Anything for Her

chapter EIGHT



NOLAN HAD A hell of a time getting anything done in the short time he had that afternoon before the squeal of the school bus brakes announced Sean’s return. Sean appeared in the workshop doorway to say, “I’m home,” then left to play with Cassie.

Nolan stared after Sean. How long had it been since he’d offered to help or expressed any interest in what Nolan was making? A while, Nolan realized, which he guessed was answer to any question of the boy’s original motives. As Nolan ran a polisher over an already smooth slab of Italian granite, creamy Nuovo Brocatello with beautiful gold and pinkish veins, he pondered why Sean had quit feeling the need to help.

Was he beginning to feel secure here? Huh. Maybe. Interesting, considering he’d also made such a shit of himself in an effort to compete with Allie. Maybe that, too, was a sign of his growing belief that Nolan wouldn’t dump him.

Testing the stone that was to be a kitchen backsplash, Nolan shook his head in something like amusement. He guessed not all touching parental moments were suitable for greeting cards.

One good thing: Cassie might be Nolan’s devoted slave all day, but the moment Sean walked in the door she made plain she was his dog. Probably afraid he’d disappear, she hardly took her soft brown eyes off him. If he went into the bathroom, she waited in the hall with her stare fixed on the door. After dinner the pair often disappeared into Sean’s room.

Nolan had a suspicion that, despite the two new super-duper, expensive dog beds he’d purchased, one of which was downstairs, one in Sean’s bedroom, Cassie actually slept stretched out beside Sean on his bed. That upstairs dog bed, he’d noticed earlier today in passing, looked remarkably pristine.

Tonight, alone downstairs, he couldn’t think of any excuse to call Allie, considering the several hours they’d spent together today. He wished he was sure enough of her that he didn’t have to think of one.

He had some bookwork he ought to be doing—his least favorite part of owning his own business—but he couldn’t seem to settle into it. He didn’t like knowing that what he felt was lonely. Loners didn’t get lonely.

Until they discovered what it felt like not to be alone.

After wandering out to the kitchen for the third time to dump out coffee that had cooled too much to be drinkable and pour another cup that would probably go cold, too, he reached for the phone and carried it to the living room. He hadn’t talked to his sister in a while.

Despite the greater age gap between them, he was closer to Anna than he was to Jed. Because of what they had in common? he wondered uncomfortably, but reminded himself that Allie was right—he and his sister had yet one more thing in common.

Not until recently had he thought of himself as an artist, but that was the direction he increasingly saw himself going. Most days, working on commissioned countertops, fountains and the like, he itched to get back to his own piece. He’d feel an almost physical tug toward that corner of the workshop. He could see a day in the future when he could command prices high enough to allow him to sculpt for a living. If that’s what he wanted. If he didn’t lose the pleasure in it because it had become his job.

He’d talk to Allie about it. She’d taken that route, in a way. If nothing else, she’d listen, and understand the push/pull he felt.

About to drop into his easy chair, Nolan went still. How things change. Once he’d have told himself a change of direction in his career was something to think about. It would never have occurred to him to talk it out, nor to have felt so comforted at the idea that he could. Allie was getting under his skin.

And the only alarm he felt at the idea was worry that his feelings for her weren’t entirely reciprocated.

He was frowning when he scrolled for his sister’s phone number and touched the send button.

“Nolan,” she said. “I was thinking about you today.”

“Were you.” He sat down and with one hand unlaced his boots.

“Mmm.” He heard water running momentarily. “Sorry, I was just cleaning the kitchen.”

“This a bad time?” he asked.

“No, I’m putting a cup of tea in the microwave. The lazy woman’s way.”

“Aren’t we all lazy these days?” He stacked his stockinged feet on the coffee table and wriggled his toes, enjoying the freedom from the heavy safety boots.

“You?” Anna snorted. “You never do anything the fast way if you can do it more deliberately.”

Except fall in love. The thought was...maybe not as startling as it should have been.

“Apparently I wanted the quick route to fatherhood,” he pointed out. “Why grow ’em yourself when you don’t have to?”

His sister laughed, as he’d expected. Only then she said, “Why grow ’em at all, if you don’t have to?”

