One Big Happy Family Page 12

  Sam had that uncomfortable feeling of being yanked out of a cozy cocoon and had to struggle to keep from frowning. “No, Marla wanted to switch, so I did,” she replied. “I’m going to paint and wallpaper our office today.”

  Her father finished pouring the batter into the frying pan before he spoke again. “I thought Jerry was going to get to that after he finished with the guest rooms.”

  Sam shrugged and took a sip of her orange juice. She knew that, but she felt so twitchy she had to do something. Something physical. Something that would make her sweat. “I like to do that kind of stuff, Dad.”

  “That’s a big job,” he said. “There are ten-foot ceilings in there and you’ll have to pull off the old wallpaper.”

  “I know.”

  “Hmm,” her father grunted as he flipped her crepe out onto a plate and poured the batter for another. “Don’t get in over your head.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.” Good advice for a certain aspect of her life. Like Kevin. She sat back down at the table. “I figure since it’s not a guest room, it doesn’t have to be as professional as Jerry and his guys can do.”

  Her father turned his attention to filling the crepe with blueberries and rolling it up. A pleasant silence filled their kitchen as Sam watched him. He looked up unexpectedly and caught her watching him.

  “You know, this shouldn’t become your life,” he said gruffly. “The bed-and-breakfast, I mean.”

  “Who said it is?”

  “You’re young. You should be spending your day off having fun, not stripping wallpaper off an old wall.”

  “Maybe I like doing it.”

  “It’s not that I don’t love you for all your help,” he said. “It’s just that this was my dream, not yours. So when your dreams call, I want you to promise you’ll follow them.”

  “What’s all this about?” she asked with a laugh. “You trying to get rid of me as your partner?”

  “You know I’m not.” He brought her crepes over and put them on the table. “So, do you promise?”

  “Fine. Yes.” She sighed. “I promise to follow my dreams, should one ever surface.”

  “So,” her father said, going back over to the stove. “That banker fella coming around anymore this week to check up on us?”

  “No,” she replied. “Not this week.”

  “Oh.” Her father picked up the frying pan. “Like I said, I was just wondering.”

  “He had to go to Indianapolis. He won’t be back until late tomorrow.”

  “Ah.” He took the pan and put it in the sink, squirting out some soap as he ran water into it. “Probably be around next week.”

  “I suppose.”

  She wasn’t holding her breath. Kevin had said he would give her a call when he came back and they would set up another time to go out. But if he didn’t, she wasn’t going to chase him down. She’d been dreaming when she’d decided she could bring him happiness.

  He had to be willing to be led from his loneliness, and she wasn’t at all sure he wanted that.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” her father said. “Larry was talking to me after the play last night. Wanted to know if you had a date for Cassie’s wedding.”

  Sam just groaned and closed her eyes for a minute. “Maybe I want to go alone,” she said. “Maybe I don’t want a date.”

  “You want to tell him or should I?” her father asked with a laugh.

  “Small-business loans are not always that profitable. They require a lot of individual care. But every so often you get one that makes all the rest of them worthwhile.”

  The words floated way out to the edges. Out to where Kevin’s sense of the real butted against his subconscious. Kevin knew the man was talking about money and profitability. But, as a smiling pixie-like face dancing in the misty corners of his mind was pointing out, not all paybacks came in dollars. Sometimes the best currency had nothing to do with silver or paper.

  There was no doubt that when the moderator spoke of that one small-business owner who made everything else worthwhile, he wasn’t speaking of Samantha Scott. In fact, if Kevin had come to this meeting two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have made that connection, either. He shook his head.

  Two weeks, hell. It would have been the same thing if he’d come a week ago. Days even.

  Kevin refocused on the presentation for a moment and found that it wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. He beat a hasty retreat to his own thoughts.

  When had this momentous change taken place?

  And it was momentous. One minute Sam was a customer and the next, she was under consideration for…For what? A good friend? He had a lot of good friends. A very good friend? That didn’t quite do it, either. An extremely charming lady friend?

  A quiet sigh floated up and out of his lungs. There weren’t any precise words to describe Sam. Yes, she was charming. But she was also intelligent, giving, pleasant to look at. Kind of ornery. He shook his head. A lot of ornery.

  A smile pulled at his lips. This whole thing was still hard to believe. Heck, Sam almost hadn’t made “customer.” Not after she’d thrown him out of that old house of theirs.

  He really should be paying attention to the presentation but, hell, it wasn’t like he was missing anything. Cindy had been right. These sessions were geared for less experienced personnel. He didn’t need to be here at all.

  But it had been necessary for him to get out of South Bend. He’d needed to be off someplace by himself so he could think.

  He’d spent last evening at the downtown hotel Cindy had booked him into, not far from the Indiana Bankers’ Association’s offices, reveling in his anonymity. Unlike South Bend, no one stopped to talk to him. No one came by his table as he ate his solitary meals. He was faceless. Anonymous like a fish in a school of others just like itself. A perfect environment for thinking and mulling things over.

  And that was exactly what he had done. Analyzed. Weighed the pluses and the minuses. After all that, he’d come to a basic simple truth: the only thing he had to fear was fear itself.

