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  Her stomach sank at her mistake. She fixed a smile on her face and turned, determined to remain pleasant. Professional.

  And came face-to-face with the solid chest and melt-inducing shoulders of the man from the boat. Of course. Because nothing beat getting off on the wrong foot with a parent like embarrassing yourself in front of a really hot guy.

  She cleared her throat. “Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Call him ‘Captain,’” the older man suggested.

  “Dad.” The quiet tone held warning. Blue eyes, dark and level, met hers from under the brim of his cap. “I’m Matt Fletcher. What can I do for you?”

  “I…Oh.”

  Another jolt, right between her thighs. She looked down. The dog.

  Her face flamed as she pushed its head from her crotch.

  “Fezz. Quit.” The same warning tone, laced with amusement.

  The dog panted amiably and dropped its weight on her foot, its thick tail sweeping the dock.

  “Allison Carter. Joshua is in my Language Arts class.” She edged her foot from under the dog, aware of the crowded wharf around them. “Is there someplace we can talk privately?”

  The senior Mr. Fletcher snorted.

  She felt her flush deepen. As if she were her students’ age and had invited him into the closet for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

  “We’re kind of busy right now,” Matt Fletcher said politely enough. “Is Josh all right?”

  She got a grip on herself and her teacher persona. At least the man cared about his son. That put them on the same side as far as she was concerned. “He’s fine,” she said. “Have you spoken with him today?”

  Matt tugged off his cap, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. His hair was the color of oiled oak, streaks of brown and gold darkened by sweat. He smelled, rather pleasantly, of salt and the sea. “We’ve been out on the water since five this morning. What did he do?”

  “Nothing.” And that, of course, was the problem. “I was actually hoping to talk to you about Joshua’s progress. We’ve been in class now for almost three weeks and he has yet to open his mouth. Or, as far as I can tell, a book.”

  He regarded her without expression. “He’s not giving you any trouble, is he?”

  “He’s very respectful,” she assured him. If a total lack of interest in her subject matter could be called respect. “But I am troubled because he’s a bright boy who’s obviously not living up to his potential.”

  The older Fletcher chuckled. “We’ve heard that one before.”

  Matt sighed. “Look, I appreciate you coming by, but I can’t do this now. I’ve got customers to deal with and a boat to hose down. I need a shower and I want a beer.”

  “Of course,” she said stiffly. She tried really hard not to get personally involved. If you cared too much for your students, you could burn out. You could break your heart. But Matt Fletcher was Joshua’s father. It was his job to care. “I’m sorry to have bothered you at work. But when I called the number on file, your wife said I should come down to the harbor to talk to you.”

  “I’m not married.”

  Oh. Good.

  She pulled herself together. Not good.

  Things were awkward enough already. She had no business prying. And no interest in Joshua Fletcher’s hunky dad, married or not.

  “Josh’s mother is out of the picture,” Fletcher Senior said. “That was my Tess you talked to. Josh’s grandmother. You want that boy straightened out, you should let her know.”

  “Josh is my son,” Matt said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Allison had met parents struggling simply to survive, so overwhelmed by the effort of feeding their families they couldn’t focus on their children’s education. And parents like her own, who wanted perfect trophy children on display in the background of their own well-ordered lives, parents for whom a child’s degree from Harvard or Princeton or MIT was simply another way of keeping score.

  Too soon to tell which category Matt Fletcher fell into.

  “It’s important to begin the school year on the right foot,” she said earnestly. “That’s why I have all my students and their parents sign a contract. As I emphasized in the syllabus, communication is key to Joshua’s future success.”

  Matt Fletcher looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language or maybe had sprouted an extra head. “I said I’ll talk to him. Tonight.”

  “After your beer?”

  She’d meant it—hadn’t she?—as a sort of a joke. An acknowledgment of his long day, an attempt to smooth things over.

  He gave her a long, unreadable look. “That’s right,” he said. “Now, unless you’re buying, you’ll have to excuse me.”

