by Marta Perry
Pop, pop, pop. A sharp sound broke the drowsy June silence. Matt’s stomach lurched. He ducked in the response that had become second nature in the last few years, adrenaline pumping, fists clenching. He had to get everyone to cover.
Fragmented images shot through his mind. He smelled the acrid smoke of explosions, felt the bone-jarring crash, heard the cries of children.
It took seconds to remind himself he was in Caldwell Cove, not on a bomb-ridden Indonesian street, seconds more to identify the sound. Some kid must be playing with caps in the lane beside the newspaper office.
A few quick strides took him around the corner of the weathered gray building. Sure enough, that’s what it was. The gut-wrenching fear subsided, to be replaced by anger. Those boys were way too young to be playing with caps.
“What are you doing?”
His sharp question brought two young faces looking up at him. Their faces wore identically startled expressions. Almost identical, he realized. They had to be brothers, both towheads with round faces and big blue eyes. The older one couldn’t be more than six or seven. Definitely too young to be smashing a strip of caps with a stone. He was surprised kids could even get their hands on those things now.
“We weren’t doing anything.” The speaker clasped his hands behind his back. His little brother nodded in agreement, blue eyes round with surprise. “Honest.”
Matt frowned at the word. “Honest” was the last thing the kid was being. “You were playing with caps. Don’t you know that’s dangerous?”
The older boy tried a smile. “We were careful. We didn’t get hurt.”
“Yet.” It wasn’t any of his business, but these two might injure themselves. He couldn’t just walk away. “Where’s your mother?”
When they didn’t answer, he planted his hands on his hips and glared, waiting. “Well?”
“I’m their mother.”
The woman flew around the corner as she spoke. She grabbed the boys and pulled them against her. Matt looked into eyes the same shade of blue as the kids’, sparkling with indignation. Her softly rounded face and curling brown hair reminded him of a Renaissance portrait, but her expression spoke more of a mother tiger, ready to protect her young.
“Why were you shouting at my sons?” She threw the words at him.
“I wasn’t shouting.”
“I heard you.” Her indignation sparked his own.
“Maybe you’d shout, too, if you were paying attention to your own kids.” As he said it he knew he was going too far, but the emotions of the past months still rode him, erasing normal politeness. “Or don’t you care what they’re up to?”
The woman’s mouth tightened, and she looked as if she reviewed several things she might say before responding. “I can’t imagine what concern my child-rearing is to you.”
“It isn’t. But I have to care when I see kids in danger.” He forced away the images that still haunted his dreams—of crying children huddled into makeshift bomb shelters or lying still on crowded hospital beds. “Your little angels were playing with caps.”
“Caps?” That stopped her dead. She looked into her kids’ faces with a hand on each one’s shoulder. “Ethan? Jeffrey? Is that right?”
He waited for the quick denial again, but it didn’t come. Apparently they had more trouble fibbing to her than to a stranger. The younger one looked down; the older flushed and nodded.
“We didn’t get hurt, Mommy.”
“Ethan, that’s not the point. You know better, both of you. Where did you get caps?”
The kid looked as if he searched for an appropriate answer and didn’t find it. Finally he shrugged. “We found them. In that old shed back there.” He pointed toward the rear of the building, where a tumbledown shed leaned against the next building.
“I told you…” The woman stopped, and Matt saw the pink in her cheeks deepen. She probably didn’t want to be having this discussion in front of him. “Go to your room, both of you. Right now. We’ll talk about this in a bit.”
The boys scampered around the building, and the woman looked as if she’d like to do the same. But she turned to face him, her color still high.
“I’m sorry.” The words were stiff, making it clear she hadn’t forgiven his sharp words. “I appreciate your concern.”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing.” He wanted to walk away and get on with his own affairs, but the awkward moment seemed to demand something more. He was back in Caldwell Cove now, where everyone knew everyone else, usually for a generation or two.
“I’m Matt Caldwell, by the way.”
“Matt…” Her eyes widened with what might have been surprise but looked like shock. “I should have recognized you.”
He started to make the polite response he always did when someone gushed that they’d seen him on television, reporting from one trouble spot or another. But she didn’t give him the chance.
“I’m Sarah Reed.”
Sarah Reed. Now he was the one left speechless with surprise. The woman he’d basically accused of being a careless mother was his new partner at the Caldwell Cove Gazette.
Sarah took a deep breath, then another, searching for some measure of calm. She’d known Matthew Caldwell was coming home to the island where his large extended family still lived. She’d known, too, that he’d undoubtedly want to discuss the investment he’d made in the Gazette over a year earlier, before her husband’s death.
She hadn’t expected to be taken by surprise like this, however. When she’d imagined their first meeting, she’d been in the office, neatly dressed in the blue suit she almost never wore, coolly prepared to discuss the fact that, since her husband’s death, she was now his partner.
She certainly hadn’t expected to get into a wrangle with the man before she even knew who he was. Her cheeks grew warm, and she smoothed her hands down the denim skirt that was far too casual for a first meeting with a business partner.
To do him justice, Matthew Caldwell looked just as appalled as she felt. And he managed to recover first.
