“Better than cake and frozen custard?” she asked, her cheeks pink and eyes shining.
“A thousand times better,” he confirmed, dipping his head to prove it with another deep, soul-searing kiss that stirred a demanding arousal.
Hannah was the first one to move away. “The kids,” she reminded him with obvious reluctance.
Luke sighed and linked his hands behind her waist so she couldn’t go too far. “So, tell me how you pulled this off without giving me a hint?”
She grinned. “Fortunately, you’re a typical man. You were oblivious to all the whispering the kids and I were doing. And Grandma Jenny did her part by keeping you distracted the past couple of days.”
“Now that you mention it, there was a definite increase in the number of odd jobs she dreamed up. How did you even know it was my birthday, though?”
Hannah didn’t want to admit that she’d recalled the exact date because she’d helped Abby plan a celebration for him all those years ago. “The kids mentioned something about it when they first got here,” she said, which was only a slight fabrication. She’d mentioned it first and Nate and Gracie had immediately gotten into the spirit of planning the surprise party, though Gracie had been skeptical that they could pull it off.
“Thank you for going to all this trouble,” he said. “It was great seeing so many familiar faces.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Whose idea was it to include Doc Langley?”
“Grandma Jenny’s. Why?”
“I think your grandmother is scheming,” he said.
“Scheming how?”
“Right before we walked over here, she mentioned that he’s looking for someone to take over his clinic.”
Hannah stared at him. “But you’re an orthopedic surgeon.”
He grinned. “I did go to medical school to get that degree.”
“But you can’t just switch specialties at the drop of a hat, can you? Besides, you haven’t said a single word about staying in Seaview. She shouldn’t be putting that kind of pressure on you.”
“Hey, slow down,” he soothed. “I’m not feeling pressured. It was just an idea. And you’re right, I’d have to be recertified in family medicine, but it is possible.”
Hannah was still indignant. “She shouldn’t be poking her nose into your business like that. I’m sorry.”
“I asked for her opinion about some things,” he responded. “She was just tossing out options.”
“But she insisted I invite Doc Langley here,” Hannah said. “So he could get in your face, at your birthday party of all things.”
“He never got in my face. In fact, the only thing he and I talked about was fishing. We’re going out together tomorrow and taking the kids. You’re invited, too, as long as you don’t try to dump him overboard if he mentions medicine in my presence.”
Hannah regarded him sheepishly. “Am I overreacting?”
“Just a little. How about it, though? Want to go fishing tomorrow? Grandma Jenny’s given me time off. She says Jeff can pick up the slack around the inn.”
“Jeff would gladly clean out the gutters and paint the whole inn again, if she asked him to. He’s trying desperately to make an impression on Kelsey.”
“I don’t think he needs to make an impression on her,” Luke said. “It’s obvious she’s head over heels in love with him. Didn’t you see how those two were looking at each other when we got back from the mainland the other day? Even someone as oblivious as you claim I am could see that something was going on with those two while we were away. Jeff just needs to hang loose and wait for Kelsey to figure that they belong together.”
“I suppose you’ve passed on that advice,” Hannah grumbled.
“Nope. Nobody’s asked for my opinion. I’m not the one in this crowd with the matchmaking gene.”
“That makes you a rarity around here, then. Everyone else seems to toss out opinions and advice at the drop of a hat.”
Grinning, Luke touched a finger to her lips. “Fishing, Hannah. Do you want to go or not? I’ll even bait your hook for you.”
She hadn’t been out in a boat in years. At one time, when her dad had been around, she’d loved it. Those times the two of them had shared had been so special to her. The loss of those memorable trips had been one more thing for which she’d blamed her mom.
“I’ll go,” she said at last. “But you’re cleaning any fish we catch.”
“Deal.”
“And no one’s giving anyone any advice,” she said. “The boat is an opinion-free zone.”
“Unless it pertains to fishing,” he corrected.
