Summer Lovin (25 page)

“Give us a chance,” his father said. “You might be surprised.” He extended the drink he'd poured and Ryan accepted the peace offering.

“To…change,” Ryan said in return, coming up with the most apropos word he could find under the circumstances.

“To change,” his father echoed.

“Is Uncle Russ coming for dinner?” Ryan asked.

His mother shook her head. “He had to work late. He said to send his regrets.”

Ryan nodded, relieved he wouldn't have to face him just yet. He wanted time with his father to figure out what Mark Baldwin knew and fill him in on what he didn't. He hoped that together they'd come up with a way to handle the past—and minimize any future damage to the company or to the family. Soon though he'd have to pay his uncle a visit and begin to tie up those loose ends.

“I was sorry to hear Samantha and Zoe went home,” his mother said, interrupting his thoughts.

Her words took him by surprise. “Does that apply to both Zoe and Sam? Or is the truth that you were glad to see Zoe go?”

His mother blinked, obviously surprised. “Of course I mean them both.”

Ryan studied her, trying to assess her sincerity.

“That Zoe has character.” Grandma Edna walked slowly into the room using her cane. “Reminds me of myself in my youth.”

“Then why did you make her feel like a pariah?” Ryan asked.

His grandmother laughed. “Because the only way to be accepted is to earn your place.”

More old-fashioned wisdom from the Baldwin family,
Ryan thought. The more things changed, the more some things stayed the same.

Grandma Edna smacked her cane against the floor for emphasis. “We couldn't make it too easy on the girl, now could we?”

“You didn't make it easy on my sister and she's gone for good. Were you trying to repeat history?”

The older woman, whom Ryan had never known well, snorted in reply. “Zoe's made of stronger stuff. I knew it the moment she stood up to me over those napkins at dinner. I, for one, respect her.”

“Well it would have been nice if you'd told her so.”

“She didn't ask.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “You could have shown her, then.”

She tapped the cane again. “Zoe was too busy assuming we didn't like her and protecting Samantha from us, for no good reason. What about you? Why didn't
you
tell her so? Maybe then she wouldn't have taken Samantha and gone home.”

“Mother's got a point,” Vivian said.

Ryan opened his mouth, then shut it again. Were they really advocating
for
Zoe?

Grandma Edna sniffed. “I'm hungry,” she said before he could formulate a reply.

Ryan knew that in her mind, her proclamation ended the subject, which was just fine with him. He turned and started for the swinging doors leading to the dining room.

“Dinner is in the kitchen tonight.”

His mother's voice stopped him and Ryan paused midstride. “We've
never
eaten in the kitchen.”

“Then it's about time we start, isn't it?” his father asked.

“Uhh…Why?” Ryan leaned against the nearest wall, exhausted from trying to keep up with the new pace here.

His mother walked over and locked her arm with his. “Because if Samantha's going to live in Boston and be happy, she can't be subjected to all the formality and structure her mother couldn't handle.”

A swell of gratitude rose in Ryan's chest as he realized how much his parents were willing to change for the sake of their granddaughter. He knew how hard it must be for them to acknowledge both their mistakes and their role in Faith's death.

He'd never been prouder of his family.

And he'd never been more certain of what he had to do next. Because despite the one-hundred-eighty-degree turn in his parents, he still couldn't envision Sam growing up anywhere near here, the place that destroyed her mother.

In the same instant he accepted his family, he also acknowledged that he needed to do what was best for Sam and that meant allowing Sam to be raised by two people who loved her. Who understood what a teenage girl needed. People who wouldn't stifle her spirit, yet would provide the proper discipline. People who'd be there when she left for school in the morning and when she came home in the afternoon. Most important, people who Ryan trusted not to deny her access to her blood relatives who also loved her.

Sam belonged with Elena and Nicholas Costas.

He spent the next hour explaining his decision to his parents, who, to his surprise, understood. He even sensed their relief at not having to deal with a teenager again this late in life.

After they ate dinner, his mother and grandmother retired early for the evening. “An after-dinner drink?” Mark asked Ryan as he poured himself a cognac.

Ryan shook his head. “How about an after-dinner discussion instead?”

“That would be a novelty,” Mark said.

He had a point, since Ryan and his father hadn't been close. Ever. Perhaps it was time they began some sort of relationship based on truth and understanding. “When you had your heart attack you cut back on running the business, right?” he asked his father.