  This age thing wasn’t that big a deal. Yes, he was older than Sam but he was still her contemporary. They shared a lot of the same values and liked some of the same things. Cats. Day lilies. The outdoors. Pizza and wine.

  It wasn’t as if they’d been soul mates from the beginning of the universe, touching and dancing in a number of past lives. But there certainly was no reason for them not to date.

  They had fun together and enjoyed each other’s company. What else was there? He looked at his watch. He hoped this damn presentation would be over soon. He wanted to get on home.

  Chapter Seven

  Sam tossed the last of the bread onto the water. “That’s it, guys. End of the handouts for today.”

  The swans took it well, just turning and gliding back into the growing shadows around the lake. The ducks were harder to convince. They kept pushing and squabbling and looking for more food.

  “You’re out of luck. Sometimes you just have to accept that things aren’t the way you want them.”

  Sam knew that all too well herself. Take her and Kevin. Obviously, things weren’t going the way she wanted them to. He hadn’t called like he said he would.

  Maybe she should just be glad that her life was still totally hers. No distractions. No reason to wait until eight in the evening to eat dinner. She turned away from the lake and started up the slope to the house. It was getting dark. Time to—

  A sedan was pulling into the drive. It stopped and Kevin got out. Her heart did a crazy leap and her feet moved a bit faster, even though she tried to hold them at the same speed.

  “Hi,” he called over to her.

  “Hi.”

  He was still dressed in his suit, though minus his tie, and his eyes looked weary. She felt an overpowering urge to take care of him.

  “You look beat,” she said. “You just get in?”

  He nodded. “I thought we had a date.”

  “I thought we had a tent
ative one,” she said and took his hand. “Come on inside. Have you eaten yet?”

  “I thought we had a dinner date.”

  “It’s almost nine,” she reminded. “I assumed you hadn’t gotten back or you’d changed your mind or something and eaten ages ago.”

  He frowned, looking hurt. “It’s just past eight-thirty,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have changed my mind and not let you know.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like it was a definite thing.”

  “I should have called,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No big deal.” They went on into the living room, and then into the kitchen. “The kitchen’s a mess. I’ve been painting the office and I’ve moved everything into the kitchen. Our banker’s here, Dad.”

  Her father looked up from the papers he was working on on the kitchen table. “Don’t bring him in yet,” her father said, snatching up the computer printouts and putting them in the cold oven. “I’m not done cooking the books.”

  “You’ll have to excuse him.” Sam involuntarily rolled her eyes. “He thinks he’s a comedian.”

  “Maybe I’d better look at your accounts,” Kevin said.

  “Good idea,” Sam replied.

  She pulled the computer printouts from the oven and laid them on the table. Kevin pulled out a chair and sat down while Sam leaned back against the kitchen counter.

  “Greatness is never appreciated,” her father said. “I’ll leave you two alone.” With a broad wink at Sam, he went out into the living room.

  The silence grew louder and louder. “We’ve got some leftover pot roast,” she told Kevin. “Want me to warm it up for you?”

  “That would be great.”

  While he flipped through the pages, she stuck a plate of the pot roast into the microwave. Their accounting system was a standard small-business software package and not all that complex. It wouldn’t take Kevin long to do his review.

  “You’re doing real good controlling your expenses.” He put the papers in a neat pile and leaned back. “It looks like you’re about fifteen percent under budget so far.”

  “Yeah, we had a number of good things happen. Like the freezer doesn’t have to be replaced like we originally thought it would.” She smiled at Kevin. “And a very generous benefactor made a donation of day lilies for our perennial garden. So our landscaping expenses are also way under budget.”

  He returned her smile and nodded. “Every little bit counts.”

  “Although that new boiler puts us a little over on our capital equipment budget.”

  “You’re still doing well.” He put his hands behind his head and bathed her with his smile. “Actually, you guys are doing very well.”

  “Thank you.” She felt her cheeks warm as her left foot moved over to cover her right. “Now all we need is customers.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine. Probably have to beat them off with a club.”

  “We can always hope.”

  The kitchen went quiet, filled only with the sounds of the approaching night. The days were still warm in early September, but the evenings were getting cooler. At the momerit, a breeze was blowing through the kitchen’s open windows. Yet Sam felt all warm and cozy, like a kitten in a muff.

  Their eyes met and suddenly the air grew thicker around them, making breathing more of an effort. Sam had pretty much told herself that Kevin was only interested in her as a bed-and-breakfast owner, a loan customer. Nothing else. What else could there be? What else did she want, anyway? Didn’t she have everything she wanted already?

  The microwave beeped, much to Sam’s relief, and she grabbed up some silverware and a napkin. “What can I get you to drink? Iced tea? Milk? Pop? Beer?”

  “Iced tea would be great,” he said as he went over to the microwave and got his plate out.

  “I could have done that,” she protested as she poured a glass for each of them.

  “I don’t need you to wait on me.”

  “You’re my guest.”

  “I’m not a guest,” he argued.

  “All right, then. You’re my banker.”

