Ava squeezed Sawyer’s arm. “Have you told him your feelings?”
“Over and over. But he doesn’t take me seriously. And he just says, ‘Don’t worry, Sawyer. I’ll be fine.’ But he doesn’t know that. How many other climbers have said that to people who lo...need them, and then they didn’t come home.”
Sawyer inhaled, held her breath a moment and said, “If something happened to Daddy, I’d be alone. Completely alone.” She stared up at Ava. “That’s why I run away, you know. I’m practicing for when I have no one else. I’m trying to show him what it’s like to lose the only person that cares about you. And every time I see him, I think, is this the last time? And it makes me so angry.”
Ava opened her arms and Sawyer fell into them. She buried her face in Ava’s shoulder and cried out all her frustration. Ava held her for minutes, lightly stroking her back. Sawyer’s fears were real. She wondered if Noah had ever held his daughter this way.
After a while, she leaned back, ran her hand down Sawyer’s braid. “Stay up here as long as you need to,” she said. “I’m going downstairs. You come down when you’re composed, okay?”
Sawyer nodded. “Okay.” Sawyer sniffed. “Is he still here?”
“Yes. He’s anxious to hear that you’re okay.”
When Ava came to the first floor, she encountered quiet. Her brothers had taken their families home. Gladys had picked up Robert. Noah sat on the sofa in front of the fire. His eyes widened when he saw her, waiting for an explanation. Those unforgettable coffee-brown eyes reminded her of the look he gave her from across a crowded room six years ago. A look that said he wanted to get to know her. She looked away.
Cora came in from the kitchen. “How is she?”
“She’s still upset, but she’ll be okay,” Ava said.
“The poor little thing.”
“Mama, I need to speak to Noah alone. Do you mind?”
Cora headed for the stairs. “It’s been a long day. I think I’ll turn in, watch a little TV. You two take all the time you need. Just lock up when you leave, Ava.”
Knowing Sawyer was upstairs and could come down any minute, Ava suggested a plan. “You haven’t seen anything of the farm,” she said. “How about a walk to the barn? It’s not too cold in there.”
She slipped into her coat and handed Noah his jacket. After asking her mother to tell Sawyer they went for a walk, they left by the back door, with Buster following them across the yard.
“I guess I made a pal of your dog,” Noah said.
“You’re lucky. He doesn’t warm up to people over four feet tall very often.”
Once inside the barn, Buster curled up on some loose hay. Ava and Noah sat on an old tack trunk covered by a blanket. “You’re right,” Noah said. “It’s twenty degrees warmer in here than outside.”
Conscious of Noah’s proximity on the trunk, Ava took a deep breath, crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t want to touch him, not even by accident. The last few minutes had been an emotional upheaval for her, and she dared not let her feelings for Noah from before interfere with what she had to do now. “As you probably guessed,” she said, “we need to talk.”
* * *
NOAH FELT THE muscles clinch in his stomach. Ava’s voice was controlled, even, administrator-like. And she was taut, the kind of tautness that came from somewhere deep in her core and had nothing to do with the fact that she was sitting on a hard trunk. Noah figured it was going to be bad.
“You told your mother that Sawyer was okay. Is that true?” Noah asked.
“She was quite upset, but we talked.”
“I was worried about letting her come out here with you to a country Neverland. It was too soon for her to connect with your family. You’re all like a painting of family ties.”
“Noah, her being here isn’t the problem.”
“Yes, it is. Sawyer has it in her mind that her life is so terrible, that I’m an uncaring, selfish jerk, that every housekeeper I hire is out to get her. She comes now to the breadbasket of America where everybody is nice and sweet, and the food is good, and even the dog is happy. Of course she’s only going to resent me more.”
“Noah, she doesn’t resent you for not giving her a life like I had growing up. And, by the way, my life wasn’t always so rosy. My father was a bully who kept everyone on edge. He tolerated Carter, but he hated Jace.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s dead. And that boy you saw...the quiet one? Robert is his illegitimate son, my half-brother, produced as a result of my father’s infidelity.”
