Always Valentine's Day

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“In other words, you really are an actor.”

“Isn’t everybody?” She glanced beyond him to see Sophia giggling at the door, next to a little boy with the same midnight hair. “I think you’re being summoned.”

Christopher turned to see them both waving madly at him. “Time to go play uncle,” he said.

“Well, it was nice to meet you.” She put out her hand. “I guess this is goodbye.”

His look held pure devilry. “Just how big do you think this ocean liner is?”

Small, he thought as he followed Sophia back inside to the staterooms. With luck, as small as a tugboat. Larkin Hayes was far and away the most interesting person he’d met on the cruise so far. Oh, hell, who was he kidding? She was far and away the most interesting woman he’d met in years. Four years, to be exact. There was something about her that made it hard to look away, some inner sparkle, a confidence in the way she stood, long and slim. Not to mention the fact that she was flatout gorgeous with that wide, generous mouth and that mane of blond hair that made a man want to sink his hands into it. It wasn’t that that got to him, though (really), but the smarts. Was there anything sexier than a clever-tongued woman?

She put that intelligence to good use, he figured, judging by her outfit: pea-size diamonds in her ears, a cashmere coat and, unless he was very much mistaken, a forty-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe watch. You noticed that kind of thing when you’d spent over eleven years as a financial industry lobbyist. Between Washington and Wall Street, he’d seen pretty much all the trappings of wealth that were out there.

Which had eventually sent him running back to the farming life he’d grown up with, but that was a different story.

And Larkin Hayes had a story. It showed in her eyes, sea green and dancing with fun, yet guarded in some indefinable way. They might have talked but she’d told him very little.

Which only made him want to find out more.

It was an ocean liner and there were only so many places to go. Sooner or later—sooner if he had anything to say about it—they’d run into each other again. Yep, by the end of the week, he was going to know Larkin Hayes a whole lot better.

“We’re moving!”

“No standing on the deck chairs, Adam,” Molly Trask reminded her grandson as they stood on their suite’s veranda. Her bobbed hair, once a glossy black, had turned full silver, a color that made her eyes look even bluer. She’d stayed trim, though—anyone with a family and a business like she had spent way too much time running around to let the pounds pile on.

“I wanna see,” Adam said obstinately.

“You just had your turn,” Jacob Trask said, turning from where he held Adam’s twin sister, Sophia, and their brother Gerard. Tall and burly as a lumberjack, Jacob looked like he could easily hold them up forever. And as their father, he probably would. “When your mama comes back from making her spa appointments, we’ll go up top where we can see everything.”

“But—”

He came by it honestly, Molly thought. Adam senior, her husband, had always been impatient himself. Impatient to work, impatient to live, impatient to love. And, it seemed, impatient to die. Ten years had passed since he’d left her, suddenly and unexpectedly. Ten years and it still felt fresh. In the time since his death, she’d focused on her family, watching her sons marry and start families of their own. How her barrel-chested, booming-voiced Adam would have loved being surrounded by his half-dozen grandchildren, rolling on the floor and playing with them. Spoiling them unmercifully, no doubt.

Well, she was no slouch in the spoiling department herself. Nor, she thought, were her sons, spiriting her off on an Alaskan luxury cruise just because she’d read an article in the Sunday travel section. To see the glaciers, they said, but she knew what it was really about. It was the tenth anniversary of Adam’s death, and they wanted to take her somewhere she’d be surrounded by family and things to see and do. Sweet of them, she thought fondly. They never asked, but she knew they worried and wondered why she’d never remarried. How could she explain that a love like she’d had with Adam left little room for another?

So she stood outside her plush stateroom and counted herself the luckiest woman around because she had the most precious of things—family.

She rose. “Come on, Adam, I’ll take you to the top deck.”

The movement took Larkin by surprise. One minute, she was sipping at her appletini and idly chatting to the couple next to her at the bar. The next, she’d realized that the pier was farther off. A lot farther off.

So that was it, then. They were under way, and Carter hadn’t arrived.

