“Please call me Sam or Samantha. Everyone around here does. When you say Ms. Fremont in that stiff upper crust accent, you sound like something from a Jane Austen novel.”
He gave a sharp, humorless laugh. “I am no Mr. Darcy, I can assure you.”
“No kidding,” she muttered under her breath. Unfortunately, she didn’t say it far enough under her breath and unfortunately he heard her. He stiffened and she wanted to kick herself. This was not the way to go about asking a favor of the man.
“Anyway,” she said quickly, “I was, er, wondering if you would allow the children to help me out with the puppies while you’re here for the next few weeks.”
“Help you in what way?”
“I need someone to check on them once or twice a day. Perhaps play with them for half an hour or so. If the weather is nice, they could take them outside to their pen, which I will make sure is completely secure from now on.”
He said nothing, only continued to study her.
“I would be willing to pay them. Would ten dollars a day be sufficient?”
“You want to pay my children to keep an eye on your puppies.” He said the words in the same disbelieving tone he might have used if she had suggested the children join the circus.
Of course he would dislike the idea. He was a coldhearted jerk who obviously couldn’t see how perfectly children and puppies meshed together. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid idea. Forget I said anything. You are here on vacation and so are the children. They don’t need a job.”
“Don’t be so hasty. I was surprised, that’s all. It’s not a stupid idea. They would enjoy earning a little spending money for souvenirs and they do love dogs. My parents have four Jack Russell terriers. They’re very smart.”
“Amelia and Thomas told me how much they love visiting them. They also told me you don’t have any pets.”
“My late wife was allergic to cats and was afraid of dogs after an unfortunate episode in her childhood.”
She wanted to ask what was stopping him from getting a dog now that his wife was gone but that seemed a crass question in light of their loss.
“If your parents had four dogs, that must have made Sunday dinners difficult when you visited their house,” she said instead.
He gave a smile that looked strained. “Whenever Susan would visit, my parents kept their dogs locked in their bedroom or outside.”
He spoke in such a stiff tone she had to wonder if even talking about his late wife was difficult for him. He must have loved her very much. Still, that was no excuse for discouraging the children from grieving over their mother.
She should say something. But how could she bring that up to him, especially when she was asking a favor of his children?
“It was a crazy idea. I just thought—I don’t know—that they might enjoy playing with the puppies as much as the puppies would enjoy playing with them.”
That seemed to give him pause. “Once or twice a day, you said?”
“Yes. And really, I wouldn’t need them to do anything other than check on them and maybe throw a ball or something for a few minutes.”
“It’s not a crazy idea at all. Amelia is eight and Thomas six. They’re certainly old enough to put out food and water for the puppies, if you should need that.”
That almost sounded as if he was at least considering her request seriously. She was afraid to hope. “Does that mean you will let them help me?”
He gazed out at the water for a moment where the moonlight danced on the waves, then shifted back to her. “I think ten dollars a day is too much. What about five?”
“Five each, then.”
He shrugged. “Fine. But we may be busy some days and they won’t be able to check on them,” he warned.
“Totally understandable. You’re on vacation. If there’s any day that doesn’t work, just let me know or have your nanny let me know and I can easily come home myself. Sundays are my day off when the store is closed so I wouldn’t need help on that day.”
“And you know we’re leaving to go home the Tuesday after Gemma’s wedding.”
She did a quick mental calculation of the dates. “Also fine. The puppies will be ready for their new homes right around then and I will no longer need the help.”
“In that case, I believe they should be able to help you most days.”
“Oh. Thank you!” Okay. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as she had been thinking.
“I’m grateful for the suggestion, if you want the truth. They are in need of a project, I think. To be frank, they’re not enjoying this trip to Idaho as much as I had hoped. They both miss their friends and say they’re bored. I tried to get them interested in my research, but neither of them wants much to do with salmon.”
“How odd of them,” she said, trying to keep the dryness out of her voice.
He gave her a sidelong look, not missing it. “For your information, salmon are fascinating creatures. Kokanee, for instance, are the nonanadromous form of sockeye salmon. Anadromous means a creature that can live in both seawater and freshwater, which is incredibly rare in nature.”
“Okay.”
“Unlike the sockeye, which are born in a freshwater stream and then migrate to the ocean for most of their lives until they return to that same freshwater stream to spawn, kokanee spend their entire life landlocked, though they also go upstream using small rivers and tributaries to spawn.”
“Right.”
“They were likely originally in the old prehistoric lakes that covered this area and then became trapped when the waters receded, adapting to their new environment in fascinating ways. They spend on average about four years in the lake before they return upstream to spawn, in this case to Chalk Creek, which has a high level of calcium carbonate from erosion of the surrounding geography.”
“Good to know.”
“Unlike many other variants of kokanee that spawn in August and September, those in Lake Haven spawn in June. We’re not sure why and that’s what I would like to find out. That’s what I’m here to research.”
