Читать книгу The Prodigal Cousin - Anna Adams - Страница 8

IT WAS THE KIND OF DAY Molly Calvert loved best. One filled with family celebration. Her cousin Sophie’s new baby, Chloe, had been christened that morning. Around six the whole family had converged on the Bardill’s Ridge Country Club to celebrate.

Her cousin Zach’s young son, Evan, and daughter, Lily, raced among the knots of relatives catching up. Her grandparents were dancing their feet off. Her widowed Aunt Beth, Zach’s mom, seemed to welcome the romantic intentions of Zach’s father-in-law, James Kendall. Her own parents, who ran a bed-and-breakfast, had taken responsibility for supplying ample food and drink, which they’d been too busy arranging to eat.

But something was wrong with Molly. Instead of wrapping herself in the cloak of family affection, she felt as if she were hanging around on the edges of love.

Surrounded by everyone who mattered most to her, she peered from baby Chloe in Sophie’s arms to pregnant Olivia, Zach’s wife. A strange emptiness yawned inside her. She’d never have a child of her own. Her two cousins, who’d been more like brother and sister to her, had reached a stage in life that she couldn’t share.

An inner voice, refusing to be silenced, whispered that she wasn’t even a real Calvert. That she was adopted.

Loneliness prodded her as Sophie passed Chloe to her husband, Ian. Behind him, Zach and Olivia each caught one of their children for a hug. Evan and Lily wriggled away, far too excited to stand still for affection.

Molly watched as if from a far place. She loved her parents, enjoyed her job, couldn’t imagine living anywhere except on Bardill’s Ridge in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains. But at twenty-five, she envied her cousins and hid a secret longing for a husband and family of her own—a husband who could love her despite the holes in her soul.

But what kind of man could love her after he heard the truth? She’d controlled her self-destructive impulses in the ten years since she’d survived a catastrophic miscarriage, but no amount of understanding could change the fact that she was damaged goods. Every man in this town knew her past. They didn’t come looking for her. She invited none of them into her life.

Loving her cousins, resenting her own envy, Molly eased through the throng in the wood-smoke-scented dining room. At the doorway, she braced her hand on one of the wide posts that ran from ceiling to floor and searched for her mother’s loving, lovable face. Her mom smiled back, and Molly felt a little better.

Since the age of eight, when Eliza and Patrick Calvert had accepted her as their foster child, she’d known no other mother. She owed her parents everything. They’d saved her life and then forgiven her for all the increasingly bad things she’d done. Owing them made her different.

None of her cousins were obliged to their parents for love. None of her cousins hungered for a child and someone—a lover or husband—to call her own.

“Have some wine for me.” Sophie, still nursing Chloe, pushed a glass into Molly’s hand.

Molly fastened a smile on her face. “Thanks. Chloe’s lovely in the dress.” Made of white lawn, lacy and yellowed with age, it had been Calvert christening attire even before their grandparents had been thought of.

“You’re falling behind,” Sophie teased. Molly thought she meant everyone else was putting away the commemorative vino. “You’d better have a baby of your own before one of our kids kicks a hole in the family gown.”

A swallow of wine and a harsh breath bit the back of Molly’s throat at the same time, choking her. Only her parents knew about her miscarriage and its resulting effects. Full of shame, she’d hidden the truth from the rest of the family and she’d made her mom and dad promise never to tell.

She glanced at Sophie, who waited with a sweet smile, wanting only to share her happiness. Molly harnessed her shaky resources and pretended nothing was wrong.

“Can you imagine Grandpa in the gown?” She nudged her cousin, pointing as Seth Calvert once again led his wife, Greta, onto the small dance floor.

Sophie grinned. “They were just waiting for someone to put Glenn Miller back on. And no, I can’t picture tall, white-haired Grandpa in that fragile gown—or his father before him.” She leaned closer. “You feel left out today?”

Molly blinked back disgraceful tears, wishing she were a better actress. “It shows?”

“Maybe I’m a little more sensitive since I almost gave up Ian to do motherhood my way.” Sophie rested her gaze on Molly’s latest cousin-by-marriage, a relationship as strong as blood in the Tennessee mountains. “The right guy will show up, Molly. Maybe you already know him.”

