Ethan sighed as she once again disconnected the call. He wanted to do as she asked, wanted to take that kind of emotional risk. More and more, though, he realized that if he dared to do that, then it would have to be with her. And none of the issues he’d just mentioned to her were going away. Nor would they be easily resolved.
Maybe that’s why love was best left to the very young, he thought with a touch of well-honed cynicism. The older people were, the more their lives had been shaped exactly as they wanted them to be. Compromise came less easily.
And yet he couldn’t help thinking that maybe the reward would be worth it.
11
After speaking to Ethan, Samantha stood at the top of the steps listening to see if she could still hear Boone and Emily. She wanted to go out on the porch and think about her conversation with Ethan, but she didn’t want to interrupt the couple if they were working things out.
There wasn’t a sound from the living room, though. She tiptoed down until she could peek into the room. She saw her sister wrapped securely in Boone’s arms, her head on his shoulder. Both of them were asleep, or so it seemed.
She tried to ease her way past them, but Boone’s eyes immediately snapped open.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Everything okay?”
“Getting there, I think,” he said. “You going out?”
“Just to the porch,” she said. “I’m not ready for bed yet. Close your eyes. I’ll just grab the afghan from the back of the sofa and sleep outside tonight. I won’t be wandering back through.”
Boone frowned. “No need to do that.”
She grinned. “You never know. Emily could wake up and things could take a turn toward interesting.”
Boone chuckled. “Not likely. She’s still working on forgiving me. Interesting’s a ways down the road.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Samantha told him, and left them alone. At least this time, they were working at communicating, rather than going to their separate corners to let wounds fester and destroy them. Maybe maturity would save them yet.
On the porch, Samantha settled on the chaise longue, the afghan wrapped securely around her, and let her mind wander. She couldn’t seem to help dissecting her call with Ethan. Would he ever get past the way Lisa had hurt him and allow himself to love someone again? Committing fully to a relationship was scary enough under the best of circumstances. She was cautious enough, and she’d never been seriously burned. Maybe when someone loved deeply and lost, they never got over it. In the case of Ethan—a man with so much to offer—going through life alone would be a real tragedy.
She was considering that and whether she had the fortitude to wait him out while he wrestled with old demons, when a car pulled into the driveway. To her shock, her father got out and headed toward the house.
“Dad!”
He stopped in his tracks and stared into the shadows. “Sammi? Is that you?”
“It is. What on earth are you doing turning up here this late?”
“Command performance,” he said succinctly. “Your grandmother informed me that I was behaving badly by not being here for every wedding-related event. She said if I missed her brunch for Emily and Boone tomorrow, I might as well not bother showing up at all. She said I didn’t have to be here to pay the bills. She’d send ’em over to Raleigh and add a ten percent surcharge to cover her consulting work. I got the impression she was ready to step in and walk Emily down the aisle in my place, as well.”
Samantha chuckled. “Blackmail, huh?”
He nodded, his expression sheepish. “I’m probably lucky she wasn’t planning to add thirty percent.” He sat down in a rocker beside her. “What are you doing out here at this hour? It’s going on midnight.”
“Things to ponder,” she admitted.
“Such as?”
She hesitated, uncertain how much insight her father could really have to offer. He’d never been around before to give advice. That had been her mom’s domain. Still, he was here now and she could use a friendly ear...and a male perspective.
“Have you ever wondered what you’d have done if the whole biomedical research thing hadn’t worked out?” she asked.
She could see his blank expression in the moonlight and knew that she was asking for something beyond his frame of reference.
“Never mind,” she said, resigned to muddling through on her own. “I guess you never had any doubts about what you wanted, did you? You were driven, dedicated and determined from the get-go.”
“Sure I was,” he replied, then startled her by adding, “But what I truly wanted was to be the finest pediatric oncologist in the country.”
Samantha regarded him with shock. “Are you serious? I never knew that. What happened?”
“Are you sure you want to hear all this? It’s old news.”
“I definitely want to know.” Not only might it help her now, but it would give her a rare insight into this man who’d been an enigma to his family for so long.
“The minute I went through my pediatric rotation in med school, I realized I’d never be able to look into those sweet little faces and know that I couldn’t save them. It would have torn me apart. I was lucky that I recognized that about myself in time to choose a new direction.” He shrugged. “So I dedicated myself to the research side of medicine. No tricky emotions to face. No losses. I have some regrets about that even now, but it was the healthier decision.”
“Why didn’t any of us know this?”
“The decision was made long before you came along.”
“And Mom supported you? She didn’t think any less of you for giving up?”
He smiled. “She told me once that she admired me for admitting I was on the wrong path. See, that’s the thing about unconditional love. You always want what’s best for the other person, even if you have to shift your own needs to accommodate it.”
She tried