  “THAT WAS A good-looking girl,” Tom remarked, turning the key in the ignition. Fezzik jumped into the back of the pickup as the engine rumbled to life.

  Matt glanced warily at his dad. Something about riding shotgun made him feel fourteen again. Maybe because while he and his dad had always been close, they’d never been chatty. Every major conversation when Matt was growing up had taken place right here in this truck, where they’d been trapped side by side, unable to make eye contact.

  Matt massaged the back of his neck with one hand. Maybe he should take Josh for a drive.

  “That girl is Josh’s teacher,” he said.

  Tom winked. “You used to have an eye for teachers.”

  Matt grunted noncommittally.

  Josh’s mother was a teacher. A psychology professor at Chapel Hill. Of course, back when Matt first met her, she was just another student. They’d both been students.

  “Long time ago,” he said. “I’m older now.”

  And wiser. He wasn’t like his poor dumb dog, sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted.

  “You’re not dead yet,” Tom said. “You need to get out. Live a little. Christ, boy, when I was your age…”

  “You were married with three kids. And don’t spin me some yarn about liberty in the Marines,” Matt added with a smile. “Because I won’t believe you. Mom would have killed you if you’d cheated.”

  “Yeah, she would.” Tom grinned with pride. “Besides, I knew what I had waiting at home. Hell of a woman, your mother.”

  Matt managed not to squirm. Bad enough his aging parents were getting more action than he was this summer. He could admire the rock solid nature of their thirty-eight-year marriage without needing to hear the details. Unless, of course, the change of subject got his dad off the topic of Matt’s own love life.

  “So you gave up your time ashore for love,” Matt said dryly. “Touching, Dad.”

  “Hell, no, I’d go on liberty with everybody else. Somebody had to keep their dumb asses out of trouble.”

  “Then how did you…” Matt said and shut up. He didn’t want to know.

  “I’d go into a bar,” his father said. “And pick out the homeliest-looking working woman there. And I’d buy her a drink.”

  Okay, he really didn’t need to hear this. “Look, it’s none of my business.”

  “Nice women, mostly,” Tom continued. “They were glad for the attention and the booze. And they kept the other women away.”

  Matt grinned. “Sneaky.”

  “There was never anybody for me after your mother,” Tom said. “That doesn’t mean I’m blind.”

  “I’m not blind,” Matt said.

  Or celibate.

  There had been women after Kimberly. Nice women, passing through on their way to someplace else. Temporary women, looking for comfort or diversion, to scratch an itch or enjoy a fling. Women who didn’t want more than Matt had left to give.

  Nobody like Allison Carter, with her big, brown, earnest eyes and long, smooth legs the color of honey.

  A prickle of sweat, a rush of heat, washed over Matt. He needed that beer.

  But first he had to talk to Josh.

  Josh was a good kid. No drama, no trauma, no simmering resentment at being abandoned by his mother or any crap like that. Thank God.

&n
bsp; But Matt could see how his son’s it’s-all-good attitude might not work so well in school. He couldn’t force the boy to open his mouth in class, but he could make damn sure he was doing his homework.

  “I just don’t need that kind of distraction,” Matt said. “Josh comes first.”

  Always had, from the moment the nurse first handed him to Matt in the hospital. Young and panicked and punchy from lack of sleep, Matt had cradled the baby’s slight weight, dumbfounded by a sudden rush of love for the damp, squashy bundle in his arms.

  His son.

  His joy.

  It had always saddened him that Kimberly never felt the same. Or maybe it was Matt she’d never loved.

  She was gone from their lives before Joshua’s first birthday, a casualty of what Matt now figured was postpartum depression. He didn’t blame her anymore for listening to her parents and abandoning their hasty marriage. But he didn’t understand how she could abandon their son.

  He stared out the truck window at scrub oak and salt pine. His own parents had never questioned his decision to raise Joshua. In their eyes, in their lives, a man did what a man had to do.

  Matt figured he was lucky to have Josh. Luckier to have had his parents’ support.

