But Ava had to deal with Noah, the man he was now. The frustrated father of a teenager who needed a champion on her side. For Sawyer’s sake, Ava had to remember her purpose. She couldn’t think of Noah as anyone other than a man who needed to get his daughter back. True, he was no longer married, but that didn’t matter now. He’d gone from her bedroom and her life without a forwarding address. They’d had their moment and now it was too late to go back. Ava had made a heartbreaking decision when she discovered she was pregnant, and now she would spend the rest of her life making it right for Charlie.
She wished she understood the complexities of the relationship between Sawyer and Noah. Was he really such a terrible father? Was Sawyer truly such an impossible child? Of one thing, Ava was extremely confident. Sawyer would still be there in the morning, despite her father’s dire prediction. She wasn’t nearly as confident about Noah, who might change his mind after one night in a Holly River bed-and-breakfast. Somehow she couldn’t picture him settling into a place full of country charm and cuteness.
She wondered where he had found a room, what he was doing, what plans he might be making, and most strangely, if she would see him again soon. Her rational side urged her to hope that she would not see him. Maybe he hadn’t even taken a room and had returned to Chapel Hill, leaving his troubled daughter behind. The possibility that he had stayed, that she might be seeing him, encountering that oddly mesmerizing blend of power and uncertainty, caused her to spend a restless night.
Ava started Monday with the gratifying knowledge that Sawyer hadn’t decided to leave Sawtooth and, in fact, was in class, wearing the standard uniform of jeans and a Sawtooth T-shirt. Needing a diversion from the odd and unpredictable occurrences of the day before, Ava was glad she had accepted an invitation from her brother Jace, to meet at the Holly River Café. They were going to discuss family matters, specifically the welfare of their newly discovered half-brother, Robert, with whom Jace had established a bond.
Ava arrived at the restaurant thirty minutes early. She sat at a table for two and ordered a coffee. Not five minutes had passed before she heard the familiar low tones of someone behind her.
“So, is my daughter still in Holly River?”
Ava spun around, nearly upsetting her coffee mug. “Oh, Noah, you startled me.”
Dressed in the same jeans he’d worn yesterday but with a fresh shirt under his black leather jacket, he looked calm, relaxed, demonstrating the exact opposite of the gymnastics going on inside her at his unexpected presence. Maybe he had put enough trust in Ava to allow himself to get a good night’s sleep. His hair was still damp from a shower. He finger-combed a few strands from his forehead.
“Is this seat taken?” He pulled out the other chair.
“I’m waiting for someone, but he’s usually late, and I’m early,” she said.
Noah took a seat. “Is this a business meeting?”
“More a family one,” she said.
He signaled for the waitress, and Allie, girlfriend of Sam McCall and a friend of all the Cahills, who’d recently got her job back at the café, came over. Ava thought Noah would order a coffee, but he scanned a menu quickly and decided on the Big Mountain Breakfast of eggs, pancakes and bacon. For a moment Ava was jealous. She hadn’t eaten the café’s specialty in years.
When Allie walked away, Noah leaned back in his chair. “Since we exchanged cell numbers and you didn’t call, I assume my daughter didn’t run away last night.”
“You assume correctly. Sawyer is right now—” she glanced at her watch “—in her ninth grade earth science class.”
“Great. Understanding the earth will open up new avenues for her escape act. It’s a big planet.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, Noah...” Her index finger involuntarily shot out toward his chest, a habit she’d tried to break for years.
He backed away from the offending finger. “I think I might mind a bit,” he said.
She placed her hand on the table. “I understand that your joking about your daughter is just a defense mechanism—”
“Actually, you’re wrong,” he said. “Believe it or not, Sawyer is my number one concern. She has been since her mother left five years ago.”
“If that’s true,” Ava said, “why are you away from her for long periods at a time?”
He frowned. “What did she tell you?”
“Not much. Only that you are basically an absentee parent.”
“I suppose my schedule could look that way to her. The truth is, I’m gone at the most for a week at a time. And I try to make up for my absences by staying home a few days in between, only taking jobs close to Chapel Hill. The rash of hurricanes this last summer kept me away from Sawyer more than I would have liked.”
He shrugged. “Of course, things don’t always work out the way I want them to. I suppose it’s just human nature that forces us to adapt to sudden inexplicable happenings in our lives.”
His deep stare made her squirm in her chair.
“Don’t you agree, Ava?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I mean we can be going along just fine. We know what we’re about, where we’re headed, and then boom, something totally unexpected, something we’re not prepared to deal with changes the entire course of our lives.”
She looked away from him, cleared her throat. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me, Noah. How does this philosophical meandering relate to your daughter?”
“It doesn’t, not this time. It relates to you.”
“Me?” Ava felt the muscles in her chest tightening.
Seemingly relaxed, he leaned slightly forward. “When were you going to tell me?” he asked. “Were you ever going to?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about a night in Charlotte six years ago. A chance meeting between myself and a young woman in a cocktail bar. A night of lovemaking that made me feel like a heel for not being completely honest with her.”