  He frowned at her. She frowned back. Something was flicking in the air between them. There was something raw and wild and elemental charging about. If it had been dark, she would have seen sparks or flashes of lightning. Or fireworks exploding in a cascade of brilliance.

  She took a deep breath and looked at the glasses in her hand. “Want to eat in here or out on the porch?” she asked.

  “The porch sounds nice.” His voice was tight and hoarse.

  She grabbed up his silverware and led the way. The sun had almost set, but still painted a spectacular array of colors across the sky. Although dusk was falling, she hated to turn on the porch lights.

  “This is great,” Kevin said, looking around as he sat down at the picnic table. “Are you going to feed your guests out here?”

  “Maybe in the summer. It’s not something we’re working on until the spring.”

  He grinned at her. “Like the pipes held together by mineral deposits?”

  “You have too good a memory,” she grumped. “So how was your trip?”

  “Boring.” He tasted his dinner. “Very nice. Somebody here makes a mean pot roast.”

  She just ignored his comment, not wanting to admit for some reason that she’d made it. She didn’t think she wanted his compliments for some housewifely skill. And she definitely didn’t want to figure out why. She stared out at the lake, trying to find Romeo and Juliet in the shadows, but the light was getting too dim.

  “What we need is somebody who’s good at muffins and breads and other breakfast stuff. We’re only serving breakfast here.”

  “I’ll remember that the next time I’m hungry,” he said. “How did your play go?”

  She brought her gaze back to him. “Fine. No major catastrophes.”

  “Cassie says none of you guys can act.”

  She stared at her glass of iced tea. “Nope. No potential Academy Award winners in our family.”

  “At least, none that’ll admit to it.”

  She looked up at him, sorry for a moment that the gathering gloom made his eyes indistinct. “What’s that mean?”

  “I saw you rehearsing with some kids. You were great. A natural actress if I ever saw one.”

  “Rehearsing isn’t acting,” she argued.

  “No, but it’s close,” he said. “And you’d have to have one hell of an attack of stage fright to lose all that talent.”

  “Maybe I’m happy directing the kids’ plays.”

  “Maybe. But why would Cassie say none of you could act?”

  Sam pulled back, glad, suddenly, of the shadows that allowed her to hide for the moment. “She’s never seen me,” she admitted. Sam was certain none of this was his business, but she wasn’t certain why she was telling him any of it. “Scotts can’t act.”

  “And so you deny your talent in order to fit in.” He’d finished eating and pushed the plate to one side.

  “It’s not that at all. I’ve always felt like I fit in. The Scotts were…are wonderful. They wouldn’t be upset if I could do something none of the rest could do. They’d be really supportive.”

  “Your mother was good at this, wasn’t she?” he asked. “Your biological mother, I mean. You said she loved to recite stuff.”

  Sam just shrugged. “She might have been. I don’t know. I don’t remember her much. The Scotts were much more my parents.”

  “And using your other mother’s talent would be disloyal.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Is it?” He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “You’re helping your father run the inn he wants. You’re pretending you don’t have a talent that would tie you back to your other parents. And if I knew you better, I probably could list a whole mess of other examples.”

  His guess had hit too close to home. Although she rarely spelled it out so clearly in her mind, she knew he was right. Partially, anyway.

  “It’s not that I’
d feel disloyal, exactly,” she said quietly. “I just want them to be happy. I want everybody to be happy. And I don’t care how much Dad says we should remember our other parents if we want, it has to hurt him if we do. It’s like he and Mom weren’t enough.”

  “I doubt that he feels that way, and even if he should, you have to be who you are—not who you think will make others happy.”

  “It’s not that easy,” she said.

  He sighed. “No, and I didn’t mean to preach. Goodness knows, the guiding force in my relationships—or lack of them—has been a desire to make the other person happy.”

  “Isn’t that what most relationships are about?”

  He didn’t say anything for the longest time, then reached across the table to take her hands in his. “I’m better at nonrelationships, I’m afraid. I’m not pushing back into my kids’ lives because I figure they’re happy the way things are. And I keep avoiding you because I figure you’d be happier with some guy closer to your own age.”

  “You’re sure making a lot of assumptions,” she returned. She liked the feel of her hands in his. “Have you ever asked your kids how they feel? And just how much older than me are you, anyway?”

  He smiled. She could feel it in the air, even though it was too dark to see it.

  “Your loan application said you were twenty-seven,” he said. “I’ll be forty in three weeks.”

  “And from the exalted wisdom that comes from that advanced age, you know what’s best for everyone.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You’re sort of an adviser on emotional loans, too, then. Really an all-purpose banker.”

  “Well, I—”

  He seemed to realize then that she was joking and he stopped. In a moment, he started to laugh. “So, what now?” he asked.

  “Now you go home to your pussycats and a good night’s sleep,” she said, getting to her feet and reluctantly releasing his hands. “Come on over tomorrow if you want and I’ll give you a test. You can help me do chores and we’ll see if you’ve got the stamina to keep up with me.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, seeming to ignore her attempt at humor. He let go of her hands but took them again once he was on his feet.