“I’m not looking for a guy.” Unconsciously, she raised her voice enough to draw curious attention from Aunt Beth.

Sophie touched her arm. “There’s no shame. You’ve finished college. You have a good job. You wouldn’t be a Calvert if your mind didn’t turn to multiplying.”

Fine for an OB-GYN to say, but Molly clenched her teeth, forcing herself to keep smiling. Just in time, Ian beckoned Sophie to consult on the state of their daughter’s diaper. Expelling a held breath, Molly set her glass on the nearest table and made for the doorway.

In the foyer, she negotiated a path through the after-work golfers who were sending impatient glances toward the Calverts hogging the dining room for their party. Molly answered the reluctant hellos the guys offered. Half of them had kids in her class.

As she fought a gust of wind to force open the door, she felt as if she were breaking through the delicate barriers of a bubble. She sucked crisp, early October air into her lungs.

“Molly? Honey, what’s wrong?”

She spun. “Mom?” Her mother faced her from the club’s doorway. “I thought I saw you in line to hold Chloe.”

“Until you ran for your life.” Eliza Calvert, a perfect lady in palest pink chiffon, floated across the redbrick porch. “You aren’t—” She stopped, ambivalent about broaching a subject they both considered put to bed. “It’s not a panic attack?”

Molly still had them, but she’d learned to control them until she could reach privacy. “Nope. It was hot in there.”

“Not that you’re twenty-five? The youngest of your generation—the last to remain unmarried?” Her mother reached for her hands. Molly couldn’t step back, didn’t know how to reject her mother in any way. “You don’t have to hurry for the sake of the family.”

Usually, Molly chose to appreciate the happiness life and her parents had given her. Ashamed of wanting more when she had so much, she tried to make light of her mom’s concern. “I’m not man-hunting. I’m fine—I just couldn’t breathe in the heat.” She shivered in the cool breeze, betrayed by her own body.

Her mother held her tighter. “I was twenty-nine when I married your father. You have so much time.”

Molly saw no point in arguing. Once her mom got the bit between her teeth, she didn’t stop for miles.

“You know lots of young men, and I wish you wouldn’t hold back because of…”

“I am reluctant with men because I can’t have children. I don’t know when to talk about it. But maybe I hold back because no one’s made me want to get that close.”

“You don’t give anyone a chance. You stop seeing them after two weeks, maximum.”

Because no man waited longer than two weeks for sex these days, but she wasn’t about to enlighten her mom.

Eliza turned toward the highly polished doors. “Why don’t we go home?” Her hair fanned around her head. “I’ll find your dad, and we’ll make dinner out of whatever’s in the fridge. None of the guests plan to be in tonight.” She tugged Molly’s braid. The familiar pressure remained the most poignant gesture of affection in Molly’s life. “You stay out here and breathe,” her mom said.

“Thanks, but I’ll say goodbye to everyone.” She hugged her mother. “Meet you back out here.”

As she ducked inside, Eliza dragged her dad off the dance floor. He’d indulged in liberal helpings of the wine Ian’s former-ambassador father had provided, so Molly asked for his keys at the car.

“You can drive,” her dad said, “but remember, a good chauffeur doesn’t peek into the back seat.” Feeling like a deer in headlights, Molly watched her parents get in the back, noisy with their joy in each other. She faced firmly forward in her seat. As she pulled away from the curb, her parents began a duet of their favorite song, “I Only Have Eyes for You.”

For the past eleven years, they’d also sung to her. After a long time with eyes only for each other, they’d seen Molly and made room to love her.

SAM LOCKWOOD HATED feeling like a stalker. He waited in the gathering dark outside the Dogwood, a Victorian bed-and-breakfast. His heart pounded like the percussion in a horror movie. The B and B belonged to his birth mother.

Not his real mother. Jane Lockwood had taken him home as a newborn, raised him and fed him and taught him to be a man. Eliza Calvert had given birth to him and then given him up for adoption.

