An Unlikely Father

“I want a mutually beneficial relationship with him,” she said. “I want him to notice me as a serious businesswoman in this town because I intend to approach him about a financial proposition.”

“A business arrangement?”

“Here it is in a nutshell, Claire. I want the charter business Ethan could throw my way once the resort is reopened. And I figure he’s more likely to be agreeable to a business arrangement if he finds me a little more pleasing to his eyes. If you’ve taught me anything, Claire, it’s that a woman who has mastered the traits of…” Helen could hardly say the words since they were so alien to her vocabulary, her way of living. “…of grace, confidence, attractiveness, can accomplish a lot more than one who just bullies her way through life because she knows how to run her mouth. I haven’t cared much about any of that until now. But now it’s important.”

“Why now?”

If you only knew. If I could only tell you, but I can’t, because I don’t know how this story is going to end. “You know the charter business just keeps my head above water,” she said. “Finn and I aren’t getting anywhere. But Ethan and Anderson Enterprises have brought opportunity to Heron Point. Other business owners in town know that and plan to take advantage of it. Why shouldn’t I?”

It was very simple, really. Other women used their wiles to get what they wanted, why not Helen Sweeney? But first she had to find those feminine traits that must be hiding somewhere underneath her coarse exterior. All Helen needed was more business and more money, which would lead to a way out of this horrible moral dilemma she’d found herself in.

Men had tromped on her all her life, and she had the emotional bruises to prove it. Now she had the chance to maybe come out the winner in a relationship. And who would get hurt, anyway? Not Helen, who, for the sake of the Bean, was determined to keep her emotions under control for once and regard Ethan Anderson only as a means to an end. Even if she learned a few tricks from Claire, and managed to grab Ethan’s attention for a while, when the resort was up and running and his work here was done, he would simply dust off his Dockers, get on with his life and forget Helen Sweeney ever existed.

Helen would just have to ignore the fact that Ethan was so darned good-looking, and so, for lack of a better word, nice. She could really fall for a guy who was so unlike any of the men she’d dated in the past. But talk about a worthless fantasy! Helen could never interest Ethan for the long haul. He was a Manhattan penthouse and she was a cottage by the Gulf. He was a Montblanc pen and she was a fishing rod.

So she’d forget his obvious attributes and approach him on a purely rational level. And she’d have what she needed, for once, a way to support her family thanks to a few extra fishermen willing to pay three hundred bucks for a trip into the Gulf. And he’d still have what he’d always had—houses and cars and an enviable New York lifestyle.

Claire’s voice brought her back from where her wishful thinking had taken her. “So, that’s what this is all about? You want Ethan to take you seriously as a businesswoman and send you customers?”

“That’s it. I just need an image improvement course to make it happen.”

“Okay. I don’t have any doubt that we can make Ethan notice you,” Claire said. “Let’s do it.” She stood up and headed to the back room. “It might be fun. Who knows what will come of this?”

As soon as Claire disappeared into the back, the shop door opened. Jack came in, followed by Ethan. And Helen groaned. After all her elaborate scheming here she was, face-to-face with the man again, and she was still plain old Helen, a woman with a serious problem and only one hope of solving it.

Jane ran up to the man who would soon be her stepfather. “Are we still going for pizza, Jack?”

“As long as you’re still picking up the tab, kiddo,” he teased. He looked at Helen. “Why don’t you come with us?”

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“Of course she will,” Claire said, entering from the back room. “You’ll come too, won’t you, Ethan?”

Helen stared at him, tried to decipher the unreadable look on his face. Her confidence plunged. How was she going to make herself interesting to this man if he couldn’t even stand to sit across from her in a pizza joint?

Just when she was certain that half a piece of chocolate cake was all she would ever get from Ethan Anderson, he hitched one shoulder and said, “Sure, why not?”

It wasn’t a rousing victory, but it was better than nothing.

CHAPTER FOUR

PETULA DEERING’S SEVEN-YEAR-OLD compact car rolled to a stop in front of the weathered cedar cottage at the edge of the Gulf. Pet got out and headed to the front door. “Three times a week,” she mumbled. “For the past six years I’ve parked in the same spot and walked up this sidewalk at least three times a week.” She stared at the old cement slabs under her shoes. “Even the cracks are the same. They’ve gone unpatched for six years.”

Pet had moved to Heron Point to get away from routine. All her life, she avoided the ruts that trapped so many people while life passed them by. She’d even changed husbands three times, burying the last one and sending the first two packing. Yet here she was, crazy about a man who kept her tied to an emotional string, never moving forward, yet never letting go.

But in the last few weeks she’d sensed change in the air in Heron Point, and she’d begun to long for the old excitement in her own life. People in town were enthusiastic again, hopeful, and Pet was feeling it, too. Unfortunately, her biggest challenge was to get Finn Sweeney to accept that change was good, because it was way past time he admitted that he should change his twenty-five-year bachelor status and ask her to marry him. That’s all she wanted, really—a firm commitment from the man she adored—and she would have all the excitement she needed.

As she approached the entrance to the cottage, Andy stood up from his spot in front of the fireplace and ambled to the screen door. He emitted a low-pitched whine of welcome when she came inside and swished his great golden tail in anticipation of her attention. While she patted his head, it occurred to her that too often there was more life in this arthritic old dog than there was in Finn. Well, maybe she could do something about that.