“You must have me confused with...”
“Not going to work, Ava. You can try lying. You can make up a completely different scenario, but I know.” He rubbed his chin while the waitress brought his coffee. “I had a dream last night,” he said. “All evening I tried to figure out why you didn’t look directly at me, why you seemed sort of familiar. And then, as dreams often play with our lives, the truth came to me.”
There was no point denying it. He was as sure of her identity as she was of his. She remained silent, not knowing if he was angry, confused, if he would say something as innocuous as “How the heck have you been?”
What he did say was spoken in a calm, rational way. “So, you got your hair cut.”
She touched a few straight strands at her shoulder. “Yes.”
“And the glasses? I kind of liked the whole librarian look you had that night. Hair in a tight topknot thing, dark-framed glasses. But now you can see?”
“I still need glasses for close work,” she said. “But I’ve had laser surgery.”
He moved his hands from his shoulders downward to his knees. “And what’s all this? More curves, fewer angles. You’re softer.”
His memories made her uncomfortable. He had recalled so many details, and she had assumed he’d forgotten about her the minute he left her apartment. “I’ve gained a dress size,” she said. “My mother’s cooking, I guess.”
He stared at her as if he were looking at a painting in the Louvre. “Looks good on you.”
She had to move the conversation away from the past before she revealed too much. So she said the one thing she felt he needed to know, the one thing he might have misunderstood about that night. And the one thing that would lead them away from thoughts of continuing where they’d left off. “You should know, I don’t make a habit of indulging in one-night stands. That night was out of
character for me. And when I recognized you yesterday, I felt a return of the guilt.”
“You don’t have to excuse yourself to me, Ava,” he said. “I never once thought I was one man in a string of many. In fact, I left your house feeling like someone very special.”
“Nevertheless, I did feel guilty.” She checked her watch. This would not be a good time for Jace to walk into the café. “Well, then, I’m truly glad this is out in the open, that there are no misconceptions. We both need to realize that the current situation we’re facing is not about either one of us. It’s about Sawyer.”
He gave her a small smile she couldn’t interpret. After a moment, he said, “Okay. Back to Sawyer.”
“She should do well at Sawtooth,” Ava said. “And while we’re on the subject of your relationship with your daughter...”
“Were we on that subject?” he asked.
“We should be, Noah.” She took a sip of coffee and wondered why it suddenly tasted bitter and seemed to stick in her throat. But she knew. This had to be one of the most awkward conversations she’d ever had in her life. “Since your occupation is at the heart of Sawyer’s problems, why don’t you tell me what you do for a living. What is your job description?”
“Job description?” He cocked his head as if he were thinking of words to describe what he did. “Let’s see. Looking at dirt from four hundred feet in the air. Clinging to steel poles in twenty-mile-per-hour winds. Checking power circuits to assure I don’t electrocute myself. Coming face-to-face with the beady eyes of hungry baby birds. And that’s not even taking into account the bees.”
Ava pictured a string of telephone poles as she tried to put the clues together. “I didn’t think we had many linemen these days, or telephone pole technicians. Isn’t everything underground cables now?”
“Not everything, but mostly, yes. Unfortunately what I do involves keeping cell phone service running smoothly. That’s totally different from making your landline work. I’m one of the guys who climbs to the top of cell towers, those scrawny, skeletal structures of crisscrossed poles that reach high into the sky.”
She let the mental image sink in while he obviously waited for a reaction. “You do know what cell towers are?” he asked.
“Of course. I guess I just never imagined climbing them. That must be very difficult.”
“It gets easier once you get your first fifty or so structures under your belt.”
Amazingly she was beginning to relax. The conversation about his job was a safe topic. “Is there a name for what you do?”
“I’m a tower climber. It’s fairly simple and direct. I suppose you can add crew foreman and cell phone technician to my title. Tower climbing takes guts. The second part requires a lot of training and skill.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?”
“I’d put it up there with lion taming and fire swallowing...without the thrill of being in a circus.”
Ava wasn’t comfortable criticizing anyone’s occupation. After all, she quit her high-paying corporate job in Charlotte to manage eighty youngsters who needed direction and purpose in their lives. Many of her friends had thought she was a fool. Of course, they didn’t know that a big part of her decision was Charlie. Once she’d learned of his parents’ deaths, she immediately began plans to become part of his life. The Sawtooth Home seemed like the perfect opportunity. Since she had an open adoption agreement with Charlie’s parents and knew of their deaths, she urged the state to send Charlie to the school. Getting the administrator’s job was just the icing on the cake. Ava would have returned to Holly River no matter what.
She’d gotten the job at Sawtooth Home because of her administrative skills, but she soon discovered she had a strong emotional attachment to the duties, primarily because of Charlie, but not just because of him. Every one of the eighty kids was special to her.
She tapped her finger against the side of her coffee mug. “Would you agree that your choice of employment is one of the reasons for the estrangement between you and Sawyer, and in fact, the main reason she runs away? We’ve established you’re gone for long periods.”
