by Marta Perry
The only surprising thing was that he hadn’t asked the question sooner. “Islanders know, for the most part.” She carefully didn’t look at him. “Our elopement was quite a sensation. People talk.”
“Gossip.” He sounded uncompromising.
“Talk,” she said again. “But folks here are used to the situation. I don’t think they’d mention it to outsiders, anyway. Islanders protect their own.”
“Unless there’s something in it for them.”
She didn’t know how to combat that kind of cynicism. “You’re wrong, Tyler. No one here would deliberately set out to hurt me or Sammy.”
“Then what’s left?” His brows twitched, impatience returning. “I can’t believe in some kind of random coincidence. You can’t believe your neighbors would meddle. What are we left with? Your family?”
“No!” She planted her fists on her hips. “Tyler, that’s ridiculous. No one in my family would do anything like that.”
“According to you, no one would do it, but it happened.” He ducked under the clothesline, and it brushed the top of his head. The movement brought him within inches of her, and her breath stuttered.
“Get rid of your rose-colored glasses for a minute, Miranda. Someone did this thing. Someone deliberately took a picture of Sammy and sent it to me. Someone who knew I was Sammy’s father and knew how to reach me.”
His words battered her like waves in rough surf. She brushed her hair from her eyes, looking at him.
“Why?” The word came out in a whisper. “Why, Tyler?”
He caught her hands, imprisoning them in his hard grip. “We’ll find out, but you have to help me. We can’t be on opposite sides in this.”
Opposite sides. The only safe place for her was not opposite, but as far away from Tyler as possible.
His grip tightened, compelling a response. “You have to help me,” he repeated.
The more she was near him, the more difficult and dangerous it would be to her heart. She didn’t have a choice.
“All right. I’ll help you.”
“Tyler, would you like another piece of fried chicken?” Sallie Caldwell held the platter out to him. It had been piled high with golden chicken pieces when they sat down, but one trip around the table had diminished it considerably.
“No, thanks, Mrs. Caldwell. I have plenty.” He’d already made his way through two pieces and a mound of mashed potatoes and gravy. He hadn’t eaten like this since—well, he’d never eaten like this.
The long table, set in the center of the dining room, was used as a buffet for guests’ breakfasts, but now light from the overhead fixture fell on seven Caldwells and one unwelcome guest.
Miranda’s mother must have her hands full, cooking for this bunch every day. David and Daniel, seated opposite him, were a couple of years older than Miranda. Both tall and lean, they wore the same stamp their father did of men who worked hard in the outdoors. People like that didn’t need to worry about getting to the gym to work off an extra serving of fried chicken.
Theo, the baby of the family, alternated between focusing on his plate and glaring at Tyler. He was clearly not reconciled to Tyler’s presence at the family table.
Nobody was, he supposed. Sallie had a smile for him, but that was either her natural expression or her idea of Southern hospitality. Sammy fidgeted in the ladder-back chair that was a little too big for him, probably eager for the Friday night movie Miranda had said he’d be attending with his cousins.
Tyler could feel Miranda’s tension from across the table. He knew its cause. They’d agreed that once Sammy was off to the movies, she’d talk to her family about the photograph.
She didn’t want to do it, didn’t think it was necessary. He crumbled a feathery-light biscuit between his fingers. She’d only agreed because she’d known that if she didn’t, he would.
Talk of the weather shifted to fishing. Tyler’s gaze crossed Miranda’s, and she glanced quickly away. Was she disappointed at his silence? She must realize that he didn’t have much to say on either subject. He wasn’t going to try to manufacture conversation with his son while all of them listened.
Not that Sammy seemed to notice. He avoided Tyler’s eye, piping into the conversation about fishing once or twice. He said something teasing to one of his uncles about coming home with an empty net and earned a grin and a ruffle of his hair.
“Did I tell y’all I saw the pod today?” That was David, he thought, though the twins were so alike it was hard to tell.
“Sure that wasn’t a sand shark?” His twin’s voice was lazily teasing. “Or maybe an old inner tube?”
“Did you honest, Uncle David?” Sammy bounced on his chair. “You should’ve taken me out with you. I’m good at spotting them.”
“School first, then dolphins,” David said easily. “How’d you do on that spelling quiz?”
Sammy sent an uneasy glance toward his mother. “Okay, I guess.”
“Just okay? Maybe we better drill a bit more this week.”
“My turn to help Sammy this week,” his twin interrupted. “I’m a better speller than you ever thought of being. Isn’t that right, Momma?”
Sallie turned that hundred-watt smile on him. “Funny, that’s not how I remember it. Maybe I ought to get out your old report cards. Let Sammy see how his uncles did in school.”
Good-humored protests from the men vied with Sammy’s cheers at the idea. Tyler leaned back. He wasn’t part of the circle of Caldwells around the table. Whether meaning to or not, they’d made that clear to him.
His childhood table hadn’t borne much resemblance to this. His parents, before they divorced, dined in the elegant room with the crystal chandelier and the velvet drapes. He and Josh had a nursery supper, he supposed, but then he’d been shipped off to boarding school, where supper was a noisy affair with people who weren’t related to you.