“Okay. I can live with that. Though I have to tell you that I may know more about fishing than you and Doc Langley combined. My dad was really, really good and he taught me everything he knew.”
“Then I promise to ask you and only you for any advice I need,” he told her, his lips twitching.
Hannah nodded. “Good. That will be a pleasant change.”
Doc Langley apparently harbored a secret desire to be the Dale Earnhardt Jr. of the fishing-boat circuit. He headed out to sea at a dizzying clip. The kids were bundled up in their life vests and clinging to the railing for dear life, but Hannah had to admit they looked happier than they had since arriving in Seaview. She, however, was feeling a little nauseated.
“Want me to tell him to slow down?” Luke asked, sitting down beside her.
“And make me the sissy?” she said. “No way.”
“According to his GPS system or sensor or whatever fancy piece of equipment he’s monitoring, we should be in prime fishing territory any second now.”
“Thank God,” she said fervently. “Fishing with my dad was nothing like this.”
Luke stared out to sea. After a couple of minutes of silence, with the salt air rushing into their faces, he said, “Tell me something, Hannah. Did you ever think about trying to find him?”
“Who? My father?”
Luke nodded.
“I probably thought about it a million times right after he left, but I was just a kid. I had no idea how to go about it. And then I got angry and decided if he didn’t love me enough to come back, why should I care about him? Eventually I stopped asking about him, which obviously relieved my mother and my grandparents.”
“I think that’s pretty much where Gracie and Nate stood before I brought them down here.”
“Are you suggesting it was a childish reaction?”
“Not in a bad way,” he assured her. “After all, you were a child. What about now, though? Do you ever wonder what happened to him?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you ever ask your mother if she had any idea where he’d gone? Or your grandmother?”
Hannah shook her head. “At first, but they claimed not to know. Like I said, eventually I stopped asking. Mentioning him clearly upset my mom.”
“I can see why it might have been upsetting for your mother, but Grandma Jenny’s another story. She’s pretty tough. Maybe you should talk to her about it sometime before it’s too late.”
Hannah understood what he was saying, but she didn’t like thinking about Grandma Jenny dying. Right now she could barely cope with the reality that her mother was gone. Besides, what would be the point of rocking the boat at this late date? Wherever her father was, it was pretty clear there was no room in his life for her or he would have made the effort himself to contact her long ago. Besides, she’d finally made peace with the way things were—that is, if total avoidance of a very sore subject counted as making peace.
“Just think about it,” Luke urged. “I have a hunch that he’s one of the reasons you have such strong feelings against Seaview.”
“You’re probably right,” she admitted, recalling the comment she’d made to Grandma Jenny when she’d first arrived a few weeks ago. As a child she’d thought that Seaview’s limitations were one of the reasons her father had left. Then somehow she’d managed to twist that into a belief that her mom had felt trapped in
to staying. Grandma Jenny had insisted that neither of those things was true. So maybe, if Hannah asked now, her grandmother would be willing to shed some light on what had really happened. Hannah wasn’t entirely sure why that mattered all these years later, but perhaps, as Luke had said, her dad leaving had caused her deep resentment toward this island.
Would knowing the truth change anything? Probably not. But perhaps she could finally put the past to rest once and for all.
Though it was hard to focus on Hannah with two rambunctious kids on a boat, Luke managed to keep an eye on her during the morning. Ever since he’d suggested she speak to her grandmother about her father, her expression had been thoughtful and just a little sad.
Maybe he’d been wrong to prod her into asking questions about something that had happened years ago, but he was pretty sure it had shaped the woman she was today in ways she might not realize, such as the way she viewed marriage and relationships.
“Daddy, I got a fish!” Gracie shouted exuberantly, snapping Luke’s attention away from Hannah.
He moved behind her and helped her brace the rod against the pull of the fish. It was giving her one heck of a fight. “Want me to reel him in?” he asked.
