get so intimate with strangers, son.”
“What’s intimate?”
“Eh…make friends with them so fast. We don’t know anything about her.”
“But we do! She can fly kites and she rescues birds and has two greyhounds and draws cartoons!”
How to argue with that kind of logic? Ross took a stab at it. “You know a lot about Marty, don’t you?” Marty was the handyman at Ross’s apartment building.
“Yeah.”
“And you think he’s nice, too. But you’ve never asked me to invite him to supper.”
“That’s different.”
Lord, the boy was stubborn. “In what way?”
“He’s nice to me, but he’s not a friend. I mean, it’s different with Kenzie. She doesn’t work for you and doesn’t have to like me if she doesn’t want to…and…and…”
He was clearly struggling to find the right words. Ross racked his brains to do the same, desperate to keep the line of communication open. This was the first time Angus had ever tried sharing his feelings with him.
“I think I see what you mean,” he said slowly. “Marty’s nice, but he’s really just doing his job.”
Angus looked relieved. “Yeah. But Kenzie doesn’t need to be nice to me. She just is. She didn’t yell when my kite landed on her, and then she showed me how to fly it.”
Ross’s eyes left the road to settle on his son. “You hit her with your kite?”
Angus blushed. “I didn’t mean to. It fell on her. Well, next to her. But I think it scared her. She was sleeping on her towel.”
“Oh.” So that was it. Nothing like a disaster to break the ice between strangers. The fact that she hadn’t berated him had obviously made a big impression on Angus. And his gratitude had strengthened into liking the more time he spent with her. Ross had to admit that, to a seven-year-old, Kenzie Daniels must seem very exotic and interesting—much more interesting than having a dour old lawyer for a father.
Ross’s spirits sank at the thought. Angus certainly hadn’t indicated any interest in his father’s career the first time he had been shown Ross’s office in Queens, where he had been introduced to Delia and the others in the practice. Granted, the run-down warehouse that served as headquarters for Calder & Hayes LLC wasn’t much to look at. Not like the glass-fronted high-rise on Madison Avenue, where Ross had practiced corporate law for eight years. Where he had been a full partner, highly paid and widely respected, and had lived only a few blocks away in an elegant town house he shared with Penelope, surrounded by the stores, restaurants and the theater and museum districts she had loved to haunt.
And now? What had the bitter battle for Angus—blown out of all proportion first by Penelope and then by the bloodthirsty English tabloids—cost him? He was no longer a high-powered attorney in a prestigious Manhattan firm, but a partner in a tiny law office that no one in midtown Manhattan had ever heard of, doing more pro bono work than not because most of his clients were the indigent and homeless of the city who couldn’t afford to pay. Nowadays he supposed he was barely one step above being a public defender—something Penelope had thought utterly amusing when she’d found out.
“My, my, how far the mighty have fallen,” she had said to him at her bitchiest best. That had been at their last meeting, back in February, after Ross had shown up at her parents’ elegant London town house to demand one last time that Penelope bring the boy back from wherever it was she had hidden him, to be reasonable, to at least allow father and son to meet, for God’s sake! But Penelope wasn’t interested in talking about Angus. She had wanted to hear all the sordid details about his downfall, how Ross’s senior partners had asked him to step down, that the publicity—the firm had an office in London—was damaging their image, how it wouldn’t do for the firm to become entangled in a custody battle between Ross and the daughter of Sir Edmund Archer.
“Hey! Hey, stop! There it is!”
Jerked from his black thoughts, Ross hit the brakes too hard. A horn blared behind him. “Sorry. Where?”
Angus pointed. The Boathouse. A two-story restaurant set back against the sound, the parking lot filled with cars. The wide front porch was packed with people waiting to be seated.
“You sure know how to pick ’em,” Ross said with a crooked smile. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get reservations for Wednesday night.”
They could. And Ross had to admit that the dining room was cheery with its cypress-paneled walls and nautical decorations. The food didn’t look bad, either.
“I want to sit at the window,” Angus whispered. “Can you ask?”
The hostess, writing down their names, overheard and smiled. “I’ll be sure and save the best table for you. You can watch the sun go down over the sound.”
Angus smiled back at her shyly. “Thanks.”
No doubt about it, the kid was opening up. Maybe Delia had been right. All he needed was to give it time.
“Nice choice,” Ross said, giving in to his feelings and tousling Angus’s hair in the doorway.
For once the boy didn’t draw away. “Really?”
“Really. Kenzie’ll love it.”
That earned him a shy smile all his own. Side by side they went back to the car, Ross feeling swellheaded with pride. Maybe he was starting to get the hang of this thing after all.
