Falling For The Single Dad

Weston took the bulging bag and sagged beneath its weight. “Leave any for the other children?”

His daughter giggled. “Daddy and I will see you next week, Caroline.”

“I’m not...” Caroline’s face did a fair imitation of Izzie sucking lemon rinds.

He gave the librarian a nice view of their backs. See her next week? He’d sit on the library porch while Izzie enjoyed story time if it meant avoiding another less-than-pleasant encounter with the stone-cold Caroline.

Who had the face of a Renaissance Madonna and the disposition of a killer shark.

Chapter Two (#ulink_2f15e725-669b-5f00-9626-87bf8625d980)

When she’d looked up from the pages of the book and found his smoldering blue eyes fixed upon her, Caroline’s heart leaped in spite of herself.

Midthirties, she guessed. From his sweatshirt and his dark brown military buzz—close cut on the sides—probably an active duty or one-time Guardsman. A ’come here, not native-born to the Shore.

Through the library window, she watched the ruggedly handsome man tuck Izzie into the green Chevy Colorado parked beside the diner across the square. His broad shoulders under the gray Coast Guard Academy sweatshirt bunched as he leaned to fasten Izzie’s seat belt.

Notwithstanding Caroline’s fifteen-year absence from Accomack County, she didn’t recognize him. She heaved a sigh. She didn’t think she would’ve forgotten him had they previously met. Her gaze flicked toward the now-empty chair.

She’d enjoyed cuddling with Izzie. Who would’ve foreseen that? Not Caroline or anyone who knew her, she guessed.

Definitely not mother material. But no more stalling.

Caroline glanced at the mounted wall clock behind the librarian’s desk. Guests typically left the Duer Lodge midmorning in pursuit of their day’s activities.

She’d scheduled a lunch meeting with her longtime colleague at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to finalize their grant-funded summer pilot program. If things went as well as she expected at the family homestead—which was to say, not well—she had someplace else to be.

Caroline turned her head toward the babble of voices at the top of the ornate staircase. Kiptohanock’s real librarian emerged on the landing with a sixty-something matron Caroline—unfortunately—did recognize.

“Caroline Victoria Duer.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Escape so close and yet so far.

“Is that you? After all this time?”

A lot of water under that proverbial bridge, but some things—like some people—didn’t change. Including Mrs. Davenport, otherwise known as the Kiptohanock Grapevine.

Mrs. Davenport, plumper after fifteen years, descended the staircase like a bygone movie queen. “As I live and breathe, Seth Duer’s second oldest come home at last.”

Other Kiptohanock bookworms popped out from between the stacks across the hall to get a look. The twenty-something librarian’s eyes blinked behind her fashionable horn-rimmed glasses.

Time, like sand in an hourglass, had run out for Caroline.

If she didn’t beat the village blabbermouth to the punch, her father and sisters would learn of her arrival before she could get to the house. She couldn’t hide any longer.

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Davenport.” She wrenched open the oak-paneled door. “The black sheep has come home at last.”

* * *

Caroline drove around the square. Past the Sandpiper Café. The post office. The Coast Guard station. Recreational and commercial fishing vessels bobbed in the harbor. Fair-weather flags fluttered in the breeze. Beyond the inlet, barrier islands emptied into the vastness of the Atlantic.

The white clapboard church hugged the shoreline. Its steeple pierced the azure sky. Leafed-out trees canopied the side lanes, where the gingerbread-trimmed Victorian homes fanned out from the center of the town square like spokes on a wheel.

Driving out of town, she averted her gaze from the cemetery on a high slope overlooking the marina. She’d finally found the courage to face her father and sisters. She didn’t know if she had the courage to face the graves. Maybe she’d never have enough courage to face them.

Leaving the coastal village behind, she headed down Seaside Road, which connected the oceanside villages. Her heart pounding in her ears, she pulled off the secondary road into the Duer driveway. A simple sign at the turnoff read Duer Fisherman’s Lodge.

Caroline stopped at the top of the driveway. Her hands white-knuckled the wheel. She paused to reorient herself with her childhood home. To prepare for the changes the devastating hurricane eight months ago had wrought. But on the surface, everything appeared the same.

She scanned the white, two-story Victorian with the wraparound porch. The picket fence still rimmed the shade-studded perimeter of the yard. The silvery surface of the tidal creek glimmered behind the house. She released her death grip on the wheel.

Home to seven generations of proud Duer watermen, including her father, Seth Duer, possibly the proudest of all. In the last century during the days of gilded grandeur, Northern steel magnates had “roughed” it at the Duer fishing lodge. Her ancestors had served as hunting guides in winter, oystered, crabbed and run charters in summer. But those days, like the steamers traveling the waters between New York City and Wachapreague, had long since passed.

She took a deep breath and released the brake. The car coasted toward the circle drive. The grand old lady, freshly painted and restored from the ravages of the storm, appeared better than ever under her youngest sister’s watchful restoration. Caroline parked and switched off the engine.

Restoration... Her fondest hope.

She whispered a quick prayer and got out of the car as a tall, Nordic blond man in jeans and T-shirt stepped around the corner of the house from the direction of the old cabin. A phone shrilled inside. Then stopped.

He advanced, hand outstretched. “I didn’t realize more guests were arriving today. I’m—”

“Sawyer Kole. Honey’s husband.”

He dropped his hand, confusion written across his craggy features. As if recognition teased on the fringes of his memory. The front door squeaked on its hinges.

Sawyer Kole’s eyes went glacial at the same moment Honey gasped, “Caroline.”

Caroline’s gaze flitted to the honey-blonde woman poised on the porch steps. Whom she’d last beheld when Honey wasn’t much bigger than Izzie. Now a lovely woman in her midtwenties and soon to be a mother. Caroline’s eyes fell to her youngest sister’s rounded abdomen. Caroline thought of little redheaded Izzie, and something stirred in her heart.

With great deliberation, Sawyer moved between them. Blocking Caroline’s view of her sister. Protecting his wife. From her.

Voices drifted from the dock at the edge of the tidal creek. A carrot-haired boy, maybe Izzie’s age, ran ahead. The strawberry-blonde woman, Caroline’s younger sister Amelia, bounced a dark-haired baby on her hip as she strode up the incline from the water.

Catching sight of her, Seth Duer, their father, came to a dead stop. As fit as she remembered, though his hair beneath the Nandua Warriors ball cap and his thick mustache were more salt than pepper. His gray eyebrows bristled.

Oyster shells crunched beneath the little boy’s sneakers. “Hey, Aunt Honey!” He waved. “Mimi, Granddad and I showed my baby how to bait a line.”

The expression on her father’s grizzled face froze Caroline to the marrow of her bones.

Amelia squeezed their father’s elbow. “Daddy.” The baby squirmed in her arms.

Seth and Marian Duer’s third-born daughter. The tomboy son Seth had never had, but longed for. Renowned illustrator. Married to Braeden Scott, senior chief at Station Kiptohanock.

Amelia’s face had shuttered with neither pleasure nor foreboding. Unable to get a read on her sister, Caroline glanced at the redheaded boy. Max. An old ache resurfaced.

Her older sister’s boy. Born moments before Lindi died after a head-on collision with a drunk driver on Highway 13. Adopted and raised by Amelia, Max’s beloved “Mimi.” And Amelia was now also the mother of the toddler in her arms, Patrick Scott.

The silence roared between them until Max in his innocence broke it.