Sixteen at the time, she’d probably seen no other alternative. Babies cost money. Children cost more. He understood the fiscal reasons, but he couldn’t deny the resentment he’d felt since his investigator had reported that she’d later adopted another child.

Forty years old and resentful. Nice start.

He glanced back at his own daughters. Nina, five, had finally fallen asleep in her booster seat, a peacefulness he hadn’t seen since the car accident that had taken her mom and his parents. Tamsin, fifteen, had kept her nose buried in a book for most of the nine-hour drive from Savannah.

Nine hours for him to cement a year-long decision. And, oddly, nine hours that had taught his girls to relax in a car again.

Tamsin’s book rested in her lap now, caught between her elbow and her chest. Mostly asleep, she twisted to put her arm around Nina, who burrowed into her.

Sam smiled. Tamsin had been a normal, occasionally sullen teenage girl sixteen months ago. She’d dressed in jeans and shirts that often made him nervous with their tightness and a tendency to expose skin, but he longed for that kind of scary clothing rather than the unrelieved black she wore now. A wardrobe that often matched her makeup.

Tamsin’s resentment made his appear amateurish. She seemed to take exception to the fact that he’d lived while her mother had died. Since he often shared the thought, he couldn’t blame her.

Sam’s throat tightened as an image of his wife, Fiona, invaded his thoughts. Delicate as she had been alive, her smile filled with love and understanding, the memory reminded him how long forever was going to last without her. Fiona would have known how to comfort their daughter. Tamsin had rejected his every effort, as well as the grief counseling that helped Nina.

He looked over the seat again, love for his girls swelling his chest. He’d promise to keep them safe always, but he’d made that same promise to Fiona and then he’d lost her, anyway. He couldn’t remember when he’d decided to become a doctor, but cardiology had been his only path after Fiona had told him about her incurable heart disease. He’d met and loved her at the age of ten, but he’d based his career on decisions that might help him save his wife.

Fate had snatched her out of his and their daughter’s lives despite his plans. Now he had to make sure his girls would have someone else if fate came back to his door.

Sam turned on the dome light and checked his watch. Seven-thirty. Half an hour had passed since he’d opened the Dogwood’s front door but received no answer to his greeting.

He pressed the back of his head against the seat rest, resisting guilt about the mess he might be making of the Calverts’ lives. As his grief for Fiona and his parents had begun to ebb, he’d realized his daughters would be alone if something happened to him.

Fiona had grown up in an orphanage, unwanted by adoptive parents because of her disease. His first conversation with her had been about her life in the orphanage. Convinced his adoptive parents had barely saved him in time from a similar institution, he’d felt empathy for Fiona, which had resulted in several fistfights with his best boyhood friends and her lifelong love.

He refused to think of their girls feeling as alone as she had. He owed Fiona security for Nina and Tamsin, so he prayed his birth mother had suffered a few second thoughts. Especially after Tamsin had found the investigator’s paperwork and shown her first spark of interest in sixteen months.

Lights flashed in his rearview mirror and a car parked in the gravel lot beside the house. Sam gripped the steering wheel. A man and woman, laughing, spilled out of the other car’s back seat.

His investigator had taken plenty of photos and he recognized Eliza. Her salt-and-pepper hair lessened the resemblance, but they shared unusual black eyes. Other than that, he must look like the birth father of whom he’d found no trace. Averting his face from the fifty-six-year-old woman he’d driven six hundred miles to see, he tossed around conversation starters.

“Just wondering why you gave me away when I was hours old.” Or “Thought you might have changed your mind about having a son.” Both approaches involved whining on his part and hurting her. Neither would do.

No one except Fiona had ever known his feelings about being adopted. His parents would have been upset, and he’d been a little ashamed that his own mother had given him away. As an adult, he’d lost any concern for his past in his focus on making sure Fiona survived for their daughters—and for him.

Tamsin and Nina remained his first concern, but now that he saw Eliza Calvert dancing up the pansy-bordered walkway in her husband’s protective arms, Sam longed to know someone else on the face of the earth who shared the blood that ran in his and his children’s veins.

If Eliza accepted them, his daughters would never be alone again.

