Temporary Father

“Hey, Mom, I’m not perfect.”

She hardly recognized the mature, strangely guilty voice. “Something wrong?”

“You’re bugging me. I’m busy.”

She scooped his laundry out of the hamper and then snatched up any clothing near it on the floor. “I’m not bugging you more than usual. What else is up?”

“I’m old enough to decide when to take showers and clean my room.”

Maybe he was, but why would that make him look lost instead of arrogant? Where was her son inside those empty eyes? “I wish you’d tell me.”

“It’s you, Mom, always on my back.” He started playing again. If only someone would make truth serum available to mothers. Breach a few civil rights and find out everything you need to know to keep a child safe.

Beth added Eli’s things to hers and then maneuvered the whole mess down the back stairs. The laundry room was also part of Mrs. Carleton’s empire, but Beth disliked letting the other woman wait on her and Eli.

She turned on the water in the washer and flipped the hamper’s contents onto the Formica folding table. Whites. Colors. Cold. Hot. Impossible. The latter pile would include Eli’s lucky skateboarding socks.

“Beth?”

Uttering a brief, humiliating scream, she landed safely back on the floor. “Van—do you have to sneak up on me?”

Her brother stood in the doorway, a half-eaten sandwich dangling from his left hand, one of those magazines that loved to cover Aidan Nikolas in his right.

“Isn’t it late to start laundry?” he asked.

“Not when I have to work on the lodge tomorrow.” She’d put her pennies together to have the charred remains knocked down. Removing it to clear the lot for new construction seemed sure to take her the next year. She pretended to be vitally interested in the clothing so she didn’t have to look at him. Should she tell him what Jonathan Barr had said? She was hardly in the position to offer help and he must not want her to know or he’d have mentioned it.

She turned instead to the troubling man who could probably help both of them out of their troubles. “Why didn’t you tell me about Aidan Nikolas?”

“I did.” He bit into his sandwich.

“You’re dropping lettuce on the floor.”

“I’m not your son.”

“Are we all in bad moods tonight? Mrs. Carleton keeps an immaculate house, and I hate seeing her have to pick up after us.”

Van bent down and picked up his lettuce. “I can see why Eli gets fed up.”

Taking his shot to heart, she stopped. “You told me someone was coming. You didn’t mention my possible deliverance was moving in down the hill.” She felt guilty. Aidan had been nice to her. For a second—only a second—she’d been attracted to him. It wasn’t polite to think of him in terms of the money he handed out for investment each quarter.

“How’d you find out?”

“I ran into him while I was out.” For some reason she didn’t admit she’d thought he was dying. Hearing a cough that had sounded more like choking, she’d gone straight through Van’s landscaping.

“Something’s on your mind, Beth?”

“Salvation,” she said.

He studied his sandwich. “Jonathan Barr didn’t give you the loan?”

She turned back to her laundry and tossed Eli’s blue soccer jersey on top of her underwear.

Barr’s voice whispered ingratiatingly in her ear again. “From what I hear, your brother will soon be asking for a loan so we can’t count on him to bail you out if you can’t repay.”

Van didn’t want to talk about it. Neither would she.

She shook her head.

“Let me help you,” Van said as promptly as if he had no secret need of his own.

“I can’t take money from you.” Nor could she look at him. She fished the jersey out and put it in the pile with Eli’s dark-colored sweatshirts. “I have my own two feet to stand on.”

“Why do I have money if not to help my family?”

Touched by the offer of his last dime, she hugged him before she realized he might wonder why. “Thanks, but I can’t. You know how it is. Campbell thinks steady work is a bad habit. He’s no example to our son. I have to get a business loan from someone who doesn’t love me.” She piled her jeans and Eli’s on the end of the table and then started loading light colors into the wash. “But I was thinking…” She wouldn’t be human if she couldn’t see safety in a venture capitalist. “Is Aidan Nikolas here to do a deal with you?”

“With me?” He stared at her, and then he looked away. He was hiding something, as surely as Eli. “What could Aidan do for me?”

She watched detergent spin into the water. “Good.”

“Good, what?”

“Good that he’s not here because of your business.” Dark eyes in a pale face floated into her memory. He could save her lodge, with an amount that would be nothing to him. “Jonathan Barr only wants to offer me enough to rebuild the lodge as it was. I told him I wanted to make improvements so that families would come instead of just fishermen. He thinks I won’t be able to repay it.” She shut the washer lid, trying to hide her frustration. “My typical visitor will continue to be a guy who can’t stay long and won’t pay much for the bare essentials. I have to get ahead, Van.”

He touched her arm. Did she imagine the unease in his eyes? “That’s why you’re glad Aidan’s not here to work with me?”

“I’d like to ask him for—”

“No, Beth. Didn’t you see he’s been sick?”

“What are you talking about?” His wife had died a year ago. She vaguely remembered that, but the news hadn’t mentioned anything about him except his successes. “I have to ask for help.” She opened the utility closet and took out a broom to sweep grass that had fallen from Eli’s jeans onto the tile floor. “He’s my match made in heaven. I need investment. He helps businesses that can’t make it on their own.”

“He takes those businesses over. He doesn’t give people money and expect nothing in return.”

“I’ll pay him back. You’ve seen my projections.” Her spreadsheets were an inch thick. “What would he want with a lodge in Honesty, Virginia?”

“That was my next question. Any small return you can offer him isn’t worth his effort. He looks for profit, not the golden glow of having been generous.”

She stared at her brother, hoping he wasn’t speaking from experience. “I just have to make him care. It takes devotion to make a business work. And determination. I have both.”

Van got a dustpan and held it for her. “When did you start believing in fairy tales?”

“Since my banker let me down. I need a fairy godmother, and don’t try to talk me out of it. If he’s not here to work with you, you’re too late and I’m too desperate.”

“He had a heart attack, Beth.” Van dumped the dustpan into the wastebasket and took the broom from her. “Aidan came here to recuperate. Do you want to kill him?”

CHAPTER TWO