He went quiet inside, oddly startled and dismayed. “You don’t plan to have children?”

“Do you?” she said sharply. “Aside from taking in this boy?”

They’d never talked about this subject. He hadn’t given it much—any—thought before, but now he discovered a yearning inside himself he hadn’t suspected was there.

Because of Allie.

“Yeah.” He sounded scratchy. “Yeah,” he said more strongly. “I think I do.”

“Why?”

He took his feet back off the coffee table, sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. “Most people do. Selfishly, there’s a lot of pleasure in seeing the world anew.”

Anna didn’t say anything.

“Is it that you don’t like kids?” he asked, feeling his way. “Or that you have trouble with the idea of having a permanent partner?”

All he could hear was her breathing, for what had to be a minute. “I don’t know if I could trust anyone that much,” she finally admitted. “God, Nolan. How can either of us?”

“I was telling someone today about Mom and Dad,” he heard himself say. Was this why he’d called her? “It got me thinking. We could have been worse off, you know. Whatever you can say about them, they both love us. Dad— I’ll never understand why he stuck with her, but he did. You know, what I’m choking on is how damn trustworthy he was.”

She made a sound somewhere between another snort and a Gah!

“I can’t even begin to understand their marriage.”

“I used to think he might be impotent, and if she wanted sex at all she had to get it elsewhere,” Anna offered.

“I used to hide my head under my pillow when their bed started squeaking. Sometimes it got lively enough, the headboard whacked the wall.”

“Don’t tell me that. Oh, ew.” A momentary silence. “I am so glad my bedroom was at the end of the hall.”

“Yeah, it mostly embarrassed me until after the uproar. Then I’d hear them in there, and I’d feel so much rage I could have lit a fire with it. Why would he want her, after? Why, if they were doing it regularly, did she screw other men?”

“She won’t talk about it, even now. I, um, think there was someone else recently. I’ve gotten so I can tell. She gets more animated, and Dad watches her with so much pain in his eyes.”

Nolan bent his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sometimes I hate her.”

Anna grunted.

“You ever think of moving out here?”

The silence suggested he’d startled her. “Is that an invitation?”

He relaxed back in his chair. “Sure, why not? You, me and Sean. Oh, and Cassie.” And Allie. Please, and Allie.

“Who?”

He told her about the adoption, and even about the signs he thought might suggest a lessening of Sean’s insecurity.

“Who was it you told about Mom and Dad?” Anna asked suddenly. “Not Sean.”

“I’m...seeing a woman.”

“How long?”

He thought back. “A month, maybe.”

“And you’re actually talking to her.”

“Yep,” he said, smiling at the pure suspicion and disbelief in her voice.

“How’d you meet her?”

He told his sister about Sean’s quilt top and Allie’s exquisite work. About how every time he went to Allie’s he saw that top becoming a quilt, and wished he had better words to describe the process, or how much of herself he sensed Allie poured into her work. Even though most often the quilts were made for someone else, she had to be doing what she did for herself. As much, he supposed, as he worked for his own satisfaction, not minding too much the letting-go part.

“I’ve never heard you sound like this about a woman before,” Anna said. “She’d better not hurt you.”

“I can’t be sure yet.” That was hard to say; hard to admit to himself. “I think she feels something for me. Maybe a whole lot of something, but she’s holding part of herself back, too.”

“Then why take a chance on her?”

Wasn’t she quick to say that, thought Nolan. “I think Allie needs time to work through some things. And I don’t have any reason to believe I can’t trust her. She has wounds that don’t seem to have healed. What’s going on between us is rubbing at them, I suspect.” He made a huffing sound, half chuckle. “Come to think of it, she reminds me a little of you. You wouldn’t be so eager to turn yourself inside out for a guy, either, no matter how much you liked him.”

“I have no intention...” she began hotly, then stopped. “Maybe I shouldn’t say never.”

“No.” He smiled, envisioning her face, not as soft and pretty as their mother’s, though she had the same blue eyes and blond hair. No, Anna’s face had some of the same bony structure as his did, which nobody could call pretty. She was striking, though, and her looks showed character. He bet there were always men around. He had no idea what it would take for her to open up to one. She was hotter-tempered than he was, less content inside herself.

