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“So,” he said, searching Lucy’s face with what looked like a mix of hopefulness and apprehension, “do I get the job?”
“Not so fast, Mr. Haynes,” Lucy answered. “I still know nothing about you. And I’ll need some form of ID to give to Human Resources if you’re staying.” Lucy held up an authoritative forefinger. “Notice I said if.”
Sam grinned and something stirred deep in Lucy’s chest. He really was beyond appealing, scientifically speaking. His face was symmetrical with a perfectly proportioned nose and a strong, angular jaw. His eyes were the soft golden shade of fresh caramel, and his collar-skimming sandy hair picked up the late-afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows of the café. He stretched long arms across the table easily, as if he was completely comfortable here, despite his very recent arrival, and Lucy couldn’t help but notice the shoulder muscles flexing under his crisp white dress shirt.
Since when did she notice things like that about a man?
She was Lucy Monroe, quiet, hardworking wallflower, just as she had always been.
She was happy here at the observatory, but she’d long ago given up on any thoughts of romance, or men in general. The guys at the observatory were much too absorbed in their work, and the married ones, well, Lucy sometimes had difficulty figuring out how they’d got that way in the first place, as clueless as some of them were about the opposite sex. They certainly never noticed her for anything other than her interest in the field of astronomy. Even though she hadn’t finished school, she loved to hear their theories and any updates in their research. In a way, she lived vicariously through them—they were a connection to what she might have been.
But dating any of those guys? No way, and part of her liked it that way. The status quo kept her from having to admit to herself that she was afraid of anything resembling a relationship. She had become involved with a few guys in the past, and things with Jeremy had been serious. When that part of her life hadn’t worked out, she’d finally paid due attention to the glaring signals that she just wasn’t cut out for romance, and she’d given up trying.
Besides, she didn’t have time for that sort of thing. She had her management work—more than any one human could possibly ever finish—and she had Shiloh, whom she loved more than anything else in the world, but who required more time and attention than other kids her age, or at least Lucy thought so.
Though lately, Shiloh had been resisting anything to do with her aunt, pushing Lucy away whenever she tried to talk to the girl she considered her own daughter. It was hurtful sometimes, Lucy had to admit, but she only wanted what was best for her niece; she’d dedicated her life to making a decent living and to providing the best she could for the girl. Parenting was sometimes a thankless job, and it didn’t matter that Lucy hadn’t chosen the position for herself. She was the only true parent Shiloh had, and Shiloh was Lucy’s whole world now. She would do anything to make her niece happy—a wish that sometimes seemed as far off as the moon.
“Got it. If I’m hired,” Sam said, breaking the silence and raising his hands in surrender, his thick voice teasing. His smile widened and small creases formed near his brown eyes. Lucy felt her face warm and she had to look away, uncomfortable with his attention. She knew he only wanted the job, and was probably just trying to charm his way into it, but all the same she felt as if she was the only girl in the room when he looked at her across the table.
Usually, when Tessa was in the room, it was pretty hard to feel that way. Her friend had been a cheerleader in school, and even though she was gorgeous, she’d latched on to Lucy the first day of second grade and had never let go, despite the differences in their social statuses. It was only one of the many things Lucy loved about her sweet best friend. But sometimes, she had to admit, being around pretty Tess brought her straight back to their school days, when Lucy felt inadequate despite her history of perfect grades and the commendations she’d received before she’d been forced to give up her scholarship at the university to take care of Shiloh.
Shiloh. Lucy checked her watch and stood up from the table. She needed to meet her niece at the bus stop soon.
“I’m sorry to cut this short, Mr. Haynes—Sam—but I have to head out and meet my niece. Would it be possible for you to meet me here in the morning? I can get James to show you the ropes for breakfast. He’s the dishwasher for the early shift, but he usually puts out a small spread for morning visitors and for the volunteer docents and other employees—nothing fancy or complicated. Muffins and fruit and coffee—that sort of thing. Then, later, if you decide you’d like to stick around a bit, we can talk about working out a menu and deal with the shopping. I hate to do it, but we may have to close the café if we can’t work something out. And I can’t thank you enough for your help today.” Lucy met Sam’s eyes and noticed their hazelnut color for the hundredth time since they’d met only a short while earlier. It was silly, really, how much trouble she had focusing with him around.