And if Angus’s happiness meant being nice to Kenzie Daniels, well, he could do that, too. At least long enough to give the boy a birthday dinner he’d remember.
“I don’t believe it!” Kenzie gritted her teeth and pounded her fist on the steering wheel. If the dump truck ahead of her slowed down any further they’d both be crawling. She’d been following him since Nags Head, unable to pass because of all the oncoming traffic. Usually Saturdays were the worst time to try and navigate Highway 12, but this was midweek, for crying out loud.
She downshifted as the dump truck slowed to veer around two cyclists, then glanced at her watch. Ross and Angus were picking her up in an hour and she was still twenty miles from home.
Nothing like a hissy fit to sour her mood even further, she thought. She was already tired and cranky after a morning spent in the Norfolk Messenger offices, summoned to a meeting that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, when she’d already planned to show up anyway. At least Maureen, her editor, had felt bad about springing the planning session on her without warning and had taken her to lunch—though they’d ended up waiting seemingly forever for their food.
Then the long drive back, with Kenzie starting to feel a little pressured about the time. The situation had worsened when her pickup had stalled just north of the Oregon Inlet bridge, the needle on the temperature gauge buried on Hot.
The radiator, of course. She’d been nursing the old one longer than she should have with a gallon of coolant she kept in the bed. The tow truck had taken too long, the radiator hadn’t been in stock, and she had whiled away the afternoon at the convenience store across the street reading pulp magazines and wondering how she was going to afford the repairs until a replacement part was shipped down from Elizabeth City.
Now she was stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle and about to succumb to a screaming bout of road rage. Didn’t the driver ahead of her know she had a date—with two good-looking guys, no less? Couldn’t he pull over and let her by?
Angus had sounded so grown-up when he’d called to ask her to dinner. Surprised and flattered, she’d accepted at once. Then she remembered that Ross would be there, too. “Are you sure your dad doesn’t mind?”
“Oh, no. He said you should come.”
Yeah, sure. Kenzie could picture him agreeing with that stoic lawyer’s look that Angus was too young and unsophisticated to read. Still, she was surprised at how much she was looking forward to the evening. She had a number of friends among Buxton’s permanent residents and went out with them often. But she’d never been invited to celebrate a seven-year-old English charmer’s birthday. Not at the Boathouse, which, after all, was outrageously expensive.
“Eight. Angus is eight as of today,” Kenzie reminded herself. She had spent most of yesterday working on his present. She couldn’t wait to see what he thought of it. No doubt Ross would find it silly. Like most of the lawyers Kenzie knew, he probably had no sense of humor.
The dump truck put on its blinker, downshifted, and turned into a construction site. Honking and waving her thanks, Kenzie sped away.
She fed the dogs and the birds in record time, then leaped into the shower. After wrapping her wet hair in a towel, she dried herself off and padded into the bedroom. No time to obsess over what to wear. She seized a dress from the closet and pulled it on, whipped out the blow dryer, then raced to put on her makeup.
“Kenzie!”
Crud! She hadn’t even heard the car drive up, and here she was still barefoot and lacking mascara. “Come on in! Be careful not to let the dogs out!”
The screen door slammed. Angus’s light footsteps sounded, followed by his father’s.
“Where are you, Kenzie?”
“In the bedroom. I’ll be out in a minute. There’s juice in the fridge. Help yourselves if you’re thirsty.”
She slipped on her watch, fastened a thin gold chain around her neck, spritzed on a trace of perfume. Her sandals were by the kitchen door. Barefoot, she waltzed out to fetch them.
“Oh, my,” she said.
Ross and Angus were at the counter, Ross pouring orange juice into a glass. They turned at the sound of her voice. She stared.
“Angus! You look super!”
He was wearing a new set of shorts and a collared shirt, obviously purchased from a local surf shop. The cargo shorts were sage in color, the Hawaiian shirt a riot of palm trees, hibiscus and exotic birds. His shoes were also new, the slouchy kind of sneakers worn by surfers and skateboarders. His still-damp hair was neatly combed.
“Do you really like it?”
“Way cool. I’m glad I dressed up, too.”
She had put on a knee-length sundress with spaghetti straps in periwinkle-blue—her favorite color. She wore her blond hair down. Her only jewelry was the delicate gold chain that nestled in the hollow of her tanned throat.
Shifting her focus from Angus to his father, she felt her cheeks grow warm. Like him or not, you had to admit that Ross Calder was one good-looking man. Angus must have talked him into buying something new, as well, because the fine white muslin shirt he wore was bright and crisp. The sleeves were rolled back in a casually masculine way and the open collar revealed an even more masculine expanse of muscled chest. Kenzie wasn’t sure how a pair of ordinary khaki pants could look so sexy, but Ross Calder definitely pulled it off.