  But now Tom said, “You can’t live for the boy forever. Or through him. He’ll be off to school in another year.”

  “Not if he flunks English,” Matt said, only half joking.

  Another faded blue glance. “Maybe you should set up a, what do you call it, parent-teacher conference.”

  There was an idea. Hello, Miss Carter, I’m here to discuss my son’s classroom performance. Why don’t you take off your clothes while we talk?

  Matt shook his head. He didn’t mess with women on the island. There was too much talk that could get back to Josh. Too much awkwardness when Saturday night’s date turned into Monday’s encounter at the checkout line in the grocery store.

  Reluctantly, he let go of the image of a naked Allison Carter lying back against her desk. “I was thinking more along the lines of knocking Josh’s head in.”

  Tom chuckled. “Worked for you. Not so much for your brother.”

  Matt rubbed his stubble with one hand, remembering the battles that had raged at home before his brother’s abrupt departure for the Marines. Josh wasn’t a hothead like Luke. He was kind and even-tempered, easy to get along with. He kept up with his chores, at least with his grandmother’s eye on him. But the boy had developed a tendency to let things slide, a plate on the floor, the lock on the door, the volume on the TV. His homework.

  His curfew.

  Generally Matt let it go, trusting Josh would learn responsibility in time. He was a good kid. A smart boy.

  Allison Carter’s accusing brown eyes stabbed him. A bright boy who’s not living up to his potential.

  Matt set his jaw, a headache still throbbing at the back of his neck. So, fine. This time they’d talk. Dammit.

  The low-hipped roof of the Pirates’ Rest rose from the shelter of the surrounding trees, the generous eaves accented by white and green trim. As a teenager, Matt and his buddy Sam Grady had scraped and repainted every one of those windows. Matt’s parents had restored and added to the two-and-a-half story Craftsman, transforming it into a successful bed-and-breakfast. But to Matt the century-old house, with its views of the sound and the sea, had always felt like home.

  Oyster shells crunched under their tires. Tom parked the truck in back. At this hour, most of the inn’s guests were out to dinner, but there were still a few vehicles pulled up to the white picket fence.

  Fezzik sniffed the tires of a late model Toyota that hadn’t been there this morning.

  “New guests?” Matt asked.

  Tom hefted the cooler from the back of the pickup. “Must be.”

  “That’s good midweek this late in the season.”

  Tom shrugged. “You want some of this fish?”

  Matt appreciated the implicit invitation, the promise of dinner, the offer of support. He was almost tempted into asking his dad’s advice about Josh. But that had never been their way. Tess was the one they all confided in, the one who prodded and pried and talked things out.

  He shook his head. “We’re good. Josh and I will grab a pizza or something.” Nothing to be gained by yelling on an empty stomach. And maybe the pizza would help the conversation go down easier.

  Tom nodded, accepting the limits Matt set. “Right. We’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  Matt could never repay his parents for everything they’d done. It couldn’t be easy, having your twenty-year-old son and his baby show up on your doorstep. He was determined not to burden them anymore, financially or otherwise. Which was why, as soon as Josh could be trusted not to set himself or the house on fire, Matt had insisted on renting one of the guest cottages behind the inn.

  He opened the door to the bachelor quarters he shared with his son. “Josh, I’m home.”

  Fezzik’s toenails clicked across the hardwood floors.

  No answer.

  Tess must have put Josh to work at the inn, turning rooms for the new guests. Which meant the kid was safe from Matt and out of trouble for at least another half hour.

  Matt snagged a cold beer on his way to the shower.

  By the time he strode up the path to the inn’s back entrance, his mood had improved considerably.

  Chocolate chip.

  The smell—and the memories—reached out to envelop him at the kitchen door. Some things didn’t change. Like his mother baking cookies to set out for the inn’s guests at bedtime.

  As Matt swung open the screen door, she turned from the oven, baking sheet in hand, a slim woman with short, gray-streaked dark hair, her eyes creased by smiles and the sun.

