“Why did Kit have to go?”

Sean sat beside his daughter and put his arm around her shoulder, fragile as a bird’s wing. “Kit’s not part of the family, hon.”

“Why’d you follow her?”

“I…thought Kit’s feelings might be hurt. I wanted to apologize.”

“Aunt Mariah wasn’t real friendly to her.”

“No, she wasn’t.” He chucked Alex under the chin. “Hey, sport, if you want to see your new cousin, we’d better get a move on.”

Alex stayed put. It was no secret she’d inherited his stubborn streak. “I like Kit.”

“I know you do.” He rubbed the back of his neck, massaged the tense muscles. “And she likes you. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

What was wrong was his inappropriate attraction to a woman who rocked his sense of responsibility. When she’d jumped on her motorcycle, his first thought had been to climb on with her.

“I just wanna be her friend,” Alex whispered. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Kit only came back because her mother messed up and she has to help her out. She’s not happy about it and she can’t wait to leave. Alex, honey, it’s hard to make friends with a person who has no intention of sticking around.”

Dear Reader,

When I was in my early twenties and just starting out in the world, I used to play a mind game to help me cope with people who drove me nuts. I would imagine the difficult person and me in a very personal situation far removed from any situation we’d face in reality. My scenario might place me at a table for two with the guy who sold newspapers on the street corner and who could never manage to be civil. I would submerge myself in the fantasy, thinking what could I find out about this person that would make him more human? Perhaps the tough guy rescued stray dogs or ran the volunteer book cart on the hospital pediatrics ward. The fantasy never repaired these individuals’ real-time annoying habits; the exercise just reminded me that things—especially other people’s lives—are never as they seem. It made me more accepting.

Acceptance is such a simple word, but it appears to be a difficult concept to implement. In The Trick to Getting a Mom, Kit Darling has never been accepted in her hometown. She is an outcast and a rebel, surviving only by forging a who-cares exterior and an itinerant lifestyle. Sean McCabe seems to accept his role as a single parent, but beneath the surface simmers a wanderlust that bows before family responsibility. One rootless, the other rooted, the two resist an unacceptable attraction. It takes an eight-year-old, Sean’s daughter, Alex, to teach the adults true acceptance.

Amy Frazier

The Trick to Getting a Mum
Amy Frazier

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

WHAT KIND OF FATHER WAS HE if he couldn’t keep one little girl out of trouble?

His gut in a knot, Sean McCabe pushed through the double doors of Pritchard’s Neck Elementary School. Alex, his eight-year-old daughter, had been suspended from school. For fighting.

At the end of the long echoing corridor that smelled of floor wax and chalk dust, Alex sat outside the principal’s office, alone, perched on an enormous bench that made her seem very, very small. Small and adrift on a sea of polished tile.

She looked up, and, even from a distance, Sean could see the shiner, reddish-purple and puffed and already closing one eye.

Instinctively, he rushed to her. “What happened?”

“I finished my work before everybody else,” she replied, her head cocked at a defiant angle. “So I raised my hand to go to the bathroom.”

“And?” Sean prodded, suspicious. Alex had a way of complicating simple tasks.

“And I thought about how Seafaring Cecil—” Seafaring Cecil was Alex and Sean’s favorite travel writer “—says you can adventure anywhere just by drawing a map.”

“So…?” Sean didn’t trust this train of thought. Alex had inherited his wandering soul, and, more and more in her “explorations,” she pushed the limits of what he considered safe for her.

“So I started a map on one of the paper towels from the bathroom with a pencil I found wedged behind a radiator, and I ended up in the fifth-grade-wing.”

This wasn’t the first time Alex had strayed. Or the first shaggy-dog explanation she’d given Sean. It was, however, the first time his daughter faced suspension from school for her adventuring.

He leveled a stern look at her. “Ms. Simmons told me you were fighting.”

With a stubborn one-eyed squint that showed no sign of tears, Alex met and matched his steady gaze. “I hit a fifth grader.” She sounded neither proud nor remorseful. To her it was only unvarnished truth.

He gently grasped her tiny face with his big weathered hand, turned her head to examine the darkening eye. Tried to steady the racing of his heart. “Why, baby? Why?”

“She said I smelled like bait.”

Sean’s gaze dropped to the miniature boots Alex seldom removed—the ones he’d had custom-made to match his own. “Our boots do smell like bait, sweet pea. So what was the real reason you hit her?”

Alex’s self-assurance wavered. Her chin wobbled and her shoulders sagged. “She…said…you must be a crummy dad if I had to go out lobstering to take care of you.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “You’re not a crummy dad. You’re the best.”

“Oh, honey.” He pulled her into his arms.

She was fierce, his daughter, fierce and proud and loyal far beyond her age and size. A chip off the old McCabe block.

“Ahem.” Candace Simmons, the school principal, appeared in the doorway to her office.

Sean stood. “Candace—” He caught himself. “Ms. Simmons.”

“Mr. McCabe.” She looked as if she didn’t relish either the necessary formality or the task at hand. “I’m afraid we have a zero-tolerance policy toward fighting. As I told you on the phone, Alexandra is suspended from school. For two weeks.”

“You said she’d be suspended for one.” He recognized the need for punishment, but two weeks was harsh.

“That was before Alexandra produced this from her boot.” Candace held out a letter opener Sean recognized as a freebie for taking out a loan at the Ocean National Bank. It had a faux scrimshaw whale for a handle. “We also have a zero-tolerance policy toward weapons.”

“Alex?” A headache forming behind his eyebrows, Sean looked at his daughter for an explanation.

“It’s not a weapon, Dad. I carry it in case of snake bite.”

“You know perfectly well there are no poisonous snakes at Pritchard’s Neck Elementary.” Sighing deeply, Candace turned to Sean. “It’s this inability to distinguish reality from fantasy that gets your daughter in trouble.”

“Clearly, she didn’t intend to hurt anyone with the letter opener or she would have used it during the fight.” He believed children should accept responsibility for their actions, but he also knew Alex. “She might fight, but she doesn’t fight dirty.”

“Sean.” Candace spoke softly, but looked him right in the eye. “The rules are there for the safety of the children. Even if I wanted to, I can’t make exceptions where safety is concerned. So…one week for fighting. One week for possession of a potential weapon. Two weeks suspension.”

“But there are only two weeks left of school.”

“Yes. The maturity Alexandra shows in completing her work outside of class will affect our decision to promote her…or not.”

“You’re telling me she might not pass?” Sean felt his blood pressure rise. “Hey, she’s one bright kid.”

“We both know that.” Candace’s pause spoke volumes. “But she’s disruptive. She has tremendous difficulty staying on task. Difficulty, too, interacting with her peers.”

“You know she’s used to being around adults.” Mainly because he was raising Alex in the home he shared with his father and his brother. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Of course not. But Alexandra’s behavior is beginning to hinder her education.” Candace rested her hand gently on Alex’s head. “When you take her to her pediatrician to look at that eye, please, discuss her classroom behavior.”

“What are you suggesting?” Defensive, he slipped his arm around his daughter.

“I’m saying that there are sometimes physical reasons for behavior patterns.” Candace’s expression softened. “It’s just wise to check.”

“You’re talking hyperactivity—drugs to counteract it?”

“You know that, by law, I can’t make a medical diagnosis.”

But she could push him in that direction, he thought, his jaw set. He would not drug his child. His active, inquisitive, normal child.

“In the meantime,” Candace continued, “these are the class assignments for the rest of the year.” She handed Sean a hefty packet. “I’ll personally monitor Alexandra’s suspension but she’ll need adult supervision at all times.”

“Of course.” Taking Alex’s hand, Sean stood, feeling as if they were two against the world.

Under the best of circumstances, Alex required almost constant supervision. Unfortunately, Sean’s circumstances weren’t the best at the moment. In addition to pulling his own traps, he was building a lobster pound with his father and brother, a potential family business they’d laid their life savings on and had hoped to have up and running before school’s end. Until the start of summer day camp, school had been Sean’s only viable child-care option.

This suspension also brought home the hard fact that the time had come to rein in his adventuresome daughter.

Before Jilian had died, Sean had made her a solemn promise to keep their baby safe, but with each passing year the task grew more difficult. Especially with a child like Alex, who never colored inside the lines.

CHAPTER ONE

DID SHE HAVE THE STAMINA to spend one more minute in this town, a town that had essentially dropkicked her from the nest?

As thunder rumbled in the distance, Kit Darling lifted the hair off the back of her neck and prayed for a breeze, a breath of fresh air, any movement at all to break the unusual June heat of this strength-sapping afternoon.

Rain would be a welcome relief. Rain would mean she could close down her stupid yard sale.

“How much is this?” A woman held up an oversize velvet painting of Elvis draped in a skimpy toga. Her companion, a second woman, snickered.