She struggled to regain her composure as she slipped on her sandals. Reminded herself that, good-looking though he might be, he was still a member of that greedy, grasping, heartless class of professionals who lived for the thrill of making money, of working a judge and jury until their clients went free whether they knew them to be guilty or not.
Like her father.
Whom she had loved desperately as a little girl but who had betrayed her in the end, and who had turned everyone in her family but her mother against her when Kenzie had courageously exposed him for the man he was.
Even after all this time the pain of it clawed at her.
“Kenzie?”
She had to swallow before she could answer. “Yes, Angus?”
“You look really, really pretty.”
She gave a strangled laugh of gratitude and relief and pulled him impulsively into her arms. “Happy birthday, you little goof-ball! How does it feel to be eight?”
“I feel very grown-up, thank you.”
Was it her imagination, or did he look a little disappointed when she let him go? She hugged him again for good measure. Funny, but she’d forgotten how good it felt to hug a kid.
Straightening, she found herself eye-to-eye with Ross. He was wearing his lawyer’s look again, revealing absolutely nothing of what he was thinking.
Her chin tipped. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“It was Angus’s idea.”
“Oh.” Her heart sank.
“And he’s right. You do look really, really pretty.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
The way he said it made a shiver flee down her spine. Confused and breathless, she gathered up her purse, sunglasses and a padded envelope from the kitchen table.
Angus’s eyes lit up. “What’s that?”
“Your present, of course. As if you didn’t know.”
“It’s not very big.”
“There are a couple of saying here in America, Angus. Maybe you have them in England, too— Good things come in small packages. And curiosity killed the cat.”
“My grannie always used to say that to me.”
“She probably had good reason to.”
Outside, Angus gallantly held open the car door for her.
“But you’re the birthday boy. You should sit up front.”
He dimpled. “But you’re the guest of honor.”
Returning his smile, she slid in next to Ross. It was the closest she’d ever been to him. He must have showered and put on aftershave recently, because he had a decidedly pleasant smell about him. Clean and…and sexy. Muscles rippled in his arm as he switched on the ignition. “Seat belts, Angus, Kenzie.”
She reached for the strap, glad to have an excuse to wriggle away from him. For some reason she found herself completely unnerved by his presence. Maybe it was the intimacy of their outing together; after all, it was easier dealing with him in the familiarity of her own home. Or maybe it was the fact that he looked so drop-dead handsome tonight. Either way, something about him was doing odd things to her inside.
Angus leaned forward as far as his belt would allow. “Will your birds be okay while you’re gone?”
“They prefer peace and quiet.”
“Did you let the pelican go?”
“This morning.”
“Oh. Too bad. I wish I’d seen it.”
“That’s okay,” she said brightly. “Maybe next time.”
“Will you be letting something else go before next Saturday? That’s when we leave.”
“The blue heron might be well enough by then.”
“Oh, good!” He leaned forward to address his father. “Can we watch Kenzie let it go?”
“We’ll see.”
“It’s a pretty neat experience,” Kenzie said. “Before I let the birds go I band them with a number so people will know who they are if they’re ever caught again. To band them, I have to put their heads in a coffee can.”
Angus’s eyes went wide. “How come?”
“It may seem cruel, but when you stuff them down inside a can they instantly relax. Then you can slide the band on their feet without a struggle.”
“Maybe they’re frozen with terror, not relaxed,” Ross said.
“Actually, research shows that their heart rates slow dramatically. So they really are relaxed.”
Angus bounced up and down in his seat. “I want to watch!”
“We’ll see,” Ross said again, but he sounded a lot more positive this time.
“Ever been to the Boathouse, Kenzie?” Angus demanded in the next breath.
“Only once, when I first moved here.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A little over a year.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“In Washington, D.C.”
“Washington!” Angus leaned forward to eye his father. “Have you ever been there?”
“A few times.”
“Is it nice? Would I like it?”
“You’d probably enjoy the museums and the zoo. Tell you what. I’ll be going there on business in October. Maybe you can come along.”
Angus’s face fell. “I’ll be in school then.”
“Second or third grade?” Kenzie asked.
“I—I don’t know. We had forms in my old school, not grades.”
“You’ll be in third grade here in America, son.”
Had Ross noticed the slight tremor in his son’s voice? Kenzie certainly had. Her heart ached, picturing Angus facing his first day at a strange new school with a new teacher and new classmates. She hoped he’d had the chance to meet a few of them already, managed to make friends with them. That he’d been taken on a tour of his new classroom so the place wouldn’t seem so strange and scary come September.