What he’d told Allie about his sister wasn’t quite right, he thought now. Anna saw more of their parents, true. But was she close to them? No. What she did, it seemed to him, was a little like willfully scraping her bare skin against a rough-textured wall until she bled, and then going back and doing it again. And again.

“Anna, you should move away.” He hadn’t known he was going to say that until it came out, but he knew it was right. “You need to put distance between you and Mom.”

This silence stretched until it quivered with the stress, but he refused to break it.

“This Allie,” she said, surprising him, “has stirred you up. Or maybe it’s Sean. Usually we don’t talk about much of anything and we both go away happy.”

“We both go away,” he agreed.

His sister gave a bark of laughter. “Okay, maybe not happy.”

“I used to think contentment was the most I could hope for,” he tried to explain. “I’ve changed my mind.”

Another silence was less easy to read.

“Maybe,” his sister said, “I should come out for a visit. Check out your rainy corner of the world. I suppose potters can make a living in Washington State as well as Chicago.”

“I suppose,” he agreed, smiling. “And it’s not windy all the time here. Or sweltering hot, or bitterly cold.”

“I’ll give some thought to it,” she told him, and they said good-night.

Nolan felt better about the conversation than he had any with her in a long time. Dropping the phone on the end table and reaching his arms high above his head in a bone-cracking stretch, he hoped she’d follow through and show up on his doorstep one of these days.

I would like Allie to meet the best part of my family.

He wondered when—if—Allie would suggest he meet her mother.

* * *

SOMEHOW ALLIE LET herself be convinced that she wanted to go waterskiing Sunday with Nolan and Sean even though her best—make that only—swimming stroke was a dog paddle and if she let herself, she’d succumb to a panic attack.

Nolan had done the granite countertops that summer for a lakefront home that had a large kitchen, enormous butler’s pantry and four bathrooms. He had explained that the owner, a man named Chuck Moore, had said, “If you ever want to try waterskiing...”

October should have been too late for water sports, but days were still rising into the eighties, although weather reports claimed that would change as soon as Wednesday. So, Nolan informed Allie when he invited her, they had to seize their moment.

During the drive, Sean was guarded but polite. He grumbled a couple of times about having to leave Cassie behind, but it didn’t sound as if he really meant it.

“You didn’t change her name.” The relief was quick and hard.

“Nah, she knows her name.” They were walking down the dock toward the big white boat bobbing at the end. He looked down at his feet. “After Grandma died, I wouldn’t have wanted somebody to think they could call me whatever they wanted.”

“No.” Her voice cracked. When she looked up, it was to find his head had turned. Their gazes held for longer than was comfortable. What had he seen?

Nolan, who’d walked ahead with the friendly man who owned the enormous house behind them and the boat, turned and grinned at them. “Ready to go splat?”

The sight of him in nothing but board shorts and sandals made Allie’s mouth go dry. Of course she’d seen him naked, but that was different. In her apartment he wasn’t striding around so that she couldn’t help noticing what impressive muscles he had or his long strong legs. Of course, her mouth might be dry out of apprehension, too. Allie wasn’t that great a swimmer. So she made a face at him. “Oh, thanks.”

“You ever snow ski or snowboard? That would give you a head start.”

“No.”

Sean shook his head.

“It’s fun,” Nolan said consolingly, dropping back to throw an arm over each of their shoulders. “Really.”

“Methinks the man doth speak too much,” Allie muttered, and Sean gave a crack of laughter that clearly pleased Nolan.

They all rode in the boat its first sweeps around the lake. That part was fun. The fine spray of water was cooling, the sun deliciously hot, the speed and power exhilarating. The owner’s son, eighteen and a freshman at the UW, was home for the weekend and had brought a friend. They took turns first behind the boat, the son demonstrating how to take off from the water, and the friend from the dock. They both insisted the dock was easier. Allie was skeptical.

The two boys elected to stay onboard with Chuck for the next round, Nolan’s turn. Sean and Allie watched from the dock. As the boat gained speed and the towline stretched taut, he rose to his feet, seemingly without effort, and skied away, leaving a white wake behind him.