“The tag says five bucks,” Kit snapped. She knew neither woman had any intention of buying the painting, or anything else for that matter. Knew they’d only come to gawk at her mother’s tacky things and gossip about Cynthia “Babe” Darling, the woman who’d run off with Millicent Crenshaw’s husband, leaving chaos, recriminations and a pile of unpaid bills in her wake.

Turning her back on the two women, Kit stalked to the shade of Babe’s sagging front porch and tried to turn her thoughts to the weather. Anything other than the woman who was her mother in name only.

Why didn’t it rain? And wash away the ghouls who’d come to pore over the leftovers from Babe’s sorry life.

Kit hated the overt cheesiness of her mother’s possessions. The erotic paintings. The tasseled, satin pillows in garish colors. The hundreds of candles with fragrance like Naked Lunch and Lusty Musk. Items Babe had bought to enhance her femme fatale image, now spread over the yard in an attempt to take a bite out of her mother’s debts, since it was her unfortunate responsibility to pay them. Kit hated Babe for sucking her back to the hometown she’d discarded nine years ago. The hometown that had discarded her years before that.

Responding to a flash of heat lightning in the distance, the two women, the only customers left in the dusty front yard, scurried to their car.

Good riddance. Kit might need the money, but she sure didn’t need the spotlight. Rumors of Babe’s latest outrage had spread like a virus through this insufferable burg. People had flocked to the yard sale to see if the rumors were true. If Babe had indeed flown the coop, her little love nest.

Would she ever be able to claw her way out from under her mother’s reputation? she wondered bitterly. Not in this town.

Nursing a powerful thirst, Kit bent to open a cooler on the porch step—the utilities in Babe’s rented house had been cut off—when a movement in the shrubbery near the end of the porch caught her eye.

“You got any books?” A small child emerged from behind a wilted hydrangea.

Despite the heat, the kid wore rubber boots and a faded flannel shirt tucked into much-worn overalls. Her hair—on second glance, Kit could see it was a little girl—looked as if it had been combed with an electric mixer. Strands stuck to a face so grimy and sweat-streaked, Kit almost overlooked the black eye. A scrapper for sure, this newcomer couldn’t be more than five or six.

Kit felt an instant affinity for the kid. She herself had been a scrapper.

“What’s your name?” she asked, stepping off the porch.

“Alexandra Melinda McCabe. But my dad calls me Alex.” The child looked her straight in the eye. “You got any books?”

Alexandra Melinda McCabe. The McCabes were an upstanding family in Pritchard’s Neck. Which one of them didn’t know better than to let a little kid run loose? And why wasn’t the child in school on a Tuesday? “What grade are you in?”

“Three.” She was small for her age.

“Why aren’t you in school, Alex?”

“I got ’spended. For fighting.” Alex rammed her tiny fists on her hips. “That’s three questions I answered. Now, you. You got any books?”

“No. I’m sorry. I have books in my apartment in Boston, but not here.” Babe had never been a reader. Men were her hobby. With Ed Crenshaw, she’d begun to specialize in younger men.

“Where are your parents?” Kit turned the conversation back to Alex.

“My dad’s working.”

Kit never failed to feel a stab of empathy when she saw a young child on the street, unsupervised.

“So your dad leaves you by yourself while he’s working?”

“My Aunt Emily’s watching me.”

Kit glanced up and down the street. “I don’t see her.”

“She’s gonna have a baby. She’s lying down ’cause she can barely walk.” Alex shot Kit a don’t-push-your-luck look. “You ask as many questions as Ms. Simmons did before she ’spended me.”

Kit suppressed a smile. She liked this kid. Liked her forthright manner and unconventional clothes. Her grime and her grit.

“You’d better head home before your aunt worries about you.” She opened the cooler. “It’s hot. Want a soft drink to take with you?”

Before Alex could answer, a pickup truck came to a sliding halt at the end of the driveway.

“Alex!” A big, dark-haired man leaped out of the driver’s side, scowling. “Your Aunt Emily’s been worried sick about you,” he barked as he charged up the driveway. “She called me at the pound to say you’d disappeared. You were supposed to stay in her yard.” His anger rolled before him like breakers on the beach.

Standing firm before his wrath, Alex pointed at the yard sale sign listing on its stake. “I saw the sign and came down for just a minute, Dad. To see if there were any Seafaring Cecil books.”

Kit pricked up her ears at the mention of Seafaring Cecil. But she hesitated to speak, cautious about coming between the man and his daughter.

“Alex—” the father’s anger quickly abated, replaced by weariness evident in the tiny lines fanning the corners of his eyes “—how could you see the sign if you weren’t already halfway down the street?”

Alex fumbled in the pocket of her overalls. “With this.” She retrieved a folding telescope Kit recognized as one of the offerings on Seafaringcecil.com.

The man seemed torn between exasperation and relief.

“She’s only been here a couple minutes,” Kit offered. “She told me she needed to get back. So as not to worry her aunt.”

Alex flashed her a grateful look.

As the man turned his attention to Kit for the first time, she sucked in her breath. She would know those dark eyes anywhere.

He held out a hand. “Sean McCabe.”

Oh, yeah.

Back when they’d gone to high school together, he’d been the cream of the crop, both scholastically and athletically. Every girl with a hormone to her name had lusted after him.

And Kit had not been immune.

Once, right before graduation, Sean had unexpectedly asked her out. Once and only once. And even then, he’d stood her up.

Kit could have sworn he’d only asked her out as some locker-room bet. The guys were always trying to find out if she was as easy as her mother.

At the unpleasant memory, Kit stiffened, but extended her hand, nonetheless. “Kit Darling.”

As his big, work-roughened hand enveloped hers, a flash of recognition crossed his face. One corner of his generous mouth twitched.

“Do you know this lady, Dad?” Alex tugged on her father’s jeans.

Kit swallowed hard. No one in Pritchard’s Neck had ever called her a lady. With one innocent question, this little girl managed to lay bare a vulnerability Kit didn’t want exposed. Especially not to Sean McCabe.

“We went to school together, punkin.” Sean spoke to Alex, but never took his eyes off Kit.

Could he possibly remember how he’d stood her up as if she hadn’t mattered? He’d been such a big man on campus. So why was Mr. Most-Likely-To-Succeed standing before her now in a T-shirt, jeans and lobstering boots instead of pinstripes and wing tips?

Kit withdrew her hand from his, unwilling to admit, even to herself, that he still made her pulse race.

Standing surrounded by the castoffs of her mother’s reckless life, Kit felt on display and unguarded in front of the one person in this podunk town she’d ever allowed herself to admire.

Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. She needed to wrap up Babe’s affairs and hit the road before she was tarred—once again—with her mother’s brush. But the problems she’d inherited from Babe required cash, and right now Kit had a cash-flow problem. She needed to stay in town long enough to liquidate what her mother had left behind to salvage her own credit rating. And to prove that at least, she, Kit, had character.

The clouds on the horizon had grown thick and dark. An uncomfortable prickly tension charged the air.

Alex sensed something was going on between her dad and this lady with the cool name—Kit, like the adventurer Kit Carson—but Alex couldn’t figure out what. Dad had said they’d gone to school together. He’d gone to school with lots of people in town, but he never looked at them the way he was looking at Kit.

Dad didn’t pay much attention to looks and always urged Alex not to either. But it was hard not to with Kit. She had purply-red streaks in her hair, two gold hoops in her left eyebrow and a cool tattoo like a skinny vine on her upper right arm.

Maybe Dad was interested in the motorcycle Alex had seen parked around the side of the house. When she and Dad read their adventuring books and planned their trips, they talked about how they’d get there. Alex always picked a motorcycle, and Dad eventually said okay—because it was all just pretend. This lady rode a motorcycle for real. Red. Like her cowboy boots. It was Alex’s favorite color. The color of the travel lines she and Dad drew on their maps.

A big raindrop fell on Alex’s head.

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get moving, scout.”

More raindrops fell. Alex glanced at all the stuff spilling over the front yard, then at Kit. Her eyes had a squinched-up look. Like she was trying hard not to cry. Or scream. Alex would scream, too, if her things were about to get ruined.

The rain began to hammer on the porch roof.

“Dad, we gotta help put away!”

She wasn’t sure he would. Though he’d do anything for his family and friends, he was real stand-offish with strangers. But Kit wasn’t a stranger. Dad had said they’d gone to school together.

“Please, Dad!”

“Not necessary!” Kit cried out as she kicked off her boots and dashed out into the yard barefoot. She looked mad as she hauled a nearby box full of shiny pillows out of the rain and onto the porch. Like maybe she hated all this stuff. Or the rain. Or Dad.

No way! Everybody liked Dad.

Alex pulled on his hand. “Puh-leeeese!” She suddenly needed Kit to like her dad, too.

“Okay,” he said, his voice real rough and funny sounding. “I owe Kit one.”

Now, what did that mean? Sometimes Alex did not understand grown-ups.

Reluctantly, Sean followed Kit into the rain.

Kit Darling.