“No, no, I want to do it,” she insisted, drawing an amused look from Doc Langley.
“Got yourself a real fisherwoman there,” Doc said as Gracie strained to hold on to the rod. Even with Luke’s help, it was bobbing and weaving dangerously.
“We need to give him a little slack in the line,” Luke coached her.
“No, he’ll get away,” Gracie protested, holding tight.
Suddenly the rod was ripped from her hands, throwing her off balance. She fell hard. There was a sharp cracking sound in the arm she used to catch herself, and she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Luke knew before he even touched the arm that she’d broken a bone. Gently he tried to feel her forearm, but each touch elicited a shriek that tore at his heart.
“Simple fracture,” Doc said decisively, proving he’d seen his share of such injuries even among a population as small as Seaview’s. He was already heading for the wheel to turn the boat around. “We’ll X-ray it back at the clinic, but an expert like you shouldn’t have any problem setting it right here. No need to go to the mainland. I’ll have us back at the dock in no time.”
Luke wanted to protest that he wanted better for his little girl, but he knew Doc was right. Unless the X ray turned up something unexpected, this would mean a few weeks in a cast and nothing more.
“Daddy, it really hurts,” Gracie said, her eyes filled with tears.
“I know, sweetie. We’ll give you something for that as soon as we get to the clinic.”
Hannah appeared at his side and immediately sat down next to Gracie. “Why don’t you lean against me?” she suggested gently. “And I’ll tell you a story while we’re heading back to shore. It’s about a mermaid named Gracie.”
For just an instant Gracie seemed to forget about the pain as her gaze turned to Hannah. “Really?”
“Yep. And she was the most beautiful mermaid in the entire ocean. She was a really good mermaid, too. All the fish loved her, because she was so kind and cheerful, but she was lonely. She really, really wanted someone to love.”
Luke’s gaze caught Hannah’s over Gracie’s head. “Thank you,” he mouthed silently.
She smiled, but went right back to telling the story. Nate slid over until he was next to her, too, as captivated by the story as Gracie was.
Relieved that Gracie had been distracted from her pain, Luke made his way through the boat to join Doc at the helm. “How much longer?”
“Five minutes, maybe ten if there are too many boats in the harbor. How’s she doing?”
“Hannah’s keeping her occupied for now.”
“The kids seem really taken with her,” Doc observed. “How about you? You have your eye on her?”
Luke glanced back at the picture Hannah made sitting on the deck of the boat with his kids snuggled up beside her. He tried to imagine Lisa being as calm and soothing under the same circumstances and couldn’t. She would have been hysterical, blaming him for putting Gracie into a dangerous situation.
He had to stop this, he told himself sternly. Making comparisons might be inevitable, but they weren’t fair to either woman. He noticed that Doc was still eyeing him speculatively.
“Hannah and I are friends,” he told him. “We’ve known each other since we were kids.”
“As I recall, you didn’t appreciate her back then. You only had eyes for that Dawson girl. Next to her, Hannah sort of faded into the woodwork.” He grinned at Luke. “Can’t say that now, can you? She’s a real beauty.”
“I suppose,” Luke said, thinking how he’d been captivated by her inner beauty, the woman she’d become. Of course, now that his gaze had settled on her mouth, he couldn’t seem to tear it away. And he couldn’t stop thinking about how much he’d enjoyed kissing her.
He shook his head and deliberately turned away, hoping to banish the thoughts, which were entirely inappropriate when his daughter was sitting there with a broken arm. If he was going to be obsessed with something, that would be a good place to start.
No sooner had he mentally lectured himself about that than Doc pulled the boat into the marina, maneuvering it into its slip with impressive precision. He reached into his pocket and handed Luke a set of keys. “These’ll get you into the clinic. The little key will get you into the cabinet with pain medication. You use whatever you need in there. I’ll finish here and bring Hannah and Nate along with me.”
