by JoAnn Ross
“Thank you.” Hannah ducked her head as her cheeks blushed even brighter.
“Show Gabriel your bracelet,” Hailey urged.
Hannah held out a slender arm displaying a silver bangle bracelet with four Space Needle–themed charms.
“Pretty,” he said.
“It’s so she’ll always have a memory of today when we leave here,” Hailey said.
“Why don’t we go upstairs and hang up your new clothes?” Chelsea suggested, desperate to change the subject.
“But Gabriel hasn’t seen them,” she whined. It had been a long, eventful day. Maybe too long. Perhaps a real mother would’ve had enough sense not to cram so many things into so few hours. But she’d wanted to make memories for the girls to take with them. Now, as she thought about them leaving, Chelsea felt on the verge of tears herself.
“I have an idea,” Gabriel suggested.
“What?” Hailey asked with a dramatic sniffle.
“You go upstairs with Chelsea and hang them up, then tomorrow, after breakfast, you can give me a fashion show. On your stage.”
“Can I turn on the spotlight?”
“Of course, It should be shining down on you just like a pop star. Did you get new pajamas?”
“Yes. The store didn’t have any with ice cream sundaes like Chelsea’s, or with dragons on them, so I got unicorns.”
“They sound amazing.”
Her expression brightened. “They are! Wait ’til you see them!” She ran toward the stairs, shoes flashing.
“Why don’t I boil up that pasta,” he suggested. “There just happens to be a jar of my mother’s organic tomato sauce in the cupboard.”
“Hailey just likes butter,” Hannah said.
“Then that’s what she’ll have,” Chelsea said. She looked at Gabriel, thinking, yet again, how grateful she was for him. Which didn’t preclude him being really hot. He was turning out to be maybe something as rare as one of Hailey’s unicorns: a near perfect man.
Dangerous thinking, she warned herself as she headed with the girls up the stairs.
* * *
BY THE TIME the pasta dinner was over, before they’d even gotten to the astronaut ice cream sandwiches, Hailey’s eyes were at half-mast.
“I know exactly how she feels,” Chelsea murmured. “It was a fun day, but a long one. What would you all say if we skip the night baths and go straight to bed?”
“That sure works for me,” Hannah said. Although she’d seemed to enjoy herself, Chelsea realized that habit would have had Hannah as concerned about her younger sister as Chelsea had been. And undoubtedly worn out by the unrelenting whirling dervish energy.
Twenty minutes later, Hailey, wearing her unicorn pajamas, and Hannah, wearing a blue Live Your Dreams camisole over plaid pajama shorts, were tucked into bed.
“Good day?” Gabe asked Chelsea after they’d settled down in the library, which was, needless to say, her favorite room in the house. His arm was around her shoulders, and she’d nestled into him in an easy, familiar way that felt all too right.
“It was long. And I’m surprised at how exhausted I am, but it was fun. Hailey’s enthusiasm, as wearing as it can be, is contagious.”
“Which brings up a question I’ve been pondering the past couple days.”
“What?”
“How the hell do parents ever have sex?”
Chelsea nearly spit out her wine. “I don’t know. But I was wondering the same thing driving home and decided they must be so continually exhausted they don’t miss it that much.”
“They must have some way. Or else they’d stop after one child.”
“True,” she said. “Maybe when the kids are asleep. Like they are now... That wasn’t an invitation.” She sighed and dragged a hand through her hair. “I know I said I wanted to step back, but I may be reconsidering.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. As much as I enjoyed the caveman door sex, I want more. I want to do it right. I want to spend the night with you.”
“Me, too. Sometimes adulting is really, really hard.” She combed her fingers through his hair, then linked them together at the back of his neck. “This is a big house,” she pointed out. “There are a lot of rooms.”
“All of which hold numerous intriguing possibilities.” His lips plucked at hers. Tasting, teasing, nipping, creating that familiar warmth. “Have you ever had sex in a library?”
“Of course not!” But the idea had her trembling. Just a little, as her lips opened to invite a deeper kiss.
“Okay,” he said against her mouth. “We’ll put that third on the list.”
“Third?”
“First is to get you in my bed.” He nipped at her lower lip. “Then that decadent master bath tub built for two.
“Then for the hat trick—”
His mouth had trailed down to that hollow in her throat, where she knew he could feel her pulse pounding hard and fast.
“The library,” she agreed breathlessly.
It was clear he wanted her. And she wanted him. Her need to not risk being caught having sex by two impressionable foster girls tangled with all the erotic images stimulated by his words flashing through her mind like the beam of the Honeymoon Harbor lighthouse, warning her of danger, while at the same time blinding her to anything and everything but this man.
Just when she was ready to throw caution to the wind, to live in the moment once again, he broke the kiss, drawing a whimper from somewhere deep inside her.
“Say good-night, Chelsea,” he said.
She couldn’t remember ever being with a man who could make her laugh, even as he made her ache. “Good-night, Chelsea.”