The last person he expected to find his daughter hanging with. Damn. Alex had enough wild ideas of her own without picking up pointers from Kit.

Still, he’d heard the rumors. This yard sale had to hurt her pride. Big time.

And…he did owe her one.

He picked up a card table loaded with half-burned candles and headed for the porch, passing behind Kit who wrestled unsuccessfully with a stationary bicycle. Putting the table down, he went to help her.

“Go away!” she snarled, rounding on him like a cornered alley cat. A stray with attitude.

So, she didn’t want him here. He opened his mouth to call Alex. Started to turn his back on Kit, whose claws-bared approach to life had always made her more enemies than friends.

But her makeup did him in.

The rain sluiced down her face, making the heavy black mask she’d drawn around her eyes run in a muddy mess. She reminded him of Alex the day she’d fallen off their wharf at low tide. Covered by gray muck, his daughter had been mad as all get out. Mad laced with scared and fragile.

Sean knew for a fact Kit wasn’t fragile, but that childlike, smeared face, those enormous gray eyes got to him just the same.

Moved, Sean reached into his pocket for a clean handkerchief, then tried to wipe away the black goop streaming down Kit’s face.

With lightning-quick reflexes, she grabbed his wrist before the handkerchief touched her skin. “Don’t,” she growled, her small white teeth bared. “I’m fine. Just the way I am.”

And she was. She looked like some ancient warrior princess, done up in battle paint, too young to defend her honor and her turf, but willing to fight to the death in the attempt.

“I know,” he conceded, pulling his hand away and pocketing the handkerchief. “You always were.”

Nine years ago he’d found her fascinating. The wild child of a wild child. Buried in responsibilities, he’d watched as Kit cut a swath of anger and anarchy through the school and community.

In their senior class, she’d been fifteen years old to his eighteen, having skipped twice. That didn’t help make her popular.

She’d refused to sit for senior portraits, and someone on the yearbook staff had cruelly printed under the blank space that should have been Kit’s photo, “Most likely to self-destruct by age twenty-one.”

Kit had taken matters into her own hands. She’d ripped up her yearbook and left pages as calling cards wedged in the lumps of manure she’d dumped on and in the cars of the high-school principal, the yearbook adviser, the class president— Sean—the head cheerleader—Jilian, his girl—and a host of others Kit had obviously considered her tormentors.

He’d admired her guts.

By the time a school administrator knocked on Babe Darling’s door, Kit had left town. At fifteen. Without waiting to collect her diploma.

Sean hoisted the stationary bike out of the mud and onto the porch, savoring Kit’s stunned expression.

Only to meet the equally astonished gaze of his daughter. Alex stood on the porch, her arms wrapped around a bunch of soggy stuffed animals, cheap carnival prizes. The look she gave him saw right through him. She’d seen how he’d lost himself in this woman.

This would never do. Kit wasn’t any part of his plan to keep his daughter safe.

“It’s coming down bad, squirt.” Affecting a nonchalance he didn’t feel, he stuck his hand out into the river of rain running off the gutterless porch roof.

Alex plunked the stuffed animals onto the uneven flooring. “This is just like the time Seafaring Cecil was in Hong Kong and the vegetable seller’s sampan sank. Cecil didn’t leave till he’d helped get all the stuff out of the harbor. Remember, the guy was so grateful he gave Cecil a duck to roast?”

Sean chuckled.

Alex whooped and jumped off the top step into the yard. Her boots created splashes that reached her tiny waist as she made a beeline for a lamp molded in the shape of a naked woman.

“Are you two crazy?” Kit cried, racing up the steps with an ugly painting of an almost-naked Elvis. The velvet background was so wet and whorled, Elvis looked pitifully cowlicked. “Why are you still here?”

“Because it seems pretty damned important to you to save this stuff.”

She looked at him as if no one had ever taken into consideration what was important to her.

At that moment Sean wanted to tell her he was sorry for standing her up nine years ago. It hadn’t been at all the way she must have imagined. But, he couldn’t give in to the attraction he’d always harbored for her. He needed his parenting wits about him, and Kit, he felt sure, had the potential to drive him witless.

“Hey, look at this!” Alex bounded back up onto the porch, carrying a plastic laundry basket full of Hollywood fan magazines. “It was sticking out of the bottom.” Nearly bursting with excitement, she took out a scrapbook. “It’s full of stuff about Seafaring Cecil.”

There were clippings about the gonzo travel writer’s adventures, his interactive Web site and the merchandise his adventures, site and books had spawned.

Alex turned to Kit, her eyes sparkling. “If this is part of your yard sale, I wanna buy it!”

Kit looked overwhelmed. “I…I…don’t know.”

“Is it yours?” Alex persisted.

“It must be my mother’s,” Kit replied. The rain drummed on the porch roof as her fingertips hovered over the scrapbook. “I never knew she took any interest in me.”

“You?” Alex flipped through the pages. There were no photos of the intrepid fisherman-traveler. “This is about Seafaring Cecil.”

“I know, kid.” Kit looked squarely at Alex. “I’m Cecil. It’s my working name.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALEX COULDN’T STOP grinning. Could the lady in front of her really be Seafaring Cecil? The man—no, the person—who’d traveled the seven seas and a few rivers thrown in for good measure? The person who’d eaten stir-fried bugs and drunk snake’s blood? The person who’d helped Dad and her plan their ultimate-awesome-when-they-won-the-lottery trip?

Funny, but Kit looked just as cool as Alex had imagined Cecil to be. Only he was a lady.

Still, her dad had taught her not to believe everything people told you.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked up at Kit and issued her challenge. “Prove it.”

Give her credit, Kit didn’t back down. “Did you ever look at the copyright page in any of the books?”

“Nope.” Alex shook her head. “We always got right to the good stuff.”

Kit smiled and Alex noticed her front tooth was just the tiniest bit crooked. She imagined it got that way when Kit had to open her emergency rations with her bare teeth. Maybe. It could happen. Cecil didn’t live like ordinary people.

“If I had a book here,” Kit said, “I could show you. It would say, ‘Copyright by Kit Darling.’ Me.”

A brilliant idea popped into Alex’s head. “We have Seafaring Cecil books at our house. Everyone.” She tugged on her dad’s pocket. “Can Kit come to supper tonight? We could check it out then.”

Dad looked like he’d been turned to stone with a voodoo curse.

“That’s okay.” Kit was acting funny, too. She probably wasn’t used to eating at a table with knives and forks. “I should be making supper for you. For your help. But I’m fresh out of duck for roasting. Plus the utilities are off.” She gave Alex a wobbly smile.

Alex felt a stab of disappointment. “I should have known a big shot like you wouldn’t—”

“Hey, it’s not like that. I’m no big shot.” Kit knelt before her on the porch. The rain all around made it feel like they were marooned in the middle of the jungle. In Brazil maybe. Or Thailand. Up close, Alex got to look at Kit’s cool vine tattoo. Had a rain forest tribesman given it to her?

“I’m only in town for a short while,” Kit explained. “I have a long list of appointments. Lawyers, mostly.” She made a face. “Then I need to get back on the road again. New places to visit. New things to write about.” She looked kinda sorry. “But I do want to thank you for your help. And for being a Cecil fan. Perhaps tomorrow you could bring me your books and I’ll autograph them. We could have a picnic lunch on the boulder out back while your dad’s working. It would give your aunt a break.”

Alex held her breath, looking at her dad. He cleared his throat.

“I don’t think so,” he said. Sean had pinched lines between his eyes. Like he had a stomachache. “You see…Alex has been suspended from school for two weeks. The suspension doesn’t include picnics.”

Now why did he have to bring that up? Just when she was about to make friends with Seafaring Cecil.

Kit inwardly cringed at the reluctance she heard in Sean’s voice. Of course he wouldn’t want his daughter associating with her. Kit the Pariah. In full view, at Babe Darling’s. Mother Pariah. Without her pseudonym, she was still a Darling. One of two town outcasts.

“I understand.” For Alex’s sake she wouldn’t make a scene. She smiled at the little girl with the big spirit. “You check that copyright page when you get home.”

She extended her hand to Sean, determined to show him his brush-off didn’t faze her. “Thanks. For your help.”

“Seems like you could use more,” Alex offered. “I could come down tomorrow and help you spread this stuff out to dry.” She stared up at her father. “That would be community service, Dad. Not a picnic.”

Kit looked around at Babe’s soggy possessions, now mostly piled on the front porch. She didn’t know if anything was salvageable, if it ever had been in the first place.

“What are you planning to do?” Sean asked, his voice brusque and his body poised to get the heck out of Dodge.

Kit glanced at him. She didn’t like the look in his eyes. Pity, maybe? She didn’t need anyone’s pity, least of all his.

“I’ll just call a junk man to haul it all off,” she declared airily. Maybe a junk man would give her something for the lot. Seafaring Cecil had only recently begun to make a real, if modest, living for Kit. She didn’t have a cushion to soften the fallout from her mother’s defection. “Yeah. A junk man.”

