Nathan's Child

by Anne McAllister

  Now, catching Carin looking at her painting, Sierra grinned. “It’s my favorite,” she said, “because it captures the island so well. And because it reminds me of the day Dominic and I finally began to understand and trust each other—thanks to you.”

  Her smile was so warm and friendly that Carin felt as if she were being praised for something she hadn’t really done. She shrugged. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Mariah does, too. I told her she needs to buy one of the island at your show.”

  “I’ll give her one. I wanted to give you and Dominic that one.”

  But Dominic had insisted on paying her—had, in fact, tried to give her more than she’d been asking, telling her she’d given him something worth far more than her painting.

  Knowledge at last of why she’d jilted him, he’d meant. And when he’d come down in the spring he’d told her that meeting her and Lacey had opened communications between him and Sierra as well. Carin was delighted that they were so happy together. Watching him now, doting on his baby daughter, she couldn’t help but smile.

  The doorbell rang just then, and when Sierra opened the door more Wolfes spilled into the apartment.

  Carin immediately identified Rhys, a slightly harder-edged, more muscular version of Nathan and Dominic. Rhys was a member of an elite corps of firefighters who traveled the globe putting out oil and industrial fires. With him was a stunning, dark-haired woman almost as tall as he was. Something about her eyes and her smile looked familiar. Then Carin remembered that she was Sierra’s sister. She and Rhys were each carrying a child.

  “Look, Mom. More cousins!” Lacey was beaming.

  “Come meet the rest of the family,” Nathan said and, snagging Carin’s hand, drew her to her feet to introduce her to Rhys’s wife and his twins, Stephen and Elizabeth.

  Rhys gave her a hug, and Mariah did, too.

  “Hugs,” Elizabeth demanded. And Carin gave her one, too. And Stephen demanded a kiss, which he got.

  “Lucky guy,” Nathan said. “It’s more than she’ll give me.”

  “You gotta learn how to ask,” Rhys said with a grin.

  Carin had hoped she would be able to remain quietly aloof. There was no reason for her to get involved. It was fine for Lacey to be included. But this was Nathan’s family, not hers.

  Try telling the Wolfes that.

  They didn’t believe in aloof. Not even Nathan, the quietest of the brothers, was quiet tonight.

  Put the three brothers together and the noise level rose exponentially. There was immediate talk of the Yankees and the Mets. Discussion of soccer and diving. Dominic and Rhys wanted Nathan to go to a ball game. Rhys and Nathan wanted Dominic to take time off to go fishing.

  “You wouldn’t think Nathan came to work,” Sierra said.

  “All they do is talk about fishing,” Mariah agreed.

  Sierra rolled her eyes. “Come on.” She grabbed Carin and hauled her into the kitchen. “You can supervise me making a salad.”

  “Or a mess,” Mariah said. “And we can warn you about getting involved with a Wolfe.”

  “I’m not involved with a Wolfe,” Carin protested.

  “Yeah, right.” Mariah obviously didn’t believe that for a minute. She put the lasagna she’d brought into the oven to heat it.

  “You just keep thinking that and you won’t know what hit you,” Sierra agreed as she tore up lettuce and tossed it in a bowl. “They get what they want, those Wolfe boys.”

  “Nathan doesn’t,” Carin said firmly.

  Both sisters looked at her, then at each other. “Maybe we’re just pushovers,” Mariah said to her sister. “Too easy. We should be tougher. Like Carin. After all Carin dumped your husband.”

  “I didn’t—” Carin’s face flamed. “I mean—”

  “Jilted him, then,” Sierra said, calling a spade a spade. “Sounds to me like he deserved it. And he didn’t deserve you.”

  “Whereas,” Mariah said dryly, “he definitely deserves Sierra!”

  Sierra gave a wicked grin and chuckled in a way that made Carin laugh, too.

  “The question is,” Mariah said, “does Nathan deserve Carin?”

  They both looked at her. “Does he?” Sierra asked.

  “We’re not—I don’t—” Carin stopped, at a loss to explain.

