“I would guess you’re an excellent father,” she said after a moment. “Only a loving parent and an honorable man would be concerned enough about his children’s mother that he would be willing to care for her as she was dying, even after they were divorced. It couldn’t have been easy.”
He didn’t know quite how to respond to that. He was only aware of a soft, seductive warmth flickering to life inside him. “Thank you,” he said gruffly. “You’re right. It wasn’t easy. But I don’t regret it, despite what my family and friends might have thought.”
They lapsed into silence again, but it was far more comfortable this time. He could feel some of the tension ease from his shoulders.
How did he find her presence so relaxing, especially with this attraction he couldn’t seem to fight?
“Tell me more about your research project. What led you to salmon, of all things?”
He seized on the topic, grateful to have another reason to stay with her for a few more moments. “I’ve always found them fascinating. The word salmon is believed to derive from the Latin word salmo or to leap. They fight against rapids and strong currents, work their way past snags in the water, all so they can return to the place of their birth. It’s unbelievable, really. The salmon in Lake Haven fight their way two miles up the fast-moving Chalk Creek waters, with six separate small waterfalls and a hundred obstacles, until they reach the place where the females create their nests, called redds. Each female will lay around a thousand eggs. Many of them die in the effort but enough survive to spawn so that a new generation can repeat the process.”
He caught himself again. “I’m sorry. I’ve been told I tend toward pedagogy when I talk about my favorite subject.”
“I don’t know what that word means,” she admitted without a trace of embarrassment. “But it sounds terrible, whatever it is.”
He laughed, finding her honesty refreshing. Okay, the truth was, he found her refreshing. Full stop.
“When I talk about my research, I tend to come off like a lecturer reading from a textbook.”
“I disagree. If you’re a lecturer, you’re a very good one. You make even salmon sound interesting.”
“They are interesting.”
She smiled. “No doubt. Of course, it might be your accent. You could be talking about plumbing fixtures and I would still find it fascinating. You know how we American girls are about you sexy Brits.”
He blinked. No one in her right mind would ever call him sexy. Good grief. He was staid and boring, focusing only on his work and his children.
“You don’t have to mock me,” he said stiffly.
She shifted to stare at him. “I wasn’t mocking you, Ian. I assure you, I was wholly sincere.”
This bright, vibrant, beautiful woman couldn’t possibly find him sexy. The idea was laughable.
“At heart, I’ll always be a boring biologist who knows more about the mating habits of salmon than I do about what makes a woman tick.”
She cuddled her dog closer. “Oh, somehow I think you do all right in that department.”
He almost laughed. What would she say if he told her he hadn’t been with a woman in longer than he cared to remember?
He wasn’t a saint by any means. He had dated here and there after the separation and had been in the early stages of a relationship with a very nice woman when Susan had been diagnosed with cancer.
Joann had been the one to gently break things off between them, telling him it was clear he wasn’t in a good space for a relationship with his attention fragmented between his children, his students and Susan’s worsening condition.
Dating had, of course, been impossible after Susan came back to live with them. Even if he had the energy or desire, which he hadn’t, how did he explain to a woman that he wanted to take her to dinner—oh, and by the way, she needn’t worry because he had caregivers at home with his dying ex-wife?
The past year had been a blur of helping the children grieve, wrapping things up at his college and frequent trips back to Summerhill to begin assuming some of his new responsibilities.
“I appreciate the confidence,” he said, his voice gruff. “Misplaced as it might be.”
“I don’t think it is. And believe me, I should know.”
“Why is that?”
She was quiet for a long moment, gazing out at the water. Finally she faced him with a determined set to her jaw. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard the rumors, considering you live next door to me.”
“Rumors?”
“I have something of a reputation around town as a man-hungry flirt.”
She said the words in a lighthearted tone as if she were making a joke, but somehow he sensed she was serious.
“Is that supposed to be some kind of a warning?”
She gave a little laugh that almost sounded sincere. “You’re perfectly safe with me. You could say I’m a reformed flirt. I used to be one, a lifetime ago. But then my mother died and I ended up with a pregnant dog, a lemon of a car and more wedding dress orders than I have hours in the day to finish. I’m not the same person I was six months ago.”
He had the feeling they were both at a crossroads in their lives, both trying to find their way amid earthshaking changes.
He shouldn’t be so drawn to her but he couldn’t seem to help it. He wanted to set her dog gently on the ground and pull Samantha into his arms, both to take that bleak tone out of her voice and to ease the aching hunger he realized had been curling through him since she walked out through the darkness to join him.
“Give it time,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll rediscover your inner flirt.”
“Maybe I don’t want to. If you want the truth, the woman I used to be was silly and shallow and focused on all the completely wrong things.”
He again had that sense of unexpected