“He makes it look easy,” Sean said finally, sounding doubtful.

Staring after him, Allie nodded. “I’m not a very good swimmer,” she offered.

He turned to stare at her. “Did you tell Nolan?”

“He said with the life vest it wouldn’t matter.”

They both wore them. Chuck had insisted on it. Allie found the plump, bright orange vest a comfort.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Can you swim?” she asked.

“Yeah. My dad made me take lessons when I was little. One summer. And then Grandma did, too.” This glance at her was more stolen than direct. “How come you didn’t learn?”

“I was big into dance.” No, no, no. “And other stuff. I later found out that my mom is scared of water. I think maybe that’s why she never took us, even though we used to go on vacations to...” Big mouth.

“To?”

“Lakes. The ocean. You know.” She shrugged. “I did take lessons for a week or two when we were at this resort on a lake. So that’s why I can at least keep myself from drowning.”

“Well, good.” His irony was almost adult.

They sat in silence for a long time. The boat roared by and set off on another circuit of the lake. Nolan waved, laughing as he passed.

“School okay?” Allie asked politely.

“I guess.” Sean lay back on the boards of the dock, which rose and fell slightly beneath them, and stared up at the sky. “Did you graduate from high school in West Fork?”

Allie shook her head, then wasn’t sure he’d seen her. “Lynnwood. You know, that high school by the Alderwood Mall?”

“Yeah, that’s weird. You can go to Macy’s on your lunch break.”

The sun threw dazzling shards off the surface of the lake. Even with dark glasses, she kept having to blink to protect her eyes. “Nolan didn’t say. Did you go to a different district last year?”

“I did second semester at the middle school here. It was, um... I didn’t really make friends. It was kind of too late in the year. You know?”

“My mom and I moved two months into my senior year of high school,” Allie said softly. She was watching the boat and Nolan on the far side of the lake, not much more than specks. “That was hard.”

Sean sat up and shoved lank blond hair away from his face. “Wow. Your senior year?”

She nodded, feeling pleasantly sleepy from the sun on her face.

“Where’d you come from? Around here?”

“Oklahoma.” The minute she said it, she wanted to grab her answer back. It was horrifyingly like dropping something precious and watching it bounce toward the edge of the dock and the depths of the lake beyond. If only she could lunge for it and save it.

“I’ve never met anyone who lived in Oklahoma,” he said after a minute. “Is it dry and boring?”

She tried to make her laugh natural. “No, there are cities like anywhere else. I don’t think it’s much like the musical anymore. If it ever was.”

She got a blank stare. “The musical?”

Allie laughed again, more genuinely. “Oklahoma? Haven’t you heard of it?”

He shook his head. “Oh, God. They’re coming back. You should go next. Like, ladies first. That’s what Grandma always said.”

This time Allie giggled. “Coward.”

The boat swung in a semicircle, slowing to a stop. It had delivered Nolan, on the end of the towline, almost directly in front of the dock, where he sank gently into the water. He swam to the ladder, pulling the ski and line with him.

His hair was dark and slick like a seal’s as he climbed onto the dock, and water streamed from sleek skin and plastered the board shorts to his body. Big bulge, Allie thought involuntarily, remembering the dancers in leotards. His grin was exultant.

“Who goes next?”

“I think Allie should,” Sean declared hastily.

She stuck out her tongue at him but rose to her feet. “Fine. I’ll make a fool of myself first.”

As she settled herself at the edge of the dock, Nolan crouched beside her, helping her put her much smaller feet in the bindings. She gripped the handle of the towline so tightly her knuckles showed white.

“Don’t look so terrified.” His voice was a gentle rumble in her ear.

“You’re sure the vest will keep me afloat?” she begged.

“Positive.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want, Allie.” Astonishingly, it was Sean who spoke. He’d risen to his feet and hovered over them. He sounded almost aggressive. “You shouldn’t have to do it if you’re scared.”

She gave him a grateful look. “Thank you. But I think I want to try. As long as the vest won’t fall off even if I crash really hard.”

Nolan rechecked the buckles. “Sean’s right.” His eyes, kind as always, surveyed her face. “If you’d enjoy yourself more just watching, that’s okay.”