  “He has asked you to marry him, hasn’t he?” Sierra stopped tearing lettuce and fixed Carin with a steady gaze.

  “Yes, but—”

  “You need to make him pay first,” Mariah finished for her.

  “I—”

  “But then you need to marry him,” Sierra said. “Because he’s Lacey’s father.”

  “I don’t—”

  “And you love him,” Mariah said quietly.

  Carin opened her mouth to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come. They all looked at each other, the truth settling in.

  Then suddenly Rhys appeared in the doorway with a twin in each arm. “They’re starving. They’re starting to chew on the furniture. When’s dinner?”

  “Coming right up,” Sierra answered for her sister. “Go wash up. There’s the bell again. Tell Dominic to answer the door,” she added as the bell rang. “That’ll be Douglas.” Then when Rhys left, she turned her gaze on Carin again.

  “Don’t waste your love,” she said. “It’s too precious.”

  “Rhys almost blew it,” Mariah added. “But finally he came around.”

  “And so did Dominic. You have to start somewhere,” Sierra agreed.

  “Ah, there they are!” Nathan’s father, Douglas, appeared, beaming in the doorway. “The three most beautiful women in the world!”

  He kissed each of his daughters-in-law, and then he kissed Carin, stepped back, paused and held her cheeks between his palms. “Ah, Carin. When are you going to make an honest man out of that son of mine?”

  “Dad!” Nathan came up behind him and got a headlock on his old man. “Leave the poor woman alone.”

  “I was only asking,” Douglas protested, slipping out of Nathan’s grasp. “Just want her to know we’re all for it. You do know that, don’t you, Carin?”

  Carin flushed. “Yes, Mr., er…yes, Douglas.”

  “Dad sounds better, don’t you think?” He winked.

  “I’m capable of doing my own proposing,” Nathan said through his teeth.

  Douglas turned his gaze on his son. “But are you capable of getting her to say yes?”

  A tide of red washed above the collar of Nathan’s shirt. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

  “No fighting in my kitchen.” Sierra advanced on them with a stirring spoon. “Out! Both of you.” She thrust a handful of silverware at her father-in-law. “Make yourself useful. Set the table.”

  “Douglas has a subtle touch, doesn’t he?” Mariah said with a grin.

  “Oh, yes,” Sierra agreed. They looked at each other and laughed. Then they grinned at Carin.

  “He’s very fond of you,” Mariah told her.

  “I jilted his son.”

  “But you gave him a granddaughter. That cancels things out.”

  Carin wasn’t sure she believed that. But Douglas certainly did have a soft spot for Lacey. And, happily, he didn’t say anything more during dinner about her getting together with Nathan.

  Neither did anyone else. The talk was easy and general, and Carin let it wash over her as she listened to the various threads of conversation—the merits of a particular Yankee pitcher, the latest rock star Mariah had interviewed, the best fishing spots on the north shore of Long Island, whether or not Lily was teething—and enjoyed it all in spite of herself.

  This was the sort of family she’d always dreamed of having.

  An only child raised by a widowed father who had more time and interest for his business than he’d ever had for her, Carin had always dreamed of being a part of a family like this. When she’d agreed with her father’s estimation of Dominic as a good potential husband, it had been in part because she knew he had b
rothers and she’d hoped to become part of his family circle.

  Of course she’d ruined that herself. And since then she’d learned that families could be created by love and effort, that the same blood didn’t have to run in people’s veins to make them family.

  She had her own “created family” on the island. Maurice and Estelle included her and Lacey in their holiday gatherings. And in the past few years she and Hugh and a few of the other young unattached people on Pelican Cay had created a family of sorts.

  But those “families,” wonderful though they were, didn’t yet have much history—not like the Wolfe brothers, who were, even in the middle of a lovely dinner, reminiscing about baseball games of their youth and whose bike had popped a tire at an inopportune moment and which brother caught the biggest fish the last time they were all at Pelican Cay, and not like Mariah and Sierra, who shared a history, too.

  How wonderful it would have been to have had a family who would share such memories.