“See.” Sean looked at his daughter. “All taken care of.”

Kit got the impression he wasn’t only speaking of Babe’s junk.

Alex seemed unconvinced, but she remained silent. An interesting kid. There was more to her than met the eye.

The downpour stopped as quickly as it had begun, leaving the yard awash in mud. The few stray belongings they’d failed to retrieve and the yard sale sign had been swept into the street. There was nothing to keep Sean McCabe and his daughter any longer, and Kit felt an unexpected and unwanted twinge of disappointment.

She tried to shrug it off by picturing an adoring wife and mother waiting for them back home. His high-school sweetheart perhaps. The one he’d stood her up for.

“Come on, Alex.” Sean put his hand protectively on the back of his daughter’s neck. “We have to check in with Aunt Emily. Then I’m taking you to the pound where Pop and Uncle Jonas can help me keep an eye on you.”

And where was the wife? Kit wondered, forced to remind herself she didn’t care.

Sean made a move toward the porch steps, landing on one of the cowboy boots Kit had kicked off earlier. There wasn’t much maneuverability in the heavy boots he wore and he grabbed at the rickety railing. It gave way under his weight. In seconds, he toppled backward off the porch and into the rain-drenched hydrangea.

“Dad!” Alex shrieked and flew off the porch, landing in the muddy front yard. She lost her footing, too, and slid down the sloping yard.

Kit didn’t know where to help first until Alex sat up with an enormous mud-spattered grin. Sean, however, lay flat on his back.

As quickly as she could without becoming a casualty herself, Kit made her way down the two shallow front steps barefooted. If she weren’t so concerned that he’d broken or ruptured something, she might find the situation funny.

Mud oozing between her toes, she slipped, then fell to her knees. She crawled the rest of the way to Sean. “Are you all right?”

“My ego’s shot to hell,” he muttered. Flat on his back and vulnerable, he looked far sexier than upright and in charge. He glowered at the offending red cowboy boot that teetered on the edge of the porch. “That nearly killed me.”

Gingerly, Kit stood, dug her bare feet into the mud, then extended her hand.

He eyed her doubtfully.

“I’ll help!” Alex materialized at Kit’s side.

Taking a hand each, Sean braced his boot heels in the mud.

“One, two, three!” Alex crowed.

They pulled as he heaved himself out of the bush, slamming against Kit. Gleefully, Alex danced away as the two adults fell once again.

Before they hit the ground, Sean grabbed Kit to him and rolled to his side. They slid like two harbor seals in a long mucky embrace down what once was—a very long time ago—a lawn. The wind knocked out of her, Kit couldn’t move, although she hated to think of the shape she’d be in if Sean hadn’t broken their fall—her fall—by flipping to his side. Pancake came to mind.

She felt the corded strength of his arms around her, felt the rise and fall of his rock-hard chest. Heard his ragged breathing and something else…something strange. The low, rusty beginnings of a laugh. The crinkles around his eyes told her she wasn’t mistaken. Holding her tightly, he threw back his head and roared. His teeth flashed stark white against his mud-daubed face.

His laughter proved infectious.

Return to Pritchard’s Neck had put Kit on edge, and the man who now held her hadn’t eased her sense of unbalance. This unintended pratfall pushed her over the brink. She flung back her head and gave herself over to a marvelous belly laugh as Alex performed a noisy dance around the two fallen adults.

“You’re a sight.” A broad grin lighting up his face, Sean brushed a clump of hair from Kit’s eyes. His mud-slick fingertips raised goose bumps on her flesh.

“No one’s about to ask you to tea at the Ritz,” she replied, picking a hydrangea blossom from behind his ear.

He caught her wrist, his merriment transferred into longing. A shiver of reciprocal desire ran down her spine.

“Alex! What are you doing?” A woman’s voice rang out with crisp authority.

Alex froze.

A look of horror on his face, Sean released Kit, and struggled to get up.

“Who’s she?” Kit asked as he helped her up. The woman wore a neat business suit and was standing beside a sedan, her arms crossed. She did not appear amused by what she saw.

“Candace Simmons,” Sean replied. He had the look of a schoolboy caught smoking behind the gym. “Alex’s principal. And my sister-in-law’s best friend.”

When the woman recognized Sean, her face registered disappointment. Slowly, with a long glance at Kit, she got in her car and drove away. And Kit saw her chances of getting out of town without starting any new rumors evaporate like fog before the morning sun.

“HOW COULD YOU?” Nine months pregnant and angrier than a hornet in a car wash, Emily McCabe leaned against her front door, her hands supporting her back. She stared at the two mud monsters. “How could you?”

Sean had stopped to tell his sister-in-law he’d found Alex and was going to take her to the lobster pound with him. Unfortunately, Candace had come and gone before them with the news of the spectacle in Babe’s front yard.

“Alexandra, do you have any idea how worried I was when I couldn’t find you?” Emily pushed a strand of lank hair out of her face. “Do you know how difficult it is for me to get around to look for you?”

“Yes’m.” Alex scuffed one toe of her boot against the other. She didn’t look at all sorry, Sean thought.

With difficulty, Emily knelt before Alex. “Honey, you scared me. If anything had happened to you…”

Sean felt guilty. He shouldn’t have bothered his sister-in-law in the first place, but he’d nowhere else to turn for child care. His sister, Mariah, was working overtime at the local landscape nursery to pay for night school. Pop and Jonas were working above and beyond their regular carpentry jobs to get the lobster pound open before the tourist season peaked. His oldest brother, Nick, and his family were in the process of moving back to Pritchard’s Neck, but they wouldn’t be settled in until the end of next month. Brad’s wife, Emily, had seemed Sean’s only choice.

Emily and Brad’s twins, Nina and Noah, were eight, and Olivia was six, which meant that they were away at school all day. So Sean had promised Emily that Alex would entertain herself, would be no trouble at all. He’d gotten the first part right.

“Do you understand why I was so upset?” Emily’s voice had lost its edge.

“Sorry.” Hugging her aunt, Alex finally seemed genuinely repentant.

“Then right around to the back, young lady, and hose off at the outside tap while I talk to your father.” Emily looked as if she wasn’t going to let Sean get away as easily.

Alex trotted around the corner of the house, a tiny smile turning up the corner of her lips, obviously already imagining she was on her way to water some trusty safari animal.

“She didn’t mean any harm,” Sean offered.

“She never means any harm.” Sighing, Emily smoothed the tent-like dress over her swollen form. “She’s in her own little world without consequences. A world you give far too much encouragement.”

“She saw the yard-sale sign down the street.” Sean stopped himself. Emily looked as if her physical strength and emotional patience had run out with her pregnancy. She didn’t need one more person challenging her. Not now, anyway. “She wanted to see if there were any books.”

“Books.” Emily rolled her eyes. “If it’s not books, it’s lobstering. If it’s not lobstering, it’s those wild travel fantasies you cultivate. Candace says Alex needs to focus more on—”

“I’m sorry she caused you grief.” He didn’t want to pick a fight with the woman who’d tried to do him a favor, but he didn’t need yet another lecture on child rearing. He was doing the best he could.

“You need to nudge her in the right directions,” Emily said gently. “Help her make more grounded choices.”

“Are you saying I’m not a good role model?”

“Mud wrestling with Kit Darling in public…?”

“I wasn’t mud wrestling.”

“If you say so, but…Candace was devastated.” Emily’s shoulders sagged. “And I can understand why. She has Alexandra’s best interests at heart. Yours, as well. And she has some expectations for her own.”

“Don’t go there, Emily. It was one dinner. A fix-up.”

“You didn’t give her a chance. She’s still hoping—”

“Candace isn’t my type.”

“Oh, but Kit is?”

“Look. I found Alex with Kit. When the rain started, Alex and I helped bring the yard sale stuff under cover. It was slippery. We fell. My eight-year-old happened to think it was funny.”

“Funny! Two adults down on the ground, groping each other in the mud. One of them a single father and the other…the other trashy Babe Darling’s daughter, no less.”

“Would it have made any difference if I’d been mud wrestling with, say, Libby Fisk? Or Heather Abernathy? Or Candace Simmons?”

“Oh, Sean.” Emily gave him a pitying look as if he were a lost boy. “All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I’m happy enough.”

“You know what I mean. I want you to have what Brad and I have. I want Alex to know a mother’s love.”

So did he, but finding the right woman for Alex—and for him—wasn’t just an easy search on eBay. “I don’t need a matchmaker, Em,” he said as gently as he could.

“If this afternoon’s any indication, I think you do.”

“So we’re back to Kit.”

“I don’t think she’s…your type.”

“I don’t know what kind of woman Kit is,” he admitted, keeping his tone even. “She hasn’t been back to town in nine years. She claims to be a travel writer.”

“Then she won’t be staying. You need a woman who’ll—” With one hand Emily grabbed Sean’s arm. With the other she clutched her belly.

