by Cara Colter
“I’m having some breakfast sent up,” he said. “Fruit, yogurt. Any other requests?”
“I have to have Huggi Bears for breakfast,” Susie told him.
“She doesn’t,” Dannie said firmly. “Yogurt is just fine. If you’ll excuse us for a minute, I’ll make myself presentable. And the children. Of course.”
“I thought you were quite presentable. Don’t feel you have to dress for breakfast. I want you to feel at home here.”
“Why? We’re leaving.”
“Until you do,” he said smoothly, and then shut the door quietly and left them alone.
A few minutes later she had the children washed and dressed. Dannie actually found herself lamenting the lack of choice in the clothing she had brought, but wore the nicest things she had packed, a pinstripe navy blue blazer and matching slacks. Like most of her clothes, the slacks were protesting her weight gain and were just a touch too snug. Thankfully the blazer covered the worst of it! The outfit was decidedly businesslike, almost in defiance of his invitation to make themselves at home. At the last moment she added a hint of makeup, ridiculously grateful there was some in her bag left over from her last trip.
He was being particularly charming this morning. That would come naturally to him. She needn’t be flattered by it. Or worse, wonder what he wanted. She had nothing a man like that would want, even with the addition of mascara!
When she came out, the breakfast bar had been set up with platters of fresh fruit and croissants. Several child-size boxes of cereal, including Huggi Bears were available. There were choices of milk, chocolate milk or juice, the coffee smelled absolutely heavenly.
What would it be like to live like this? To just snap your fingers and have a feast including Huggi Bears delivered instantly?
It would make a person spoiled rotten, she thought. Emphasis on the rotten.
Or make them feel as if they had died and gone to heaven, she thought as she took a sip of the coffee. It was even richer and more satisfying than it had smelled.
It renewed her commitment to taking the children home. Before she was spoiled for real life. Before she started wanting and expecting luxuries she was never going to have.
“Let’s take it out on the terrace,” he suggested. He took the baby from her with more ease than she would have expected after just one day. When she joined him outside, he was spooning yogurt into Jake who was cooperatively opening his mouth like a baby bird waiting for a worm.
Susie had chosen one of the tiny boxes of Huggi Bears. It was the annoying kind that claimed it could be used as a bowl, but never quite worked properly. Still, Susie insisted she had to have it out of the box, and by the time Dannie had it opened along all the dotted lines and had poured the milk, she was cursing Joshua’s charm and good looks, which made her feel as clumsy as if she were trying to open the box with elephants’ feet instead of hands!
She made herself focus on the view, which was spectacular in the early morning light. The sea breeze was fresh and scented. She wondered what Hawaii smelled like.
She ordered herself just to enjoy this place and this moment, but it proved to be impossible. She needed to know what happened next. It was just her nature.
“So, may I ask what arrangements you’ve made for the children and me?” The thought of traveling again so soon exhausted her. The thought of staying here with him was terrifying.
It gave new meaning to being caught between a rock and a hard place.
“Well,” he said, and smiled widely, “I have a surprise for you.”
Danielle was one of those people who did not care much for surprises. It was part of being the kind of person who liked to know what was going to happen next.
“I’m flying out to look at a property for a few days. It’s called the Moose Lake Lodge. Susie mentioned camping, so I thought she’d love it. All of us. A vacation in the British Columbia wilderness.”
“We’re going camping?” Susie breathed. “I love camping!”
“You don’t know the first thing about camping,” Dannie said.
“I do so!”
She was staring at Joshua with a growing feeling of anger. So this was why he’d been so charming this morning! Smelled like Hawaii, indeed. Her hair made him think of Hawaii. Sure it did!
“Are you telling me or consulting me?” she asked dangerously.
He pondered that for a moment. “I’d really like for you to come.”
It was an evasive answer. It meant he hadn’t booked them tickets home.
“The real question is why would you want to drag two children and a nanny along on a business trip?”
“It’s not strictly business.”
She raised an eyebrow and waited.
“You know as well as I do Melanie will kill me if I send the kids home after I promised her I’d give them a holiday.”
It still wasn’t the whole truth. She could feel it.
“Say yes,” Susie said, slipping her hand into Dannie’s and blinking at her with her most adorable expression. “Please say yes. Camping.”
Everything in her screamed no.
Except for the part of her that screamed yes.
The part of her that begged her to, just once, say yes to the unexpected. Just once to not know what the day held. To not have a clue. To just once embrace a surprise instead of rejecting it.
To leave the safe haven of her predictable, controlled world.
What had her controlled world given her so far? Despite her best efforts, she had ended up with her heart broken, anyway.
“What do you mean, you’re flying?” she asked, looking for a way to ease into accepting, not wanting to say an out-and-out yes as if the promise of an adventure was more than poor, boring her could refuse.
Not wanting to appear like a staid nanny who’d been offered a rare chance to be spontaneous.
“I have a pilot’s license,” he said. “I fly my own plane.”