“Thanks,” Luke said, then went to gather up his daughter. “Let’s go, sweetie. We’ll have that arm fixed up in no time.”
“Can Hannah come, too?”
“She’ll be along in a minute with Doc.”
To his surprise, Gracie latched onto Hannah’s arm with her uninjured hand and clung to it. “No, I want her to come now!”
“Of course I’ll come,” Hannah said at once. “I’ll sit in the back and hold you while your dad drives, okay?”
Luke nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Nate, will you be okay helping Doc?”
“Sure!” Nate said eagerly.
Minutes later, Luke, Hannah and Gracie were inside the clinic. He turned on the X-ray machine and took the films he needed. “It’ll take a couple of minutes for me to process these. Gracie, you want some of that pain medication now? You’ve been really brave, but it will help when it comes time to set that arm.”
“Do I have to have a shot?”
“Afraid so.”
She gazed at Hannah trustingly. “Is it going to hurt?”
“Not for more than a second,” she promised. “I imagine your dad knows how to give shots that barely hurt at all. Think of it as a fairy kiss. There and gone in the blink of an eye.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Luke said. He’d never had to administer a shot to one of his own children before, but his time in Iraq had prepared him to handle far worse emergencies. He glanced into Gracie’s eyes and saw that she was regarding him with complete trust, thanks to Hannah’s faith in him. He wiped the upper part of Gracie’s arm with alcohol, then gave her the shot. “All finished,” he announced.
She beamed up at Hannah. “Just like a fairy kiss.”
He walked into the processing room and had to lean against the door. How the hell had he done this kind of thing for a living? Somewhere along the way, even before the mind-numbing pace of treatment in Iraq, he’d been so focused on the procedure and the outcome that he’d forgotten there was a scared patient before him. Gracie had brought that home to him. He vowed never to forget that again.
When the films were developed, he brought them out and put them on the light board. As he’d anticipated and Doc had predicted, it was a clean break that could be easily set right here.
He worked with practiced skill to set the bone and fit Gracie with a plastic cast. “There you go, kiddo. When you go back to school, yo
u can have all your friends sign your cast and then you’ll have a souvenir from your first fishing trip in Florida.”
Gracie studied the bright pink cast on her arm, then sighed. “It would have been better if I’d caught the fish.”
17
Gracie was reveling in being the center of attention when they got back to the inn around two. Hannah grinned as Gracie regaled Grandma Jenny, Kelsey and Jeff with her version of the events as she stuffed herself with ice cream, while Nate ate cheese, crackers and then ice cream.
“Can I be the first to sign the cast?” Jeff asked.
Gracie beamed. “Sure. You, too, Kelsey.”
“I’d be honored,” Kelsey said, and went in search of a good pen.
When she returned, they made a major production out of the signing ceremony, then Luke studied his daughter and announced, “Time for a nap, sweetie. You, too, Nate.”
“But I’m too old for a nap,” Gracie protested.
“Not when you’ve been out half the day on a boat and come home with a broken arm. I think anyone would want a nap after that. Then I think we should call your mom and tell her what happened, okay?”
Gracie studied him worriedly. “Do you think she’s going to be mad?”
“At you? No way,” Luke said. “If she’s upset with anyone, it will be with me for letting this happen to you.”
“But it wasn’t your fault,” Gracie protested. “It was that big ole fish’s fault.”
“The fish was just doing what he had to do to survive,” Luke told her. “Now, scoot. You need some rest.”
Gracie turned to Hannah. “Will you come upstairs with me and tell me another story?”
“Sure,” Hannah said, following her.
Gracie crawled under a sheet, already yawning. “I liked the story about the mermaid,” she murmured sleepily. “Tell that one again.”
Hannah repeated the story, adding some embellishments along the way. She watched as Gracie’s eyes finally began to drift shut.
“That’s a good one, Hannah,” she murmured sleepily. “You should put it in a book.”
Seaview Inn Page 23
