Hunter's Bride and A Mother's Wish

by Marta Perry

He hadn’t had a choice in the matter. “I guess so. What’s this ‘something’ you have in mind?”

  Theo looked at his scuffed sneakers. “There’s a job down at the yacht club. They’re pretty busy just now with lots of colleges having spring break. I could work there.”

  Luke pictured the glistening white boats he’d seen moored at the yacht club, imagining the kind of people who owned them. “Sounds like a smart idea to me. That’s the kind of place where you meet people who count.”

  “People who count for what?” Chloe asked.

  He hadn’t heard Chloe come out, but she stood a couple of feet from him. She was close enough that he could feel the anger, close enough to see the sparks. Obviously he’d made a tactical error.

  “Theo and I were just talking.” He heard the apologetic note in his own voice and wondered where it had come from. He didn’t owe Chloe an apology for taking an interest in her kid brother, did he?

  Theo slid away from the rail. “Guess I’d best see if Miranda needs any help.” He vanished into the inn, leaving Luke to face the accusation in Chloe’s eyes.

  “You were encouraging him to take a job at the yacht club.” She shot the words at him.

  He closed the laptop and leaned back in the rocker, meeting her gaze with his own challenge. “I’m not sure encouraging is the right word. We were talking about it. Don’t you want me to talk to your brother, Chloe?”

  “You implied that the yacht club people were important for him to know.”

  He stood, setting the chair rocking behind him, and put the laptop on the table. It looked incongruous next to the lemonade and molasses cookies, reminding him that he didn’t belong here.

  “I told him what I thought.” He frowned at her. “Unless being back here has softened your brain, you know how important it is to know the right people.”

  She flushed, the color painting cheeks that were already glowing with sunlight. “That’s what it’s like in the outside world.”

  “What if Theo wants to live in the ‘outside world’? You did. Are you saying he can’t make the choices you made?”

  She took a step toward him, her hands curling into fists.

  “Theo is too young to make choices like that. And you certainly don’t have the right to advise him.”

  “He came to me, Chloe. And you brought me here.”

  “Do you think I’ve forgotten that?” She glanced toward the inn, then lowered her voice. “This deception was your idea, not mine. You decided on it for business reasons, not because you wanted to do me a favor.”

  “Maybe that’s true.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with shifting all the responsibility onto him. “But you’re the one who created the situation in the first place, remember?”

  “I know.” She stood very straight, fists clenched. “But that doesn’t mean it’s all right for you to interfere with my family. I don’t want you giving Theo advice. I don’t want his values to be—”

  “Contaminated by mine?” Whatever fascination he’d felt in seeing Chloe stand up to him disappeared in a wave of anger. “There’s nothing wrong with my values. They’re realistic in the world out there—” He jerked his head toward the mainland.

  “Caldwell Cove is different.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Chloe. This place may seem like Shangri-La, but sooner or later it will get dragged into the twenty-first century. Isn’t that what you’re trying to do with your Web site? Your brother might need the kind of values that lead to success.”

  “I don’t want Theo influenced by you.” Chloe threw the words at him. “If you can’t accept that, then maybe you’d better leave right now.”

  Chapter Six

  Horror at what she’d just said flooded Chloe. Was being back on the island causing her to take leave of her senses? She couldn’t talk to her boss that way.

  Apparently Luke felt the same. His face tightened, and his ice-blue eyes chilled her to the bone. “Is that really what you want, Chloe?” His voice was deceptively soft, but she’d heard that deadly calm before, directed at other people. Her job hung in the balance.

  “I’m sorry.” The words came out in a rush. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  But it was true. The thought came out of nowhere. She tried to reject it but she couldn’t. She didn’t want Theo absorbing the values that seemed so natural to Luke.

  Please, Lord. The prayer also seemed to come from nowhere. I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know what I want, and I certainly don’t know what’s best.

  “You have a right to say what you believe.” He shifted his weight so that he stood an inch closer to her. He was close enough that she could feel the iron control he held over his anger. “Is that what you believe, Chloe?”

  “I don’t…” She stopped, took a breath, started again. “I can’t mix business and family together. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I like working in Chicago. Having you here, letting my people believe we’re involved—it’s just too hard.”

  She expected a withering response. Instead she felt his ire seeping away as he considered what she’d said.

  “All right.” He nodded, still frowning. “I guess I can understand your feelings. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  He actually seemed to be trying to understand. Maybe he’d been as surprised by their quarrel as she had. She could breathe again.

  “If we told my parents the truth…”

  “No.”

  His sharp response told her that, at least, hadn’t changed. He tried to manage a smile, but it didn’t have much humor in it.

  “That’s the one thing we can’t do. I have too much of my time and reputation invested in this location now. If I don’t come up with a proposal, I can kiss the vice-presidency goodbye.”

  The way his face hardened on the last words told her he wouldn’t do that. It meant too much to him—maybe more than anything else in his life, certainly more than her old-fashioned values.

  “All right.”

  She took a deep breath, trying to find an alternative they both could live with. She’d like to feel that the two of them were on the same team. She’d always felt that—until now.