“I cut back on traveling from store to store, yes.” He narrowed his gaze. “Why do you ask?”

“In the years before you cut back, were you focused on the nitty-gritty? Like financials and insurance?”

His father waved a hand. “That always was your uncle Russ's forte, not mine. In time it'll go to J.T. I preferred the hands-on dealings and once I slowed down there, I focused more on golf.” He smiled at his words and swallowed a gulp of his drink. He regarded his son and his expression sobered. “What's going on, Ryan?”

As succinctly as possible, Ryan began to explain everything he'd discovered about Uncle Russ.

“Impossible,” Mark said.

“Unfortunately, it's true,” Uncle Russ said as he entered the room and joined them. “I wanted to be here when you heard everything, and I assumed Ryan would tell you tonight.”

“I can't believe you sent my daughter away. That you made money off of our family's tragedy and our business.” Mark raised his voice to his brother in a way Ryan hadn't heard in years.

“It was a long time ago,” Ryan said to his father, expressing some of the things he'd come to terms with over the last week. “And I do believe Uncle Russ thought he was bailing Faith out.”

“You're defending him?” Mark yelled.

Uncle Russ placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. “Don't. You'll wake the women.” He turned to Ryan. “But that's a good question. Why
are
you defending me?”

Ryan drew a deep breath. “You've always been there for me. I can't forget that. Plus I know you, and I have a hard time believing your intentions were all bad. I'm not saying I'm over it or that it won't take time to rebuild trust, but…” He shrugged. “Life's too short to waste time hating or holding grudges. Faith taught me that.”

His uncle extended his hand and Ryan took it, going so far as to pull him closer and pat him on the back.

“I'll leave it to the two of you to deal with the business and the past,” Ryan said to his father and his uncle and started for the door. He hadn't been involved in the family business before and he wasn't about to start now.

“Ryan?” his uncle called to him.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“I suggest you attend to your future.”

Ryan didn't need to ask his uncle what he meant.

Z
OE LET HERSELF
into her parents' house around 3:00 a.m. and quietly placed her keys on the console by the front door. She slipped off her shoes so she wouldn't wake anyone and silently headed toward the stairs.

“Did you ever hear the expression,
too busy to think?
”

At the sound of an unexpected voice, Zoe jerked around and shrieked aloud. “Mom! Jeez, I didn't expect anyone to be up at this hour. You scared me to death.” She placed her hand over her rapidly beating heart.

“What were you doing out so late?” Elena asked, rising from the couch. She stepped forward, nearly tripping on her kimono before catching herself and hiking up the sides of the flowing garment with her hands.

Zoe shook her head, but knew better than to comment on Elena's clothing. “Why don't you sit, Mom?”

Elena complied.

“I was working covering security at a show tonight.” Zoe's company, now officially named All-Hours Security Specialists, was up and running and doing extremely well for a fledgling business. “Since when do you keep tabs on me?” Zoe joined her mother on the couch and settled in beside her.

“I just worry about you.”

Zoe leaned her head on her mom's shoulders as if she were a little girl again. “And I love that you care.” She curled her legs beneath her, allowing exhaustion to take over. “But you know I work long hours and you know not to worry. So why wait up for me now?”

She stroked Zoe's hair with gentle hands. “Because your heart is hurting. That's what I'm so concerned about.”

Zoe shook her head, her denial automatic. But she knew she was lying. She'd been home from Boston for two weeks and she hadn't been able to forget anything about Ryan and their time together. She remembered what his lips felt like kissing hers and how his very presence reached her on a deep, intimate level.

“Baah. You miss him.” Her mother had always been able to read her well.

She could no longer lie to herself, nor did she want to. “Of course I do, but that doesn't make us right for each other.” She bit down on the inside of her cheek, but her words were even more painful.

“What does this
right for each other
mean?” her mother asked, all the while running her hand over her daughter's hair with soothing strokes. “Do you love him?”

Zoe forced a nod. “But that doesn't change that we live miles apart or that our backgrounds are completely opposite.”

“So? Does he eat with his hands or does he use a fork?”

Zoe laughed. “Too many forks, actually. Mom—”

“Does he respect your feelings and who you are as an individual?”

Zoe nodded, knowing her mother would feel her reply even if she couldn't put it to words.