“What?” He knew without asking.

“It’s time!” Emily gasped. “This is labor.”

“Are you sure?” Had he and Alex precipitated this?

“Of course I’m sure!” Emily said through clenched teeth. “I’ve had three children. Oh—” Reaching into her dress pocket, she withdrew a cell phone and thrust it at Sean. “Call Emergency Response.”

“I’ll call Brad.”

“There’s no time!”

He punched in 9-1-1 and requested the Emergency Response Unit, then turned his attention to his sister-in-law.

“I need to sit,” Emily pleaded, breathless.

As he helped her to the step, he tried not to think about Jilian’s difficult delivery. “Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes!” She clutched his arm. “Promise me you’ll see Candace tomorrow. Explain about this afternoon. She deserves an explanation.”

Emily was right. Candace did deserve an explanation. Maybe even an apology. She was a good person. Just not the woman for him.

Another contraction almost doubled Emily over. Still, she clung to his arm. “Promise.”

“I promise,” he said quickly to alleviate her obvious distress.

Looking up, he saw a dripping Alex standing at the corner of the house, fear etched on her face.

“It’s okay, punkin,” he said, extending his free hand to her. “Aunt Emily’s about to have her baby.”

“Here?” Alex squeaked, running to him, throwing her wet arms around his leg.

Emily let out a short laugh. “You two adventurers would appreciate a front-yard delivery, wouldn’t you?” She began to pant.

Sean put his arm around her and soothed her.

Within minutes the Emergency Response Unit arrived. Fortunately, the paramedics performed their duties seamlessly. Sean, with Alex plastered to his side, wouldn’t have been much help. He assured Emily he’d wait for her children to get off the bus, that he would bring them to the hospital. He’d also get in touch with Brad. Yes, he knew his pager number.

As the paramedics began to close the doors to the unit, Emily caught and held his gaze.

“Let me call Uncle Brad,” Alex chirped, patting the back pocket of Sean’s jeans. “Hey! Where’s your phone?”

With a sense of dread, he felt his empty pockets.

“It must have fallen out when you fell in the mud. At Kit’s.” Alex’s eyes lit up. “We’ll have to go back to look for it.”

“No.” He didn’t like that idea. “Not now. We can use Aunt Emily’s.”

Alex made a beeline for the phone abandoned on the front step. “But we’ll have to get yours sometime,” she declared with a grin. “And when we do, I’m bringing my books for Kit to autograph.”

Sean’s stomach dropped.

He’d thrown himself into Alex’s fantasy of travel and adventure because it was only pretend. And, therefore, safe.

Then Kit blew into town. A real traveler with iconoclastic baggage. He didn’t so much envy her travels as fear what she represented. She was the siren. Luring his daughter and enticing him with her song.

CHAPTER THREE

KIT SAT IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM cubicle, waiting for a nurse to return with her release forms. The stitched-up gash in her right forearm throbbed as the local anesthesia wore off. Biting her lower lip against the pain, she tapped the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. It had been one long, frustrating day—starting with that blasted yard sale.

Sean and Alex McCabe had left her in a stew. Alex, because the kid reminded Kit of herself—or what she might’ve been like if she’d had the benefit of a remotely normal family. And Sean because…well, because Sean was Sean. Strong. Sexy. Self-confident. With an intriguing, barely suppressed anger—or an itch—that ran right below his responsible surface. He hadn’t changed much in nine years.

Except now he had a daughter.

Did that mean he also had a wife? He hadn’t been wearing a ring, but what lobsterman did? Around heavy equipment, a ring was a physical liability.

Why did Kit care about a ring or a wife?

Getting angry at herself for having given Sean McCabe’s marital status two thoughts had been Kit’s first mistake, she realized, thumping her heels against the examination table, waiting.

Hopping the neighbor’s chain-link fence to use their backyard hose as an impromptu shower-and-clothes-wash-in-one had been her second. As she’d scoured reluctant grass stains out of her jeans with her fingernails, she had remembered the feel of his body against hers. Remembered the sound of his laugh. The look of intensity in his eyes as he’d explained why he’d stayed to help.

Because it seems pretty damned important to you.

Sean shouldn’t have been her concern. Climbing back over the neighbor’s chain-link fence should have been.

And that was her third mistake. Her thoughts unfocused, she’d slipped and ripped her forearm.

Where was that nurse?

Her skin crawled under her damp clothes, still dirty, while her stomach growled. It was seven o’clock. Breakfast and her morning shower at the turnpike truck stop were a distant memory.

A plump nurse with pastel scrubs and a tiny, fuzzy koala attached to her stethoscope entered the examination cubicle. Kit didn’t know whether to resent Nurse Sunbeam’s well-fed perkiness or envy her cleanliness.

“We’ve filed your insurance. Here’s your release.” She handed Kit a yellow sheet of paper, then a second white one. “And here are instructions for taking care of that wound. If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to come back in.”

“I won’t have any problems,” Kit declared, sliding off the examination table. She’d been in worse situations without benefit of hospitals and antibiotics. Her stomach growled again. She needed to find the cafeteria. Clutching her papers, Kit headed for the elevator.

The elevator doors opened onto a bright and cheery food court. Just as Kit stepped out, a doll’s head rolled to a stop at her feet.

“Uncle Sean,” a child complained, “Alexandra’s not playing nice.”

How many Seans and Alexandras could there be in Pritchard’s Neck?

“But playing house is soooo boring,” a now familiar voice shot back. Alex McCabe’s. “I wanna play headhunters and cannibals.”

“Eeuuww!” girlish voices chorused in disgust.

Kit picked up the doll’s head.

Two little girls huddled on a plastic chair and tried to protect their family of dolls from a sword-wielding assailant. Make that a rolled-up newspaper-wielding assailant. Alex. Still dressed in mud-spattered overalls.

So where was her father this time?

A groan near a bank of soft-drink machines drew Kit’s attention to two jean-clad backsides—one adult, one child—which presented themselves to the world from an ignominious position on the floor. It seemed the two were trying to retrieve something from under one of the machines.

“Aha!” Rolling to a sitting position, Sean held aloft a plastic action figure. “Look, Noah,” he said, ruffling the young boy’s hair and handing him the toy, “just because Alex dares you to do something, doesn’t mean you have to—”

Sean stopped as if stung. Stopped and stared at Kit. The flinty look in his eye said she was the last person he expected—or wanted—to see.

Well, he was the last person she wanted to see.

“Kit!” Alex’s face, on the other hand, transformed with joy. Throwing down the newspaper sword, she rushed at Kit as if to hug her, then pulled up short when she spied the bandage on her forearm. “What happened? Lions? Tigers? Bears?”

“No wildlife.” Kit smiled. “A chain-link fence.”

Sean rose stiffly to his feet. He hadn’t managed a clean change of clothes either since they’d shared a mud bath. “You should get that arm looked at.”

“Well, duh, Dad!” Alex rolled her eyes. “She’s in a hospital. I think she already has.”

Sean’s ears turned pink as the three other children, now seated around a table littered with the remains of a meal, stared wide-eyed from Alex to Kit to Sean.

“We’re waiting for Aunt Emily to have her baby.” Alex seized Kit’s uninjured arm. “Come meet my cousins.”

Kit had never met anyone who accepted her so unconditionally, who championed her so exuberantly as Alex did.

“Maybe Kit was on her way somewhere, scout,” Sean cautioned, as if he wished Kit would take off. The hungry look in his eyes, however, belied his gruff tone. “Let her be.”

The corners of Alex’s mouth turned down.

“I’d like to meet your cousins,” Kit replied, slipping her hand into Alex’s. She tried to ignore Sean’s inhospitable words and her empty stomach. A round of introductions was the least she could do for the little girl who so openly accepted her.

Sean watched his daughter lead Kit toward Nina, Noah and Olivia.

“Hey, guys! Meet Seafaring Cecil.” Sean winced at the hero worship in her voice.

His daughter loved new words, but he didn’t know if she understood the meaning of transience. As in Kit’s life. The McCabes were a rooted lot. They might venture out on the tide, but they came back in on it as well. How would his daughter feel when Kit eventually took off—as she would, oh, yes, she would—without a backward glance?

“So tell them about your favorite trip,” Alex insisted, clearly intent on showing off her prize.

It surprised Sean that his daughter had to draw Kit out. He would have expected more swagger from Seafaring Cecil. From a woman who’d hit the road at fifteen. But she stood, holding Alex’s hand, and looked almost shy.

“My favorite trip is one I’ve never taken.” She smiled and her smile was sweet and far away. “Kathmandu.”

Could it be? Kathmandu was the trip she and he had mapped back in senior year when they were supposed to be researching the effects of geography on the Russian revolution instead. Their mutual passion for the freedom travel promised was what had led him to ask her out.

She glanced at him, then quickly looked away, blushing. “So maybe you’d rather see some tricks I picked up from a street performer in Montreal.”