  Even as she thought it, Carin watched Lacey’s expressions as she listened to her father and her uncles teasing and battling and arguing with each other. Her daughter’s gaze went from one to the other, as if she was watching a tennis match. And all the while she was grinning so much her smile seemed to wrap two times around her face.

  Carin tried to remember the last time Lacey had looked that happy.

  It was the night she’d come back from Nathan’s—the day he’d arrived—when she knew at last that her father loved her and that he’d come to Pelican Cay determined to make her part of his life.

  Oh, Lacey.

  “Tell me about your accident,” Douglas requested, interrupting Carin’s thoughts. “Nathan said he was terrified when you went over the handlebars. He thought you’d killed yourself.”

  She dragged her gaze away from Lacey’s face. “I should have been going slower. I had to swerve when Zeno ran in front of me.”

  “Zeno?” Douglas’s brows hiked. “You have a wolf on the island?”

  “Not a wolf. A dog.”

  And so they talked about Zeno. And about her show. About her painting and who was handling the business while she was here.

  Douglas said he was thrilled that she and Nathan were going to be part of this show together. But he didn’t take advantage of the subject to ask her again when she was going to marry his son. He just talked about Nathan’s photography, about how well Nathan was doing, about how proud he was of him.

  Dominic poured more wine in everyone’s glasses. Lacey took the twins out into the living room and built block towers with them. Rhys challenged Nathan to a game of pool.

  Dominic tapped Carin on the shoulder. “The old man must be boring you by now. How about coming to talk to me while I clean up in the kitchen?”

  “He wasn’t—” Carin began to protest.

  But Douglas stood up. “Yes, yes. You go on with Dominic. Don’t let an old windbag waste your time.”

  “You didn’t want to hear him sing Nathan’s praises anyway, did you?” Dominic asked her.

  Carin stammered, unsure how to answer that.

  Dominic just laughed. “Come along.”

  If anyone had told her that she would ever stand in Dominic Wolfe’s kitchen, talking to him while he loaded the dishwasher, she would have said they were insane. Not even when she had been going to marry Dominic had she considered that he would unbend that far. But he acted as if he was no stranger to dirty plates and pots and pans.

  And while he did it, he talked about Pelican Cay, about going back there with Sierra. “I was scared to,” he said.

  “Scared?” Carin blinked, surprised at the confidence he was sharing.

  Dominic shrugged. “It was sex at first, you know, between us. At least that’s all we thought it was. But it wasn’t just sex for long. It was Sierra. I cared a lot about her. I loved her. But I didn’t know how she felt.” There was still a raw aching sound in his voice when he spoke of those days.

  “She loves you,” Carin said quickly, trying to reassure him. Any fool could see that.

  Dominic grinned. “I know that now.”

  “I’m glad,” she told him sincerely. “I’m glad you’re happy. I worried about it. About you. But I couldn’t—”

  “I know you couldn’t marry me. It’s a good thing you didn’t. I just wish you could have told me why. I wish I’d let you tell me why.” His mouth twisted wryly. But then he shrugged and smiled again, though his eyes grew serious. “I hope you and Nathan can be happy, too.”

  Carin wet her lips. What could she say to that? It wasn’t the same as with him and Sierra.

  “I hope so, too,” she said at last.

  It was close to midnight by the time they went home with Rhys and Mariah and the twins. Stephen and Lizzie were both asleep, and Lacey was yawning madly as Rhys flagged down two taxis and directed them to their brownstone across the park.

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Carin began.

  “You won’t,” Rhys said flatly, “unless you make me take you down to midtown to some hotel.”

  Carin sighed and settled back against the seat, once more giving in to the inevitable, “I won’t do that.”

  Rhys and Mariah owned the whole brownstone they lived in. They had two tenants on the upper floors, but the third-floor studio apartment that looked out onto the garden was vacant.

  “We keep it for friends,” Mariah said as she led Carin and Lacey up the stairs. Nathan had been deputized to help Rhys get the two sleeping children into their beds. “And brothers. And their families.”

  “I’m not family,” Carin protested.

