For His Son's Sake

“Shore birds, mostly. Like herons and egrets.”

Could those blue eyes get any wider? “Do you own a heron, Kenzie?”

She laughed and felt something wicked stirring inside her. Maybe because Ross Calder was standing there looking so impatient, as though letting Angus talk to her was the last thing he wanted. “Tell you what. If you’d like, and your father says okay, you can come over to my place tomorrow and see for yourself. I think you’ll be pretty impressed.”

Angus whirled. “Can we?”

“We?”

“I can’t drive myself, can I?”

Kenzie bit her lip to keep from grinning. He was a cheeky little Brit all right, and more of his father’s son than had been evident at first.

“We’ll see.” Ross’s tone didn’t hint at what he was thinking. But his expression made Kenzie wonder if maybe he wasn’t having trouble making up his mind. He almost appeared to be feeling uncertain about whether to give in to the boy’s wishes or tell him no outright. Surely an odd reaction coming from a man who seemed as self-confident as Ross Calder?

“Please?”

“Angus. We can talk about it tomorrow. Right now we’re late for the movie.”

“Better hurry,” Kenzie agreed. “It’s the only theater around and it fills up fast. Come on over after ten, okay?” She gave them directions to her house, said goodbye and walked off feeling pretty pleased with herself for having made up Ross Calder’s mind for him.

Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have. After all, she wasn’t stupid, and she strongly suspected that Ross Calder didn’t want to have another thing to do with her. You’d have to be blind to miss the body language. He was obviously used to giving orders and having them followed. And his orders were clear: Keep away from my kid.

Not that Kenzie didn’t respect those wishes. But it irked her that he could be so standoffish when Angus was so much the opposite.

Besides, she hadn’t given him a single reason to dislike her, had she? Was she sending out the vibes of an ax murderess or something?

Oh, the heck with Ross Calder. Angus’s reaction when he saw her birds up close would be well worth his father’s unwilling participation. Kenzie had joined the local shorebird rescue society about a month after moving to Buxton. Her whitewashed cottage had had an aviary in the back, and when Kenzie’s landlord had told her that the former tenants had been rescue volunteers, Kenzie had immediately decided to do the same. The moment she had been given her first orphaned baby bird to hand feed, she’d been hooked. Now she had more than a dozen feathered orphans under her care, and a tour of the aviary was a real treat for any youngster. Kenzie ought to know—she’d hosted Hatteras Elementary School field trips often enough.

But even as she stowed her bags in the back of her pickup, Kenzie’s thoughts returned to Ross. Why did he act so uptight all the time? If he wasn’t careful he’d wipe that sunny smile off Angus’s face for good.

“I should know,” Kenzie muttered ruefully.

But she wasn’t going to think about her own father right now. No, sir. She’d only end up feeling as grumpy as Angus’s dad.

It was a beautiful evening and she intended to enjoy it. Once she got home and finished her chores, she was going to sit on the dock, dangle her feet in the water of Pamlico Sound and watch the sun go down. And she would pretend she didn’t have a care in the world.

Which, at the moment, she hadn’t. She’d finished enough drawings to meet publication deadlines until the end of the week, and she didn’t have any appointments in Norfolk until Thursday. That meant she was free to do whatever she wanted tomorrow, a delicious thought after all the work of the past few weeks, when she’d sat up all night waiting for the drawing muse to hit and enduring harassing phone calls from her editor, because Maureen hated missed deadlines.

As for Ross and Angus Calder, if they didn’t show up tomorrow she wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Only, to be honest, a little disappointed.

I must be crazy, Ross was thinking to himself. Taking Angus to a strange woman’s house to look at her birds. What on earth did the kid want to do that for? After all, he’d spent nearly an hour that morning tossing bread crusts to the seagulls on the back deck. Surely Kenzie Daniels’s birds couldn’t be as interesting as those dive-bombing scavengers that had made the boy laugh out loud for the first time since coming to America? Or worth a drive in the growing heat of the day?

But here he was, easing the rental car onto the highway heading south toward the town of Buxton.

“Hey, look!” Angus pointed to the black-and-white Cape Hatteras lighthouse on the horizon. “Is that the one we climbed yesterday?”

“Sure is.”

A few years ago the lighthouse had been moved several thousand feet inland, away from the eroding beach where it had stood for more than a hundred years. Ross had enjoyed studying the photos of this engineering phenomenon at the small National Park Ranger Station nearby, but Angus had been more excited about the climb itself.

They had made it all the way to the top without stopping, Angus ducking beneath the legs of the tourists puffing along ahead of them in order to be there first. He hadn’t wanted to go back down again for the longest time, and Ross had allowed him to look his fill of the ocean, the beach, the rooftops of the houses far below, pleased to see him so animated.