“Don’t mention it again,” Sam said, that warm smile causing both his face, and Lucy’s heart, to light up. “I’m glad I could help. And of course, I’d be happy to help with breakfast in the morning. Should I arrive at seven? I noticed the café opens at nine.”
It was almost too good to be true. Lucy didn’t trust those kinds of things, but did she really have another choice at this point?
The answer was obvious. “Seven is good,” she said, running a hand through her bangs, which likely only caused further frizzy disarray.
“Let me walk you to wherever you’re heading, Ms. Monroe. I’d really like to see the grounds if you don’t mind. Get more comfortable with the place.”
Lucy hesitated. Shiloh would be happy to see she’d brought someone along with her; it seemed the nascent social butterfly was friendly with just about anyone but Lucy lately.
“All right, that’s fine,” she said, checking her watch again. “I’ve got a few minutes.”
Sam held the back door open for her, and Lucy followed him out of the café, locking up behind her. Tessa mouthed goodbye from inside the window with a wave and a sneaky smile, which Lucy promptly ignored. Her friend headed back to the front desk, where she supposedly worked once in a while when she wasn’t busy pestering Lucy.
She and Sam walked a few areas of the grounds, Lucy naming the telescopes for him. Bless him; he didn’t seem bored by her explanations of the different mirror and dome sizes and how the giant instruments deciphered light from distant stars.
She stopped talking and looked at Sam, embarrassed. “I’m sorry if I’m going on and on. I just love this place. And I like to see other people show interest in space. We have so much to learn from the galaxies out there. There’s a whole world beyond our own, and I just need to know as much as I can about it. I can’t get enough.”
Sam stopped and turned toward her, searching her eyes. For what, she didn’t know.
“Am I rambling too much?” she asked, heat rising to her cheeks.
“Absolutely not,” he said, his eyes reassuring. He seemed to be telling the truth from what Lucy could tell, which she admitted wasn’t much. She wasn’t used to interacting one-on-one with men who weren’t employees at the observatory. And, though she loved the scientists, they were a different breed altogether—one she understood, at least, thanks to her dad. “It’s nice to see a woman who’s passionate about her work. I feel the same way about my own.”
Lucy grinned, his compliment holding more weight than it should. “Did you always like to cook?” she asked, hoping to guide the conversation away from herself. She wasn’t sure she could take much more of Sam’s intense gaze on her. It felt as if he could see straight through her skin and bones and right down to her rapidly beating heart.
An emotion that Lucy couldn’t identify crossed Sam’s face, before passing just as quickly as he looked away, and she found herself wanting to ask him what he’d just been thinking of. She reminded herself that she barely knew him. She didn’t trust the way she was able to talk to him so openly, and the way she felt almost as if they’d known each other for ages.
She needed to focus on the facts.
Guys like Sam didn’t go for girls like Lucy.
It was that way in high school, and that way still. Some things in life didn’t change. She’d learned to live with that and most of the time she was pretty happy with the way things were—or at least...comfortable. She refused to get her hopes up just to have them smashed back down.
“Yes, I came to love cooking, once I figured it out,” Sam answered.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, growing up, I always thought that you had to have a recipe, and that’s just not my style. I got a job as a sous-chef, by chance really, and once I started practicing and playing with food, so to speak, I realized that it’s more of an art than a science, and I was able to put my own spin on things. I started creating my own dishes and experimenting with different ingredients just to see what I could come up with. That’s when I realized that cooking is actually a lot of fun. It can be a way to express yourself just like any other art form,” Sam said, his eyes lighting up as he talked about his work.
Lucy understood what he meant about experimenting with things, but expressing herself was another animal altogether, for which she shared no familiarity.
“So did you start the job straight out of high school?”