Another woman climbed out of the car. Taller than Eliza, she was slender but curvy. Her thick, dark red braid slid over her shoulder as she shut the door. She glanced at his car and lifted her hand in a brief wave. With a glance at Eliza and the man disappearing inside, she started toward Sam. Her silky dress outlined her body with each step she took.

She must be Molly Calvert.

Sam opened the car door and stood with trepidation. Eliza had adopted Molly when she was fifteen. Sam’s investigator had picked up rumors of juvenile misconduct, nonspecific because the court had sealed her records and the townspeople avoided talking about her.

Her own parents had abandoned Molly. Again, he knew only the bare bones. Would she resent him and the girls if her mother accepted them?

“The door was open.” Her voice flowed, as smooth as her dress. “You didn’t have to wait out here.”

“We haven’t checked in.” He shut his door and opened the back. Tamsin blinked, stretching a little, smiling before she remembered where she was—who he was.

“We’re here.” He squeezed her hand, still draped around Nina’s shoulder. She drew back, rejecting tenderness—as if she couldn’t bear to be comforted since Fiona’s death. “Wake up, sweetie,” he said anyway.

“Dad.” She instantly donned her armor.

He kissed her little sister’s forehead. “Nina, girl, time to wake up.”

Nina kicked at his hand in her sleep as he took her out of the booster seat and straightened to face Molly.

“We didn’t make a reservation. Do you have two rooms?”

She nodded, smiling at the sleepy girls. “We have something with bunk beds if your daughters prefer—or two adjoining rooms, one with a dressing room that’s been converted to hold a child’s bed.”

Her friendly reception heightened his guilt. He hadn’t considered Molly’s feelings.

“We’ll take the second combination.” He elbowed the car door shut as Nina peered into the growing darkness. “Nina can take the dressing room attached to mine.”

“Daddy, where are we?”

“Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee.” Love of home deepened Molly’s voice. “Let me get your bags.”

“No, I’ll come back.”

“I’ll get them, Dad.” Tamsin surprised him, but maybe she hoped to avoid the possible debacle inside.

“I’ll help.” Molly grinned at Nina. “Your little girl may want her pajamas in a hurry.”

“Who are you?” Nina demanded.

“Molly Calvert.” She offered a hand on which a couple of rings glittered in the streetlights.

Nina giggled, because people rarely shook hands with her. “Do you have food?”

“All kinds.” Molly’s mouth trembled with an infectious urge to laugh. “What do you like?”

“Ice cream.”

Sam chuckled, pulling his daughter closer. “Good try, but no go. This is Nina, Molly.” He backed around the trunk and dropped his hand on his older girl’s shoulder. “This is Tamsin. I’m Sam Lockwood. We’d all love a sandwich.”

“Peanut butter and strawberry,” Nina said.

“Or whatever you have.” Sam had worried about Nina and Tamsin for so long he hadn’t noticed Nina’s manners slipping. She might be a little spoiled.

“How about you, Tamsin?”

The teenager smiled, her manners in better shape. “Whatever you have.”

“Me, too. Whatever.” Nina kicked against his side. “Lemme walk, Daddy.”

He let her down and then opened the trunk and reached for the large canvas rolling bag that held most of his and Nina’s clothes. Tamsin grabbed her own suitcase. Molly took Nina’s backpack full of stuffed animals and the smaller suitcase that held the rest of the child’s stuff.

“Thanks,” he said. A quick search for his younger child revealed her tugging at the B and B’s heavy front door. “Nina!”

“She’s fine. I’m sure my mom saw you, and she’ll catch her.” Molly slid the backpack over her shoulder. Cool air wrapped her skirt around Nina’s suitcase, exposing her slender calf. Sam forced his gaze back to her face. “We came from a family christening,” she added.

Eliza and her husband had clearly celebrated. “We can find our own dinner if you’ll point us at the kitchen.”

“Seriously, we were just about to loot the fridge and we always share meals.” With a friendly smile, Molly waited for Tamsin to move along the sidewalk in front of her. “We want our guests to feel like family.”