His food was delivered to the table. He tucked his napkin into his shirt collar. “Need to go clothes shopping today,” he said. “As for my daughter having a problem with my job, yeah, I suppose she does. But her complaints seem to go away when she needs new clothes, the latest smartphone, or an iPad.” He snapped off a piece of bacon and rolled his eyes as if he were communicating with heaven. “Bottom line, Ava, I make pretty good money hanging off towers.”
“Is this the only job you’ve had, as an adult, I mean?”
“Nope. I suppose you can count the four years I spent in the belly of fighter planes as a technician in Afghanistan with the Air Force. Followed by a year in technical training school.”
“Afghanistan. Another dangerous job,” she said.
“No complaints from me. I was with a great crew. Everyone knew their job and did it well.” He took a bite of egg.
She gave him a sharp look of disapproval. “I know you’re trying for cool, calm and collected, Noah, but I’m seeing a pattern here.”
He stopped chewing and stared at her over his suspended fork. “What kind of pattern?”
“One of taking risks and not behaving seriously, or at least considering how your choices affect the people around you.”
He frowned. Maybe she’d gone too far.
“You’re not suggesting I have some sort of death wish, are you?” Noah asked. “Because I don’t. And, also, I happen to be highly trained and skilled in a service people like you need every day, people who complain if they can’t text the pizza place to get their order in. I’m also well paid to do this job.”
She scowled at him. “I get it. But I do use my cell phone for much more important matters. Although, the pizza in this town is pretty good.”
He smiled.
“Has Sawyer ever asked you to quit this job?”
The smile vanished as his lips hardened. “She’s a kid. She can’t control what I do with my life or the choices I make. Especially if I make them with her best interests in mind. Believe me, that’s more than my parents did.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but it doesn’t mean you have to make the same mistakes they did.”
He sat ramrod straight in his chair. “Are you listening to me, Ava? I’m not making the same mistakes. Sawyer has everything she needs. She can reach me whenever she wants to. Yeah, I’m gone sometimes, but when I come home, I’m her father in every sense.”
“Okay, but I’ve found that too often children are left out of family decisions. Families work better when everyone has a say in what’s going on.”
“I’m not sure I buy into that, Ava. There has to be one person who ultimately makes the decision. Is this equal say philosophy how you Cahills do it?”
She couldn’t answer with complete honesty. Her father not only made decisions for himself and his wife, but for his children as well. And just recently she and her brother Carter, had surreptitiously gone through their mother’s papers to discover why Cora was suddenly pinching pennies. But that was for a good reason. “For the most part,” she finally said. “At least since my father died. If Sawyer has a problem with your job, she should feel free to express her concerns.”
He released a sarcastic chuckle before wiping his mouth. At least he had relaxed a bit. “Believe me, Sawyer doesn’t feel inhibited expressing her concerns about anything. And she doesn’t have a problem with my job. Her complaints are about the wicked witches I’ve left in charge of the household when I’m not around.”
“And does she have a point about these ladies?”
Noah lifted his fork and aimed it casually at Ava. “I’d be happy to show you the references I’ve gathered on all these women,” he said. “Even the paper they’re printed on is squeaky clean.”
Ava took another
sip of her lukewarm coffee. “Still, something is causing Sawyer to run away from home.”
“Yes, and she could run away from your home as well. Sawyer has a way of viewing everyone in a position of authority through the same lens. You could be the next wicked witch.”
Is that what he thought of her six years ago? No, she didn’t think so. He had treated her as if she were unique, special. But that was then. “I suppose I could. But, Noah, something has to be done. Sawyer’s behavior is dangerous.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He set his napkin on his empty plate. “You think I haven’t considered giving up my job to stay home?”
“Have you?”
He pulled some bills from his wallet and tossed them on the table. “Of course. But here’s the bottom line. Sawyer has a problem with authority. She always has. That’s why her mother left. Maybe if I were a 24/7 dad, I could control her better, but I don’t really believe that. Trust me. To my daughter I’m the lesser of two evils. I’m slightly more compassionate than her self-centered mother, and I’m a bit more tractable than the housekeepers I’ve hired.”
He slid back from the table, the chair making a harsh scraping noise on the wood floor. “I’ve come to accept my role in Sawyer’s life. Money provider, swinging door dad. It is what it is. Do I worry about her? Of course. Do I lose sleep over her? Every night. Do I chase her all over the state of North Carolina when I have to? I do. I keep bringing her home. I pray her street smarts will keep her safe. I hope the next time I hire someone, it will work out. As far as Sawyer and I are concerned, our life together is one big trial and error.”
His eyes pierced into Ava’s heart with a sadness she’d never have expected from him. She almost always blamed the parents when a child became difficult to control. And her first instinct was to blame Noah Walsh. Maybe she’d been too hasty. He wasn’t a perfect parent, but he suddenly seemed a caring one. Just as he’d seemed a caring man that night...
High Country Christmas Page 5