His answering rough laugh was as regretful as she was feeling as he took her hands and pulled her lightly off the oxblood leather couch. “I think I’ve hiked every trail in this state,” he said. “Including Hannegan Peak on Mount Baker and up to the top of Olympus. But the hardest hike I’m ever going to take is the one back to that lonely cabin.”
“I know.” She touched a hand to his cheek. “That group meeting of foster moms Adele Douglas told me about while we were filling out all those papers and I’d agreed to go through the licensing process is tomorrow night. Maybe I can learn the secret.”
He kissed her again. Quick and hard. “Take notes.”
* * *
“I HAVE AN IDEA,” Gabe said the girls’ third morning in the house after serving up blueberry pancakes, which Hailey declared the best ever. Though, by this point, Chelsea suspected he could make her sardine pancakes and she’d declare them wonderful.
They’d left the girls having breakfast and were having a rare private conversation in the library. “I know you need to get back to work with the adventurers—”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it precisely that way. But yes, that’s admittedly how I’m feeling.”
“But you want to. Because it was your idea. Your project. Your ass on the line.”
“All true. But I also understand priorities.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me. Here’s the thing... Weren’t you taking them to Herons Landing today?”
“After a trip to the museum to learn about Honeymoon Harbor’s Victorian era. And why the buildings on Water Street are now stone and brick due to fire that swept through town and destroyed all the wooden ones back in the 1900s.” Those up on the bluff and set farther back from the harbor had been saved. “How did you know?”
“You told me the schedule over dinner at Sensation Cajun.”
“You remember that?”
“It’s important to you. So, sure, of course I remembered. After Bri there’s a five-day break, then you go to Blue House Farm.”
“Okay. I’m impressed.”
“I don’t know why. I’ll bet dollars to those doughnuts the cops make that you memoriz
ed everything I told you about wooden boats.”
“Well, of course, but...”
“You’re smarter than me?”
“That’s not what I was implying at all. It’s just that I didn’t know anything about them, so it was interesting to me.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m extremely interested in you. So, it only stands to reason that I’d be interested in what interests you.”
He was not making this fling plan at all easy, even if they could ever get it off the ground. Despite their short time together, they’d been forced into a domestic situation that didn’t allow for pretension. Chelsea still didn’t know what had brought him back to town, but she did know what kind of man Gabriel Mannion was. Her first instinct had been right. He really was The One. Which, despite that set-in-stone timetable she’d agreed upon, she was already teetering on the brink of falling in love with. The slightest nudge and she’d go tumbling over.
“Well. Thank you.”
She was going to think about his unexpected declaration later. And undoubtedly drive herself crazy delving for hidden meanings, clues that he might be open to changing his mind, too. Sure. That was going to happen. Because there were so many openings for a billionaire stock trader here on the peninsula. And as much as she loved visiting New York, Chelsea knew she could never live there.
“You’re very welcome. Want to hear my idea?”
“Of course.”
“Take Hannah with you to work. You know she belongs with the adventurers.”
“I do know that. I just couldn’t figure out what to do with Hailey while Hannah was off having adventures.”
“That’s solved. She’s visiting the farm.”
“Your family’s farm?”
“Well, I could have called Jim at Blue House Farm, but I figured my family made more sense. And before you worry, I called Mrs. Douglas yesterday to see if it’d be okay, and she approved it without a second thought, which didn’t surprise me. I would’ve mentioned it last night, but we got sidetracked by Hailey the dervish, then trying to decide what to do about our sexual drought.”
Despite her tangled nerves, Chelsea laughed at that. “Wow. If you call this a sexual drought, you must really be looking forward to getting back to New York and your regular life.”
“There’s sex and then there’s more,” he said. “This is more.”
Once again it was as if he’d read her mind. Yet, more could mean a very different thing to him than it did to her.
“It is,” she agreed, waiting to see if he’d elaborate.
“So, what do you think?”
“About Hailey going out to the farm?”
“Unless you’re open to me ravishing you here on the couch, that would be the topic on the table.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Never.” He bent down and touched his lips to hers. As light, as short, as the kiss was, it still set off sparks.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “Please thank your mother for me.”
That problem taken care of, thirty minutes later, she and Hannah were on the way into town to the library, where the adventurers were meeting. “Are you only taking me because you feel sorry for me? Or because I’m staying with you and Gabriel, and you don’t know what else to do with me until camp opens or Mrs. Douglas finds us a new family?”
It belatedly dawned on Chelsea that Hannah would have seen the posters about the program, along with stacks of signup sheets. How could she have not felt left out?
“You should know better than that, by now,” she said mildly. “You and I have come a long way since that first day when you had to decide whether or not I was a child trafficker.”
“I didn’t really mean that I thought you were going to sell us to pervs. I just need to be careful that Hailey stays safe.”
“I get that. But, and this is one hundred percent the truth, I couldn’t figure out what we could do with your sister. Can we both agree that there’s no way she has the patience or maturity for the adventurer program? Which is only open to middle school through high school anyway.” Although, unsurprisingly, she hadn’t had any high school age readers sign up. She might have spent her summers in the library, but she’d been well aware, even back then, that she was an anomaly.