  “I guess I can understand that. But I’m not going to lie to anyone. And I don’t want you to give Theo any more advice.” Her mother’s worries about the boy flitted through her mind. She’d said she would help, but this certainly wasn’t what she’d intended.

  “Agreed.” He clasped her hand as if they’d just sealed a deal, and his fingers were strong around hers. Their warmth swept inexorably up her arm, headed straight for her heart.

  She stepped back, breaking the connection. “All right, then.” She reached behind her for the door, needing to escape. “We’ll leave it at that.”

  “Just one thing—”

  Luke’s voice stopped her. She turned reluctantly to look at him.

  “Maybe you ought to give a little thought to what you’re saying to your brother, Chloe.”

  She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You don’t want him taking on my values. But your life is an example more potent than whatever I might say to him. Isn’t it?”

  Chloe tried to find an answer to that question throughout another mostly sleepless night. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so torn—between Luke and her family, between the past and the future. She’d made a promise to Luke, and she’d always been taught that a promise had to be honored. Taught by her daddy, to whom honor was everything.

  The future, that was what worried her the most. She turned over, trying to keep the bed from creaking in protest, and stared at the ceiling. Would Daddy say that if he knew what promise she was keeping? Moonlight filtered through the curtains, sending designs across the ceiling as the branches of the live oak swayed. When she was a child, she’d imagined whole stories taking place in those moving shadows—filled with castles and dragons and knights on horseback.

  Miranda’s even breathing fr
om the other bed was oddly soothing. Miranda had made her choices, and as difficult as they’d been, she never seemed to doubt the road she was on. Chloe envied that certainty.

  Where was this adventure going to end? She couldn’t picture it, couldn’t believe that things could ever go back the way they’d been between her and Luke, between her and her family.

  Maybe that was bound to happen sometime. She could hardly expect to find happiness while working for Luke—not when that meant holding her feelings secret in her heart. As for her family—her relationship with them had changed, and she hadn’t even realized it. She’d looked for her career off the island, thinking that was the only way to be her own person. She’d been tired of being just one of the crowd of Caldwells.

  Now—she thought of her mother, talking to her about Theo as if she were a friend. Of the pleasure she’d found in being useful here. Of the way her experiences with Dalton Resorts had begun to translate to ideas for running the inn. Things changed, whether she wanted them to or not.

  She turned again, and her restless gaze fell on the framed sampler with the words of her Bible verse embroidered on it, which was propped on her bedside table. She couldn’t leave it behind in Chicago, so it had come with her.

  As the words reverberated in her mind, she felt her tension begin to seep away. Hope and a future. She might not be able to see how God’s plans were going to work out, but knowing they existed should be comfort enough. Her body relaxed, her eyelids drifting closed.

  She’d meant what she said to Luke about not telling her family any lies. But as Chloe watched her father talk with Luke over coffee in the breakfast room the next morning, she wondered if she’d gone far enough. Maybe she should have specified that Luke not tell any lies, either.

  “Excuse me, miss, could I have another pot of tea? This one isn’t hot enough.”

  Chloe managed a smile for the elderly guest whose tea water was never hot enough. She didn’t mind being pressed into service at breakfast—she’d done it since she was old enough to carry a tray. She did mind not being able to hear what Luke and her father were talking about.

  Why? The question nagged at her while she brought a fresh pot of tea for table four, replenished the dish of homemade strawberry jam at table six and whisked a nearly empty breakfast casserole dish from the buffet table. Why did it bother her to see her father with Luke?

  Maybe it was her fear that the two of them could never see eye-to-eye on anything. Clayton Caldwell lived by a few simple rules—rules he’d taught his sons and daughters from the day they were born. Trust the Lord, and He will guide your ways…. Tell the truth, even if it’s painful…. A man’s word is his bond, and without it he has nothing.

  Her father wouldn’t understand the kind of business world Luke operated in, though he’d probably equate it with Uncle Jeff. Luke would never understand her father. He’d mistake her father’s sense of honor for naïveté, just as her father would mistake Luke’s sense of competition for dishonesty. No, it would be far better if she could keep the two of them apart until this game had ended.

  Carrying the carafe of coffee, she approached their table with a sense of determination. “Daddy, would you like a thermos of coffee to take with you?”

  “I’m not going just yet, Chloe-girl.” He held out his mug, his sharp eyes inspecting her. “Fact is, I’m not going fishing at all today. Your momma’s been pestering me to take a picnic lunch, go over to Angel Isle, check out the cottage. I’m thinking we’ll do that today.”

  Well, at least that would get him out of Luke’s company for a while. “Sounds like a nice idea. Don’t worry about anything here. I’ll keep an eye on the desk.”

  Luke smiled and held out his mug for a refill. “Actually, your father invited us to go with them to the island.”

  Only long years of practice kept her from dribbling coffee onto the blue-checked tablecloth. “Don’t you have some work you want to do?”

  Luke was probably longing for her to give him an excuse to get out of it, she assured herself. He probably had no desire to go out on the boat again.

  “Not at all,” he assured her blandly. “Sounds like a great idea.”

