Hearts in Motion (2 page)

And while he’d held the lost little girl, he’d felt her quivering, felt her pure fear.

Though his younger brother often said Holden had a heart like a hardball, he did have one, and it wouldn’t let him drop the girl and race after his former in-laws as they scurried to the taxi, his former mother-in-law leaving a suitcase on the driveway. Both of them in a hurry to escape and catch the first flight back to their Palm Springs home, their country club, and their cocktail parties. To play golf and have lunch and gossip about friends.

A small child didn’t fit in to that lifestyle.

“I let them go,” he said, hearing the steel in his voice. “I’ll have to get ahold of Juliana. I put a call out to a couple mutual friends for her phone number. In the meantime, I thought I could put the girl in daycare.”

“Darling, I’m not a daycare. Why here?”

“I took the girl to a place this morning. She started shaking when we walked in the place and she saw all the kids in the hall. She’s not used to other children. From what she’s said, Juliana wasn’t around much, and her grandparents kept her at their home, with revolving nannies taking care of her. There weren’t opportunities for her to meet other kids.”

He glanced at the girl again.
Cara.
He needed to remember to call her by her name. Not
the girl
. After all, he’d given it to her in the hospital.

How ironic, him naming her.

And damn Juliana for being as careless a mother as she’d been a wife. Taking off and leaving the child alone so often. Just like his parents had done to him. They lived in Cannes now, and he hadn’t seen them for four years.

And Juliana’s parents...double damn then. Two of the most selfish and cold people he’d met.

At least his grandfather had had passion, even if it had been directed at his business.

“She likes Elvis.” His aunt nodded her chin at the wood sculpture. Her black and white cat had jumped down to the first perch, his head raised to inspect the girl. Cara was bending down, holding out her hand, the cat’s nose pointed up to sniff her.

“Elvis seems to reciprocate the emotion.” He looked back at his aunt. “It’s just two short weeks. If you—”

“Darling,” she said, “I’m meeting a friend for lunch today. Tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment. Just a check-up, but I don’t want to miss it, and she would be bored silly waiting for me. Plus, I have lunch with friends on Thursday. On Saturday, I’m meeting with my book club, and on Sunday, I’m going to a play in Madison. Besides, what makes you think the girl is better off with me than the grandparents?”

“You wouldn’t leave her with a nanny all day, every day. Even my grandparents didn’t do that.”

“That’s because my parents were too stingy to pay for a nanny,” she said.

He laughed. Too true about his stern grandparents. Despite the fact that they were one of the wealthiest families in Eagleton, his grandmother had made breakfast for him every day and sent him off to school herself. No private school for him or his brother. And every night, his grandfather had checked their homework to make sure they’d done it.

They’d ruined his father, his grandmother had said often. They weren’t doing the same thing with him and Ryan.

“Cara needs someone younger than me,” Daisy said. “Someone lively, who will do things with her.”

“I hope you’re not talking about Portia. She has her own career. I won’t ask her to stop it for me.”

“Of course I’m not thinking of Portia.” Daisy made a gesture with her hand, as if swatting away a fly. “Didn’t I say someone lively?”

He stared at her, not saying anything, while she gazed blandly back at him, her lips quivering with silent laughter.

A stalemate. But in his mind, he was winning. Portia’s tranquility—or lack of vivacity, his aunt would say—was what had drawn him to her. Portia was a calm lake where Juliana had been a frenetic lightning storm.

“You have someone lively in mind?” he asked, hoping it wasn’t someone too lively. The last thing Cara needed in her life was a clone of her mother.
 

Daisy beamed. “The girl who makes my cat furniture. She works from home, and—”

“Whoa.” He got to his feet. “Saws and woodworking tools aren’t a safe place for a small child.”

“You’re a good man.” Daisy stood and reached out to pat his cheek. “Abby does the designing and the marketing. She’s the people person. Her partner does the woodwork.”

“Partner as in a live-in lover?”

“You’re such a prude.” With her face animated and her eyes bright, Daisy still looked like the fun aunt from his youth, with only a few more wrinkles, a few more pounds, and a change of hair color. “Her partner is a woman and, no, she doesn’t live with Abby.”

“How do you know them so well?”

“Abby fosters cats. Elvis was staying with her when I adopted him. And then I realized I knew her parents. Not well, but we were acquaintances.”

“The...thing on your wall. That’s one of hers?”

She twisted to smile at it before twisting back. “Beautiful, isn’t it? I admire their work and their ambition.”
 

“What about kids? Does she have anyone for Cara to play with?”

“Her sister is fourteen. I think she has summer school so won’t be home for at least part of the day. Their parents died nine years ago. Their father was a neurosurgeon, and their mother was a chef. Abby quit college to raise her sister. She’s doing a wonderful job. They’re both amazing young women.”

He stared at her for a long moment as a memory lit in his mind of a girl-woman with red hair who’d made him laugh years ago when he was going to college.

“
Abby,
”
she’d said.
“
My name is Abby.
”

He blinked the image away.

“You’re not fixing me up, are you?” he asked.

“Of course not. You’re engaged.” Her lips curved into a smirk. “Besides, you wouldn’t do for Abby. She’s like...a bright, shining star. While you’re...”

“A dark cloud?” he asked.

She laughed again. “Not quite, dear. But you’re too solid for her. It would be an awful match. Like putting together a butterfly and a toad.”

“Obviously I’m not the butterfly.”

“You would hate being a butterfly. You’d rather be the toad. The king of your own lily pad.” She beamed at him. “You know I love you, darling.”