There was that feeling in her stomach again, of a roller coaster chugging up the steep incline. “Is that safe?” she demanded.
“More safe than getting in your car every day,” he said. “Did you know that you have more chance of dying in your own bathroom than you do of dying on an airplane?”
Who could argue with something like that? Who could ever look at their own bathroom in the same way after hearing something like that?
That was the problem with a man like Joshua Cole. He could turn everything around: make what had always seemed safe appear to be the most dangerous thing of all.
For wasn’t the most dangerous thing of all to have died without ever having lived? Wasn’t the most dangerous thing to move through life as if on automatic pilot, not challenged, not thrilled, not engaged?
Engaged. She hated that word with its multitude of meanings. She thought she had been engaged. For the first time she did not touch her locket when she thought about it.
She took a deep breath, squeezed Susie’s hand. “All right,” she said. “When would you like us to be ready?”
Dannie had never flown in a small plane before. Up until getting on the plane, her stomach had been in knots about it. But watching Joshua conduct extremely precise preflight checks on the aircraft calmed her. The man radiated confidence, ease, certainty of his own abilities.
The feeling of calm increased as she settled the children, Jake in his car seat, and then she took the passenger seat right beside Joshua.
She loved the look on his face as he got ready to fly, intensely focused and relaxed at the very same time. He had the air of a man a person could trust with their life, which of course was exactly what she was doing.
The level of trust surprised her. At this time yesterday, getting off an airplane after having read about him, she had been prepared to dislike him. When he hadn’t arrived at the airport, she had upgraded to intense dislike.
But after seeing him in his own environment, and now in charge of this plane, she realized the mix-up at the airport probably had been Melanie
’s. Joshua gave the impression of a man who took everything he did seriously and did everything he did well.
Still, to go from being prepared to dislike someone to feeling this kind of trust in less than twenty-four hours might not be a good thing. She might be falling under his legendary, lethal charm, just like everyone else.
Of course she was! Why else had she agreed to fly off into the unknown with a man who was, well, unknown?
She did touch her locket then, a reminder that even the known could become unknown, even the predictable could fail.
Before she really had time to prepare herself, the plane was rumbling along the airstrip and then it was lifting, leaving the bonds of gravity, taking flight.
Dannie was surprised, and pleasantly so, to discover she liked small airplanes better than big ones. She could watch her pilot’s face, she could feel his energy, he did not feel unknown at all. In fact, she had a sense of knowing him deeply as she watched his confident hands on the controls, as she studied his face.
He glanced at her, suddenly, and grinned.
For a second he was that boy she had seen in the photo on the beach, full of mischief and delight in life. For a second he was that football player in the other photo, confident, sure of his ability to tackle whatever the world threw at him.
Something had changed him since those photos were taken. She had not been aware he carried a burden until she saw it fall away as they soared into the infinite blue of the sky.
“You love this,” she guessed.
“It’s the best,” he said, and returned his attention to what he was doing. And she turned hers to the world he had opened up for her. A world of such freedom and beauty it could hardly be imagined. Joshua pointed out landmarks to her, explained some of the simpler things he was doing.
An hour or so later he circled a lake, the water dark denim blue, lovely cabins on spacious tree-filled lots encircling it. Wharves reached out on the water. Except for the fact it was too early in the year for people to be here, it looked like a poster for a perfect summer. Still, she was actually sorry when the flight was over.
A car waited for them at the end of the runway, and introductions were made. Sally and Michael Baker were an older couple, the lines of living outdoors deeply etched in both their faces. They were unpretentious, dressed casually in jeans and lumber jackets. Dannie liked them immediately.
And she liked it that Joshua did not introduce her as a nanny, but said instead that his sister had sent her along because she didn’t trust him completely with her children!
The Bakers had that forthright and friendly way about them that made children feel instantly comfortable. Jake went into Sally’s arms eagerly.
“I think he’s been waiting all his short life to have a grandmother,” Joshua said.
“He doesn’t have a grandmother?” Sally asked, appalled.
“The kids paternal grandparents are in Australia. My mom and dad were killed in an accident when I was growing up.”
Melanie had told Dannie her parents were gone, but never the circumstances. Dannie had assumed they were older, and that they had died of natural causes. Now she wondered if that was the burden he carried, and she also noted how quickly he had revealed that to the Bakers.
There was a great deal to know about this man. But to know it was to invite trouble. Because even knowing that he’d lost his parents when he was young caused a growing softness toward him.
“That must have been very hard,” Sally clucked, her brown eyes so genuinely full of concern.
“Probably harder on my sister than me,” he said. “She was older.”
Suddenly Dannie saw Melanie’s attitude toward her brother, as if he was a kid, instead of a very successful man, in a totally different light.
Michael packed their things in the back of an SUV, and they drove toward the lake. Soon they were on a beautiful road that wound around the water, trees on one side, the lake, sparkling with light, on the other.