Was that the kind of childhood he wanted for Sammy? He looked at the boy, smiling at some quip his grandfather had aimed at the twins. The laughter in his son’s eyes was for the Caldwells, not for him.
Something Miranda had said about Sammy being a well-loved child rang in his mind. Sammy had plenty of people to love him. Miranda had plenty of people to support her. It didn’t look as if either of them had any need of him.
Headlights flashed against the windows, and a car horn sounded. Sammy was off his chair in a flash. “That’s my cousins, Momma. Can I go now? Please?”
“Not with chicken on your mouth.” Miranda handed him a napkin, and he mopped his face quickly.
“Now?” His feet moved as if he were already running.
“All right.” Miranda grabbed him before he could dash. “But you say goodbye properly first, y’hear? And don’t forget to mind Cousin Matt.”
“I won’t.” Sammy planted a quick kiss on Miranda’s cheek. “Bye, Momma. Bye, y’all.” His gaze, rounding the table, came to Tyler and stopped.
Tyler could almost see the thought running through his son’s mind. Sammy didn’t know what to call him.
“G’night,” he muttered. Then he dashed out the door.
Clayton’s children, though grown, called him Daddy with open affection. Tyler’s son didn’t have a word for him. That mattered more than he’d have expected.
“Before y’all go, there’s something I want to ask you.” Miranda clearly didn’t like it, but she intended to fulfill her promise.
David, who’d half stood, sat down again. “What’s up, sugar?”
“Y’all know about the picture of Sammy someone sent to Tyler.”
There was a murmur of assent and one or two hostile glances sent his way.
“We…I feel like I need to know how that happened. So I’m asking for the truth. Does anybody know anything about it?”
Tyler’s fists clenched under the edge of the woven tablecloth. If they did, would they admit it?
For an instant her family stared at Miranda without speaking. Then Theo smacked his palm against the table. “No! You can�
�t think we’d do anything to bring him here.”
Clayton cleared his throat. “No need to get riled, Theo. The thing’s worrying at her, and your sister’s got a right to ask.” He looked around the table, his clear glance seeming to measure each of them in turn. “Anybody know anything about this?”
The anger faded from Theo’s face, leaving him looking young and vulnerable. “No, Daddy.”
“No,” the twins said together.
Sallie shook her head.
“Nor I,” Clayton said. He reached across to clasp Miranda’s hand. “I understand why you wanted to ask, sugar. Anybody thinks of anything that might help, you tell Miranda right off.” He pushed his chair back. “Mind, now. Anything at all.”
That seemed to be a sign of dismissal. The family filtered out of the room until only Tyler and Miranda were left. She began stacking plates on top of one another, as precisely as if it were crucial that they lined up evenly.
Finally she looked at him. “They were telling the truth.”
“I know.” He did know. Whoever had sent that photo, for whatever reason, it wasn’t one of the people who’d sat around the table tonight.
“They’d never do anything to hurt me or Sammy.” She said it as if she expected an argument.
He had none to make. They loved her. They’d supported her and Sammy for the past eight years, when he hadn’t been a part of their lives.
They didn’t need him. Neither the woman he’d once loved nor the son he hadn’t known about needed anything he had to offer.
Had Tyler believed her family? Miranda shoved the tip of the spade into the soft earth at the corner of the front porch the next morning, her mind far from the azaleas she meant to plant.
He’d said he did. She frowned at the sandy earth she’d turned. Her people hadn’t sent Tyler the photo of Sammy. They wouldn’t. Probably next he’d want to ask her sister, then her cousins, then anyone else he could think of.
Her thoughts touched on an army of Caldwell second cousins and courtesy aunts. Everyone knew who Sammy’s father was, but they’d all known for her son’s entire life. If they’d wanted to make trouble, they could have done it any time in the last eight years.
She leaned on the shovel for a moment, glancing past the crepe myrtles that edged the yard. Sammy was at the dock, spending his Saturday morning helping David clean the boat. He could have been doing something with his father, but Tyler was upstairs in the room he’d turned into a branch office of Winchester Industries.
The really exasperating thing was the fluctuation of her feelings about that. One minute she wanted to pressure him into spending time with Sammy, the next she assured herself that it was better this way.
You’re a mess, she told herself sternly. Decide what you want and stick to it.
That was certainly one of those things easier said than done. Lord, maybe You’d better show me what I’m supposed to do in this situation, because I surely can’t figure it out for myself.
The screen door banged, and she heard footsteps on the porch.
“Are you digging or daydreaming?” Tyler leaned on the porch rail.
“Digging.” She shoved the spade in and struck a root. “We had a lilac bush here, but it died, so I’m putting in some azaleas.” She nodded toward the pots behind her. “My brothers have been promising to dig the bed for me, but they always have something more important to do.”
Tyler came down from the porch as she spoke. Before she knew what he was about, he’d grasped the spade.
“What are you doing?” Her grip tightened.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t that obvious? I’ll do the digging for you.”
“I can do it myself.” Amazing how childish that sounded.
“I’m sure you can.” The look he gave her suggested the words meant more than the obvious. “I’d like to help you, however, and you wouldn’t be so impolite as to refuse.”