Admittedly it was the first time Ross had felt a little bit at ease with his son. Not worried that he was going to say or do something to make the boy withdraw into himself, the way he had when they’d first met in England after Penelope’s death.

What a bleak meeting, Ross thought, recalling how awkwardly he had stood in his former in-laws’ icy drawing room while Angus, led in by a servant, had ducked his head and refused to say hello. Penelope’s parents weren’t even there. They had flown to Majorca, hoping the sunshine would help them get over their only daughter’s death, which had occurred several weeks earlier when Penelope’s commuter plane had crashed while carrying her on holiday. They had left no message for Ross, although they had known he was coming to take his son to America—nor, apparently, had they told Angus about it, either.

Angus had been unaware of the recent upheaval in his life—that his father, having only recently learned of his existence, had tried to see him, only to be denied visitation rights by his mother. When no amount of pleading, arguing or, finally, threatening had swayed Penelope from her stubborn stance, Ross had reluctantly resorted to intervention from a court of law.

A lot of good that had done him, he thought briefly. Not only had he unleashed a media frenzy thanks to the Archers’ well-known name, but Angus had been spirited away to some isolated Norfolk estate. And Penelope, pleading a fragile constitution, had flown off to Naples with some millionaire boyfriend, providing even more fodder for the gossip columns.

Grimacing at the memory, he massaged the tight spot in his chest. He didn’t like thinking back on those days or dwelling on how little progress he and Angus had made since then.

On the other hand, Angus seemed to have had fun being with him yesterday and there was no reason things should be different today. Maybe a visit to MacKenzie Daniels’s birds would recapture a little of the spontaneity they’d felt while touring the lighthouse together.

That, in effect, was why he’d agreed to take Angus to Buxton.

On the other hand, he had to admit that he, too, was a little bit curious. Not so much about MacKenzie Daniels’s birds, but about the woman herself.

Of course, his curiosity was purely academic. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he felt guilty at how curtly he’d treated her on the beach yesterday. He’d not meant to do so, of course. But when she’d pointed out to him how dangerous it was to let Angus go near the water by himself he’d all but panicked at the thought of what might have happened, and at how absolutely ignorant he was of the commonsense rules of parenting. So he’d retreated behind a facade of rudeness, telling himself that he resented Kenzie Daniels for the sweetly easy way she treated his son—and the way Angus responded to her.

Okay, so maybe he did resent her a little. Ross didn’t care to admit it, but you’d have to be blind not to see how much more relaxed and outgoing Angus seemed in Kenzie’s presence. Far more so than he’d ever been with his father.

Ross thought back to the way Kenzie had lectured him for letting Angus go down to the beach alone, and a cold hand settled once again around his heart. Had she been right in saying Angus was too young to be trusted near the water? But how was he supposed to know these things?

Cripes, it was proving harder to be a father than it was to practice law! Maybe Alex hadn’t been entirely wrong. There were so many rules to learn and so many things you had to figure out intuitively. How on earth was he ever going to get the hang of it?

“Kenzie’s lucky to live here,” Angus said suddenly.

Ross realized the sand dunes on either side of the highway had given way to the small shops and filling stations of Buxton. “Think so?” Ross hadn’t been too impressed with the town yesterday although, to be fair, they’d turned off at the lighthouse without seeing much of it. But looking around now he wasn’t inclined to change his mind, except for liking the fact that Buxton was less developed than Avon, crowded as it was with rental houses, restaurants and souvenir shops.

“What kind of birds do you think she has?” It was a question Angus had been asking pretty regularly since last night. Even the comedy he and his father had seen at the theater hadn’t held his interest as long as the thought of Kenzie’s birds.

“She said something about herons and egrets,” Ross reminded him. Although why anyone would want to keep one of those as a pet was beyond him. He didn’t like animals in general, and certainly couldn’t see anyone owning anything more exotic than a goldfish.

“Look, isn’t this where she said to turn? Right after the fire station?”

The road sign read Soundside Lane. “Good eye, son.”

Angus grinned shyly. “Thanks.”

The car bumped down a narrow paved road past thinning trees and marshland. In the distance the waters of Pamlico Sound shimmered in the sunshine. The road ended at a curving shell driveway. Ross recognized the old black pickup truck he’d seen outside the bait-and-tackle shop last night.

“Looks like this is it.”

A sandy path led to the house, which was built at ground level, not elevated like newer ones designed to meet federal flood regulations. Its age showed in the weathered white siding and tin roof. A gnarled oak tree shaded the front deck. Ross had noticed yesterday that, unlike Avon, Buxton had a number of older cottages like this one, which must have been built by the original families who had populated the island. They had probably planted the trees, too, because the oak in this front yard had obviously been around for half a century or more.