He suddenly looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I’m droning on. It’s a bad habit when I talk about my work.”
Oddly, she found she liked that particular chink in his armor. She tended to do the same when talking about her dress designs.
“We all have our passions, don’t we?”
To her shock, she was almost certain his gaze flickered to her mouth.
“Yes,” he murmured. “We do.”
Glittery heat suddenly flared in her stomach, as if he had pressed his finger to her skin instead of just a look.
Where had that come from?
She swallowed, reminding herself she still wasn’t sure if she liked the man.
Her little dog tugged on her leash, yanking her back to her senses. She might be physically attracted to him but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t in the market for a fling with her sexy neighbor.
She chose to focus instead on her dog. “Betsey’s passion is her puppies right now, as much as she likes the odd break from them, so I had better take her back to them. I’ll be in touch in the morning with a key for the children.”
“If you’d like, I could send Thomas and Amelia over first thing before you leave for your boutique.”
His thoughtfulness startled her. “I thought you wanted to make an early start tomorrow.”
“That should be a short trip. With the boat close by, I can leave before sunrise and will plan to be back so that I can have breakfast with the children.”
Maybe she had judged him too hastily. She knew plenty of fathers who wouldn’t put a priority on spending mealtime with their children, especially when it conflicted with work.
“Are you sure it’s no trouble?”
“None at all. Would eight be early enough?”
“Yes. That’s perfect. Thank you, Mr. S
ummerhill.”
In the moonlight, she saw his mouth quirk into a smile. “Please. Call me Ian. When you say Mr. Summerhill in that tone, it sounds remarkably like you really mean Mr. Darcy.”
She couldn’t help smiling at his reference to her earlier words.
He was looking at her mouth again, she realized with no small amount of consternation. The moment stretched between them, heady and sweet. She wanted him to kiss her. Quite desperately actually.
Oh, this would never do.
Impatient with herself, she tugged on the dog’s leash. “Come on, Betsey. We need to go.”
The dog followed her reluctantly as Sam hurried back to the relative safety of her house.
She was still as flighty and flirty as she’d ever been, she thought with frustration as she closed the door tightly behind her. It took all her self-control to resist the temptation to look out so she could see if he was still standing by the dock.
A short time ago, she had been convinced the man was a horrible father who didn’t deserve his two adorable children. After only a quick conversation, here she was wanting to make out with him in the moonlight.
What was wrong with her?
She didn’t want to be that giddy, silly girl anymore. Starry-eyed Samantha, who fell in love at the drop of a hat and who started making wedding plans if a man so much as looked twice at her.
When she looked back at her past, she was mortified at how immature she had been. Sometimes she thought her mother had purposely encouraged her shallowness so Linda could ultimately control her better.
If she was focused on romance all the time, her latest crush, she didn’t have time to think about how unhappy she was with her life and the choices she had made with it. She might have even become unhappy enough to decide she wanted something else, a life away from Lake Haven.
She sighed as she put the dog back into her pen with her puppies. Betsey immediately sniffed the sleeping puppies, making sure each was all right before curling up beside them.
The instinctive gesture somehow made a lump rise in Samantha’s throat.
She swallowed it down. Her mother was gone and it was long past time she grew up.
* * *
IAN WATCHED SAMANTHA FREMONT return to her house, doing his best to tamp down his shocking, unexpected reaction to her.
What was it about the woman that left him feeling like a bumbling idiot?
There was something so appealing about her. She was lovely, yes, with her honey-gold hair and hazel eyes, but it went beyond the surface. There was a light to her, a soft energy that seemed to draw him inexorably closer.
Had he really babbled on about his research to her for a good ten minutes? She must think him an utter idiot.
He wasn’t quite sure what had happened. He didn’t usually have trouble talking with women. Yes, he could be a bit of an absentminded professor but he generally could at least be trusted to carry on a halfway coherent conversation with most people.
Not with Samantha Fremont. With her, he started spouting off about chalk streams and anadromous species. At least he hadn’t gone off on sympatric speciation or predatory nonnative lake trout that could decimate a population.
With a heavy sigh, he headed back to the rental house where the children and Letty had settled in for bed hours ago.
What was wrong with him? He had wanted to kiss her for a few moments there, with an urgency that had left him feeling a little light-headed.
He wasn’t sure why being in Samantha Fremont’s presence left him so off-balance but he didn’t like it. At all.
He had less than a month at Lake Haven to finish his research. He didn’t have a moment to waste pining over his next-door neighbor, who would be only a memory in a month’s time, when he had to leave this place, put away his work and focus on helping out his family.
CHAPTER FIVE
“MISS FREMONT WANTS us to take care of her puppies?” Amelia gaped at him. “And you told her we would? Are you joking?”
“I assure you, I’m not.”