“Despite my faults.”

“Everyone has faults.”

“Except you.”

“Especially me. I’m selfish. I enjoy my little luxuries.” She swept her hand out to encompass her jewelry-box-like condo. “And I’m fond of getting my own way. The reason I never married.”
 

His cell phone buzzed. He took it from his belt and saw a text from his secretary. “I have an appointment in a half hour. It’s important.”

“Cara’s important, too.”

“That’s why I want to leave her with you. Someone I trust.” He took her right hand in both of his, leaning close to look into her eyes. “What I’m doing isn’t as important to me as it is to all the employees at Eagleton Furniture. Every year it gets harder to compete against the cheaper furniture coming from Asia. I could retire tomorrow, and everyone in the family would live a life of ease. Not them.” He released her hand and stepped back. “Some would be okay. They might even make better lives for themselves. But others...”

Frown lines on her forehead deepened. “Life is always so serious for you.”

“Life is serious when you have so much power over people’s lives. If I don’t do my job well, they’ll lose theirs. And it’s not just jobs, it’s insurance, too. Many of the employees have been with us for a long time. You can’t deny there’s age discrimination. The older workers would have a hard time finding a new job. They or their dependents might have health problems. To some, it might make a difference between a quality life and barely getting by. To others, it might mean life or death.”

She sighed. “I wish you were exaggerating.”

“I wish I were, too.”

“You said you trusted me. Do you mean it?”

“Absolutely.” But a twinge of worry twisted inside him....

“Then I’ll do what’s best for Cara.” She made a shooing motion. “You run off to your business. Save the world in your own little way.”

“Like a superhero,” he said.

“You keep telling yourself that.” Her eyes gleamed with humor. “While you’re saving the world, I’ll take Cara to Abby’s and make her an offer she can’t resist.”

“What kind of offer?”

Her eyebrows rose. “You said you trusted me. Just go. You won’t be sorry.”

Every time someone said he wouldn’t be sorry, he usually was. But he nodded and turned to Cara to tell her he was leaving her with someone she’d just met. As if she were a package that was being handed from one person to another.
 

She looked up at him, her eyes blank, and he did something he hadn’t planned on doing. He went to her, crouched, and hugged her. She stood stiff, as if unused to hugs or any shows of affection.

“I’ll be back,” he said. And then he left, his strides fast.

He would be glad when these two weeks were over.

3

Abby watched Holden Ramsay stride up her front sidewalk, purpose in every firm step. Daisy had told her he was coming to pick up Cara and, in the future, would be dropping her off in the mornings. If not for the girl’s sad little face, she might have smiled at Daisy and made her apologies.

That and the fact that she desperately needed the money. Daisy’s proposal was an answer to the prayer she hadn’t made. Enough to pay a few bills and get them over this hump.

Only two weeks...

By then she would think of something to keep them going. Something to save them all.

She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb.

He hadn’t changed. A face like that could be on a movie poster. A chin that looked stubborn. A line permanently etched into his forehead. Brows slashed above silvery-blue eyes that made her feel as if he were peering into her soul.

“Well, if it isn’t the Big Bad Wolf at my door,” she said.

His face that had been set in hard lines made a lightning change to surprise. The lower half of his face opened into a grin, and she thought it was like watching a large rock crack in half.

Still looking at him, she amended that to a very handsome rock.

“Do you really want me to say the Big Bad Wolf’s reply, Little Red?”

She groaned, though she’d asked for it. When would she learn to keep her mouth shut? So what if keeping her mouth shut was boring? She could be boring.

But not today.

She pushed away from the doorjamb. “Only if you want to get your shin kicked.”

“Hard to resist that line. I could take my chances.”

“And I could kick higher.”

He laughed again and shook his head. “You have an odd effect on me.”

“Join the crowd.” She gestured behind him, as if hundreds of confused, invisible people were milling there, afraid to get too close to her. “So you are human. That’s not what I’ve been hearing.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing Ryan ever said about me.”

“It was a long time ago that I dated your brother for a glorious ten days.” She rolled her eyes, though there was a small ache in her chest. Not for Ryan. For her parents, who’d laughed at her when she’d fumed at them about Ryan and his brother, until she’d laughed, too.

She tamped the ache down. She preferred to think they were still alive somewhere, in another dimension, another place. Maybe just a breath away, sending her and Grace love. Telling her they believed in her. Telling her not to let one of the city’s wealthiest bachelors overwhelm her.

As if.

“My brother's an asshole,” he said.

“No arguments.” She grinned. “You said the same thing nine years ago when I went to your house and asked for my physics book back.”

“Demanded it back. Said you were going to call the police on Ryan if I didn’t get it for you.” He lowered his head to peer down at her, reminding her that her feet were bare, and she was about ten inches shorter than his six-foot-or-more height.

She straightened her spine. “And you told me to go ahead and call the police.”

He chuckled.

“You got the book for me anyway.”

“I was afraid you would combust in my grandmother's foyer if I didn’t. How did you do in physics, anyway?”

She opened the screen door. “Like I said, a long time ago. Come on in.”

From the way his smile dropped, she guessed he remembered her parents had died in the accident less than two weeks after her visit to his grandparents’ house.
Don’t pity me.

If he did, she might kick him in the shins, after all.

Laughter came from the back, two voices mingling. Grace’s, soft and low, joined with Cara’s higher, younger laugh that pitched up and down. As if she didn’t laugh often and was unsure how to do it.

Abby’s sense of goodwill dissipated, and she glared at him. This was his
daughter
. How could he have allowed her life to be so joyless?