No sense brooding about it, Ian told himself. He stood to go back inside his own rental house when he saw Samantha’s back door open. A moment later, she walked down her back steps with her little dog on a leash.
He knew the moment she spotted him. She stopped in her tracks and looked torn, as if she wanted to return to the house. After a moment, she seemed to reconsider and resumed walking toward the dock.
“We have a bad habit of meeting like this.”
Was this the reason he had lingered out here, long after he should have gone back inside? Was he hoping she would come out to join him?
Yes, he admitted. He had missed her deeply these past few days and had thought of a hundred things he wanted to tell her when he next saw her.
Now all of those things seemed to have floated away across the lake like so much cottonwood fluff.
“How was the bridal shower?”
She gave him a long look that suddenly set him on edge. “Interesting.”
“In what way? Or do I want to know?”
For a long moment, he didn’t think she would answer. Finally she gave a small, almost imperceptible sigh and settled next to him on the bench.
The air was suddenly luscious with the scent of her, strawberry and vanilla and Samantha. The moon passed between clouds, gleaming on the water as small breakers lapped against the dock.
“I suppose there’s no point in dancing around it.”
“Dancing around what?” He had a sudden premonition of danger, though he couldn’t have said exactly why.
She met his gaze. “I overheard your mother and Gemma talking. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was helping carry gifts out to the car after the party and they were talking. I don’t think they knew anyone was there.”
He couldn’t imagine what his mother and sister might have said to spark this strange mood. “Is everything okay?”
She met his gaze. “You tell me, Lord Ian.”
There it was, exactly what he had been dreading.
He sighed. “Ah.”
“Yes. Ah. I thought you were simply a rather adorable distracted scientist. The classic rumpled university professor. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
He stumbled for a moment, transfixed that she had called him adorable. Is that truly what she thought?
Not really the point, he reminded himself.
“I couldn’t tell you, for a few reasons.”
“From what I overheard, I’m guessing Gemma asked you not to.”
“That was part of it.”
“I don’t understand why all the secrecy. Why would she think anyone in Haven Point would care whether she was Lady Gemma or plain old Gemma?”
“I think her reasons had more to do with herself than anyone here. She wanted to forget, I think. Make a new start. Our brother’s death affected her more than any of us realized, beyond her obvious physical injuries. I was busy with Susan’s cancer amid the ugliness of our divorce and my parents were battling with their own grief. None of us noticed how Gem was struggling until she announced she was taking a job overseas.”
“Poor thing.”
“Yes.” He shifted, feeling guilty that he hadn’t seen Gemma’s pain because his own had obscured it.
“I gather she wanted to make a new start, unencumbered by her title. Apparently she ran into some professional difficulties at a previous job and chose not to use it here. She planned to tell everyone after the wedding but didn’t want it to become any kind of issue beforehand. We discussed it as a family and opted to follow her wishes while we were here.”
He wasn’t sure if she believed him. The darkness made it difficult to tell.
Why did they always seem to meet out here on the dock at night? It had become their own private spot.
“The other reason I didn’t tell you,” he said honestly, “is because, like Gemma, I prefer to forget it myself.”
Before David’s death, as the second son to the earl, he had been the Honorable Ian Summerhill but had never used that honorific in his academic or professional career. Oh, it was hard to hide completely. Word tended to get around in most circles, but he wanted to think he had earned his place on his merits, on his scientific achievements, not on a bloodline that had been an accident of birth.
“That’s the reason you’re leaving science behind, isn’t it? When your brother died, you became the heir to your father’s title.”
The sadness in her voice matched his own so perfectly that he had to fight the urge to pull her into his arms.
“I never expected to inherit and was always allowed to pursue my own interests. When David died, everything changed.”
“Three years ago. I never made the connection. Did your brother die before or after Susan left?”
She was too clever for her own good. “You picked up on that, did you? After, if you want the truth. David died about six months after Susan had left me. When she learned I was now Viscount Summersby instead of plain Professor Summerhill, she tried to come back, said she’d made a terrible mistake and would I forgive her.”
“I hope you told her to shove off.”
He smiled. “Not in so many words. But I didn’t take her back, of course. Not then, anyway.”
“But you let her come live with you after she was diagnosed with cancer.”
“What else was I to do? She needed care.”
She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was low. “You’re an extraordinary man, Ian Summerhill. Or Lord Ian. Or Viscount Summersby. I don’t know what to call you.”
“Just Ian,” he murmured. Though he now had a hundred more reasons not to do it, he couldn’t help himself. He had to kiss her.
Unlike the urgency and heat of their previous kiss here, this one was soft, tender, but no less moving.
Each time he kissed her was a revelation, a new discovery of uncharted territory. He wondered if it would always be that way. Something told him it would, that he could spend a