“Actually, no. I worked in restaurants while I went to college. I studied anthropology, of all things. Mostly because I couldn’t decide what else to concentrate on and, well, what’s more interesting than people? So I settled on that.”
Lucy could list many things more interesting to her than people. She preferred her stars and planets. Their mathematically calculable rules and patterns made more sense to her than those of human beings, but she decided to keep that to herself. The last thing she wanted to do was offend Sam.
“Did you enjoy it?”
Sam laughed and shook his head.
“The school part, no, not really. I was more of a goof-off. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in class.”
“Ah, I know the type,” Lucy said. She’d known plenty of guys like him, had been made fun of by more than a few, and she’d formed an opinion of them early on.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, I just mean, well, it’s just that—” Lucy tugged at her glasses, suddenly nervous and tongue-tied “—guys like you...” She stopped talking before she said something off-putting.
“Guys like me?” Sam abruptly stopped walking and faced her. “I just met you, Ms. Monroe, and, forgive me, but you don’t know enough about me to be able to size me up and categorize me with other men you’ve known.”
He was right, and Lucy blushed at his surprisingly blunt correction. She didn’t know what to say so she kept silent and just kept walking.
Sam caught up to her but he was quiet, and when she stole a glance his way, his brows were knitted and he seemed lost in his own thoughts. Lucy was surprised at how strong the urge was for her to ask what he was thinking, but she reminded herself that it wasn’t any of her business. Still, the intensity she saw in the set of his jaw made her strangely sad, and she found herself wishing for something that would break the spell she’d unintentionally cast.
Thankfully, they had covered most of the grounds and were at the front entrance, where Shiloh’s bus would drop her off. They were lucky the bus came all the way to the observatory, several miles from the outskirts of town. The school had made a special arrangement for Shiloh since Lucy was her only guardian and couldn’t drive into town each day to pick up her niece. The bus driver was a sweet lady, who loved Shiloh, and Lucy was grateful she had someone she could trust to drive Shiloh home every day in her place. Shiloh hated the special treatment, as she hated all such things, and she didn’t like being the last one off the bus when everyone else, even the kids who lived farther out of Peach Leaf, was already off by the time they reached her stop.
Sometimes Lucy didn’t know what to do to please the child. She was twelve now—spunky—and had a mind of her own, and a mouth to go along with it; there were some days when Lucy wished her niece would return to being the kind darling she had been as a little girl. But she loved her so much and couldn’t be angry with her for anything for very long. Lucy just hoped Shiloh’s habit of shutting out her aunt was a phase she’d get through soon.
Dust billowed around them as the bus lumbered to a stop. Lucy waved at Mrs. Stevens and waited for the driver to unfasten Shiloh’s wheelchair and lift her down. She turned and saw Sam’s face as he realized that Shiloh wasn’t going to walk out of the bus on her own two legs.
Lucy was accustomed to people catching themselves staring when they saw a child in a wheelchair. It wasn’t that they meant any harm—it was just a human reaction to someone who was different than most. But there was something odd and unusually powerful about the way Sam’s mouth straightened, and his eyes clouded. Surely the man had seen a kid with a disability like Shiloh’s before.
“Is something wrong?” Lucy asked. She hoped Sam would be honest. People usually tried to skirt around the subject, but she’d found she preferred if they asked questions or talked about what they felt, rather than try to ignore what anyone could see with their own two eyes.
“No, no, nothing at all,” Sam said, shaking his head. He turned to grin at her and the strange, concentrated expression she’d seen a moment ago was gone. “It’s just that I didn’t know that your niece used a wheelchair to get around. You didn’t say anything about it.”
Lucy searched his eyes.
“Of course, you didn’t have reason to,” Sam said, understanding the question in her features. He turned and smiled as Mrs. Stevens pushed the lever to lower Shiloh down from the bus. Shiloh raised both hands as though she were on a roller coaster and Lucy melted at the old inside joke they shared, glad there was a trace of the sweet little girl in there somewhere.