  “I am,” Lacey said firmly.

  “Of course you are,” Mariah said. “And Nathan is.”

  “Nathan?”

  “Oh, dear. I just assumed… Would you rather Nathan slept downstairs with us.”

  “We stayed with him when Mom got hurt,” Lacey said. “He slept on the couch right by her room. He carried her to the bathroom every day,” she told her aunt Mariah.

  After that revelation, Carin could hardly say she wanted him downstairs. “It’s all right,” Carin mumbled.

  And then she discovered the sleeping arrangements.

  It was a one-room apartment. The “sofa” was a trundle bed and there was a high built-in queen-size platform bed which was separated from the rest of the room by the two-foot high carpeted “wall” that enclosed two sides of it, giving only the illusion of privacy.

  When Nathan finally came upstairs half an hour later, Carin had done the best she could.

  Lacey, in pajamas, was tucked into the platform bed. The trundle was made up for Nathan.

  “I’ll just slip in alongside Lacey,” Carin told him. At least they would have the two-foot wall between them.

  “With your arm?”

  Oh, hell. She hadn’t even thought of that. She was so used to her cast by now that she barely gave it any thought. It was an inconvenience to her. But it would be more than that to Lacey, who was a restless sleeper. Lacey would be banging into her all night.

  “I’ll pull out the other trundle bed for you,” Nathan offered with a grin.

  He did—and lined it up right next to his. The room was now virtually a wall-to-wall bed—with Carin right next to Nathan.

  “Isn’t this cozy?” He grinned.

  Carin gave him a hard look and didn’t deign to reply.

  “I think it’s cool.” Lacey shoved herself up on her pillow and peered over the little wall. “I know you said I was going to get a surprise,” she said to her mother, eyes shining. “But this is so cool. All of us being here together like a real family.” Lacey’s gaze went from Carin to Nathan. “This is the best surprise ever.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  OF ALL THE WOLFE BROTHERS, Nathan was the born fisherman.

  Dominic and Rhys were fast-moving, take-charge, do-it-now men who gnashed their teeth if the fish weren’t biting. They fished, but mostly they argued about where they ought to be fishing, what kin
d of bait to use, what time to go out, when to come in, and which one had caught the bigger fish.

  The fact was, Nathan almost always caught the biggest fish because he was the one with the patience. He was the one who studied the currents, checked the depth, considered the temperature and the time of year and made his plans accordingly.

  And then he sat. And sat. And sat.

  He always knew what he was after, and he was always willing to wait. A guy didn’t value something unless he worked for it, Nathan figured. And he valued it even more if he’d endured some hardship and frustration along the way.

  What was true of fishing was also true of his photography and his books. They were products of much thought, long hours, vast patience and hard work.

  So was courting Carin.

  And if thought, long hours, vast patience and a fair amount of work had anything to do with it, the way Nathan figured it, he ought to value Carin more than anything or anyone on earth.

  Talk about patience, endurance, frustration! God Almighty!

  Here he was in bed lying mere inches from her—inches!—and she was sound asleep.

  Carin wasn’t frustrated. Not a bit! She had glared at him as if he’d manipulated the whole disastrous sleeping arrangements bit, then she’d brushed her teeth, kissed Lacey good-night, and climbed into the trundle bed right next to his as if she didn’t even notice him.

  So what else was new? Nathan thought, grinding his teeth.

  He’d done his damnedest to make this evening a success, to make her enjoy herself, to encourage her to feel a part of the family—and what did he have to show for it?

  Zip. Nada. Zilch. Not a damn thing.

  Unless you counted the fact that she was now comfortable enough around him to fall asleep virtually in the same bed with him as if he weren’t even there! Lots of comfort in that revelation, huh? Nathan practically snorted in disgust.

  She’d spent the whole evening basically ignoring him. She’d seemed to enjoy his sisters-in-law. She’d played with his nieces and nephew. She’d chatted easily with his father and Rhys. She’d even gone off into the kitchen and, he hoped, had a heart-to-heart with Dominic. But had it done any good?