Nathan's Child (7 page)

It wasn't smart. She could die of sunstroke. But it was better than spending the rest of the afternoon trying
not
to think of Nathan. So she ran.

She ran. And ran.

She ran until sweat poured down her face. She ran until her breaths came in painful harsh gasps. She ran until she reached the rocks. Two miles. Maybe more. She was exhausted, bent over, gasping for breath. But her mind was clear. She felt calmer, steadier, stronger. Her demon had been exorcized.

Carin shut her eyes and breathed a long, deep cleansing breath.
Yes!

Then she straightened, turned and began to amble back the way she'd come—and saw, for the first time, the tall dark-haired man and the slender girl in a lime-green cap coming toward her.

Damn!

So much for steadier, stronger and calmer. All Carin's sense of emotional well-being vanished as she realized she'd run right past Nathan's house. Now he would think that she'd come to spy on them!

“Mom! Hi! What're you doing here?” Lacey waved madly, then came running up to her.

“I finished early,” she said, struggling to breathe easily. It wasn't really a lie. She had finished. Just because she had nothing to show for it, didn't mean she hadn't tried. “So I thought I'd come for a run.”

“In this heat?” One of Nathan's brows lifted.

“I'm quite used to it.”

“We finished early, too,” Lacey told her. “Dad said we'd caught enough fish to feed an army and he didn't want to clean them all. He knows a great fishing spot! Better'n the one Thomas took me and Lorenzo to!”

“Really?” Now it was Carin's turn to raise a brow. It didn't seem likely that Nathan would know any such thing, just having returned to the island yesterday.

Nathan shrugged modestly.

“We're goin' for a swim now,” Lacey went on. “An' then we're gonna cook the fish. Dad says he's good with a grouper.” She grinned. “You can eat with us if you want to, can't she?” Lacey turned eager eyes on Nathan.

“I wouldn't want to intrude,” Carin said quickly, not looking to see what Nathan's reaction to Lacey's impromptu invitation was.

“You wouldn't be,” Lacey said.

“You're welcome to eat with us,” Nathan seconded.

But Carin didn't want to eat with them. “I'm…having a guest for dinner,” she improvised.

Lacey looked surprised. “Who?”

“Hugh.”

She only hoped he was home. If he was, there was no doubt that Hugh McGillivray, Pelican Cay's “best-looking bachelor”—his own description—would say yes to pulling up a chair to her table tonight. Hugh was notorious for trying to wangle dinner invitations. He also made no secret of his attraction to her—an attraction that Carin generally discouraged.

Well, one meal wouldn't get Hugh's hopes up. She just prayed he wasn't already eating at someone else's house.

“Bring him,” Lacey said promptly. “Hugh's just a
friend,” she explained to her father. “Remember, I told you about him. He's the one who flew Lorenzo to Nassau.”

“Right.” Nathan looked at Carin. “Bring him along.” There was an edge to his voice. Still Carin hesitated.

“Come, Mom. Please,” Lacey begged. “It'd be fun.”

It wouldn't be fun at all. But maybe if she brought Hugh, Nathan would think she and Hugh were an item. Maybe he'd realize that he didn't need to stay around Pelican Cay, that Lacey didn't need a full-time father.

“I'll ask Hugh,” Carin said. “I'll let you know.”

“Seven o'clock,” Nathan said. “I can pick you up.”

“Hugh has a car. Or we'll walk.”

Nathan looked as if he might argue, but Lacey grabbed his hand. “C'mon, Dad. Let's swim. And I want to show you how I can stand on my hands.”

Carin swallowed the temptation to tell Lacey not to brag. She should be pleased that daughter and father were forming a relationship, forging bonds, making connections. But she turned away at the sight of Nathan's fingers curling around their daughter's as he allowed himself to be led toward the water. She couldn't look. It made her wish…

She didn't want to wish.

 

“Dinner?” Hugh looked amazed, then delighted at Carin's invitation. “You're inviting me to dinner?”