“Who’s this dude?” Shiloh asked, sizing up Sam.
Shiloh had a knack for saying exactly what she was thinking, just like her mom, Jennifer—Lucy’s sister. People had always joked that neither mom nor daughter had been born with a filter.
“Well, hello to you, too, sweetheart,” Lucy said, brushing a strand of hair out of Shiloh’s eyes, before her hand was promptly swatted away, just as she’d suspected it would be.
“Shiloh, meet Sam, our new...trial chef.”
Shiloh stared up at Sam, hooding her eyes with her hand. “Hi, Sam,” Shiloh said, her tone completely unreadable.
Sometimes Lucy understood her niece, and other times she couldn’t remember ever having been as nonchalant about everything as Shiloh was, though she knew most of that was just Shiloh trying to hide any kind of emotion, like a normal teenager.
“Hi, there.” He grinned and held out a hand, not in the slightest fazed by her lack of care at his presence. “I have to say, that’s a pretty sweet ride.”
Shiloh cracked a genuine smile, the first Lucy had seen in a long time. It was a nice sight. Maybe Sam would earn his place after all.
“So,” Sam continued. “How long have you had it?”
Shiloh stared at him, skepticism suddenly taking over.
Lucy bristled, bracing herself for whatever words might come out of her niece, though she was glad that Shiloh spoke her mind most of the time. Lucy had spent plenty of her own time keeping her words to herself at Shiloh’s age, and it hadn’t necessarily served her well. She would have loved to have Shiloh’s confidence when she’d been young—heck, she could use a dose of it now.
A fierce need to protect Shiloh from the world was in her blood, despite the fact she hadn’t brought her niece into the world herself. Lucy loved Shiloh as though she had carried her in her own womb, and part of that love—that parental love—she guessed, was constant worry.
* * *
Sam’s heart fell to the bottom of his stomach with such force that he was surprised he couldn’t actually hear a thud. He kept his expression as neutral as possible as he tried to process everything in front of him.
There was no mistaking that this girl, Shiloh, was his daughter.
She didn’t look like him at all. She took after her mother and Lucy. The same copper hair, except wavy rather than curly, the same eyes, and the same freckles, like fairy dust across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. But all the same, he knew she was his as sure as he knew his own name.
Shiloh looked at Lucy, her expression insecure, and then back to Sam.
“Do you mean how long have I had this specific chair? Or how long have I been...like this?” She pointed at her legs.
Sam swallowed. He wasn’t sure which he meant, actually. He wanted to know every single thing about her down to the tiniest detail, and it didn’t matter where she started—as long as she did.
“Both,” he said, deciding that the best way to navigate the new waters he found himself in was to just be honest.
Shiloh studied him and shrugged her shoulders, seeming to decide that this was okay with her.
“Well, I got this chair last year from Dr. Blake for Christmas,” she said, pointing out the bumper stickers with the names of popular bands she had stuck all over the back. “But, I’ve been like this—” she pointed down at her legs again “—for a long time.”
Shiloh tossed her long strawberry hair over her shoulder. Sam was impressed at her openness, and, though he knew he had no right to be, he was proud of her confidence and straightforward answer. “Ever since the accident,” she continued, before Lucy interrupted.
“So how was school today, Shi?” Lucy asked, obviously eager to change the subject.
Shiloh looked up at Sam as though he and she were in cahoots.
“She means, how was the math test?” she said, narrowing her eyes at Sam and tossing up her hands. “Math isn’t so good to me.”
“She can do anything she wants,” Lucy interjected, crossing her arms. “She just doesn’t apply herself in math because she doesn’t like it. But sometimes in life, we have to work hard at things, even if we don’t like them. Right, Shi?”
Shiloh rolled her eyes and tossed her head back with much dramatic flair, causing Sam to giggle. “Right, right, right,” she said, drawing out the words as though to illustrate her boredom with the whole concept.
“So you’re terrible at it, then?” Sam asked, smiling at Shiloh. Lucy’s mouth shot open and she lowered her eyebrows, as if offended on behalf of her niece, but Shiloh just laughed.