“Has he tried to change you?” Elena pushed on.

“No,” she whispered, her words making a mockery and a lie of everything she feared.

“I see,” her mother said. “You are right to distrust him and think things won't work. Ryan Baldwin is an awful, awful man.”

“Mom!” Zoe said, laughing once more. Her mother knew just how to twist a point in order to make her own, and she'd just cornered Zoe with her own words.

And Elena wasn't finished yet. “On top of everything, you're willing to trust him with our Samantha.” She paused on purpose. “And yet you refuse to trust him with your own heart. Why not, my beautiful daughter?”

Zoe sighed and closed her eyes. How could she explain her deepest fears? “Ryan may act one way now, he may promise all the right things and say he loves all my ‘unique' qualities. He may even believe all these things, but eventually we'd clash on issues. Important issues.”

Her mother waved her hand dismissively. “All married couples argue. After all, common wisdom says opposites attract, no?”

“Opposites divorce, too,” Zoe reminded her.

“Baah. You're grasping at reasons to run away from him because you're scared.”

“Of?” Zoe asked, affronted her mother would think such a thing.

“Of love.” Her mother's voice dropped, her sadness and disappointment obvious. “Didn't your father and I set a good example?” she asked.

Zoe swallowed hard, reaching for Elena's hand and holding on tight. “Of course you and Dad set the best example, but you're both so…so…intense.”

There was that word again,
Zoe thought.
Intense.
Extreme
. She on one end of the spectrum, Ryan on the other, only their passion uniting them.

“You inherited the same qualities. Much more so than Ari,” Elena mused.

Far from being reassuring, her mother's words cemented the fear in Zoe's heart. But there was no time like the present to confront it.

“It's that intensity that frightens me,” she admitted. “When I was younger, I thought if I put all those feelings into my career, I could handle it. I realize now the Secret Service and all my training with the Bureau was a way for me to try and control the intense part of myself.”

“The Greek part of you? We're hot-blooded people. We fight strongly and we love strongly. It's not something to fear but to embrace.” Her mother smoothed Zoe's hair with her hand again.

Zoe nodded, understanding her mother's words in a soul-deep way she couldn't have before. Not when she was young and searching for adventure, and not when she'd first met Ryan. Only after. “I feel that kind of intense emotion with Ryan in a way I never did for another man,” she admitted to her mother.

“I understand. It was the same for me and your papa.”

Zoe sat up. She glanced over at the wedding photograph of her parents on the mantel and smiled. “You married young. I'm already thirty.”

“Way past time to settle down.”

“Way past time to get set in my ways,” Zoe countered. “What do I know about sharing my life?”

Another wave of her mother's kimono-sheathed arm followed. “You'll learn together. Zoe, Zoe, even when we joked about you being afraid to commit to anyone or anything, I never thought I raised you to be a coward.”

“Well then surprise, surprise.” Because Zoe was a coward.

She was damn scared of discovering she couldn't have it all, that she couldn't be herself and keep Ryan happy, too. She was afraid of having to answer to him and failing, afraid of disappointing him.

Elena pinned Zoe with her contemplative gaze. “So you're afraid even to try. You're unwilling to compromise so that you and Ryan can be together.”

Ryan had accused her of something very similar, Zoe recalled.

Her mother made a tsk-tsking sound that Zoe knew signaled her disappointment in her. “And is Ryan a coward, too? He must be since he let you leave without fighting for you. Another one unwilling to change or compromise.”

Zoe rose from the couch, her anger flowing on Ryan's behalf. “I'm willing to admit my flaws, but don't paint Ryan with the same brush.”

“What is this brush?” Elena asked, confused by the English expression.

“I mean don't just assume that Ryan is like me. He's come a long way since the first time he set foot in our backyard.”

Her mother leaned forward, her chin in her hands. “Really? How so?” she asked as if she doubted Zoe's claim.

Zoe tossed her hands in the air. “After all Sam and I told you about our trip to Boston, I can't believe you need to ask. He understands Sam. He will raise her to be independent without crushing her spirit. He's mellowed and he looks for reasons before just applying ridiculous rules or codes of behavior.”

“So what makes you think he's incapable of doing the same for you?” Elena asked, her mother's words doing the near impossible, silencing Zoe, and also forcing her to think.