A grin cracked his handsome face as he looked up from the boat engine he was working on. Hugh McGillivray had dancing blue eyes and thick dark hair, cheekbones to die for and a once-broken nose that merely added to his appeal. And even with a streak of engine grease on one cheek and another on his bare muscular chest, it was true, what he always claimed—that he was the best-looking bachelor on Pelican Cay.

Or he had been until yesterday, a tiny voice piped up in Carin's brain.

“Yes, dinner,” Carin said firmly, ignoring the traitorous voice, not wanting to admit that, even now, in her eyes
Nathan was far more appealing. “Tonight. If you don't have other plans.”
Please God, don't let him have other plans.

“Sounds great,” Hugh said cheerfully. “I'll bring the beer.”

“Not necessary,” Carin said quickly. At Hugh's look of surprise, she shifted from one foot to the other. “It's, um, it's not at my place. Well, it was going to be, but…there's been a change in plans. My, um…that is, Lacey's…father…is on the island…visiting…and he took Lacey fishing and they asked if we'd like to come to dinner.” She said all this in sort of a jerky stop-and-go jumble and wasn't surprised when Hugh cocked a brow.

“Invited
us
?” Clearly he was reassessing the invitation and didn't believe her one bit. Carin couldn't blame him.

“Invited me,” she clarified. “But I didn't want—I said I was inviting you to dinner—” she flushed a little admitting that “—and Lacey said bring you, and Nathan said yes, do. And, well…you know.”

Hugh knew. “Right,” he said. “So you want me to go as your boyfriend?”

Carin felt the heat in her cheeks increase. “I don't—I mean, it's not what you think,” she said lamely.

Hugh tilted his head. “Oh? And what do I think?”

She put her hands on her hips. “You think I'm still attracted to him. I'm not!”

Hugh's silence told her what he thought of that remark.

“Of course he's attractive,” Carin allowed, because it was impossible to deny that Nathan was a damned attractive man. It was the fact that he didn't love her and had left her that she found
un
attractive! “But I'm not attracted to him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I'm not!”

“I understand.” Hugh nodded solemnly, though there was an unholy light in his eyes. He started to rake a hand through his hair, then looked at the grease on it and wiped
it on his disreputable cutoffs instead. “I get it. You've finally become attracted to me. And about time.” His grin flashed. “Taste comes to Carin Campbell at last.”

“Don't you wish?” she teased.

“Don't I,” Hugh agreed with just enough seriousness to make her wonder as she sometimes did, if he was serious or not.

As long as she'd known him, he'd had one girlfriend after another. None had been serious. None had lasted. The only single woman between eighteen and forty she knew he hadn't dated was her. And not because he hadn't asked. He had. She hadn't been interested.

“We'll be friends, Hugh,” she'd told him. “That will be better.”

“Sez you,” he'd complained.

But they'd been friends for four years. Maybe she'd made a mistake asking him to have dinner tonight. She didn't want to spoil that by changing things now.

“You're a gorgeous guy, Hugh,” she began, “but—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “Don't. If you're asking me out to dinner, don't start putting qualifications on it.”

“No. I just—”

“Don't, Carin,” he warned her, a rough edge to his voice. “What time do we have to be there?”

“Seven. But if you'd rather not—I don't expect—”

“I'm looking forward to it,” he said firmly. “I'll be interested to meet Lacey's father.” The speculative look on his face was further cause for concern. But before Carin could say anything, he told her, “Right, seven it is, then. I'll pick you up at quarter to.”

“Ok.” But as Carin started away from the boat dock, she still worried. She tended to think of Hugh as her pal, a carefree, devil-may-care guy, whom every woman on Pelican Cay lusted after—save her—and who wouldn't be caught no matter what. Certainly that was the impression he was always at pains to give.

His reputation, well known among the island's fairer sex,
was that he was a terrific playmate—and bedmate. But in his own words, he'd “never met a woman he didn't like, nor one who made him think in terms of happily ever after.”

But Carin also remembered that two years ago he'd taken her flying one afternoon, determined to show off his new toy—the seaplane that he had added to his fleet of charter vehicles. Carin had never taken off or landed on the water before. She'd loved it, had been eager to have him do it again and again.