It was the perfect opening. Much as he hated spying, Sam needed to see Eliza Calvert with his girls. To see if she’d be as open as Molly. If Eliza was uncomfortable, he and Nina could drag Tamsin through the Smoky Mountains for a few days and then head home.

They caught up with his youngest, still doing battle with the door.

“I—can’t—open it.”

Sam reached over her head with a rueful glance at Molly, who smothered her laughter in a cough. Over her shoulder, Tamsin looked revolted. Sam cleared his throat and held the door for all of them.

Inside, Patrick Calvert waited behind a dark pine registration desk. Molly started toward the stairs with Nina’s things.

“Dad, they want rooms three and four. I’ll take these up.”

“Thanks, honey.” With a smile at Tamsin, Patrick spun a ledger toward Sam. “Glad to have you. If you’ll sign in? Have you eaten?”

“That big girl said she had food,” Nina said.

Laughing, Patrick leaned way over the desk to see her. “Driving makes you hungry, Miss—” he glanced at Sam’s signature “—Lockwood?”

“Daddy hates to stop,” she said. Tamsin actually laughed, which made Sam’s public humiliation more than worthwhile.

“I packed snacks,” he said in self-defense.

Patrick’s bark of laughter nearly burst his eardrum. “A kindred spirit. That’s what I always say, too. You wouldn’t know it to look at my daughter, but she’s an eating machine.”

“Dad.” The startled protest burst from Molly.

Sam grinned at Tamsin, who promptly dropped her gaze. He glanced at Patrick. “Need anything else?”

After a swift perusal, Patrick shook his head. “Be sure to come back down. My wife is putting dinner together.”

Sam nodded, uneasy again, because Eliza’s husband, welcoming now, might come to view him as the enemy. Sam didn’t enjoy invading Patrick’s home under false pretenses.

With Nina clinging to his free hand and Tamsin back on her side of the great generational divide, he carried his bag upstairs behind Molly. At the top, she took a right, her footsteps whispering on a thick burgundy rug. Soft lighting increased warm tones in the paneled hall. Had this place belonged to the Calvert family since it was built? Sam couldn’t imagine that kind of continuity.

Molly opened the third door. She set Nina’s bags on a chest in front of a surprisingly plain four-poster, and his younger daughter bolted across the room. Sam had expected frills and lace. Instead, the early American primitive paintings and a fire laid on the hearth offered hospitality.

“Daddy, come look!” Nina swung on a door frame, summoning him to her room. Tamsin leaned over her shoulder and forgot to move when Sam joined them.

Frills abounded in here, from the lace-trimmed duvet on the child-size sleigh bed to the skirt on a miniature dressing table. “It’s like a playhouse,” he said. “Only no spaces between the walls.” Nina’s stuffed animals would be at home at the tiny table set for high tea.

“Wow,” Tamsin finally said. Sam suspected the word had escaped her.

Molly’s smile reached all the way to her hazel eyes. “I like it, too. I wish we’d had it when I was a little girl.”

“How will I talk Nina into going home?” Sam asked.

The little girl grabbed her backpack, snatching a tattered blue elephant and a threadbare green lizard from its zippered opening. She seated them on the small white chairs, chattering about tea.

“Tamsin, come.” Nina patted the one open setting.

Tamsin glanced at Molly, adolescent reluctance all over her face. Sam fought a fond smile. She showed inordinate patience with her little sister, but what teenager wanted to take tea with a green lizard in front of a stranger?

“Would you like to see your room?” Molly asked her.

“No—after tea,” Nina said.

“I’ll come back, Nina.” Tamsin turned toward their hostess.

Molly edged around Sam, trailing a whiff of spice and woman that disturbed him. She crossed his room to open another door. “Here you go.”

Tamsin hauled her bag behind her. At the door, she glanced from her assigned quarters to Molly, and her bright smile made Sam glad he’d dragged her here.

“It’s great,” Tamsin said.

He was dying to see it, but she didn’t invite him in, and experience had taught him to wait for her to make the first move.

Molly clasped her hands as if to say “My work here is done,” and backed out, pausing at Sam’s hallway door.