“I like tricks!” six-year-old Olivia chimed in. “But not mean ones.”

“Can you saw a person in half?” Alex asked, her uninjured eye saucer-large.

“No tricks that complicated.” Kit winked. “But I can juggle and do card tricks and read palms and pick pockets—”

“Pick our pockets!” Alex exclaimed as the children leaned forward as one.

Slapping her hands over her miniature backpack, eight-year-old Nina appeared shocked. “Do you keep what you take?”

“No, no!” With a predatory feline grace Kit moved around the small group. “This is just for fun.”

Her twin brother, Noah, danced from foot to foot, but Nina wore a pruney expression. “Picking pockets—”

Alex reached out and clamped her hand over her cousin’s mouth.

“You’ve got to pick a pocket or two,” Kit crooned, with a mischievous grin. “I give it all back afterwards to prove how clever I am. Cleverer than the people whose pockets I pick, whose belongings I snitch.” Waggling her fingers, she looked into the children’s eyes.

The kids giggled—except for Nina—and hugged their pockets.

“Who thinks they’re cleverer than me? Who thinks they’d know if I fingered their valuables?” Kit twirled an imaginary mustache. At ease now. Lost in the game. Impish. And irresistible. “Who?”

“Me!” A spontaneous chorus of four. They were McCabes, after all. Sure of themselves.

When the hands shot up, Kit made her lightning quick move. Sean saw Olivia’s bead bracelet disappear off her tiny wrist, noticed because Olivia had made such a big deal of finding that bracelet before coming to the hospital. Twisting to keep her eye on Kit, Olivia, however, seemed not to have felt a thing.

Sean examined Kit’s moves more closely. Not an unpleasant task.

“Who thinks their young eyes are sharper than my old fingers?” she asked.

“Me!” The four craned their necks to keep their eyes on Kit prowling the perimeter of their rapt group.

As Nina wriggled uneasily, Kit slipped a bow from the cousin’s hair, then palmed it out of sight. Nina didn’t flinch, as the others squirmed and protected their own pockets.

Sean took note, however. He took note of every sensuous move Kit made. How the vine tattoo on her uninjured arm rippled over svelte muscle as Kit swiped then pocketed the children’s little treasures. How intense and childlike her own expression turned as she wove a sense of magic with her voice and her movements. How her red cowboy boots clicked on the hospital’s tiled floor as she moved around the group, holding their attention as a snake charmer would a snake.

In fact, he was so mesmerized that he failed to get out of her way on one of her turns. She bumped into him. Hard. But she wasn’t hard. She might have the enthusiasm of a child, but she had the soft curves of a woman.

Patting him solicitously, she said, “Sorry.”

He wasn’t.

“You’re all so clever,” she remarked, returning her attention to the children. “A tough crowd. Protecting your pockets so well.” She reached down and pulled a coin from behind Noah’s ear. “I’ll never put anything over on you.” She held it up to the delighted giggles of her audience.

She handed the quarter to Alex. “Hold this between your hands.” She adjusted Alex’s hands to a prayer position, and his daughter’s Seafaring Cecil compass ring instantly disappeared. “And I’ll try to move Noah’s money from here—” she tapped Alex’s fingers “—to there.” She tapped the pocket on Sean’s shirt.

Her touch left a warm spot on his chest.

She threw her hands into the air. “Alakazam!”

Alex opened her hands, and the coin fell to the floor.

The group groaned its disappointment.

“You couldn’t do it,” Nina said, her face a stiff little smirk.

“But I could do this!” With a flourish, Kit held the pilfered goods aloft. One bead bracelet. One hair bow. One compass ring. And one very familiar wallet.

Sean’s wallet. How the devil had she done that?

“Now who wasn’t paying attention?” Kit crowed.

He’d seen her lift all the other stuff, but not his own. Obviously, that enjoyable bump she’d given him had scrambled his brain. She certainly had that power.

Alex rolled on the floor, her face contorted with glee.

“Well, I’ll be—” Sean shook his head in admiration as Kit handed back his wallet.

“You need to keep a closer watch on your valuables, sailor,” she murmured, a wicked gleam in her eye.

His pulse picked up.

Once Alex’s cousins recovered, they erupted in a sea of demands.

“Teach me!”

“Teach me!”

“Teach me!”

“Is this a hospital, or did I make a wrong turn?”

Sean turned as his older sister, Mariah, marched off the elevator. She drilled such a look at Kit. Rude. His sister, a stunner and a spitfire who was completely overprotective of her younger brother Sean.

“Aunt Mariah!” Nina exclaimed. “Mom’s having our baby.”

“That’s why I’m here, love.” She bent down to accept a group hug from the four cousins. “And guess what? I checked. There’s a new kid on the block. Eric Aaron McCabe.”

“Uncle Sean!” Noah whooped. “I got a brother!”

Alex stood on a chair and tossed impromptu confetti—shredded cafeteria napkins—into the air.

“Alexandra,” Sean warned. “Get down and start cleaning up.”

“All of you, chop, chop!” Mariah bustled about the table. “Help me clean up. As soon as Aunt Emily’s back in her room, we can go up to see the baby.” She turned to Sean, her back to Kit, her posture antagonistic. “Family only.”

Sean thought it better to ignore her challenge. “I talked to Pop and Jonas. They’ll be along as soon as they close up work on the pound.”

“I think it would be better if we don’t all descend at once on Emily,” Mariah said. “After the kids have gone up, we can flip to see who takes the rug rats home for baths and bed.” She cut a hard glance at Kit. “You’ve been here the longest, maybe you should take them home.”

“I want to see our new baby,” Olivia wailed.

“Brother,” Noah insisted.

“I wanna stay right here.” Alex thrust her skinny arm through Kit’s shapely one.

Cocking one eyebrow, Mariah glared at Sean.

Sean refused to be intimidated. “Mariah, you remember Kit Darling. An old friend.” Rebellion simmered in the half-truth. “Kit, my big sister, Mariah.”

Mariah clamped her mouth shut, obviously reacting to rumors. She could be such a brat. Her brass made Sean want to shield Kit.

Kit shrugged. “I have to eat.” Gently removing her arm from Alex’s grasp, she handed back Olivia’s bracelet, Nina’s hair bow and Alex’s ring. She flipped the coin to Noah.

“It’s been real,” she said, her voice suddenly tough. She let her hand rest for a moment on Alex’s head. “You’ve been great.”

Then, without so much as a glance in Sean’s direction, she moved to the cafeteria’s sandwich array.

And Sean, having wanted her to leave earlier, now desperately wanted her to stay.

Standing with her back to the lot of them, Kit paid for a ham on rye. Who the hell did Mariah think she was? Dishing out the cold treatment. Making Kit feel fifteen again. And lacking.

The only reason she hadn’t decked the insufferable snot was because the insufferable snot was Alex’s aunt. Alex deserved better.

She moved to the drink machines to purchase bottled water. But when she stuffed a dollar in the slot, the machine immediately spit the rumpled bill back at her. She banged the lit front with the flat of her hand.

“Lemme try.” Alex stood next to Kit, empathy written on her face.

Kit handed her the dollar.

Carefully, as if the task were brain-surgery important, Alex straightened the kinks from the corners, then smoothed the entire bill by running it back and forth over the edge of the vending machine.

The gesture touched Kit. “Why are you being so nice to me?” she murmured.

Alex cocked her head, her gaze unwavering. “Because I like you.” Simple as that. Yet not so simple when her family obviously wanted Kit out of their lives.

Kit glanced over her shoulder to where Sean and his sister were engaged in heated stage whispers. Nina, Noah and Olivia huddled near their aunt.

Kit looked back at Alex, a little person with an enormous heart. “I like you, too,” she replied and felt pounds lighter for having admitted it.

Alex stuck the smoothed dollar in the slot, and the docile machine gave up a bottle of water. Scooping it out of the bin, she handed it to Kit.

“Thanks. Can I buy you one?”

“Alexandra,” Mariah called over. “Come finish cleaning up.”

The McCabes had always been clannish and tough as nails. They’d worn their hardscrabble respectability like a badge. The Darlings couldn’t buy respectability with a bushel of money and a gold-plated plaque from the governor.

Kit turned on her heel for the elevator. To hell with them. All of them.

“Kit!” Alex called as the elevator doors slid open.

“Let her go, Alex,” Mariah urged.

“Kit!” Sean called as she stepped into the car. “Wait!”

She punched the button for the lobby and felt an enormous sense of escape as the doors shut and the car began to descend, leaving Sean behind with his sanctimonious sister. Kit kicked the metal wall. Hard. Pain shot through her big toe.

In the lobby, she hobbled toward the entrance and the parking lot.

“Kit!” Sean had emerged from the second elevator.

She hobbled faster through the lobby’s automatic doors and into the parking lot toward her motorcycle. Freedom on a kickstand.