“No. I’m ready. Lean back,” she told herself.

Nolan stood and lifted a hand to Chuck, behind the wheel of the cruiser. “Go for it, honey.”

Allie swallowed and waited for the yank on the line.

* * *

NOLAN STOOD BESIDE his foster son, watching apprehensively as Allie took off on her first attempt at waterskiing. He had a sinking feeling that she might be an even poorer swimmer than she’d admitted to. Most people were afraid of getting yanked off their feet; all that seemed to scare her was the possibility of being stranded midlake—which happened—without the life vest.

Somehow, though, he wasn’t surprised when she rose as gracefully to a standing position as if she’d skied a hundred times, and seemed to fly off, her body beautiful and slender in a simple, one-piece black bathing suit cut high on her hips and low in back. He’d seen the two college boys eyeing her until they caught his expression. Mine.

“Man,” Sean breathed, “look at her go.” He was quiet for a minute. “Now I’m going to be the only person to fall on my face.”

Nolan clapped him on the back. “You’re a good athlete. And don’t be embarrassed if you do fall. Even experienced skiers do. Allie is having beginner’s luck.”

“No.” The boy frowned. “It’s just her.”

Nolan thought so, too, but he didn’t agree aloud. “You two getting along okay?”

Sean rolled his eyes. “I was nice. As ordered.”

“Did I order?”

He shrugged.

“I thought you’d both enjoy this.” Nolan stared after her. She’d become very small as the boat headed for the end of the huge lake. “Was I wrong?”

“No, it’s okay,” Sean said, to Nolan’s surprise. “Can I dive in and swim while they’re gone?”

“Of course you can.”

He did, then erupted back out. “It’s freaking cold!”

Nolan grinned. “I didn’t mention that?”

Spitting out profanities, Sean scrambled out of the water and flung himself full-length onto the warm dock.

“That’s what keeps you on your feet while you’re out there.” Nolan nodded toward the distant boat. “Course, you’re getting sprayed, so by the time you’re back here, you’re already numb.”

His foster son told him where to go, not very politely.

Happy in an unfamiliar way, Nolan leaned back on his elbows and kept an eye on Allie until boat and skier disappeared from sight as they curved around the southern shore of the lake.

She made two circuits, although she didn’t quite have the nerve, apparently, to let loose of the handle with either hand to wave when she passed by. She was laughing, though, so Nolan was able to relax again. Drowsing in the sun, he and Sean talked little, and in slow sentence fragments.

When the boat came back around either the boy piloting it or Allie—or both—miscalculated the drop-off, leaving her sinking into the water a good twenty yards off the end of the dock. Seeing her panic, Nolan came to his feet. The vest still seemed to be securely fastened, good. He dived off the dock and swam quickly to her.

She looked a little less panicked when he surfaced. “I feel like a cork.”

“You look like a cork. Here, I’ll take that.” He grabbed the ski. “Can you make it? If not, I’ll take this to the dock and come back for you.”

“No, I can...well, sort of.” She began kicking and doing a sort of half crawl, half dog paddle that did propel her forward, if slowly.

Sean was on his feet, watching. He reached down for the ski, freeing Nolan to put his hands around Allie’s waist and boost her halfway up the ladder. The boat had circled around and Nolan was able to grab the handle of the towline. Allie was laughing and gulping when he joined her on the dock.

“Oh, Lord! That was...”

“Fabulous?” Nolan prompted.

“Awful?” Sean asked.

“Fabulous, once I decided I wasn’t going to fall down. Though at the end it got a little scary.” She laughed up at Sean. “Go for it.”

He gulped. “God. Do I have to?”

“No.” Nolan put a hand on his shoulder. “Same thing I told Allie.”

He shook his head, sat down and wedged his feet into the rubber bindings. After a deep breath, he lifted his hand. “Oh man, oh man, oh man...”

The line stretched taut, and he was off, Nolan and Allie both cheering when he remained on his feet.

Allie sat on the end of the dock where Sean had been, legs dangling. Nolan joined her. “So, what do you think?”