“Dinner will be waiting. I’m sure Mom will find something fun for Nina.” She already knew Tamsin wouldn’t want to be classified with her sister. “When you come out of your rooms, turn left and go past the stairs. Mom and Dad use that end of the house, and the hall ends in a door to the kitchen stairs.”

Hearing her call his birth mother “Mom” shocked Sam. He nodded, trying to look as if he felt nothing, but her gaze narrowed as she caught his response, anyway. After a moment, she continued through the door.

She left it open, so he had to close it, but he couldn’t help watching her stroll toward the family side of the house. Her slender back and the gentle sway of her hips drew his gaze, inappropriate as that was. For God’s sake, she couldn’t be more than twenty-five.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Nina had entered his room again. “You look sad.”

“Sad?” He shut the door and scooped her into his arms. “Why would I be sad when you and Tamsin and I are going hiking tomorrow, and you’ve got this great room to sleep in tonight?”

She planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek. “I like this place. It’s cool.”

Astounding him, tears stuck in his throat. Nothing had been cool for her since she’d lost her mom. In fact, he didn’t believe his baby had ever used that word before. “Where did you learn ‘cool,’ Nina?”

“Tamsin says lots of stuff is cool. Daddy—” she pointed her toes toward the floor “—lemme down. Judy wants tea with Lizzie and Norm.”

Out of her pack came Judy, a doll with short blond hair that stood on end and bright blue eyes nearly kissed off her painted face. Fiona had named Judy before Nina could even turn over.

“Settle Judy and the gang and then wash your hands and face, and we’ll go downstairs.”

He couldn’t say if it was the long drive or his daughters’ excitement at their temporary rooms, but like Tamsin and Nina, he was suddenly interested in his surroundings.

Until he remembered he had to find a way to tell Eliza Calvert who he was.

MAYBE AN HOUR AGO she’d assured Sophie she wasn’t looking for a man, but Molly was an honest woman and she couldn’t restrain herself from listening for the least little sound from above. Inappropriate. A man who loved his daughters the way Sam Lockwood clearly worshipped Nina and the reluctant Tamsin, probably also loved his absent wife.

Sam’s reasons for traveling alone with his daughters made her curious, but she didn’t sense a divorce. Molly had dealt with plenty of children in the past four years. Usually, the extroverts like Nina, who believed even the adults around her were waiting for her conversation, came from a loving home. Tamsin was too quiet, but under all that Goth makeup, she was a young woman enduring the torture of her teenage years.

“They’re nice girls?” her mom asked.

Molly looked up from the beans she’d been staring at instead of snapping. “Nina’s chatty.” She broke a couple of beans at once. “She loves the room. Tamsin, the older girl, seems…”

The more Molly thought about it, the more she realized Tamsin seemed unusually quiet. She wore the unnerving yet familiar air of the walking wounded.

“I knew Nina’d like the dressing room.” Molly’s dad came in from the pantry behind the kitchen, brandishing several freshly cleaned trout. “Think they’ll enjoy these?”

“You’re going all out.” Tamsin was none of her business. Molly tried to put the girl out of her mind—or relegate her to the position she should occupy, that of a guest. “I thought we were doing leftovers.”

Her dad grinned. “I liked the way Nina called you the ‘big girl.’ And her sister looks as if she could use a treat.”

“The father sounded tired even from here,” Eliza said. “We might as well start their visit with a special dinner.”

“You’re staying, Molly?” her dad asked. “I cleaned one for you.”

Molly pried her gaze away from her mother’s face. She hadn’t imagined Sam Lockwood’s fatigue if her mother had sensed it, too, but Molly’s interest in the little family felt inappropriate. She’d resisted rash acts for ten years. No need to ruin her record and let herself feel involved because something about Tamsin spoke to her past. “I have stuff to do for a science project at school tomorrow.”

“You have to eat,” her mother said. “Stay.”

Upstairs, the door squeaked and Sam’s voice floated down. “Hold my hand, Nina. Don’t run. Hold on to the rail.”

“He’s overprotective.” Eliza looked upward. “Those stairs are perfectly safe.”