Finn wheeled his chair around from in front of the television and smiled. “Hello, beautiful.”

He always called her by some form of endearment, and she loved that about him. She was fifty-nine years old and certainly no longer beautiful if she ever had been. But she was interesting looking. She kept her platinum hair long and tied with ribbons and leather and fancy clips. She wore ankle-length, flowing garments that masked her middle-age flaws and accentuated her still-positive qualities. She kept her lavender eyes, which Finn said either beguiled or bewitched him, depending on her mood, sparkling with penciled outlines in shades of pink and sapphire.

“Hello, handsome,” she said as she walked between Finn and the television to deposit her enormous tote bag on the sofa. As she passed, he grabbed a fistful of gauzy skirt and pulled her back onto his lap. She landed with a low chortle and nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck. “It’s a good thing you don’t have feeling in these legs or you’d be hollering about my weight.”

“Ha! I’d never complain about that. Besides, I’ve got feeling where I need it, and you are lighting my fire, woman.”

She laughed and stood up. Okay. There were still moments of pure excitement in her life after all. “Hold that thought, old man. I’ve brought your dinner from work. I don’t want you passing out from lack of nutrition.”

She spread the top of her bag and took out a sack from the Green Door Café. “Snapper sandwich, fries and coleslaw,” she said. “It was the special today.”

Finn had already returned his attention to the television. “Damn news,” he said. “Damn Republicans. I miss Walter Cronkite. At least he could deliver the news without depressing the hell out of a person.”

Pet warmed his dinner and brought it out on a tray with a glass of iced tea. He turned off the television and began eating. “So, any news from town today?” he asked.

This was her chance. “Oh, you bet. Since that fella from Anderson Enterprises arrived, everybody’s talking about the reopening of Dolphin Run.”

He grunted, dipped a fry in ketchup. “Bunch of damn fools to get all riled up over an Anderson in town.”

Pet ignored him and pressed on. “Everybody’s making plans,” she said. “The town council’s talking about sprucing up Island Avenue. Larry hired a contractor to give him a quote on fixing up the Green Door’s outside eating area. He wants to expand and add new lighting, maybe some of those outdoor heaters so we can keep the patio open even in the cold months.

“Claire hired a couple of guys to paint the town hall. She’s picked a nice shade of peach. And I saw new porch furniture at the Heron Point Hotel today.” Pet took a sip of her iced tea. “It’s exciting, Finn. Really it is. Change is good, you know. Keeps us young.”

Finn stared at the television as if he hadn’t turned it off, his way of avoiding eye contact with her, she supposed. “Not if it means Archie Anderson is coming to town,” he said. “That kind of change will ruin Heron Point, you mark my words.”

Being a self-proclaimed spiritual person, Pet didn’t rise to anger quickly. She’d found it easy to maintain a calm sense of being in Heron Point. This little town made hibernating bears out of the most aggressive beasts. But she was angry now. She set her tea glass on the floor, crossed her arms over her knees and leaned so close to Finn that he actually jerked back a couple of inches.

And she blasted him. “Finn Sweeney, I am sick of hearing you spew all this negativity about Archie Anderson. For over a month now you’ve berated the man and his company without offering one bit of concrete evidence to support your contempt.” She sat back and let her gaze wander slowly over his features from the top of his head to his shoulders. “There’s a bad aura about you, has been for weeks. You’re under a psychic cloud, while everybody else in Heron Point is standing in the sunshine.”

His face pinched up, so for a moment his bushy gray eyebrows seemed to connect with his moustache and beard. A hairy monster about to explode. “You don’t like it, Petula, there’s the door.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like me to leave you alone to stew in the cauldron of discontent you’re trying to brew up for this town. Well, it’s not going to happen because I’m not going anywhere unless it’s out to Dolphin Run to do a little investigating of my own. I guarantee you I can walk inside that big ol’ place and sense what’s going on as fast as you can snap your fingers.” She snapped her own in front of his face to prove her point. “I’ll find out if there are ghosts around that run-down resort. I don’t need you to tell me.”

His brows drew together in a threatening frown. “You stay away from Dolphin Run.”

“I will not. At least not until I get some answers from you.”

He stared at her, his gray eyes glittering. Just when she thought steam might come out of his ears, he said, “All right then, Petula, what’re the damn questions?”

Now she was getting somewhere. “How do you know Archie Anderson? Why do you hate him? What did a big financier from Manhattan ever do to you, a fisherman from Heron Point? What connection do you have with Dolphin Run? How…”

He held up a hand. “Hold your horses, Pet. You’re making my head spin.” He took a deep breath.

She waited.

He clasped his hands in his lap and stared at them a full minute before speaking so softly she had to strain to hear him. “Forty-seven years ago a boy drowned off the dock at Dolphin Run. And a twenty-one-year-old man tried to save him and nearly lost his own life in the process. And it was all Archie Anderson’s doing.” She gasped. He looked up into her eyes. “And that’s just the half of it,” he said.

THE ENTHUSIASTIC PARTY of five meandered among the Friday-night crowd the two blocks from Wear It Again to the Pepperoni Pit, Heron Point’s only pizza restaurant. Helen lagged behind Jack, Claire and Ethan, and walked with Jane. They kept up a lively discussion about school and boys and Claire’s upcoming wedding to Jack. Tonight especially, Helen enjoyed Jane’s company, maybe because the idea of having a child of her own was not as remote as it always had been.