And while they were soaring through the wild blue yonder getting ready to make yet another approach, and the plane had banked and Carin had taken half a dozen shots out the window, exclaiming all the while how wonderful it was, Hugh had said, “You could do this all the time if you married me.”

Carin had laughed. She'd rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, yes. Sure. Right.” Because, of course, he wasn't serious. Hugh was never serious in matters of the heart.

He'd laughed, too. He hadn't pursued it. He'd never uttered the word
marriage
again. But every once in a while Carin had caught him looking at her intently, his expression always unreadable.

It had made her wonder more than once if she'd been wrong.

But then immediately she thought, surely not. Hugh McGillivray went through women like she went through tubes of cadmium blue. He was a tease, a charmer and her pal. He could have said no, after all, she told herself. It wasn't as if she was leading him on. He knew she wasn't interested in serious stuff. And neither was he!

“Hey, Carin!”

She slowed and glanced back over her shoulder. Was he going to change his mind?

Hugh was standing beside his disemboweled engine now, looking grubby and sweaty and handsome as sin. And she wished, not for the first time, that she could muster for him
a hundredth of what she felt every time she looked at Nathan Wolfe.

“What?”

He grinned. “Wear some sexy little black number with no back, why don't you?”

 

Lacey had said Carin and Hugh the hunk were “just friends.”

It didn't look like that to Nathan.

They weren't exactly holding hands and smooching in public, but when they arrived for dinner they were very definitely a couple. Carin had obviously made an effort to dress up for the occasion. She was wearing a sundress in varying shades of blue. It skimmed her narrow waist and flared at her hips, and it had such thin shoulder straps that it was obvious she wasn't wearing a bra. While the dress wasn't backless by any means, it displayed a lot of smooth, tanned skin, which Nathan watched Hugh the hunk touch as he escorted Carin up the steps.

That annoyed him. It annoyed him further that when she introduced them she called Hugh “my very good friend”.

She called Nathan “Lacey's father”.

Which he was, of course. But prior to that he had to have been “Carin's lover”, hadn't he? He'd been tempted to say so. And he might have if Lacey hadn't been in the room.

Instead he'd got Hugh a beer and Carin a glass of wine and chatted about the fishing expedition he and Lacey had gone on, while he watched the fish he was cooking and tried not to watch Hugh lean back against the deck railing and casually slide an arm behind Carin, obviously staking his claim.

“I think maybe we'll eat out here,” Nathan said abruptly. “How about helping me move the table, Hugh?”

“I just set the table, Dad,” Lacey moaned.

“It's too nice an evening to eat inside,” Nathan said firmly. “Come on.” He went in through the sliding doors and was gratified to have made Hugh follow.

After they got the table and chairs moved and Hugh was about to settle back next to Carin again, Nathan suggested she give Lacey a hand. “She made a fruit salad and we've got some garlic bread in the oven that you could bring out.”

“I'll help,” Hugh said.

“Great.” Nathan thrust a platter into his hands. “Hold this for me.”

He put Carin at one end of the table, himself at the other and had Hugh and Lacey sit on either side. At least Hugh the hunk wouldn't be able to put his hands on Carin during the meal.

But the connection remained.

When they talked about fishing, Carin said, “Hugh's a great fisherman,” and began a story about a time Hugh had taken her and Lacey fishing and they'd had great success because he knew right where to go.

“We didn't do that well,” Hugh protested modestly. “Carin thinks less is more because she doesn't like baiting hooks,” he told Nathan with a grin.

“I remember,” Nathan said tersely. He looked down the table at Carin. “I think I was the first to ever take you fishing, wasn't I?”

Carin paused, a forkful of salad halfway to her mouth. “Were you?” she said. “I don't remember.”

Liar,
Nathan thought. And he said it with his eyes. He wasn't sure whether he was gratified or not when Carin looked away.

They moved on from fishing to talking about the island economy.

“It's picking up,” Hugh said. “Tourist dollars are coming in. They're staying longer, spending more.”

“They have more options now,” Carin said. “It's not just my place and Miss Saffron's straw shop and the pineapple store and lunch at The Grouper anymore.”