Another Chance to Love You (11 page)

Or perhaps it was a combination of both those things.

Whatever it was, she felt vulnerable. “Daniel?”

“Hmm?”

“Be careful with me.”

“I will, Monica,” he said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. “I promise.”

M
onica slept little that night. The bed seemed cold and much too large. She kept remembering the elegant dinner with Daniel. It had been more wonderful than she’d imagined it would be.

It had also been more dangerous than she’d expected.

Be careful with me,
she had pleaded, knowing her heart could be broken now that she loved him again.

And Daniel had answered,
I will, Monica. I promise.

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe they had a future together as a family. But how? Even if he wanted marriage, even if he continued going to church with her and became a Christian, his job was in Chicago and hers was in Boise. She realized there were couples who had long-distance marriages, but Monica didn’t want to be one of them. Could she leave her home, her church, her parents, her friends and
her business if Daniel asked her to? And if she couldn’t, wouldn’t it be wiser to call things off now?

By the time wispy clouds in the eastern sky were tinged pink by dawn’s first light, Monica was wondering about the wisdom of her and Heather spending a weekend with Daniel. Maybe she was setting herself up for more heartache. Yes, she had promised to give him the summer. But what did that mean, after all? What did he want from her? Or did he know?

With a groan, she cast off the blanket and sheet and got out of bed. She was tired of so many questions that didn’t have answers. She’d go mad if she kept thinking about it.

She showered, then dried her hair and put it in a ponytail. She didn’t bother with makeup except for some mascara.

A short while later, wearing khaki shorts, a cotton shirt and new hiking boots, purchased especially for this weekend, she went to Heather’s room to wake her. She was too late; her daughter was up and dressed.

“Is Daddy here yet?” she asked the moment Monica opened her door. Her eyes sparkled in anticipation.

“Not yet. We’d better eat breakfast so we’ll be ready when he arrives.”

“Should I carry this stuff downstairs first?”

Monica smiled. “Okay. I’ll help you.”

Heather led the way, lugging her duffel bag with one hand and carrying a pillow tucked under her other arm. “Daddy said he’s gonna teach me how to fish. And if I catch anything, he says we’ll eat it for dinner. D’ya think I’ll catch a fish, Mama?”

“I don’t know, honey. You might.”

“I sure hope so. Mary said her dad’s never taken her camp
ing or fishing. She said she’s gonna ask him to, next time she goes for a visit with him and her stepmom.”

Heather couldn’t have any idea how her words affected Monica. If she and Daniel didn’t make things work between them, then Heather would be shuffled between them for visits, just as Mary was between her divorced parents. Monica had been willing to accept that possibility a few weeks ago. But now that she loved Daniel, now that she knew how much he loved his daughter…

“You want some toast, Mama?” Heather asked as she headed for the kitchen.

With a catch in her heart, she answered, “Okay,” even though she wasn’t the least bit hungry.

Daniel drove Monica’s minivan along Highway 55, following the churning Payette River. The water was high from spring runoff, and kayakers were out in force on this early summer Saturday to experience one of the top white-water rivers in the country.

About midway in their drive, Daniel stopped at one of the many turnouts along the two-lane highway. They got out of the van and stood on the ridge above the river so they could watch the men and women in wet suits who braved the icy waters below. The river plowed over rocks and boulders, white foam splashing high in the air. Reflections of sunlight created multiple minirainbows above the brightly colored kayaks that skimmed, plunged, rolled and turned in the water. It was obvious these kayakers weren’t novices. They knew exactly what they were doing. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have a prayer.

Monica and Heather both squealed as a kayak turned up
side down immediately below them. A second later, it was up-righted by the kayaker’s oar. The man grinned at Monica as he spun his lightweight canoe to face upriver, then paddled against the flow of water, waiting for one of his colleagues.

Show-off, Daniel thought. He draped a proprietary arm around Monica and another around Heather.

“This is way cool!” Heather exclaimed, looking up at him.

“Yeah, it is.” But he didn’t mean watching the kayakers. He meant being with her and her mother. He glanced at Monica and wondered if this would be the weekend he should tell her he loved her.