Ryan
had
changed since they'd met. He'd found a balance between his Boston upbringing and Sam's cherished independence.

He'd told Zoe he loved her and was willing to wait for her.

And he'd gotten nothing back in return, she realized. Not a single, solitary thing. Not words of love, not promises of tomorrow or even a future. Nothing.

“Zoe?” Her mother's voice interrupted her thoughts. “You're quiet.”

“I'm thinking.”

“About?”

“What an idiot I've been.”

“How so?” her mother asked.

Zoe sighed. “Ryan's a good man. A decent man.” A sexy man who
loved
her and accepted her, stubborn flaws and all.

And she'd walked away.

Her pulse raced. Nausea threatened as reality struck, hard and unyielding. She'd been so stubborn, so unwilling to believe in love, or in Ryan. Or even in herself. She placed a trembling hand over her churning stomach. Why hadn't his word been enough?

Hadn't he proven himself since he met her? He'd loosened up and learned to accept things new and different. Like the Costases and their pet pig, she thought wryly. And he'd promised her that he'd never make her change. Yet she'd still felt the need to run.

Why?

Fear had motivated her, just like Ryan had said.

And now? What had changed in her mind? She bit down on her lower lip. She was still scared of the emotions and the intensity they shared. Only now she saw things clearly and she was much more afraid of losing him than she was of giving them a try.

Ryan had already found his balance in life. It was time she showed him she had done the same. And she knew exactly what she had to do in order to prove herself to him. She only hoped it wasn't too late or else she was doomed to spend the future alone. Because an intensity and love like she shared with Ryan only came around once in a lifetime.

 

R
YAN SAT IN HIS OFFICE
, legal pad in front of him, case files surrounding him, but his concentration wasn't on work. Instead all he could focus on was Zoe. Ryan had every intention of telling her family about his decision to let them raise Sam, and he planned to tell them in person. He didn't want to delay the revelation because he understood how much pain and misery was involved in preparing to say goodbye.

But his plans to leave immediately had been cut short when one of his partners had been rushed to the hospital with appendicitis. Ryan had stepped in to take over the workload. As a result, the soonest he could leave for New Jersey would be this coming weekend.

Not that it mattered. Whether he left for Jersey late Friday night or early Saturday morning, beach traffic would prolong his commute. And no matter when he made the trip, he'd still have hours alone in the car to think about all the things he could and should say to Zoe. Not that any of them would make a damn bit of difference. Apparently in his world,
I love you
was destined to be a one-way street.

He glanced down at the empty pad when the buzzer on his intercom rang. Ryan ignored it, hoping Nadine would take the hint and assume he was busy. Unfortunately she was persistent and suddenly the buzzer turned into knocking on his office door.

“Come on in,” he called, annoyed with the interruption.

Steeling himself to deal with the intruder when he wanted nothing more than to be alone, he glanced up. Zoe was the last person he expected to see standing in the doorway. But there she was. Wearing her trademark miniskirt and not much of a top that fell seductively off one shoulder, she looked tanned and as fresh as the summer morning.

He couldn't deny the absolute pleasure he took on seeing her here in his office, on his turf. Coming to him.

“Hi,” she said, lifting one hand in a hesitant wave. Her expression was just as wary, and since uncertainty wasn't something he normally associated with Zoe, Ryan was immediately on guard.

Still, she'd made the trip here and his heart leaped in his chest. He rose, not bothering to hide his surprise at seeing her. “What are you doing here?”

She shut the door behind her. “I needed to talk to you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I've called every couple of days to speak with Sam. You've avoided every possible opportunity to talk.”

Though he didn't know why she was here, he wasn't about to make this visit easy or let her off the hook without an explanation. Surely he deserved that much from the only woman to whom he'd ever professed his love.

“I've been working long hours.”

“So have I,” he said, pointing to the stacks around his desk. “But that didn't stop me from calling the people I care about.”

She briefly bowed her head. “You're going to make me work for this, aren't you?”

“Work for what?” he asked her. “I have no idea why you're here or what you want.”

And Zoe wondered if he even cared anymore. She swallowed hard and resisted the urge to wipe her sweaty palms against her skirt. Nobody promised her an easy meeting and certainly nobody had guaranteed her the happy ending she wanted. For all she knew, there would be no second chances for herself and Ryan.