Noah looked at the ceiling of the barn, a building that was clean by barn standards, smelled of aged wood and fresh hay. “You’re telling me that your father had all this, a wife like Cora, three nearly perfect kids, and he screwed it up?”
“We weren’t perfect. No child is. But yes, my father made some terrible mistakes. Trust me when I say that you and Sawyer have a long way to go to end up like that.”
“So what did she tell you? That she hates me?”
“No. As a matter of fact, and as I’ve told you before, she doesn’t hate you.”
Noah couldn’t help chuckling his disbelief. “What about all those adjectives she has for me, like selfish, stupid and a few other choice ones.”
Ava shifted slightly. All at once he could see the soft light in her incredibly blue eyes. Her honest, caring blue eyes.
“Yes, she believes you are all those things,” Ava said, “or at least she claims to believe them. But I don’t think any of them would matter if she didn’t also believe that you don’t care anything about her.”
“Don’t care about her? Good grief, Ava, she’s all I think about. Sometimes I wish she weren’t, but she won’t let me stop. She does everything she can to ruin my schedules, mess up my life and basically, just scare me. I wake up every morning, no matter where I am, and hope she goes to school, doesn’t get in a fight with a teacher, doesn’t smoke a cigarette.”
“I’m going to say it again, Noah. Sawyer doesn’t hate you. But she’s frightened to death that one day you won’t be there at all, that she’ll be completely alone. That’s a heck of a black cloud for a kid to live under.”
“Look, my job takes me away, but I always come home. She has no reason to think that I won’t.”
Ava closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she stared hard at him. “Don’t you get it yet? She’s afraid you’re going to die, that you’re going to climb a tower and never make it down alive.”
He shook his head slowly, trying to clear the cobwebs of this confusion. “I’ve explained all this to her, Ava. She knows I’m careful. She’s never even met anyone personally who ended up dying on a tower. It’s the internet. She needs to quit googling tower accidents and imagining that I’ll be the next victim. She knows this is what I do. I’ve told her countless times that I’m highly trained and always careful. And let’s not forget that I make good money doing it.”
He tamped his anger by taking a deep breath. “Did she also tell you that her room in Chapel Hill is crammed with every techie device a kid could want, that she can’t even close her closet doors for all the clothes, that she’s already talking about what kind of car she wants in two years? Did she tell you that?”
“She’s compensating,” Ava said.
“What? What does that even mean?”
“She’s using material things to fill a void left by her fear of abandonment.” Ava sighed. “I suppose now you’re thinking that I’m not a child psychologist, so what do I know.”
He didn’t answer.
“But I believe I know what you’re thinking right now.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“That Sawyer readily accepts all the things you give her. She seems materialistic, but Noah, things can’t compensate for what she is afraid of.”
Noah swallowed a
nd felt a burn all the way down his throat. He met her gaze with an equally hard stare. “You sound pretty confident for a woman who’s not a therapist.”
“I’m not all that confident, Noah. This is entirely new ground for me. I’m the one who does the paperwork to admit new residents. I keep the financial records. I’m the middleman between parents and teachers. I decide when children can go home for a visit. But a therapist? No. I’m not even close. What is true is that I’m not as close to this situation as you are. I’m able to sit back and evaluate without being emotionally involved.”
She leaned toward him, almost tentatively. “But even that isn’t a totally honest statement. Sawyer got to me in her lightweight hoodie, warning me about our insufficient security system. She’s tough and smart, yes, but she’s also vulnerable.”
His Sawyer vulnerable? Stubborn, obstinate, an expert escape artist? These traits Noah could believe. But he looked at Ava and knew that she believed, and suddenly he wanted to be on the same side. This woman, this determined, compassionate, competent woman knew his daughter better than he did. He had known his daughter for fourteen years. Ava had known her a week.