No, he decided. He needed to prove some things to her. He understood that. She cared about him. She might even love him. But she was scared. She had no reason to trust him yet with the things that were most important to her. He had to show her he was a man who could be trusted, and he would have to do it carefully. If he rushed her, he might lose her for good.

“Well, campers,” he said with a determinedly cheerful voice, “let’s move along. I’d like to get camp set up before noon.”

The remainder of the drive to Ponderosa State Park, a campground on the banks of Payette Lake, went swiftly. Heather taught her parents several songs she’d learned the previous year at Girl Scout camp, and the three of them sung them with varying degrees of skill. They often ended a verse with gales of laughter over their own performance. When singing got old, they played the alphabet game, searching roadside signs for words that began with each of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. The trick, of course, was finding them in order.

It was past ten-thirty when the merry campers arrived at
the state park. Daniel went into the ranger station to register them for a campsite while Monica and Heather used the ladies’ rest room. By eleven o’clock, they’d found their site, a spot on a knoll overlooking the lake.

“Can I go down and see the beach?” Heather asked, glancing from one parent to the other. “Just for a minute?”

“Sure,” Daniel answered. “But stay where we can see you.”

Heather darted off with Cotton galloping after her.

“Daniel, she should have helped us set up camp before she got to play.”

He looked over his shoulder, meeting Monica’s gaze. It was obvious she wasn’t happy with the decision he’d made. “It couldn’t hurt for a few minutes, could it? She’s been cooped up in the car for a couple of hours.”

“So have we.”

“Then maybe you and I should join her.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Let’s see how cold the water is.”

Monica tried to maintain her scowl of disapproval but failed. Daniel was too hard to resist, especially when he smiled at her that way. She took hold of his hand and allowed him to pull her down the path to the swimming area.

Heather had made her way to a deserted stretch of beach, away from the dock and those who were soaking up the early summer sun while seated on short-legged chairs or lying on oversize beach towels. She threw a piece of driftwood for the dog and laughed as Cotton chased it, tossing sand and water in every direction with her big paws.

Daniel’s grip tightened on Monica’s hand. “Thanks.”

She looked at him, but he was watching Heather.

“Thanks for not getting an abortion or giving her up for adoption. I know you could have. I know it might have been
easier.” His voice was thick with emotion. “Thanks for letting me be her father.”

Wordlessly she squeezed his hand in return. A wave of hope washed over her in that instant.

Maybe…

Just maybe…

Daniel cleared his throat, then called to Heather, “How cold’s the water?”

“Like ice.”

“Still want to go swimming later?”

“You bet!”

He chuckled and softly said, “Kids don’t feel the cold like we do, do they?” He didn’t wait for Monica to answer before calling to Heather, “Come on, squirt. We’ve got a couple tents to put up, and I need your help.”

“Okay, Daddy. Cotton. Come here, girl. Let’s go.”

Heather raced up the trail and whizzed right past her parents, her dog at her heels as usual. Daniel draped an arm over Monica’s shoulders, and the two of them proceeded more slowly toward their campsite.

They must look like a real family, Monica thought, and that fluttering, butterfly-wings feeling filled her stomach once again.

The setting up of the first tent was an occasion none of them would soon forget.

The large canvas tent was old, and the instructions had long since disappeared. Daniel had thought he would remember exactly which pole went in what loop. It was soon obvious he’d been mistaken.

The third time the tent collapsed, this time with Daniel
trapped inside, Heather was felled by the giggles. Monica laughed so hard she had to sit down. Their amusement only grew worse when Daniel finally poked his head out of the tent.

Gasping for breath and trying not to laugh himself, he pretended an offense he didn’t feel. “You sure know how to hurt a guy. Making fun of him when he’s down. There’s only so much the male ego can take.”

“Poor baby,” Monica replied with an amused shake of her head, tears running down her cheeks.

He lifted one eyebrow. “You’ll think ‘poor baby’ when you have to sleep on the ground under the stars instead of inside this tent. It
could
rain on you, you know.”

“McCall has several nice hotels,” she countered, unfazed by his threat.

Daniel cast a horrified look in Heather’s direction. “A hotel? Are we going to stay in a
hotel?
”

“No!” his daughter exclaimed, then started giggling again.