“I’m really glad I did it.” She smiled at him, the glints of gold in her eyes more mesmerizing than the white-hot shards of sunlight bouncing off the waves. “Thank you, Nolan.”

He bent his head enough to kiss her. “You’re very welcome.”

It took some effort for him to keep the kiss as undemanding as he did. He felt a stirring that would become all too obvious in wet board shorts. Something he’d have to quell before Sean got back. As the kiss deepened, he decided a last-minute plunge into the ice-cold lake would do it.

He was nuzzling her neck when Allie stiffened and gasped. “Oh, no!”

“What?” He straightened and put a hand over his eyes. Across the lake, the boat had slowed and was circling back. There was no water-skier behind. “Did you see what happened?”

“Just him and then a big splash.”

“I’ll bet he got cocky.”

She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from the scene across the lake. “You think he’s all right?”

“Yeah, I think he’s all right.” God, he hoped so. Despite his reassuring words, he jumped to his feet to see better. Allie did the same.

“There he is. He’ll have to learn to start from the water. Unless they’re going to pick him up. No.” It looked as though the handle of the towline had been tossed back to the figure in the water. He was left bobbing while the boat made another gentle semicircle and gained speed. “He’s up...he’s up... No. Shit.”

“Is he okay?”

“I’m worried about his ego, not his physical well-being.”

“Oh.” She was all but on tiptoe as they watched another attempt begin. “Come on, Sean,” she whispered. “You can do it.”

The kid made it up this time and they were off around the lake.

Allie patted her chest. “I don’t know if I could take having children.”

Nolan laughed. “Me, I figured if I skipped all the early years, I wouldn’t have anything to worry about.” Anna had found the argument convincing, right?

Allie’s snort sounded an awful lot like his sister’s.

He didn’t resume kissing her; Sean would be by any minute. Allie sat back down and tipped her face contentedly up to the sun. He did the same. “Wish he’d had a friend to bring with him,” Nolan said after a minute.

“It’ll happen. I mean, he’s not getting in fights, and nobody is making fun of him or anything like that, right?”

Suddenly less drowsy, Nolan frowned. “I don’t think so. No fights, anyway. I’d have heard from the school about that, I’m pretty sure.”

“Mmm. He’ll be fine, then. It takes time, that’s all.”

“That’s right. You said you moved a lot. You must be a pro at starting over in new schools.”

“We talked about it, a little,” she said after a minute. “Sean and I. He said school is okay, but that he didn’t make any friends last spring. We agreed that it’s harder then. Everybody already belongs. It’ll be different this year.”

“It’s October.”

“I’ll bet he has guys he hangs out with at school. And maybe some girls flirting with him.”

The boat roared by, closer to the shore this time. Sean’s grin was jubilant as he shot past.

“I’m glad we did this,” Allie said, her voice utterly free of tension, as though something had loosened inside of her. She quit holding herself up on her elbows, instead lying flat on her back. Her eyes closed.

Nolan sat looking down at her, feeling a squeeze in his chest. God, she was beautiful, poetry in motion and equally graceful on those rare occasions she was still, like now. His gaze ate up the dark curve of her eyelashes against ivory cheeks, the delicate skin of her eyelids, the wing of eyebrows, the purity of her bone structure and the long arch of her neck. The suit clung to her small, perfect breasts, slim waist and supple hips. And those exquisite legs.

The funny thing was, even as he looked, hungry, awed at his own luck and totally appreciative, Nolan knew that this grip she had on him had to do with a lot more than her beauty. It was the sunrise of her smile, the way she lifted her chin in defiance. It was her patience as she worked over the quilting frame with her back so straight and her arms held just so, the unexpectedness of the fabrics she put together, the way she listened to him, the fierceness of her anger and—hell, maybe most of all—the ghosts he could see in her sometimes haunted eyes.

Vulnerability that moved him—and frightened him.

His heart beat heavy and hard in his chest. Life had been easier before he looked into her eyes and stumbled into something unexpected. On a silent, shaken laugh, he knew. Scared to death or not, he couldn’t imagine going back. A world without Allie.

He made himself turn his face away and look out over the water. Another boat passed, this one towing two skiers. He watched it and them, without seeing.