But Sean’s stride was too great. Catching up with her, he grasped her good arm and spun her around.

“Stop, dammit.” His dark eyes burned into her. “Why are you running?”

Her heart raced in a rhythm all out of proportion to her brief sprint. Sean did her in with his smoldering eyes and push-me-pull-me looks. His yearning tinged with anger.

“Why aren’t you inside with your family?” she demanded.

He held her arm as if he had every right to touch her. He didn’t. Kit had fiercely guarded her right to tell a man when he could and when he could not touch her.

“Let me go,” she growled.

He threw his hands in the air and took a step backward. “Not everyone in the world is the enemy, Kit.”

“Tell that to your sister.”

“She acted like a jerk. I apologize for her behavior.”

“You owe me nothing.”

“Ah, Kit….” A look of pain suffused his rugged features. “For a long time I’ve owed you an apology.”

It was her turn to take a step backward.

“Back in school—”

She held up her hand to ward off what she realized was coming.

“In school,” he continued, undeterred, “I asked you out, then stood you up.” His words seemed scraped and raw. “I’m sorry.”

She couldn’t believe he’d brought that old hurt into the open.

“Why did you stand me up?” She pulled herself ramrod straight, prepared herself for his macho defense. Or, at the most, the admission of teenage stupidity. Peer pressure. Folding to a dare. “Why?”

“Jilian…” He cleared his throat. Clenched and unclenched his hands. “Jilian told me she was pregnant. With Alex.” His words sounded forced. “I wasn’t thinking about anything or anyone else. We were married right after you left town.”

Dumbfounded by this unexpected confession, Kit felt a stab of empathy for his wife. The gossips must’ve had a field day. “How would Jilian feel if she knew you were telling me this?”

In the light of the parking lot lamps, Sean’s face appeared drained of all color. “Jilian’s been dead six years. Car accident.”

Kit didn’t know what to say. She’d been prepared to stand up to him if he’d apologized for being a jerk. But this halting admission was too filled with pain.

“You didn’t have to tell me all this.”

“I did.” He glowered at her as if he hadn’t wanted to tell her anything. “Because you shouldn’t think I wasn’t attracted to you. Then.”

He said then, but his eyes said now. She’d seen desire in men’s eyes before. Lust. Crude and controlling. The look in Sean’s eyes was different, tinged with vulnerability. Telling her the truth had cost him.

Unaccountably, tears stung her eyes.

“Kit…” He moved to draw her to him, kiss her maybe. She couldn’t quite tell. His tenderness and unguarded yearning made her wild. She could have handled his scorn. Or his pity. But not this sensitivity.

Drawing back, she slapped his face with all her might. As much to punish him for arousing her deeply guarded feelings now as for his inadvertent cruelty all those years ago.

CHAPTER FOUR

HIS CHEEK STILL SMARTING from Kit’s slap, Sean stepped out of the hospital elevator and into a McCabe celebration. With all the goings-on, surely his bruised ego would go unnoticed.

Pop and Jonas had arrived in the maternity floor waiting room and Brad was passing out cigars, both real and chocolate. The kids were wild from junk food, missed bedtimes and the adults’ high spirits.

“Once he decided to come, there was no stopping him!” Brad exclaimed, his chest puffed out. “And he’s a keeper, all right. Eric Aaron McCabe. Seven pounds, eleven ounces and eighteen inches of squalling testosterone.”

Jonas clapped Brad on the back.

“He’s right. I just saw him. And Emily looks great, too.”

Mariah appeared around a corner. “I’ll call Nick and Chessie,” she said. “They’d better move back home quick before the selectmen declare Pritchard’s Neck has its quota of McCabes.”

“Hush, girl.” Pop gave his only daughter a loving glance that belied his gruff reprimand. “There could never be enough of you to suit me.” Penn had fathered five children. Now he counted on those offspring to build his dynasty.

A nurse appeared, and Sean recognized her as one of Pop’s poker pals. “Visiting hours are over, and you need to let the new mom rest. But, if you can control yourselves, I’ll bend the rules just the tiniest bit and let you take a peek at the new family member…who’d better have a good set of pipes to be heard over the lot of you.”

“Ah, Adele,” Pop crooned, affecting an Irish brogue. “I’ve a soft spot in me heart for a lass in uniform. Can I buy you a cuppa when your shift is done?”

Adele leveled Pop with a flinty glare. “You can pay your poker debts, Penn, and I’ll call us even.”

Her retort shut the older man up momentarily.

“Now,” Adele continued, “if you can hold on for just a few more minutes, we’ll have your baby ready for viewing in the nursery. But first, Emily would like to speak to you, Sean.”

“Me?”

“You sure she wasn’t asking for the proud grandpa?” Pop asked, feigning insult.

“I think I know the difference between you and your sons,” Adele replied. “I’ll be back for the rest of you when the baby’s ready.” She squinted at the assembled clan. “And try to keep your conversation to a dull roar.”

With that, she set off down the corridor at a brisk clip, Sean in her wake.

“Did Emily say why she wanted to see me?” he asked.

“You can ask her yourself.” The nurse stopped outside one of the rooms. “She’s in here.”

Emily was sitting up in bed when Sean came in, holding the baby and looking radiant.

“Do you want to hold your nephew?” she asked.

“You bet.”

Sean took the tiny bundle and stared down in wonder at the newest family member. “Hey, I’m your Uncle Sean.” The baby yawned, unimpressed. “He’s a handsome dude, Em.”

“Thank you. We think so.” Emily shifted her pillow, cleared her throat. “Would you like to have more children?”

Yeah, he would. “I’ve got Alex,” he said, concentrating on the infant in his arms. “And a whole lot of nephews and nieces. That’s plenty.”

“Family’s important.”

“Nothing more important.”

Another nurse appeared in the doorway. “I’m here to take the baby. If we don’t get him in the nursery soon, I’m afraid your family’s going to riot.”

“They’re an impatient bunch.” Sean chuckled as he handed Eric over. He turned to Emily. “I’d better let you get your beauty sleep.”

“Just a minute,” Emily replied. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Sean shifted uneasily.

“I’ve been a McCabe long enough to know what a devoted father and family man you are, Sean. You deserve a woman with the same values.”

“How did this get to be about me?”

“Mariah told me Kit was with you in the cafeteria.”

“She wasn’t with me. It was pure coincidence we ended up in the same room.”

“Hmm. Two coincidental meetings in one day.” Emily obviously didn’t believe him. “Mariah said there was chemistry between you two.”

“Mariah’s got an imagination as vivid as Alex’s.”

“Alex is definitely attracted to her.”

“Kit’s not staying in town.”

“Exactly. Why would you want to start up with someone who’s leaving?”

“I think we’ve had this conversation.”

Emily looked him in the eye. “My friend Elaine works for a consumer credit counseling service in Biddeford. The agency helps people manage their debt once they’re in trouble. Kit paid them a visit to get help sorting out Babe’s financial mess.”

“I don’t think Elaine should have told you this, and I don’t think you should be repeating it to me.”

Emily acted as if she hadn’t heard. “It seems Kit cosigned with Babe on all her accounts. When Babe skipped town, she left Kit with thousands of dollars in debt. Thousands.”

Sean cringed. What kind of person would do that to family? A mother putting that burden on a daughter was unbelievable. It was a betrayal. He thought of how implicitly he trusted Pop and Jonas and the deal they’d struck on the pound. Bailing out and leaving a family member stranded was so far outside Sean’s realm of experience, he felt suddenly protective.

“You can’t hold that against Kit,” he declared. “She’s trying to do what’s right.”

“I know,” Emily said quietly. “I’m telling you this because I’m worried about you and Alex. For us, family ties, loyalty and reliability mean everything. For Kit…who knows?” She gave his hand an affectionate squeeze. “You’re a good man, Sean. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want Alex to get hurt.”

“Neither do I. Good night, Em.” He kissed his sister-in-law on the top of her head, unwilling to admit that she’d effectively made her point. He and Kit were worlds apart. “Don’t worry.”

He left the room to find his daughter.

Back in the waiting room, Alex sat alone in the corner, scowling and peeling the label off a soft drink bottle. Sean could hear the rest of his family down the hall, presumably admiring the baby in the nursery.

“Hey, june bug, don’t you want to see your new cousin?”

Alex shrugged. “I dunno.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Why did Kit have to go?”

Sean sat beside his daughter and put his arm around her shoulder, fragile as a bird’s wing. “Kit’s not part of the family, hon. Besides, she finished her business at the hospital and headed home.”

“So why’d you follow her?”

“I…thought Kit’s feelings might be hurt. I wanted to apologize.”

“Aunt Mariah wasn’t real friendly to her.”

“No, she wasn’t.” He chucked Alex under the chin. “Hey, sport, if you want to see Eric, we’d better get a move on.”

Alex stayed put and crossed her arms over her chest. It was no secret she’d inherited his stubborn streak. “I like Kit.”

