Nathan's Child (19 page)

Her jaw wobbled. Her eyes filled. “Oh, God, Nathan!”

“Don't cry, for heaven's sake!” he begged her, distraught. “I'm sorry. If you don't want to hear it, I'm sorry! I couldn't leave without saying—”

“I
want
to hear it!” She would have flung her arms around him if she could have figured out how to do it without hurting him. “I love you! I love you, too!”

And then he wrapped his one good arm around her. And right there in the middle of Pineapple Street, right in front of the Win Pixie grocery store and the Pelican Cay school, Nathan was kissing her, hungrily, desperately.

And despite her fear of hurting him further, Carin was kissing him back.

“I love you,” she said again. Her voice broke, but her spirit soared. The words, once spoken, were now easy to say. She smiled against his lips, tears threatening again. She dashed them away. “I ran after you to tell you. I didn't
want you to go without knowing. I thought you'd gone…. And then I thought the plane…”

She started to cry in earnest now. And Nathan was hanging on to her, shaking his head. “Not gone. Not going. Not without you. I couldn't.”

There were kids gathering at the windows of the school, watching, grinning. “Hey, Lace! Lookit! It's your mom and dad. They're kissin'.”

But Carin barely heard them. She only looked at Nathan. “But you have to go. It's what you do. I don't expect you to stay for us.”

“I'll go again,” Nathan told her. He looked down at his arm which was probably broken and hurt like hell—but not as much as going without them had. “But only if you and Lacey come with me.”

“Of course.” Carin smiled up at him through her tears. “Of course we will.”

Was it that simple? Nathan wondered, dazed. Would he wake up in Doc Rasmussen's and discover he'd dreamed it all.

But then Lacey was there, and all her classmates, whooping and cheering.

“We have to get you to the doctor,” Carin said, easing an arm around his waist, trying to get him to walk with her.

“In a sec,” Nathan said, reveling in the moment. He wasn't dreaming. There was no way he could have dreamed up an elementary school full of cheering kids. He kissed her again, and she kissed him back willingly. He needed this far more than he needed a doctor or X-rays or Band-Aids.

He needed Carin—and Lacey—more than he needed anything else on earth.

“Come on, Nathan,” Carin urged him. “We need to get you to the doc and then home to bed.”

“Bed?” Nathan said hopefully.

Carin looked up into his eyes and he looked down into hers. They looked at each other tenderly, laughingly, lovingly. “Oh, definitely,” Carin said.

And then together, with her supporting him, they limped off up the street.

Zeno watched them, then looked at Lacey and wagged his tail.

Not bad, his eyes said, for a morning's work.

New York City, One Year Later

This time it was Nathan's show.

They all had a part again this year—Nathan, Carin and Lacey. It made sense, Gaby agreed, because they'd all gone on the expedition together. It had been a family affair.

With Nathan's arm broken and winter fast closing in, they couldn't leave until spring. But in May the three of them had flown up into the north woods. The temperatures had still been just south of frigid. The snow had been thick on the ground. It had been an education for Lacey, all right.

It had been a time to remember for all of them.

Now they were sharing the memories with the world at large. The book,
Not So Solo,
would be published just before Christmas. But the gallery show was opening in less than half an hour.

The highlights were Nathan's photos of Zeno the wolf and his pack. It had taken nearly a month for him to track the wolf down. He hadn't been in any of the places Nathan had expected to find him and, out of Lacey's hearing, he'd told Carin he was afraid Zeno, loner that he was, might have died.

In fact, he'd just been too busy to frequent his old stomping ground. The lone wolf was solo no longer. Four young wolf cubs—one who looked remarkably like the young Zeno—were obviously his. A pretty young gray-and-brindle female had made a family man out of him.

“There are some interesting parallels,” Gaby said, smiling as she and Stacia hung the show.

“A few,” Nathan agreed. He slipped an arm around his daughter and thought how much taller and grown-up she seemed now than last year. Lacey was a teenager, heaven help him. She was talking about boys! He might have to lock her up.

His gaze met his wife's. Everything they'd had the week they met they had again now—only better. They had love. They had trust. They had a future together. They were older, they were wiser. They knew to speak the words the other needed to hear.

“I love you,” he mouthed now. “All of you.”

All of them. Carin. Lacey. And Joshua, two-month-old Joshua, who—despite the commotion of the opening—was sound asleep in his mother's arms.

Nathan dropped a kiss on his daughter's brow, then leaned in to kiss his wife, a kiss that promised a lifetime of love to the woman he had so nearly lost, and then brushed his lips over his son's downy head.

“The littlest Wolfe cub,” he murmured smiling into Carin's eyes.

She smiled back, loving this man now even more than she'd dreamed possible. Loving him for the past, for Lacey. For the present, for Joshua. For the future. Forever.

Their gazes locked.

“But hopefully,” she said, “not the last.”