An Unlikely Father. Cynthia Thomason

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      He said goodbye to Ethan and headed toward his vehicle. And Helen thought how lucky Claire was to have found someone like Jack. Solid. Dependable. And very rare.

      After a moment, she turned toward Ethan. “Good luck with getting that rental car delivered. In a way, I feel somewhat responsible for you standing out here waiting for it.”

      He smiled. “No offense, Helen, but once the new car arrives, I’m going to stay as far away from that truck of yours as I can.”

      “No offense taken.” They stood without talking in the gloomy silence of a battlefield littered with beer cans. Helen figured she ought to start picking up the mess she’d created, but before she took a step, she heard the subtle squeak of the foam restaurant container.

      Ethan held it out to her. “Do you like chocolate cake?”

      ETHAN DIDN’T VERY often feel as if he walked a thin line between boardroom executive and idiot, but that’s exactly how he felt right now. What was he doing, standing here with a peace offering for a woman who’d been doing her best in the last two days to destroy two perfectly fine modes of transportation?

      She peered over the edge of the box. “You’re giving me your dessert?”

      He shrugged an indifference he didn’t feel and said, “Seemed like the quickest way to soothe the angry beast. I have to wait out here for my car. You’re here, too, and there are still a few cans in that trash bin.”

      Her lips twitched. He hoped it was a hint of a smile and not the beginning of a snarl. And then she said something that in his experience was a predictably female reaction. “I’d do most anything for chocolate.” She stuck her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans and nodded down the street. “Come on. I’m not eating standing up.”

      He followed her a block to where her Suburban was parked. She stepped up on the front bumper, turned around and sat on the truck. He noticed a slash of flesh through a slit in the knee of her denims. She patted the hood beside her and said, “There’s room.”

      He looked at the seriously faded steel, taking in the gritty remains of road dirt, and, considering her occupation, who knew what else, and stared down at his perfectly pressed beige Dockers. And he remembered that during his tour of Heron Point today he hadn’t seen a business that was essential to a Manhattan male’s lifestyle—a dry-cleaning establishment.

      She must have correctly interpreted his reluctance because she sort of smiled again and then gripped the edge of her shirt cuff and wiped a small circle beside her. “Don’t worry, Princeton,” she said. “In all my years in Heron Point, I don’t recall anyone ever catching something from the hood of a truck.”

      Princeton? He thought about correcting her and saying he was a Harvard man, but didn’t think that would earn him any points. And that’s what he was here for, after all—to establish a good working relationship with the locals. For some reason, his father, head of Anderson Enterprises, had decided to invest in this quirky Florida island by buying an old, run-down resort, and he’d sent his son to see that the renovations went smoothly.

      It helped that Archie Anderson’s chief security officer, Jack Hogan, had been in town a month longer than Ethan and had become something of a superhero to the two thousand people who lived here. In fact, Jack had even decided to stay once he’d fallen for the town’s mayor. But Ethan needed to relate to these people on his own, one at a time, if he had to, and despite the way he and Helen had met, he didn’t mind starting with her first.

      He placed the toe of his Italian loafer on the bumper, hoisted himself up to the hood, and admitted to a grudging admiration of the old truck. The metal didn’t even groan when he sat his clean chino-covered posterior on top of it.

      He handed the box to Helen. She took out the fork, poked through a quarter inch of creamy icing and brought up a wedge of cake to her mouth. While she chewed, she handed him the utensil. “There’s only one fork,” she managed to say. “I can always light a match and sterilize it between bites.”

      Any sympathy he’d begun to feel for this teary-eyed woman who’d dropped a can in front of Jack like a guilty delinquent vanished. Helen Sweeney was about as vulnerable as a barracuda. And just as alien to a Manhattan guy who’d never been closer to a fish than the city aquarium. Unfortunately, what was unfamiliar was almost always fascinating, as well. And Ethan couldn’t take his eyes off Helen’s smart mouth as she chased a trail of frosting with the tip of her tongue.

      “Never mind,” he said, taking the fork and cutting a piece of cake for himself. He swallowed, licked the fork and handed it back to her. “See? I can be as daring as the next guy.”

      She huffed, dug into the dessert again, and, quite unexpectedly, Ethan found himself wondering what it would be like to share more than a plastic fork with this woman.

      CHAPTER THREE

      FINN WAS ALREADY in the kitchen at six o’clock the next morning when Helen padded in on bare feet. He looked up at her and frowned. “What time you get in last night?”

      “A little before eleven. I had a few janitorial services to perform in town, but I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

      He gave her a questioning stare before wheeling to the kitchen table with a quart of milk. “I’ve got your cereal and toast ready. I’ll cut up some fruit.”

      “Thanks, but mostly I want coffee.” She responded to a scratching on the screen door and went to let the dog in. The Labrador lumbered into the room, his arthritic back leg stiff as it always was in the mornings. “Did you give Andy his pill?” she asked her father.

      “Not yet, but there’s a chunk of liverwurst on the counter.”

      Helen stuffed a large pain pill into the meat and molded a sort of liverwurst cocoon around it. Andy walked over to her, opened his mouth and accepted the treat without being coaxed. Helen bent down and kissed the top of his golden head. “That’ll get you through another twenty-four hours, big guy,” she said.

      “I’ll fix you some lunch to take with you,” Finn offered.

      Helen shook her head. Every time she had a charter, Finn asked her if he could fix her a lunch. And almost every time, she said no. “I can’t eat when I’m out there, Pop. You know that. I’ll eat when I get back.”

      “I know what you say, but you should take a sandwich along just in case.”

      She poured herself a mug of coffee and sat. “Look, Pop, you know what it’s like. I’m going to rig lines, cut mullet and bait hooks for four hours. It’s not all that conducive to a hearty appetite.”

      “No, I guess not. Eat your breakfast.”

      She stared at two bars of shredded wheat floating in a sea of milk. Her stomach turned over. Surely she wasn’t going to suffer from morning sickness. Life couldn’t be that cruel. She pushed aside a glass of orange juice in favor of a small bite of cantaloupe. It settled in her digestive tract without much of a revolution and gave her courage to try the cereal. She knew she had to eat. She wouldn’t see food again until after noon.

      “How many are going out today?” Finn asked.

      “Six. A group of accountants from Tampa.” She saw a glimmer in Finn’s eyes and quickly worked to СКАЧАТЬ