Then they came into a clearing. A beautiful, ancient log lodge was facing the lake at one end of it, gorgeous lawns and flower beds sweeping down to the sandy shores. Scattered in on the hill behind it were tiny log cabins of about the same vintage.
“It’s beautiful,” Dannie breathed. More than beautiful. Somehow this place captured a feeling: summer laughter, campfires, water games, children playing tag in the twilight.
A children’s playground was on part of the huge expanse of lawn before the beach, and Susie began squirming as soon as she saw it.
“Is that a tree fort?” she demanded. “I want to play!”
Sally laughed. “Of course you want to play. You’ve been cooped up in a plane. Why don’t I watch the kids at the park, while Michael helps you two get settled?”
Dannie expected some kind of protest from Susie, but there was none. As soon as the car door opened, she bolted for the playground.
Michael and Joshua unloaded their bags, and they followed Michael up a lovely wooden boardwalk that started behind the main lodge, wound through whispering aspens, spruce and fur. The smell alone, sweet, pure, tangy, nearly took Dannie’s breath away. The boardwalk came to a series of stone stairs set in the side of the hill, and at the top of that was the first of about a dozen cabins that looked through the trees to the glittering surface of the lake.
The cabin had a name burned on a wooden plaque that hung above the stairs to the porch.
Angel’s Rest.
There were a pair of rocking chairs on the covered, screened-in front porch. The logs and flooring were gray with age, the chinking and the trim around the paned window was painted white. A window box was sadly empty. Dannie could imagine bright red geraniums blooming there. A worn carpet in front of a screen door said Welcome.
Michael opened the door, which squeaked outrageously and somehow only added to the rustic charm. He set their bags inside.
It occurred to her she and Joshua were staying together, under the same roof. Why was it different from how staying under the same roof had been last night?
The cabin was smaller, for one thing, everything about it more intimate than the posh interior of Joshua’s apartment. This was a space that was real. The decades of laughter, of family, soaked right into the cozy atmosphere.
“This is our biggest cabin,” Michael said. “There’s two bedrooms down and the loft up. Sometimes the kids sleep on the porch on hot nights, though it’s not quite warm enough for that, yet.”
“How wonderful there’s a place left in the world where it’s safe enough for the kids to sleep out on an unlocked porch,” Dannie said.
Michael nodded. “My daughter and her kids usually take it for the whole summer, but—” He stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. “Dinner is at the main lodge. See you there around six. There’s always snacks available in the kitchen if you need something before then.”
And then he closed the door and left them.
Alone.
The cabin was more than quaint, it was as if it was a painting entitled Home. There were colorful Finnish rag rugs over plank flooring. An old couch, with large faded cabbage roses on the upholstery, dominated the living room decor. Inside, where the logs had not been exposed to the weather, they were golden, glowing with age and warmth. A river rock fireplace, the face blackened from use, had two rocking chairs painted bright sunshine yellow, in front of it.
Maybe it was that feeling of home that made her venture into very personal territory. Standing in this place, with him, made her feel connected to him, as if all the warmth and love of the families who had gathered in this place had infused it with a spirit of caring.
“I can’t believe I’ve worked for Melanie for months and didn’t know about your parents. I knew they had passed, but I didn’t know the circumstances.”
“It was a car accident. She doesn’t talk about it.”
“Do you?”
He shrugged. “We aren’t really talkers in our family.”
“Doers,” she guessed.
He was studying the window casings, which were showing slight signs of rot, scowling at the floors that looked decidedly splintery. He went up the stairs to the loft.
“I’ll take this room,” he called.
She knew she shouldn’t go up there, but she did. She went and stood behind him. The loft room was massive. The stone chimney from downstairs continued up the far wall, and there was another fireplace. A huge four-poster bed, antique, with a hand-crafted quilt took up the greater part of the space.
He was looking under the bed.
“Boogeymen?” she asked.
He hit his head pulling out from under the bed, surprised that she was up here. “Mice.”
The shabby romance of the place was obviously lost on him. “And?”
“Mouse free. Or cleaned recently.”
She was afraid of mice. He was afraid of caring. Maybe it was time for at least one of them to confront their fears.
“Joshua, I’m sorry about your parents. That must have been incredibly hard on you.” She said it even though he had let her know it was off-limits.
He went over and opened a closet door, peered in. She had a feeling he was already making architectural drawings, plans, notes.
“Thanks,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”
“What are your plans for this place?” she said, trying to respect his obvious desire not to go there. “If you acquire it?”
“I want to turn it into a Sun resort. So that means completely revamping the interiors of these cabins, if we kept them at all. Think posh hunting lodge, deep, distressed leather furniture, a bar, good art, bearskin rugs.”
She actually felt a sense of loss when he said that.
“For activities,” he continued, “overnight camping trips, rock climbing, hiking, a row of jet skis tied to a new wharf.”
She winced at that.
“Five-star dining in the main lodge, a lounge, some of the cabins with their own hot tubs.”