Amelia ought to know by now that his sense of humor wasn’t nearly so well-defined.
“Did you hear that, Thomas? We can play with those darling puppies every single day!”
“Yes!” Thomas punched the air and slid off his chair to dance around the breakfast table.
“Here, now.” Letty, oatmeal spoon in hand, looked alarmed at their energy. Ian winced. He probably should have spoken with his nanny/housekeeper first before springing the ideas on the children like that.
“When will we begin?” Thomas asked eagerly. “May we go see them today?”
“Yes. Actually, I told Ms. Fremont I would take you both over to her house this morning so that she could provide instructions on how to take care of them and what your responsibilities will entail.” He gave them a serious look. “This isn’t only about playing with the puppies, remember. It will take a great deal of work to make sure three puppies and their mother are looked after properly.”
“We don’t mind the work, do we, Thomas?” Amelia said, her features still dazed with joy.
“No, especially when it means we can play with puppies.”
He should have found a dog for them before this. Ian fought down guilt as he watched their enthusiastic response to what was a very good idea from Samantha Fremont.
As was the case for too many other things, he had used Susan as an excuse not to move forward. They could have found a dog the moment she moved out and filed for divorce, when they were so lost and confused in the Oxford flat.
What would they have done with a dog, though, when Susan came back after her cancer diagnosis?
He could have figured something out. She had been desperate and in no state to put up a fight about having to live with an animal.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t have any real excuses now. Susan was gone, had been gone more than a year. It was time he and the children started figuring out their lives without her.
“If you can show responsibility as you help care for Ms. Fremont’s puppies, perhaps we can discuss looking for a dog ourselves when we return to England.”
Their eyes widened with delight.
“Do you mean it?” Thomas asked, as if he were afraid to hope.
“Yes. We will have to talk about it to determine what sort of dog, but I don’t see why we can’t, as long as you do an excellent job helping our neighbor with her puppies.”
“Oh, we will,” Amelia assured him. “We will take the best care ever of them. You’ll see, Dad.”
She rarely called him Dad. Susan had always encouraged the children to call them Mother and Father. He had always found that too formal and decided he liked Amelia veering away from the path her mother had set her on.
“Can we see them now?”
“Yes. Find your shoes, both of you, while I talk to Mrs. Gilbert a moment.”
The children raced off, leaving him alone with the housekeeper, nanny and chauffeur who was worth far more than her weight in jewels. He and the children truly would have been lost without her, both before and after Susan’s death.
He faced her warily, this woman who had raised him, David and Gemma as much as their own mother had. “I hope checking in on the puppies once or twice a day won’t be too much of a bother. I should have talked to you about it first.”
“I’m only surprised to hear of it, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry. I bumped into Ms. Fremont last night out on the dock and she proposed the idea of having the children look in on the puppies while she’s at work. She has a clothing boutique in town. Did you know?”
“I did. She’s a lovely girl, that Samantha Fremont. I met her the other day while you were out on your boat, when the children and I were outside playing. She’s sewing your sister’s wedding gown.”
“I know.”
Letty tilt
ed her head and gave him an appraising look. “You know, maybe while you’re here, you should go on a date or two. It might take your mind off everything.”
He didn’t have to ask what she meant. Letty was as much a trusted friend as an employee. She knew he regretted having to leave his work behind when they returned.
All their lives would change forever when this summer was over. Letty understood how he dreaded packing up their things and moving to Summerhill.
“Thank you for the advice,” he said stiffly.
“I’m only saying. You’re handsome enough when you’re not glowering like that. You’re on the tall side but some women like that. You can be a bit too bookish but so far you have your own hair.”
“A glowing endorsement if I’ve ever heard one.” He tried not to laugh.
“Not to mention, you’re the heir to an earldom. I’m told some women apparently favor that kind of thing.”
He knew that only too well. Since his brother died, leaving him the only male heir of his father besides Thomas, Ian had struggled with a sudden unexpected and unwanted popularity among certain women who had been drawn to him only because he was a viscount now and would one day inherit several properties, farms and businesses.
He preferred not to think about any of it.
“Do you mind about the puppies?”
“Not at all. Not at all,” she said as she cleared away the breakfast dishes. “As I said, I was just surprised, that’s all. They’re darling little things and the responsibility will be good for the children.”
“Exactly what I thought.”
“And they’ll be glad of the distraction from their lessons.”
“Thank you. You’re a wonder.”
“As I’ve been telling you for years now,” she said with a cheeky smile that made him smile reluctantly in return.
“As this is the first visit, it may take a little longer than usual. Put your feet up and read a book for a few moments, why don’t you?”
“Now that is the best idea I’ve heard all week,” she said. “When you’re back, you can find me in the cozy sunroom, looking out at the water and reading my book. I only need a big floppy cat to make the scene perfect.”
Summer at Lake Haven Page 6