“But now that Gabriel’s taking her to his family’s Christmas tree farm, the problem’s solved.”
“I remember getting a tree at the farm once,” Hannah said. “They were having a festival, with music and cocoa and cookies. It was a lot of fun. There was a sleigh, but it was on wheels because there wasn’t any snow that year.”
“I remember that. My family went once, too.”
Hannah sighed. “Sometimes life really sucks.”
“You’re not going to get any argument from me. Which is why we have to grab hold of special moments and hold them tight, so they’re always there to brighten up suckfest days.”
“Like at the Space Needle.”
“That, too,” Chelsea said. “But I was thinking of now. Just the two of us, having some quiet time together.” Like a mother and daughter. Which, Chelsea considered, was even more dangerous than her thoughts about Gabriel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE DAY TURNED out to be even more of a success than she’d hoped. The group of a dozen adventurers had liked the museum’s Victorian display, although the girls had admittedly been more interested in the women’s cumbersome clothing, especially those corsets and bustles, while the boys had liked the idea of a giant fire roaring through the town. Chelsea knew they didn’t want Honeymoon Harbor to go up in flames, but she’d been a librarian long enough to know if a topic had anything at all to do with explosions, boys would eat it up.
They’d enjoyed the painted balsa wood models of early buildings and seemed excited about visiting one that was much the same as it had originally been, albeit updated. They’d all been suitably impressed by the enormous mural painted on the high arched ceiling of the foyer, although—no surprise—none of them had heard of James Whistler.
Rather than going with the mythological figures popular at the time that Herons Landing had been built, Whistler had painted scenes of the peninsula—from the cliffs and crashing waves, to the glaciers of Mount Olympus standing tall over Hurricane Ridge, to the towering hemlock and Douglas firs, fields of lavender farms, the Juan de Fuca Strait leading to Puget Sound, and, of course, the dazzling blue bay that Honeymoon Harbor had been built on.
Scattered throughout the quadrants were the Native American original settlers; the tall ships, including Admiral Vancouver’s Discovery; and fishermen and builders like Seth Harper’s family. Unsurprising, given that the Victorian house had been contracted by a wealthy timber baron, loggers claimed the center. Many of the adventurers’ families’ occupations were represented in the mural, which made the excursion even more relatable.
“That was fun,” Hannah said on the way home.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I don’t usually get to hang out with kids my own age.”
“Well,” Chelsea said easily, even as those words sliced another little piece off her heart, “that’s one reason to look forward to camp next week.”
“I guess so. At least none of the kids today made fun of me for not having parents.”
“That’s not as rare as you might think, these days. Though you do have a far more challenging situation than most.” She wondered if there were any other foster children in the county Hannah’s or Hailey’s age and made a mental note to ask Adele Douglas. Perhaps they could arrange meetups.
“Do you have any Dickens books in the library?” Quotes from Dickens about Victorian times had been part of the museum display.
“Absolutely. There’s one, appropriately titled Charles Dickens, that includes some of his personal letters and takes you right into Victori
an England, so you feel as if you’re experiencing his horribly difficult life as a boy growing up. By reading it first, to get some background, you’d probably enjoy David Copperfield, which is a wonderful story, even better than A Christmas Carol.
“Dickens based it on his own life and it has many dreadfully wicked characters and tells about wretched times for poor David, who was a fictional version of Dickens, as a boy. It also has some humorous parts. I’ve always felt that Dickens was the best writer ever at balancing comedy and tragedy. I know there’s an edition of David Copperfield in Eagles Watch’s library, but we could go back to the library and get the other one.”
“That’s okay,” Hannah said. “You have that meeting with the other foster moms to go to. And you said you wanted to bake brownies to take to it.”
“Mrs. Douglas said it was a coffee and cookie type of thing, so I thought bringing some to the meeting would be a good way to break the ice.” She hoped her nervousness about attending didn’t show. She could have picked up a box of delicious macaroons at Desiree’s bakery, but homemade felt more appropriate for this situation.
“That’s a good idea,” Hannah said, unknowingly echoing her thought. “Everyone likes brownies. Maybe you could bring the book home tomorrow?”
Home. Hadn’t that become a charged word? “Absolutely. It’s also somewhere in the house library, but the books aren’t catalogued, so I’ve no idea how long it would take to find it.”
“Maybe you could catalog them.”
“That’s an idea.” The task would definitely take longer than the remaining time she’d be living at Eagles Watch. Although she’d been looking at Realtor listings on Zillow, she hadn’t found anything even halfway appropriate. Honeymoon Harbor, she was discovering, was not a bustling real estate market.
“Thank you,” Hannah said quietly.
“No need to thank me. I’m a librarian. Nothing makes me happier than sharing books, especially when I can introduce a reader to one of my favorite authors.”
Okay, if she had to be perfectly honest, sex with Gabriel would top book sharing. But although she and Hannah were getting along better each day, that was definitely too much information.