“So what should I do?” Noah asked. “I’ve already told her about the skills that certified me as a teacher of other climbers. She knows I don’t take risks.”
“That’s just it,” Ava said. “She believes you take risks every day. If not on your job, then on your motorcycle, behind the wheel of your speedboat. And the more you take risks, the more she sees it as a way of avoiding responsibility to her. It’s almost as if she believes you don’t care if you leave her all alone to fend for herself.”
Was this possible? Did Sawyer believe he was so unfeeling? He was beginning to see his daughter as Ava did, an insecure, scared, anxious kid who thought her only sense of belonging, her only family would leave her in a plume of dust at the bottom of a tower. “I don’t do any of these things to hurt Sawyer,” he said. “I keep at my job because it supports us both. I ride a bike and drive a boat because it’s what I enjoy. Am I supposed to give all those things up?”
“I’m not saying that,” she said. “But I think you need to talk to your daughter. And you both need to understand the importance of compromise.”
He stared at Ava’s hand in her lap and impulsively reached out and took it in both of his. He suddenly needed a connection with something solid. Compromise. He could do that, couldn’t he? He suddenly could picture doing anything that would make this woman respect him. His thumb began rubbing her knuckles, and a memory of doing exactly this in a bar in Charlotte flooded his mind.
“I understand what you’re saying, Ava, but I’m forty years old. I can’t suddenly become a different person. I can’t start a new career at my age. Or at least I wouldn’t want to try. And truthfully, I don’t want to. Sawyer and I have become accustomed to a certain life, a life I’ve provided. I have a responsibility to the people I’ve trained. They depend on me, and I don’t want to let them down. At some point Sawyer has to accept who I am and believe what I tell her.”
Ava gave him a warm smile that seemed to melt deep down inside him. “And that might happen. But right now she’s just a frightened child, a kid who is taking risks that in some ways are even greater than the ones you take. Every time she walks out your door or climbs out a window, her life is a little less safe. But tonight I believe we have taken a step toward understanding. Admittedly that step is toward you understanding her, but that can change.”
She kept her hand in his, leaned forward and stared deeply into his eyes. “We’ll start here and go forward. I have every confidence that your relationship with Sawyer can be saved.”
He felt more optimistic than he had in several years. Was it because Sawyer had such a determined champion in this woman? Was it because he felt Ava was as much on his side as she was on Sawyer’s? Was it because he believed, for the first time, that someone could actually stop him from alienating his daughter forever...for his sake as much as Sawyer’s?
Whatever, he hadn’t felt this close to another human being in a long time, especially not to a woman. “You’re amazing, Ava.”
“Maybe I can just see things you can’t because I’m only the observer. I simply want to make this situation better...”
Too much talk suddenly. Noah’s heart was beating. The blood was racing through his veins. He wanted nothing more than to be closer to Ava, to believe in her. He pressed his hand on hers. “You might think that all I’m feeling now is gratitude, Ava, but it’s not. I want to kiss you...”
“I don’t know, Noah. This is about Sawyer...”
“Right now,” he said, “I believe this moment is about us. Finding you again was like a dream. You came into my life when I was at my lowest, and you’ve given me hope. That’s a big thing in my book, Ava.
“Don’t we owe it to ourselves to see if what we shared years ago still exists? Because it was strong then. I hated leaving you that night, especially knowing what you must have been thinking of me. I guess, I’m saying I want another chance to make things right.” He cupped her cheek and waited. She didn’t pull back. In fact, her whole body seemed to lean into him. He threaded his fingers through her silky hair and moved closer, feeling a slight shudder come from her chest. She blinked hard and breathed in short gasps of air.
“Let’s not think for one minute, okay? Just feel.” He kissed her eyelids, the tip of her nose, and then settled his mouth on hers. Her lips were lush and fragrant with Italian spices. He tasted her, savored her response. When his tongue slipped inside her lips, she let out a little sound and tilted her head to more fully engulf him in their kiss.