“I should think not.” He grunted. He muttered something else about a man’s pride as he returned to work.

Somehow he and Heather straightened out the poles and ropes and stakes. At long last, the girls’ canvas abode rose victoriously from the forest floor—and remained standing.

Puffing out his chest, Daniel turned toward Monica who was, by this time, preparing a lunch of sandwiches made with cold cuts and cheese. “There,” he said. “I told you we could do it.”

She put down the knife she’d been using to spread mustard and applauded them. “Very good, Mr. Rourke. Most impressive. And you, too, Heather. But perhaps you should get your tent upright, too, before you start bragging.”

“You mock us, Ms. Fletcher. I can tell. Be careful,” he warned, “or you might find yourself taking a dunking in the lake.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

He chuckled ominously. “Wouldn’t I?” He moved toward her with deliberate, threatening steps. “Push me a little more and see what happens.”

“Stop right there.” Monica picked up the knife again and waved it in his direction. “Or I’ll add sweet pickles to your potato salad.”

He grinned. She’d remembered he didn’t like pickles in his potato salad. All these years, and she’d remembered a little thing like that.

He raised his hands in a show of surrender. “Truce?”

She smiled back at him. “Truce.”

“I think for a truce to be binding it has to be sealed with a kiss.”

Monica glanced toward Heather.

“Go on and kiss him, Mama.”

Daniel advanced. Monica put down the knife.

He took hold of her upper arms and drew her toward him. She allowed her head to drop back as she rose on tiptoe.

He stopped smiling. So did she.

He kissed her. She kissed him back.

They belonged together, he thought as he tasted the sweetness of her mouth.

He knew it, and so did she.

Lost in his own thoughts, Daniel drove the minivan north along a dirt road.

It had been about nineteen years since he’d come with his
dad to this fishing spot on the river that joined the upper and lower Payette Lakes. Daniel didn’t have many good memories about his father, but the few he had were almost all tied to fishing. Richard Rourke had first brought his son to this spot when Daniel was about six or seven years old. He remembered catching a big trout that day, and he remembered the way his dad had slapped him on the back and praised him for a job well-done.

He glanced over at Heather. She was staring out the window with an eager expression on her pretty face. His heart slammed against his ribs, driven there by a feeling of love so strong it knocked the breath right out of him.

Watching the road ahead of him once again, he couldn’t help marveling over all that had happened to him in the past few weeks. From a work-obsessed bachelor in Chicago to a dad on an Idaho fishing trip with his ten-year-old daughter. Who would have believed it? And who would have believed he’d feel this way about it?

“Mom should’ve come with us,” Heather said, interrupting his thoughts. “She wasn’t gonna do anything but read a book. She’d’ve had more fun with us.”

“I’m not so sure.” He chuckled. “I think she was glad to see us go so she could relax in that lounge chair. I’ll bet she’s taking a nap.”

“This is gonna be more fun.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

Daniel spied his turnoff and followed it off the main road. The van bumped its way over a narrow track, tall brush and trees shading the way before them. He was just beginning to wonder if he’d taken a wrong turn when the trail opened up before him into a small meadow. This was
it. The old fishing spot. And luckily, no one else had beat them to it.

“We’re here,” he said as he applied the brakes.

They had barely come to a halt before Heather unbuckled her seat belt and was out of the van. She opened the sliding door on the passenger side and retrieved the fishing poles.

“Did you catch lots of fish here, Daddy, when you were a boy?”

Daniel lifted the tackle box with one hand. “I caught a few.”

“I’m gonna catch a really big one, and then we’re gonna fry it and have it for dinner.”

“I hope so, squirt.” He mussed her bangs. “I sure hope so.” He rolled the door closed, locked the van, then picked up the tackle box and his fishing pole. “Let’s go.”

The sun was warm on his back as he followed a trail through tall brush and past stands of aspen. The song of the river, gurgling over smooth stones, serenaded them even while it was out of view.

He thought about his dad again, remembered the red flannel shirt Richard had worn fishing and that ugly military green hat with fish hooks stuck in its crown. Tall and ruggedly handsome, Richard Rourke had loved the outdoors. He’d loved to hunt and fish, loved to escape into the wilderness.