“Mrs. Reed.” He held out his hand, something a little rueful showing in the hint of a smile that touched his firm mouth. “I’m sure this isn’t how either of us wanted to begin.”
If he was prepared to be gracious, it was the least she could do, as well. She met his grip, and his hand enveloped hers, firm and strong. A faint shiver of awareness went through her at his touch, and she brushed it away.
“Perhaps we should start over,” she said. “Welcome back to Caldwell Cove, Mr. Caldwell.”
He grimaced. “In view of our partnership, maybe we’d better dispense with the formality. Sarah.” He said her name cautiously.
She’d have preferred to hang on to some measure of distance between them, but she could hardly say so. “Fine.” She took a step back, gesturing toward the building. “Why don’t we continue our conversation in the office?” Maybe there she’d be able to regain her composure and get this encounter back to the way she’d imagined it. But she suspected that was a lost cause already.
She stole a glance at Matt as he walked beside her to the front of the building. She should have recognized him the instant she saw him. Maybe she had, at some level, though she hadn’t identified that jolt of familiarity when she’d looked into his eyes.
She’d known of Matt Caldwell first as her friend Miranda’s cousin, which was reason enough to watch for his face on the evening news broadcasts from around the globe. Then her husband had accepted Matt’s investment in the paper, and she’d had more reason to be interested.
But this Matt Caldwell looked different from the tall, composed figure she’d seen standing with a microphone in front of a bombed-out building or a refugee camp. It was the same strong face, the planes of it looking as if they had been chiseled from stone, the same dark hair brushed ruthlessly back from a broad forehead.
He had the look of the Caldwells she knew already, but he had none of their casual, relaxed manner. He was dressed with a touch more formality
than most men on the island, wearing chinos, not jeans, and a white shirt open to reveal a strong, tanned neck.
The lines in his face were deeper than she’d noticed on her TV screen, and the fan of wrinkles at the corners of his chocolate-brown eyes spoke of tension. Even his hand, braced against the door as he opened it for her, looked taut, as if he might fly into action at any moment.
And he wasn’t half a world away. He was here, in Caldwell Cove, disrupting her peace and interfering with her children.
The bell she’d put on the door jingled, and his hand jerked involuntarily. She frowned. What was going on with the man? He’d overreacted with her boys, no matter how wrong they’d been, and now the slightest sound seemed to affect him. Then she remembered all those danger spots she’d seen him report from and realized she knew the answer.
“Hi, Mommy.” Andi looked up from the computer, and her little face grew solemn at the sight of a stranger. At eight, Andi took being the oldest very seriously, especially since her daddy’s death.
Amy, at eighteen months, felt no such restraint. She banged a plastic hammer on the rail of her play yard. “Up, Mama! Up!”
“In a minute, sweetheart.” She glanced at Matt and intercepted a frown. He’d probably never envisioned the newspaper office populated by a round-faced toddler clutching the rail of a play yard, nor a pigtailed little girl peering at him from behind the computer monitor.
Well, he’d just have to accept it. She couldn’t afford to hire a baby-sitter every minute of the day, so the children had to be where she could watch them.
A tinge of guilt touched her. She hadn’t been watching the boys closely enough. If she had, that quarrel with Matt would never have taken place. She should have realized that tumbledown shed behind the building would attract them sooner or later.
“Well.” She forced a smile. “Here’s the office. Is it the way you remember it?” Miranda had told her Matt had worked at the paper as a teenager, and she’d assumed that was why he’d decided to invest in it. A sentimental whim, probably—a connection to his home when he was halfway around the world.
He turned slowly, assessing the sunlit room, its worn wooden counter and elderly wall clock contrasting with the modern computers. “The computers are new. Harvey Gaylord wouldn’t even have an electric typewriter in the place. He insisted on using his old upright.”
“We put the computers in when we bought the paper from him.” Behind the casual conversation her mind worked busily. What did he want?
It was natural enough for him to check on his investment, she assured herself. And if he had a complaint about the return he was getting on that investment—well, surely he’d realize that no one got rich running a small-town weekly. They were lucky to be able to pay the bills some months.
She ought to bring the subject up herself, instead of worrying about it, but she couldn’t quite do that.
“Did you…I guess you wanted to see the operation for yourself.” It was as close as she could come to asking him outright why he was there.
“What?” He glanced up from his study of her computer, dark eyes frowning.
Wariness shivered along her nerves. There was something, some emotion she didn’t understand, suppressed under his iron control.
Please, Lord. The prayer was almost involuntary. Don’t let him tell me he wants to pull out his investment. We couldn’t survive that.
“Your arrangements with my husband,” she said, trying for a casualness she didn’t feel. “I know they were made long-distance, through your attorney. You probably want to see the operation for yourself, while you’re here on the island.” She tried to manage a smile, knowing that the charm that had come so easily to Peter was totally missing from her makeup.
“Not exactly.” He transferred the frown to her, and she sensed that he was searching for words to tell her something.
“Then what, exactly?” She was probably being too blunt, but she couldn’t seem to help it. The newspaper was too important to her family to beat around the bush. “If you have bad news for me, I’d rather you just came out with it.”