“Sh.” Patrick clearly felt the Lockwood family deserved privacy.

Her mom returned to the stove. Molly snapped the last of the beans and carried them to the sink as Nina’s sneakers slapped across the black-and-white-tile floor.

“We’re back,” she said.

Molly searched their faces for some hint about Tamsin’s restlessness and pain. Sam looked away, but not before she caught the trace of an old injury in his eyes. Something was wrong.

“I tried to bring Judy, but Daddy said she needed a bath before she sat at a strange guy’s table.”

“Stranger,” Sam said. His discomfited silence stretched. “That sounds pretty bad, too.”

“Not at all.” Molly’s mom took over. “I’m Eliza Calvert. Welcome to our home.”

Sam remained too quiet for too long. Molly turned to find her mother holding out her hand, while their guest stared at her with blank black eyes that reminded Molly of Eliza when she was annoyed and trying to hide it. At last he took her hand.

“Mrs. Calvert.” He quickly let go, still staring at her.

Molly turned completely to face him. His distracted glance barely brushed her face, but then he started as if he realized his response wasn’t entirely normal.

“Thanks for the great rooms.” He reached for his older daughter, who avoided his hand, stepping off the stairs in front of him. “This is Tamsin. I’m Sam Lockwood. The little one’s Nina.”

She marched across the room to peer into the sink. “I don’t like beans.”

“Nina.”

“But I’ll eat ’em.” Her forced enthusiasm drew laughter from everyone except Sam and Tamsin.

“I stir-fry them,” Eliza told her. “You’ll love them. They taste sweet.”

“I liked my mom’s.”

Sam offered an apologetic grimace. Tamsin turned to inspect the tile backsplash over the dark granite counter. With a troubled expression, Sam dropped his hand on Nina’s head. “My wife…passed away…sixteen months ago.”

Molly forgot about not getting involved. His control made his grief more palpable, and the loss of her mother explained Tamsin’s pain. Molly’s parents closed ranks with her, offering silent, united support.

Sam rounded up his girls, clearly unable to handle one more nuance of sympathy. “Why don’t we go outside and clean your snack stuff out of the car before we eat?”

Nina skipped ahead of him. Again, Tamsin evaded comfort. Sam glanced over his shoulder at Eliza.

Molly’s heart thudded. He stared at her mom as if he knew her. His inexplicable concentration seemed to include her dad and Molly, too.

She barely waited for the door to close. “Have you met him before, Mom?”

Her dad looked surprised. “How would your mom know Sam Lockwood?”

“Actually, he seems familiar, and I can tell he thinks I do, too.” Eliza took the beans. “I’m trying to think where I might have met him.”

“You couldn’t have,” Patrick said. “He’s driven a long way today and he’s tired. The little girl’s a sweetie, but she keeps him hopping, and he’s obviously concerned about the older one. You two are reading more into that.”

“Maybe,” Eliza said.

Molly couldn’t agree. Her parents were such innocents. Sam had definitely looked at her mother as if he knew her. Later, Molly eyed him as they all sat down to dinner.

Sam checked Nina’s trout for bones before he started his own meal. Suddenly, he looked up, his knife in midair. “I thought you mentioned sandwiches, Molly. I hope you haven’t gone to all this trouble for us.”

“I caught these earlier today.” Molly’s dad chewed with enjoyment. “We planned to have them for breakfast.”

Sam set his fork on the table. Tamsin did likewise. “Will you have enough?” he asked.

“We can supplement with bacon and eggs.” Eliza flicked Molly a glance. “What my daughter calls a breakfast platter.”

“A breakfast platter?” Sam trained his dark eyes on Molly.

Heat climbed her throat. Annoyed, she answered without thinking. “I spent a lot of time in diners before—” This stranger had no need to know about her homeless days at the age of eight. “Before,” she finished.

He nodded, compassion softening his eyes. Molly placed her own utensils on the table as a chill fingered her spine. He knew about her. He wouldn’t feel sorry for a woman who’d just happened to eat in a few diners.

This man didn’t deserve their trust. “Mom,” she said, “I’m too tired to drive home tonight. I’ll stay here.”