He remembered this woman, this feeling.
He felt her hands flatten on his chest before she pushed him away. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said. “This is about Sawyer...”
“For a minute there, it didn’t feel like it had anything to do with Sawyer.”
She looked down, focusing on some indefinite spot on the barn floor. “Let’s go in. It’s getting late.”
He exhaled a long breath as they began walking. Suddenly he stopped and asked her, “How did that feel to you?”
“It was a kiss,” she said. “A nice one perhaps, but one that shouldn’t have happened.”
“You don’t feel strange? Not even a little déjà vu?”
“No. Of course not.” She still hadn’t looked at him.
“Well, I’d never forget a kiss like that. And I’m kinda convinced that you haven’t either.”
A tiny smile creased the corner of her lips.
He reached for her hand. Their fingers entwined for a second, maybe two before she took back her hand. “Come on, Noah. Sawyer is probably downstairs by now and wondering where we are.”
Yes, probably, he thought, following her. But Sawyer wasn’t exactly what he was thinking about at this moment.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AVA WAS GRATEFUL she and Sawyer had had a calm, productive discussion when they returned to the Sawtooth campus on Sunday night. Sawyer had forgiven her father for showing up unannounced, but of course she was still angry about how he decided to live his life. Noah’s life choices were the big issue between the two, and that problem would not resolve itself without a lot of work and effort on both their parts, not to mention compromise.
Also thankful that her schedule was relatively free this morning, Ava proceeded with her plan to visit the paper mill today even though she’d slept fitfully last night. After what happened in the barn with Noah, she was having a difficult time concentrating on anything but the kiss. Noah had said he remembered their kisses, and she had downplayed his assertion.
Unfortunately, Noah was right. Like him, Ava had never forgotten his kisses. They’d kissed and caressed and enjoyed each other for hours. They’d talked about their childhoods, their wants and goals. They’d laughed at the same things. Noah had been so real t
o Ava that night. She had believed they shared a special bond, one that might grow despite the distance between them. But now everything was different. Now she had Charlie to consider. She couldn’t let herself fall for Noah and face the agonizing choice of whether to tell him about his son.
It was best if she simply didn’t allow him to kiss her again. But those moments in the barn had been wonderful. She’d run upstairs to spend a few minutes in the bathroom just to try and get her mind on something else. She couldn’t allow herself to be so swept away again. Once Noah had gone back to Chapel Hill, she could concentrate on raising their son by herself, which she had planned to do when she took the job at Sawtooth.
Besides, her history with Noah was flawed, based on a few fleeting hours, a mistaken pregnancy, a man who had been married. Last night she had felt a connection. But that other night, at the end, when he walked out of her bedroom, she had felt shame.
Ava pulled into the parking lot of the Cahill Paper Mill. She’d been here many times before. She’d often helped her father with record keeping, preparing invoices, sending overdue bills to customers. Raymond had been proud of his daughter’s intelligence and expertise. She’d been the favorite child. She hadn’t asked to be, didn’t want to be. But it was a fact.
She took her briefcase from the car, locked the doors and went in the front entrance. The smells were the same, the distinct acrid odor of pulp, the smoky, barely contained scent of the boilers, the more pleasing smell of fresh wood. The mill was a decent, hardworking environment. Most of the employees were happy to have jobs there.
It wasn’t always that way. Miranda’s own father had died of cancer due to his placement in the asbestos-riddled boiler room, a risk he’d known about but had taken to better his family’s situation. The tragic consequences had broken Miranda’s heart and caused her to break up with Carter when they were teenagers. Thank goodness they’d found each other again.
Ava proceeded down a short hallway to the executive suites of the company officers. Here the smells were subdued as if the toil and discomfort a few hundred yards away didn’t exist. A receptionist sat at a polished desk in front of three office doors. The largest door had once led to Raymond Cahill’s office, but now belonged to his brother Rudy.
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