“I know you do.” He rubbed the back of his neck, massaged the tense muscles. “And she likes you. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

What was wrong was his inappropriate attraction to a woman who rocked his sense of responsibility. When she’d jumped on her motorcycle after slapping him, his first thought had been to climb on that powerful machine with her. He could imagine the evening breeze on his face, the heady sense of freedom, the thrill of not knowing what lay around the corner.

“I just wanna be her friend,” Alex whispered, her face pinched in confusion. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

His child deserved the best explanation he could muster.

“When Kit lived here,” he began, “she wasn’t happy. She didn’t make friends easily. She always wanted to leave, to see the world. She only came back because her mother messed up and Kit has to help her out. She’s not happy about it, and she can’t wait to leave. Alex, honey, it’s hard to make friends with a person who has no intention of sticking around.”

Sliding off the chair, Alex threaded her tiny fingers through Sean’s big ones. “Maybe she’d stick around if she had friends.”

It was hard to argue with a child’s simple logic.

He didn’t try. Instead, he led her down the corridor to where the rest of the family stood in front of the large nursery window, behind which the plastic bassinets were empty, except for one. It seemed Eric Aaron had center stage to himself tonight in this small coastal hospital. Better he should be in the spotlight than his Uncle Sean.

Lifting Alex up so she could see her new cousin, a flood of memories washed over him. He’d stood at this very window and gazed down at the pink bundle he and Jilian would take home. Alex.

He felt a pang of guilt now, that he’d been less consumed with love or awe at that time and more worried about how two nineteen-year-olds and a newborn were going to make it on their own.

Near the end of senior year, when Jilian had told him she was pregnant, he’d had to turn down a scholarship to Brown to do the right thing—to promise to love, honor and cherish her. He’d managed the honor part, no sweat, and he’d worked on cherish. But, regretfully, love came too late.

“So you’re going to help your Uncle Jonas and me work on the pound tomorrow while your dad’s pulling traps.” Pop stood next to him, talking to Alex.

“Sorry, Pop Pop.” Alex rubbed her eyes. It was past her bedtime. “Seafaring Cecil’s in town, and she said I could help her. We’re gonna get her yard sale stuff ready for the junk man.”

“Reality check.” Sean set Alex firmly back on the floor. “We talked about this earlier. You’re to stay with Pop Pop and Uncle Jonas and work on your school assignments.”

Alex covered her ears and closed her eyes.

“What’s going on, skipper?” Pop ruffled Alex’s hair. “You want to throw your grandpop over for some old travel writer?”

“She’s not old.” Scowling, Alex raised her voice. “She’s cool. And she’s only here for a little bit, and she promised to autograph my books.”

The others turned as one, their attention diverted from the baby to Sean and Alex. Mariah shot Sean a what-have-you-gone-and-let-your-daughter-do-now look.

“Alex, enough.” He pulled her hands from her ears. “You’re overtired, and it’s time for bed. We’re going.”

Alex yanked hard on his hand. “But I want Kit to watch me tomorrow! Not Pop Pop and Uncle Jonas!” She shouted so loudly, Eric let out a high-pitched yelp behind the plate glass.

“McCabes, out. Now.” Adele stormed down the corridor.

“Sheesh,” Noah muttered, slouching past Alex. “Why’d you hafta ruin it for everybody?”

Unabashed, Alex stuck her tongue out at her cousin.

Brad patted Sean on the back as he and Mariah herded his brood down the hall. “Hang in there, buddy.”

“Hold the elevator.” Trying not to grin, Pop followed.

“Be good.” Jonas tweaked Alex’s nose in passing. “See you tomorrow.”

“Nuh-uh,” Alex muttered almost inaudibly.

“What did you say?” Alone in the corridor, Sean knelt on one knee before his daughter.

Alex refused to speak. This was so unlike her. Normally, she told him far more than he needed to know. She didn’t argue with him. And she loved spending time with Pop and Jonas.

Sean tilted her chin so that she had to look at him. “I won’t have bratty behavior.”

“I’m not a brat,” Alex muttered.

“But you’re behaving like one.”

“Then you’re behaving like one!” she wailed. “Seafaring Cecil’s our favorite. But now she’s right here, you won’t let me be nice to her. You’re just a big phony!”

“You’ve crossed the line, Alex. I won’t tolerate disrespect.”

“But everybody’s disrespecting Kit!” she cried.

Sean gritted his teeth. “Kit is no concern of ours.” She certainly wasn’t if she could drive this ugly wedge between him and his daughter, between him and his family.

“But Daaaad—”

“Not a word, Alex. I mean it.” Picking up his daughter like a sailor’s duffel, he headed for the elevator.

Alex withdrew into silence and became stiff in his arms, clearly showing her displeasure, clearly shutting him out.

SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT.

Kit pushed open the front door to Babe’s rental. She could have sworn she’d locked the tiny house. But then nothing worked in this place. The long Maine twilight cast the sparse furnishings in gloom, making them appear shabbier, if that was possible. Babe had always rented, and she’d always rented furnished. She used to say that as long as she had a springy double bed, she was home. She always told Kit things Kit knew other mothers didn’t share with their daughters. Shouldn’t share.

The faint odor of a man’s cheap cologne hung in the air. Was it new—an unsettling thought—or just a lingering reminder of Ed Crenshaw?

Sean didn’t wear cologne.

He smelled of the sea and of shirts hung out to dry in the tangy salt air. He smelled like a man who worked out-of-doors for a living ought to smell.

She moved her foot to feel for the backpack with her flashlight where she’d left it beside the front door. The pack and her sleeping bag were her only luggage. She traveled light.

Hairs rose on the back of her neck as she suddenly realized that her things had been moved from one side of the door to the other. Flattening herself against the wall, she listened intently. Nothing. Not a sound except crickets chirping beyond the front screen door.

Sliding slowly down the wall, she fumbled in the outer pocket of her backpack for her flashlight—weapons grade, she’d called it when she’d bought it—but didn’t turn it on. She had a cell phone, but the battery was dead. Besides, who would she call? The police? She’d never considered the police on her side. No, the heavy flashlight would have to do.

She scanned her surroundings. The house was minuscule. Kit hadn’t noticed—or felt—anything amiss when she’d clambered over the yard sale mess on the porch. The front door opened directly into a living space that elled on the left into a kitchen and eating area. In daylight she could see the entire area from where she stood. Her eyes now accustomed to the dusk, she detected no out-of-place shape or movement.

But she sensed something—or someone.

Straight ahead, the door to the single bedroom hung open. Kit could see most of the room, the double bed, the single dresser. She couldn’t see into the bathroom off the bedroom or out onto the back porch, which opened off the kitchen. Never lifting her gaze from the bedroom doorway, she stood on one foot and then removed a boot. Prepared to flee out the front, she flung it with all her might through the bedroom doorway. The boot landed with a thud against the far wall, the noise echoing throughout the mostly empty house.

Nothing but the racing of her heart.

She slipped her foot out of the other boot, then crept barefoot across the living room into the kitchen. It, too, was empty and silent. She felt a little foolish, Kinsey Millhone in a Nancy Drew town.

Peering through the window over the kitchen sink, she couldn’t see anything on the porch. She tried the back door. It was also unlocked. How many men had Babe given keys? Every sense alert, she stepped outside.

Twilight had receded into night, but the moon hadn’t risen yet. The house was set back from the road in a thick copse of evergreens that hid the neighbors on either side and out back. Kit scanned the line of trees.

Off to the right, a few yards into the trees, was a huge granite outcropping. She couldn’t see it now in the dark, but beyond the trees where the rocks were, a small glow caught Kit’s attention. Too orange for a firefly, it was more like the lit end of a cigarette. As she stared, frozen, the light arced then disappeared.

Sometimes retreat was the better part of valor.

Kit backed into the house and locked the door, jamming one of the kitchen chairs under the knob. Hefting the other chair to the front door, she locked and jammed that too. There were only five windows in the entire house. She checked that they were all shut and locked. It would be stuffy, but in her travels she’d experienced stuffier. Physical discomfort barely registered on her sensory radar. Emotional discomfort…well, better not go there.

She grabbed her sleeping bag and unrolled it under the kitchen table. An intruder would least expect to find her there, although she hoped she was just being paranoid. Too much time spent in this stupid prying town.

An intruder? More likely kids, hearing the rumors of Babe’s flight, had checked to see if the house was empty for a smoke or an illegal beer scarfed from Mom and Dad’s fridge.

Kit quickly shed her jeans, then crawled on top of the sleeping bag in her tank top and panties. Lying under the table, she snorted softly at herself. She should have been wearing her cap-cam. Her Seafaring Cecil fans would have found a video version of this latest adventure a hoot. It would certainly blow her tough-guy persona.

She breathed slowly, trying to regain her center. Four slow breaths in, four out. She tried to focus on a pleasant memory—kayaking in Tasmania. But her mind wandered to Alex McCabe and her small kindnesses.

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