She let go of the shovel and moved out of his way. “My momma taught me never to be rude.”
Tyler shoved the spade into the earth, striking the same root she’d hit.
“I guess I should have mentioned that the old roots from the lilac were still there.”
He maneuvered the blade underneath the root, prying it up. “Guess you might have.”
He’d left her with nothing to do, but she could hardly walk away. It would be better if she didn’t stare quite so obviously at the movement of his muscles under the white knit shirt he wore.
She picked up one of the potted azaleas. “Looks like that hole’s about ready for the first one.”
Tyler moved back to give her room, then knelt beside her to help slide the azalea from its pot into the hole. Together they pressed the earth around the plant.
“How long has it been since you’ve gotten your hands dirty like this?” She tamped the soil down with a trowel.
He shrugged, so close she felt the movement brush against her. “A while, I guess.”
It was too bad Sammy wasn’t here to see his parents working together on something. That might be better for him than constantly sensing their tension. But Sammy was off with his uncle because his father had had something more vital to do with his Saturday morning.
“Did you finish up whatever work was so important this morning?” She didn’t mean her question to sound quite as condemning as she feared it did.
Tyler’s expression told her he’d taken it that way. “I have a business to run, remember?”
“Don’t you take Saturdays off?”
“Maybe, when I haven’t spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday on other things.”
“Important things.” Like your son, for instance.
He leaned on the shovel, studying her face for a moment. “Is it important for you to help your family run the inn?”
The question took her by surprise. “Yes, but…that’s different.” It was, wasn’t it? “That still leaves me plenty of time for Sammy. Besides, my family depends on me.”
“The people who work for Winchester Industries depend on me. I try not to let them down.”
That was probably true, though she couldn’t help but believe his devotion to his position was more consuming than it had to be.
“Can’t your brother take some of the load?” Josh had still been in school when she and Tyler were married, but she remembered it had been assumed he’d go into the company, too. That was what Winchesters did.
“Josh doesn’t handle responsibility very well.” Tyler began digging the second hole with unnecessary force.
She sat on her heels, watching him. “Doesn’t he also work for the company?”
Tyler’s face set. “If you call having a corner office with his name on the door working for the company, I suppose he does.”
“Don’t tell me there’s a Winchester who’d rather do something else.” She said the words lightly, but a chill touched her. Was Tyler thinking that now he had a son to fill the role Josh apparently didn’t?
“Josh talks a good game.” He grabbed an azalea and shoved it into the hole. “But when I trusted him with something important to do, he let me down. I won’t make the same mistake again.”
Tyler’s expression was as impervious as granite. His brother had let him down, and he didn’t forgive that.
Her chill intensified. Tyler didn’t forgive. No matter how they managed to cooperate about Sammy, she’d best keep one thing in mind. Tyler would never forgive her for not telling him about their son.
Chapter Five
Tyler tamped the earth around the last of the shrubs, then stretched. His back felt tight from the unexpected labor, but it was a good sensation. He hadn’t done any physical work outside the gym for a long time.
“Is that it? Or are you hiding some more plants somewhere, just waiting for someone to come along and help you?”
“That’s it.” Miranda sprinkled pine bark mulch around the bushes, then smiled at him. “Thanks, Tyler. I really didn’t expect you to do this.”
“
I know. You could have done it yourself.” He followed her to the hose. She sprayed sun-warmed water over his hands.
“I could have.” A note of defensiveness touched her words. “You didn’t have to leave your work on my account.”
Was that a slap at him for working this morning instead of doing something with Sammy? He took the hose from her, holding it so she could wash her hands. She hesitated for a moment, then thrust her hands under the spray. Small hands, but strong and capable, like the rest of her.
He frowned, trying to look honestly at his actions over the last few hours. What he’d said to Miranda was true—he did have work to do, and he didn’t trust his brother to take over for him.
Unfortunately, a niggling conscience suggested that hadn’t been the only reason he’d hurried to his room after breakfast. Had he been backing off from spending time with his son, avoiding a possibly awkward encounter with Sammy?
If so, he had to do something about that, and quickly. His only reason for being here was to build some sort of relationship with his son.
Miranda turned off the hose, coiling it against the latticework beneath the porch. She had to be wondering what was going on with him. Trouble was, he didn’t know.
“Is Sammy still down at the dock?” he asked abruptly.
She nodded, a question in her eyes. “He’s helping David clean the boat.”
“Maybe I’ll see if he’d like to do something with me.” Like what? He hadn’t a clue.
“I’ll walk down with you.”
Miranda fell into step with him as he crossed the lawn, then the shell-covered path. Was she thinking he needed her intervention with Sammy?
Sunlight sparkled on the waterway between the island and the mainland. A sailboat dipped and swayed in the wind as gracefully as a dancer. Gulls circled the mast, white against a sky that was bluer than it could ever be in the city.
The weathered wooden dock stretched into the water, lined with boats on either side. He stepped onto it, his gaze held by the sight of a small figure industriously polishing the chrome trim of a white catamaran. His son. A feeling he didn’t recognize welled inside him.
