Hunter's Bride and A Mother's Wish: Hunter's Bride / A Mother's Wish

“Don’t kid yourself, Chloe. This place may seem like Shangri-La, but sooner or later it will get dragged into the twenty-first century. Isn’t that what you’re trying to do with your Web site? Your brother might need the kind of values that lead to success.”

“I don’t want Theo influenced by you.” Chloe threw the words at him. “If you can’t accept that, then maybe you’d better leave right now.”

Chapter Six

Horror at what she’d just said flooded Chloe. Was being back on the island causing her to take leave of her senses? She couldn’t talk to her boss that way.

Apparently Luke felt the same. His face tightened, and his ice-blue eyes chilled her to the bone. “Is that really what you want, Chloe?” His voice was deceptively soft, but she’d heard that deadly calm before, directed at other people. Her job hung in the balance.

“I’m sorry.” The words came out in a rush. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

But it was true. The thought came out of nowhere. She tried to reject it but she couldn’t. She didn’t want Theo absorbing the values that seemed so natural to Luke.

Please, Lord. The prayer also seemed to come from nowhere. I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know what I want, and I certainly don’t know what’s best.

“You have a right to say what you believe.” He shifted his weight so that he stood an inch closer to her. He was close enough that she could feel the iron control he held over his anger. “Is that what you believe, Chloe?”

“I don’t…” She stopped, took a breath, started again. “I can’t mix business and family together. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I like working in Chicago. Having you here, letting my people believe we’re involved—it’s just too hard.”

She expected a withering response. Instead she felt his ire seeping away as he considered what she’d said.

“All right.” He nodded, still frowning. “I guess I can understand your feelings. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

He actually seemed to be trying to understand. Maybe he’d been as surprised by their quarrel as she had. She could breathe again.

“If we told my parents the truth…”

“No.”

His sharp response told her that, at least, hadn’t changed. He tried to manage a smile, but it didn’t have much humor in it.

“That’s the one thing we can’t do. I have too much of my time and reputation invested in this location now. If I don’t come up with a proposal, I can kiss the vice-presidency goodbye.”

The way his face hardened on the last words told her he wouldn’t do that. It meant too much to him—maybe more than anything else in his life, certainly more than her old-fashioned values.

“All right.”

She took a deep breath, trying to find an alternative they both could live with. She’d like to feel that the two of them were on the same team. She’d always felt that—until now.

“I guess I can understand that. But I’m not going to lie to anyone. And I don’t want you to give Theo any more advice.” Her mother’s worries about the boy flitted through her mind. She’d said she would help, but this certainly wasn’t what she’d intended.

“Agreed.” He clasped her hand as if they’d just sealed a deal, and his fingers were strong around hers. Their warmth swept inexorably up her arm, headed straight for her heart.

She stepped back, breaking the connection. “All right, then.” She reached behind her for the door, needing to escape. “We’ll leave it at that.”

“Just one thing—”

Luke’s voice stopped her. She turned reluctantly to look at him.

“Maybe you ought to give a little thought to what you’re saying to your brother, Chloe.”

She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You don’t want him taking on my values. But your life is an example more potent than whatever I might say to him. Isn’t it?”

Chloe tried to find an answer to that question throughout another mostly sleepless night. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so torn—between Luke and her family, between the past and the future. She’d made a promise to Luke, and she’d always been taught that a promise had to be honored. Taught by her daddy, to whom honor was everything.

The future, that was what worried her the most. She turned over, trying to keep the bed from creaking in protest, and stared at the ceiling. Would Daddy say that if he knew what promise she was keeping? Moonlight filtered through the curtains, sending designs across the ceiling as the branches of the live oak swayed. When she was a child, she’d imagined whole stories taking place in those moving shadows—filled with castles and dragons and knights on horseback.

Miranda’s even breathing from the other bed was oddly soothing. Miranda had made her choices, and as difficult as they’d been, she never seemed to doubt the road she was on. Chloe envied that certainty.

Where was this adventure going to end? She couldn’t picture it, couldn’t believe that things could ever go back the way they’d been between her and Luke, between her and her family.

Maybe that was bound to happen sometime. She could hardly expect to find happiness while working for Luke—not when that meant holding her feelings secret in her heart. As for her family—her relationship with them had changed, and she hadn’t even realized it. She’d looked for her career off the island, thinking that was the only way to be her own person. She’d been tired of being just one of the crowd of Caldwells.

Now—she thought of her mother, talking to her about Theo as if she were a friend. Of the pleasure she’d found in being useful here. Of the way her experiences with Dalton Resorts had begun to translate to ideas for running the inn. Things changed, whether she wanted them to or not.

She turned again, and her restless gaze fell on the framed sampler with the words of her Bible verse embroidered on it, which was propped on her bedside table. She couldn’t leave it behind in Chicago, so it had come with her.

As the words reverberated in her mind, she felt her tension begin to seep away. Hope and a future. She might not be able to see how God’s plans were going to work out, but knowing they existed should be comfort enough. Her body relaxed, her eyelids drifting closed.

She’d meant what she said to Luke about not telling her family any lies. But as Chloe watched her father talk with Luke over coffee in the breakfast room the next morning, she wondered if she’d gone far enough. Maybe she should have specified that Luke not tell any lies, either.

“Excuse me, miss, could I have another pot of tea? This one isn’t hot enough.”

Chloe managed a smile for the elderly guest whose tea water was never hot enough. She didn’t mind being pressed into service at breakfast—she’d done it since she was old enough to carry a tray. She did mind not being able to hear what Luke and her father were talking about.

Why? The question nagged at her while she brought a fresh pot of tea for table four, replenished the dish of homemade strawberry jam at table six and whisked a nearly empty breakfast casserole dish from the buffet table. Why did it bother her to see her father with Luke?

Maybe it was her fear that the two of them could never see eye-to-eye on anything. Clayton Caldwell lived by a few simple rules—rules he’d taught his sons and daughters from the day they were born. Trust the Lord, and He will guide your ways…. Tell the truth, even if it’s painful…. A man’s word is his bond, and without it he has nothing.

Her father wouldn’t understand the kind of business world Luke operated in, though he’d probably equate it with Uncle Jeff. Luke would never understand her father. He’d mistake her father’s sense of honor for naïveté, just as her father would mistake Luke’s sense of competition for dishonesty. No, it would be far better if she could keep the two of them apart until this game had ended.

Carrying the carafe of coffee, she approached their table with a sense of determination. “Daddy, would you like a thermos of coffee to take with you?”

“I’m not going just yet, Chloe-girl.” He held out his mug, his sharp eyes inspecting her. “Fact is, I’m not going fishing at all today. Your momma’s been pestering me to take a picnic lunch, go over to Angel Isle, check out the cottage. I’m thinking we’ll do that today.”

Well, at least that would get him out of Luke’s company for a while. “Sounds like a nice idea. Don’t worry about anything here. I’ll keep an eye on the desk.”

Luke smiled and held out his mug for a refill. “Actually, your father invited us to go with them to the island.”

Only long years of practice kept her from dribbling coffee onto the blue-checked tablecloth. “Don’t you have some work you want to do?”

Luke was probably longing for her to give him an excuse to get out of it, she assured herself. He probably had no desire to go out on the boat again.

“Not at all,” he assured her blandly. “Sounds like a great idea.”

She set her lips into what she hoped resembled a smile. “Fine. I’ll just go help my mother get things ready.”