It shouldn’t have surprised her. It shouldn’t even have made her pause. She’d known when he’d called that there was no way he was going to make it. It wasn’t exactly the first time he’d promised something he hadn’t come through with.

So why did she feel let down?

The reality was that she missed him. She hadn’t wanted the five-year schism between them, she just hadn’t been able to stand by and see him rush down the aisle halfcocked yet again. Perhaps the first time she’d watched him had been the hardest, when she’d been thirteen, pale, still grieving the loss of her mother the year before. After that, she’d gotten better at it, and it had gotten easier. She’d grown accustomed to the cycle, learned how to get used to the new faces in the house but not attached.

In marriage, Carter had taught her hope, but he’d also taught her cynicism. With her mother, it had been ideal. In the marriages since, the affection, the white lace and taffeta had a way of morphing all too soon to arguments and hostility, to an angry crescendo followed by a few months of quiet after the wife of the moment had swept out and before the next began to make his eyes twinkle. Over and over Larkin had watched it happen—the rash decisions, the headlong rush, the racing disillusionment, like high-speed footage of the phases of the moon. Marry in haste, repent in court. The last time, though, at twenty-two, she’d refused to sit by and watch it all play out again.

And she’d told him why.

Carter hadn’t taken it well. The words had been bitter and echoed through the silence between them in the years since.

The partially successful legal battle to break his prenuptial agreement had lasted longer than the marriage, or so she’d heard. There’d been no rumors of a new Mrs. Hayes on the horizon. Perhaps, approaching sixty, widowed and with four subsequent divorces under his belt, Carter had finally decided to take a breather. His voice on the phone that hot August morning a few weeks before had almost made her drop the handset in shock, but she’d listened. Come with me, he’d said. We’ll have fun.

A chance to get through to him, Larkin had thought, a chance to make things right. Of course, making things right was kind of hard to do with someone who wasn’t there.

She downed the rest of her drink and rose.

“I thought you were going to order champagne,” a voice said behind her.

And in a rush of gladness, Larkin turned to see her father face-to-face for the first time in five years.

He looked the same, she realized in surprise. Oh, a pound or two more, maybe, and a bit less hair, but there was still a spark of enthusiasm in his eyes, an energy in the way he moved. Carter Hayes had grown older, perhaps, but on the dawn of his sixtieth birthday, he was not yet old.

He pulled her to him for a hug.

“I thought you’d missed the boat,” she said into his shoulder.

“I told you I’d make it. One of these days you should learn to trust me.” He held on a moment more, then released her. “So,” he said as he pulled out a chair, “where’s that bubbly?”

“Look at this place,” Christopher said as he walked through the open door of his cousin Gabe’s suite. “You could fit my room in here three times and still have some space left over.”

“Is it our fault we know how to live in style?” Gabe stepped in from the veranda.

“It’s not the knowing that’s the problem,” Christopher told him.

The color scheme was tones of peach and gold, to contrast with the ocean blues. Mirrors on one wall made the spacious suite look even bigger. Below the mirrored panels, the bed held pride of place with its snowy linens, puffy duvet and embarrassment of pillows. The built-in couch that ran along the opposite wall before curving out around the broad glass coffee table would hold three or four visitors, or sleep his cousin’s two rambunctious boys, unless they wanted to curl up in the armchairs that finished off the conversational grouping. But it was the wall of windows giving out onto the broad veranda that truly spoke of luxury. It was the windows that brought the sea inside.

“So your room’s small?” Gabe asked.

“Not so much. It’s at least the size of your bathroom.”

“That’s what you get for taking over the room of a halfbroke public servant.” Gabe was referring to his firefighter brother, Nick, who’d had to cancel his trip because of his wife’s unexpected pregnancy.

“You’re right. I should have held out on coming until you agreed to swap me for your room.”

“You’d have held out a long time.”

“How’s Sloane doing, anyway?” Christopher asked.

“Still the size of a house, last time I heard.” Gabe’s eyes twinkled. “Twins will do that to you.”

They stepped outside into the fresh sea air.