  Matt grinned, reaching. “Those for me?”

  She swatted at him with a spatula. “Wash your hands first.”

  “I’ll arm wrestle you for them,” another voice offered.

  Stunned, Matt turned toward the kitchen table, where his father sat cradling a cup of coffee. And beyond him…

  “Luke!”

  His baby brother. The Marine.

  Luke’s chair scraped back as he stood.

  Matt grabbed him hard in a one-armed hug as they pounded on each other’s backs. They were almost the same height, eight years apart in age.

  His brother had lost weight, Matt thought as he drew back to search his clear blue eyes. His frame was as tense as coiled steel.

  “I thought you were in Afghanistan,” Matt said.

  “I should be.” Luke’s usually cocky grin was strained.

  Matt gripped his brother’s shoulder. “You all right?” he asked, as if he’d just hauled him out of another childhood scrape.

  “Fine. I’m on leave.”

  “He goes back day after tomorrow,” Tom said.

  Matt’s brow knotted. Flying to Kandahar on military transport could take days. Why would his brother come home only to turn around again?

  He glanced toward their father, seeking an explanation, and for the first time noticed the kid hunched in the chair beside him. A skinny boy—girl?—maybe nine or ten years old, wearing an oversized T-shirt and a Kinston Indians cap. A guest’s kid, maybe. Matt had never seen him—her— before in his life.

  She raised her head. Familiar blue eyes stared at him from a sulky face.

  Matt sucked in his breath. “Who’s that?”

  But he knew. In his gut, in the back of his neck.

  Trouble.

  “This is Taylor,” their mother said brightly.

  Matt switched his gaze back to his brother. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She’s come to stay with us awhile,” Tess said.

  “Why?”

  “Luke was just telling us.” Tess set a plate of cookies in front of the girl, who ignored them. “Her mother died a month ago. She named Luke as Taylor’s guardian.”

  “Her guardian,” Matt repeated slowly. No shit. No way. “You mean…her father.”
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br />   Luke’s gaze collided with his. A corner of his mouth lifted in a humorless smile. “Spare me the sermon, bro. I’m just following in your footsteps.”

  Two

  THEY WERE TALKING about her like she wasn’t even there.

  Fine. Taylor stared at the plate of cookies until they blurred. Her throat ached. It’s not like she wanted to be here anyway. She wanted to be home in her little blue bedroom in the house she shared with Mom.

  But she couldn’t think about her mother without crying. She swallowed hard.

  “Taylor.” Luke—she wasn’t going to call him Dad, no matter what the letter said—touched her shoulder. “Say hi to your Uncle Matt.”

  Uncle.

  The word thumped into her like a fist. She already had an uncle. She didn’t want another one.

  “Hi, Taylor.” He had a nice voice, deep and kind of quiet.

  She shot him a look from under her cap brim. He was wider and older than her…than Luke, with darker hair and eyes and big hands. Taylor looked at the jagged white scar running across his knuckles and felt kind of sick and out of breath, like she’d had the wind knocked out of her on the playground.

  She didn’t say anything.

  He regarded her silently a moment. “I can see a resemblance.”

  Tess nodded. “She has Luke’s eyes.”

  “I was thinking she had his attitude,” he drawled.

  Stung, Taylor jerked her gaze up. Her Uncle Matt smiled at her crookedly. Her stomach cramped. She ducked her head.

  She didn’t want him smiling at her.

  She hunched her shoulders, slumping deeper in the chair. She didn’t want him noticing her at all.

  THE KID WAS scared, Matt realized.

  Not just nervous at meeting her new family or grieving at losing her mother but as angry and anxious as one of the island’s feral cats and as determined not to show it. Poor kid.

  Matt looked at Luke. “Where’s she been the last four weeks?” The last ten years. “Who takes care of her?”

  White lines bracketed his brother’s mouth. “I do now. She’s been staying with her mother’s parents. Until the will was probated.”

  “You remember the Simpsons, Matt,” Tess said. “Ernie and Jolene?”