  She set her lips into what she hoped resembled a smile. “Fine. I’ll just go help my mother get things ready.”

  Trying to avoid her father’s gaze, she whisked herself off to the kitchen. Daddy knew his children only too well. He’d always been harder to fool than her mother—not that she’d spent a lot of time trying to fool either of them, even as a child. But she’d seen the twins try, and fail, too many times. This cozy little trip together was not a good idea.

  And what had given Daddy the idea? He didn’t take the morning off just to—The thought struck her with a certainty she couldn’t deny.

  Gran and her matchmaking.

  She pressed her palms to overheated cheeks. She could just imagine the conversation.

  All Chloe’s young man needs is a little push to propose, Gran would say. It’s up to us to see he gets it. Chloe will be the next Caldwell bride.

  Now what was she going to do about that?

  She still didn’t have an answer an hour later, when she stood on the dock handing a picnic basket to Luke. He’d already been on the boat with her father when she’d come down. What had they been talking about? She tried to think of one single thing they had in common, and couldn’t. Except, possibly, her.

  She gave Luke a sharp look as she accepted the hand he held out, and climbed onto the Spyhop. “Are you sure you want to do this?” She spoke under the noise of the motor. “Daddy would understand if we begged off.”

  Luke looked at her questioningly. “Don’t you trust me around your father, Chloe?”

  She definitely should have laid down the law to Luke about her father, as she had about Theo. “It’s not that.” Since she didn’t believe herself, she felt quite sure he didn’t believe her, either. “I just thought this wouldn’t be much fun for you. The water might be rougher out on the sound today.”

  “Then, I’ll have to depend on you to keep me safe, won’t I?”

  His low voice teased her, and she felt a little ripple of…what? Longing for a relationship with him in which teasing spoke of affection? That was a dangerous way to think.

  Luke turned away to help her mother on board, drawing her gaze. Had he borrowed the jeans and T-shirt from one of her brothers? It certainly wasn’t his usual garb. Before this trip, she’d have said he wouldn’t look at ease in anything but a business suit. But he seemed perfectly at ease now, with the T-shirt stretching across broad shoulders and looking even whiter against his tanned arms.

  She shouldn’t be noticing that, she told herself firmly, bending to stow the hamper in the locker and taking the jug of sweet tea her mother handed her. She should imagine Luke right back into one of his expensive suits. Maybe then she’d be able to get through this trip.

  She started forward, but her mother caught her arm.

  “I’ll go up front with your daddy, honey.” She nudged her toward Luke, smiling. “You sit back here and keep Luke company.”

  Matchmaking, she thought despairingly. Oh, Gran.

  Before she could come up with a really good reason to sit forward, her father was asking Luke to cast off the lines. When she made a move to do it, Luke edged past her and leaned across to the dock.

  “I’ve got it.” He nodded toward the seat. “You sit down and be a lady of leisure this trip.”

  He must have watched her handle the lines the last time, because he did it perfectly, with not the slightest hesitation to show how much he disliked leaning out over the water. He even coiled the lines the way she had.

  “Very nice,” she murmured, when he sat down next to her. “You must have been taking lessons.”

  “Somebody talked me into it.” He smiled, then draped his arm casually across her shoulders. “Don’t forget, you have to hold on to me if I get nervous.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll push you in, instead?” She w
ouldn’t turn her head to look at him. His face was too close to hers, and she was already too aware of the weight of his arm against her.

  He squeezed her shoulders. “Not a chance,” he said softly in her ear. “I trust you, Chloe. You’d never let me down.”

  She tried not to respond to that, tried not to think that he meant anything by it. He trusted her as his assistant—that was all.

  The Spyhop rounded the curve of the island, passing the yacht club dock. The sound stretched in front of them, waves glistening in the sunlight. A laughing gull, squawking, flew overhead, probably hoping they’d give him something for his lunch. On the horizon the islands beckoned, lush and mysterious.

  She felt Luke’s movement as he inhaled deeply, tilting his head back as if to take it all in.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured.

  He turned toward her, so that she felt his breath against her cheek.

  “It’s really beautiful, Chloe. Thank you for bringing me here.”

  He hugged her, his cheek warm against hers as if they really were the couple her family believed them to be.

  Chloe smelled like sunshine. Funny that he’d never noticed that before. Luke held her protectively, feeling her slim figure sway against him as her father sent the boat in a wide arc toward the island. He was enjoying this, maybe a little too much.

  Enjoyment had been the last thing on his mind when her father had invited them to go along today. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say no, but Clayton Caldwell’s shrewd gaze had suggested he wouldn’t buy an easy excuse. And then Luke had thought of Chloe and the concerns she’d brought up the day before.

  He’d been angry at first over her attitude toward his talk with her brother. After all, he hadn’t approached Theo. Theo had come to him.

  But he couldn’t help being impressed by how much she cared about her family. Her passionate defense of them was outside his experience, and he didn’t really understand it. The only thing he had to compare was his friendship with Reverend Tom and the debt he owed to the man who’d taken him off the streets and given him a future.