His face tightened, if that were possible, and he braced one hand against the counter. “I don’t know whether you’ll consider it bad news or not. The fact is, I’m here because I intend to help run the paper.”
She could only stare at him. “Run the paper.” She repeated the words, hearing the disbelief in her voice.
Apparently he heard it, too, because the lines in his forehead deepened as he gave a curt nod. “That’s right. Run the paper. I own half of this operation, and I want to help run it.”
“But…” Her mind spun. She could almost hear Peter’s voice in her mind, that day last spring when he’d told her he’d accepted an investment offer from Matt Caldwell. This would be an easy solution to all their money problems, he’d said. Caldwell would be half a world away, not here, bothering them, and the money would bail them out of a tight crunch.
Now Peter’s solution didn’t look so easy. Their silent partner didn’t intend to be silent any longer.
Matt moved impatiently, drawing her gaze back to his determined face. “Is that a problem for you?”
She took a breath, trying to ignore how off balance the man made her feel. More to the point, trying to find a tactful way of telling him she neither wanted nor needed his help. “Not a problem, exactly.” Her too-expressive face was probably telling him exactly the opposite. “But it wasn’t part of my understanding of what our agreement involved.”
“Our agreement gives me a half share in the paper. That means I have an equal say in how it’s run.” He said it uncompromisingly.
Well, why wouldn’t he sound sure of himself? He’d known what he intended, after all. She was the one left unprepared by this sudden attack on her peaceful life.
She tried to summon up defenses. “But why? You have a successful broadcasting career. Why would you want to give that up to run the Caldwell Cove Gazette?”
His face looked closed, his brown eyes shuttered, denying her any glimpse of his feelings. “Let’s say I’m ready for a break, and running the Gazette will give me that.”
There was more to his decision than that; she could sense it. But he certainly wasn’t going to confide in her. She sought desperately for another argument, any argument that might stave off this unwelcome development.
“I’m afraid you’ll be bored to tears within the next month.”
His smile had nothing of humor about it. “Let me worry about that.”
“There’s not really enough work for two. We have a couple of part-timers who help out when we need them, but otherwise, I can handle it myself.” She could only hope she didn’t sound desperate.
“You worked with your husband. How is it any different to work with me?”
There were so many answers to that question that she couldn’t decide which one to pick. A chill touched her. She’d seen Matt Caldwell’s type before—arrogant, determined, sure he was right and the rest of the world wrong. What might he do if he were running the paper? But he’d decided on this course, and he wouldn’t be easily dissuaded.
“Mommy?”
She blinked, turning to Andi. She’d forgotten her daughter was there, watching them with the level, serious stare that was too old for her eight years.
“Mommy, what’s wrong? What does he want?” Andi trained that solemn look on Matt.
“Nothing’s wrong, honey.” Nothing, except that the precarious balance she’d attained since Peter’s death was seriously disrupted. Nothing, except that Matt Caldwell proposed to interfere in the running of the paper that was the livelihood for her little brood.
She looked from Andi to Amy, chewing on the rail of the play yard, thought of the two boys in their bedroom, hopefully reflecting on their misdeeds. She was all they had. She had to provide for them. If Matt presented a threat to her ability to do that, she had to find a way to defeat him.
She forced herself to meet his gaze. “This isn’t a good tim
e to discuss our business.” She gestured toward the children. “Could we get together later?”
He looked ready to argue, but then he glanced at Andi and gave a reluctant nod. “When?”
No, he wasn’t a man who would give up easily. “We live in the apartment behind the office. Can you come by about seven? That will give me time to get the children settled.”
“Seven it is.” He made the words sound like an ultimatum. Then he turned and walked quickly out of the office without saying goodbye, the bell jingling as he closed the door.
Sarah let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. That didn’t do any good. She couldn’t relax, not yet. Matt’s energy and determination still seemed to bounce from the office walls, rattling her as much as his presence had.
“Mama! Mama, up!”
She had to push herself to walk to the play yard, lift Amy, cradle her close. The baby wrapped chubby arms fervently around her neck, and then planted a wet kiss on her cheek.
Andi followed her. “What did that man want, Mommy?”
Persistence was one of Andi’s strongest qualities. A good quality, but right now she could do with a little less of it. She needed time—time to think through that encounter with Matthew Caldwell, time to analyze what it would mean to them if he did what he intended.
“Nothing, sweetheart. Everything’s okay.”
Sarah drew in a breath. Everything’s okay. She’d like to hear someone say that to her sometimes, when she struggled with the responsibility of raising four children and running a business. No one did. If Peter were here…
But dealing with trouble had never been Peter’s strong suit. Peter had been laughter, charm, quicksilver. If he were here, he’d dismiss her worries with a laugh.
She closed her eyes briefly.
Father, you’ve helped me through everything else. Please help me handle this.
She held her daughter closer, drawing comfort from the warm, wiggling bundle of energy. She couldn’t react with Peter’s laughing charm, even if she wanted to. She had four children who depended on her for everything. Running the paper by herself might not be easy, but she’d proved she could make a living at it. She wasn’t ready to risk that on Matt Caldwell’s whim.