“He’s not wrong, Aunt Lu,” she said.
Lucy moved behind her niece’s wheelchair to push her home, but Shiloh’s fingers moved quickly over the controls and she zoomed over to Sam’s side, leaving Lucy behind in the cloud of dust in her wake.
“Just like me,” Sam said, grinning down at her.
Just like her father.
A million thoughts rushed through his mind, so he concentrated on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, to keep the surge of emotion from drowning him.
His daughter was beautiful, as her mother had been the last time he’d seen her all those years ago. And like her aunt.
He made a mental note to call the PI later, thank the man for his services and close out their contract. Sam had all the information he needed to take things from here. He would let his head New York chef, Jack, know that he wouldn’t be returning to the restaurant for a while, and to call if anything major came up. The other restaurants in LA and Seattle were doing great, and Sam needed only to fly in for occasional visits. He trusted his assistant could manage the rest with no trouble, freeing Sam to move to Peach Leaf temporarily.
He watched as his little girl drove ahead of him and Lucy, making figure eights in the dust, seemingly unfazed by her limitations.
He had questions, of course—thousands of them. But to his surprise, he was only mildly interested to know more about the accident she’d mentioned, the event she’d endured without him by her side. Instead of rage at the unknown entity responsible for her pain, Sam wanted to know more about Shiloh as she was now. He knew she wasn’t a fan of math, so then what was her favorite subject at school? What did she love to do in her spare time? What hopes and dreams filled her young mind as she slept through the night?
Did she know anything about her absent father? Did she want to? Or was her life more peaceful without an explanation for the missing man?
It would kill him if she thought she wasn’t wanted.
No.
Even though it would complicate her world, the girl deserved to know that her dad cared for her, that he hadn’t purposefully abandoned her and that he would do anything in the world for her now that he knew she existed.
Once she had that knowledge, it would be up to her to decide what to do with it. He would take whatever chance he had to spend time with both Shiloh and her aunt, and when the right moment came—and he hoped he would recognize it—he would speak to Lucy.
It was astounding to think how his world had turned upside down with the few words Jennifer had spoken to him over the scratchy phone connection a month ago, though he regretted nothing. He had never planned on becoming a father, but with the way he’d behaved as a young man, he shouldn’t be surprised that it was a possibility. When Jennifer had called, he’d vaguely recalled a broken condom incident that he had dismissed in the heat of the moment. He’d realized after how stupid he had been and had never made the same mistake again.
But the result of what he’d considered a mistake at the time, though tremendous and frightening, was...perfect, and the onslaught of new, pure love coursing through his veins at the sight of his daughter was proof that he’d done the right thing by taking a risk in coming to find her.
The road ahead would most certainly be bumpy, but there was nothing more important than her left for Sam back in New York. Now there was only here. Only his Shiloh.
Chapter Three
Thor was snoozing on the porch when Lucy and Shiloh got home that afternoon. At the sound of the gate opening at the end of the short driveway, the mutt dashed across the lawn toward them, ears flopping, barking joyfully the whole way. He bounded into Shiloh’s lap and she let out a happy squeal as he began to sniff her face. Despite many sessions with a trainer since he’d wandered onto their property as a skinny puppy, about six years before, their dog repeated the same routine day after day, unable to contain his joy when he saw his girl. Lucy laughed and rubbed behind his ears. He tossed her a quick lick before turning back to his true love, and they all made their way into the small home where Lucy had been raised.
The house had been part of the deal when her dad agreed to run the observatory. When her mother had left, and after her father died, Lucy hadn’t been able to part with it. The little red brick home had grown shabby with age and it needed some work, but the fact that she didn’t have a mortgage made it possible for Lucy to stretch her salary further than it would otherwise. And even though, once her parents’ marriage had started to fall apart, many of her childhood years there had been less than pleasant, for some reason she couldn’t let go. The house wasn’t the reason her parents had fallen out of love, and it wasn’t the reason her mother had left the three of them so long ago.
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