She swallowed, reminding herself she still wasn’t sure if she liked the man.
Her little dog tugged on her leash, yanking her back to her senses. She might be physically attracted to him but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t in the market for a fling with her sexy neighbor.
She chose to focus instead on her dog. “Betsey’s passion is her puppies right now, as much as she likes the odd break from them, so I had better take her back to them. I’ll be in touch in the morning with a key for the children.”
“If you’d like, I could send Thomas and Amelia over first thing before you leave for your boutique.”
His thoughtfulness startled her. “I thought you wanted to make an early start tomorrow.”
“That should be a short trip. With the boat close by, I can leave before sunrise and will plan to be back so that I can have breakfast with the children.”
Maybe she had judged him too hastily. She knew plenty of fathers who wouldn’t put a priority on spending mealtime with their children, especially when it conflicted with work.
“Are you sure it’s no trouble?”
“None at all. Would eight be early enough?”
“Yes. That’s perfect. Thank you, Mr. Summerhill.”
In the moonlight, she saw his mouth quirk into a smile. “Please. Call me Ian. When you say Mr. Summerhill in that tone, it sounds remarkably like you really mean Mr. Darcy.”
She couldn’t help smiling at his reference to her earlier words.
He was looking at her mouth again, she realized with no small amount of consternation. The moment stretched between them, heady and sweet. She wanted him to kiss her. Quite desperately actually.
Oh, this would never do.
Impatient with herself, she tugged on the dog’s leash. “Come on, Betsey. We need to go.”
The dog followed her reluctantly as Sam hurried back to the relative safety of her house.
She was still as flighty and flirty as she’d ever been, she thought with frustration as she closed the door tightly behind her. It took all her self-control to resist the temptation to look out so she could see if he was still standing by the dock.
A short time ago, she had been convinced the man was a horrible father who didn’t deserve his two adorable children. After only a quick conversation, here she was wanting to make out with him in the moonlight.
What was wrong with her?
She didn’t want to be that giddy, silly girl anymore. Starry-eyed Samantha, who fell in love at the drop of a hat and who started making wedding plans if a man so much as looked twice at her.
When she looked back at her past, she was mortified at how immature she had been. Sometimes she thought her mother had purposely encouraged her shallowness so Linda could ultimately control her better.
If she was focused on romance all the time, her latest crush, she didn’t have time to think about how unhappy she was with her life and the choices she had made with it. She might have even become unhappy enough to decide she wanted something else, a life away from Lake Haven.
She sighed as she put the dog back into her pen with her puppies. Betsey immediately sniffed the sleeping puppies, making sure each was all right before curling up beside them.
The instinctive gesture somehow made a lump rise in Samantha’s throat.
She swallowed it down. Her mother was gone and it was long past time she grew up.
IAN WATCHED SAMANTHA FREMONT return to her house, doing his best to tamp down his shocking, unexpected reaction to her.
What was it about the woman that left him feeling like a bumbling idiot?
There was something so appealing about her. She was lovely, yes, with her honey-gold hair and hazel eyes, but it went beyond the surface. There was a light to her, a soft energy that seemed to draw him inexorably closer.
Had he really babbled on about his research to her for a good ten minutes? She must think him an utter idiot.
He wasn’t quite sure what had happened. He didn’t usually have trouble talking with women. Yes, he could be a bit of an absentminded professor but he generally could at least be trusted to carry on a halfway coherent conversation with most people.
Not with Samantha Fremont. With her, he started spouting off about chalk streams and anadromous species. At least he hadn’t gone off on sympatric speciation or predatory nonnative lake trout that could decimate a population.
With a heavy sigh, he headed back to the rental house where the children and Letty had settled in for bed hours ago.
What was wrong with him? He had wanted to kiss her for a few moments there, with an urgency that had left him feeling a little light-headed.
He wasn’t sure why being in Samantha Fremont’s presence left him so off-balance but he didn’t like it. At all.
He had less than a month at Lake Haven to finish his research. He didn’t have a moment to waste pining over his next-door neighbor, who would be only a memory in a month’s time, when he had to leave this place, put away his work and focus on helping out his family.
CHAPTER FIVE
“MISS FREMONT WANTS us to take care of her puppies?” Amelia gaped at him. “And you told her we would? Are you joking?”
“I assure you, I’m not.”
Amelia ought to know by now that his sense of humor wasn’t nearly so well-defined.
“Did you hear that, Thomas? We can play with those darling puppies every single day!”
“Yes!” Thomas punched the air and slid off his chair to dance around the breakfast table.
“Here, now.” Letty, oatmeal spoon in hand, looked alarmed at their energy. Ian winced. He probably should have spoken with his nanny/housekeeper first before springing the ideas on the children like that.
“When will we begin?” Thomas asked eagerly. “May we go see them today?”
“Yes. Actually, I told Ms. Fremont I would take you both over to her house this morning so that she could provide instructions on how to take
