Falling For The Single Dad

Chapter Two

When she’d looked up from the pages of the book and found his smoldering blue eyes fixed upon her, Caroline’s heart leaped in spite of herself.

Midthirties, she guessed. From his sweatshirt and his dark brown military buzz—close cut on the sides—probably an active duty or one-time Guardsman. A ’come here, not native-born to the Shore.

Through the library window, she watched the ruggedly handsome man tuck Izzie into the green Chevy Colorado parked beside the diner across the square. His broad shoulders under the gray Coast Guard Academy sweatshirt bunched as he leaned to fasten Izzie’s seat belt.

Notwithstanding Caroline’s fifteen-year absence from Accomack County, she didn’t recognize him. She heaved a sigh. She didn’t think she would’ve forgotten him had they previously met. Her gaze flicked toward the now-empty chair.

She’d enjoyed cuddling with Izzie. Who would’ve foreseen that? Not Caroline or anyone who knew her, she guessed.

Definitely not mother material. But no more stalling.

Caroline glanced at the mounted wall clock behind the librarian’s desk. Guests typically left the Duer Lodge midmorning in pursuit of their day’s activities.

She’d scheduled a lunch meeting with her longtime colleague at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to finalize their grant-funded summer pilot program. If things went as well as she expected at the family homestead—which was to say, not well—she had someplace else to be.

Caroline turned her head toward the babble of voices at the top of the ornate staircase. Kiptohanock’s real librarian emerged on the landing with a sixty-something matron Caroline—unfortunately—did recognize.

“Caroline Victoria Duer.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Escape so close and yet so far.

“Is that you? After all this time?”

A lot of water under that proverbial bridge, but some things—like some people—didn’t change. Including Mrs. Davenport, otherwise known as the Kiptohanock Grapevine.

Mrs. Davenport, plumper after fifteen years, descended the staircase like a bygone movie queen. “As I live and breathe, Seth Duer’s second oldest come home at last.”

Other Kiptohanock bookworms popped out from between the stacks across the hall to get a look. The twenty-something librarian’s eyes blinked behind her fashionable horn-rimmed glasses.

Time, like sand in an hourglass, had run out for Caroline.

If she didn’t beat the village blabbermouth to the punch, her father and sisters would learn of her arrival before she could get to the house. She couldn’t hide any longer.

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Davenport.” She wrenched open the oak-paneled door. “The black sheep has come home at last.”

* * *

Caroline drove around the square. Past the Sandpiper Café. The post office. The Coast Guard station. Recreational and commercial fishing vessels bobbed in the harbor. Fair-weather flags fluttered in the breeze. Beyond the inlet, barrier islands emptied into the vastness of the Atlantic.

The white clapboard church hugged the shoreline. Its steeple pierced the azure sky. Leafed-out trees canopied the side lanes, where the gingerbread-trimmed Victorian homes fanned out from the center of the town square like spokes on a wheel.

Driving out of town, she averted her gaze from the cemetery on a high slope overlooking the marina. She’d finally found the courage to face her father and sisters. She didn’t know if she had the courage to face the graves. Maybe she’d never have enough courage to face them.

Leaving the coastal village behind, she headed down Seaside Road, which connected the oceanside villages. Her heart pounding in her ears, she pulled off the secondary road into the Duer driveway. A simple sign at the turnoff read Duer Fisherman’s Lodge.

Caroline stopped at the top of the driveway. Her hands white-knuckled the wheel. She paused to reorient herself with her childhood home. To prepare for the changes the devastating hurricane eight months ago had wrought. But on the surface, everything appeared the same.

She scanned the white, two-story Victorian with the wraparound porch. The picket fence still rimmed the shade-studded perimeter of the yard. The silvery surface of the tidal creek glimmered behind the house. She released her death grip on the wheel.

Home to seven generations of proud Duer watermen, including her father, Seth Duer, possibly the proudest of all. In the last century during the days of gilded grandeur, Northern steel magnates had “roughed” it at the Duer fishing lodge. Her ancestors had served as hunting guides in winter, oystered, crabbed and run charters in summer. But those days, like the steamers traveling the waters between New York City and Wachapreague, had long since passed.

She took a deep breath and released the brake. The car coasted toward the circle drive. The grand old lady, freshly painted and restored from the ravages of the storm, appeared better than ever under her youngest sister’s watchful restoration. Caroline parked and switched off the engine.

Restoration... Her fondest hope.

She whispered a quick prayer and got out of the car as a tall, Nordic blond man in jeans and T-shirt stepped around the corner of the house from the direction of the old cabin. A phone shrilled inside. Then stopped.

He advanced, hand outstretched. “I didn’t realize more guests were arriving today. I’m—”

“Sawyer Kole. Honey’s husband.”

He dropped his hand, confusion written across his craggy features. As if recognition teased on the fringes of his memory. The front door squeaked on its hinges.

Sawyer Kole’s eyes went glacial at the same moment Honey gasped, “Caroline.”

Caroline’s gaze flitted to the honey-blonde woman poised on the porch steps. Whom she’d last beheld when Honey wasn’t much bigger than Izzie. Now a lovely woman in her midtwenties and soon to be a mother. Caroline’s eyes fell to her youngest sister’s rounded abdomen. Caroline thought of little redheaded Izzie, and something stirred in her heart.

With great deliberation, Sawyer moved between them. Blocking Caroline’s view of her sister. Protecting his wife. From her.

Voices drifted from the dock at the edge of the tidal creek. A carrot-haired boy, maybe Izzie’s age, ran ahead. The strawberry-blonde woman, Caroline’s younger sister Amelia, bounced a dark-haired baby on her hip as she strode up the incline from the water.

Catching sight of her, Seth Duer, their father, came to a dead stop. As fit as she remembered, though his hair beneath the Nandua Warriors ball cap and his thick mustache were more salt than pepper. His gray eyebrows bristled.

Oyster shells crunched beneath the little boy’s sneakers. “Hey, Aunt Honey!” He waved. “Mimi, Granddad and I showed my baby how to bait a line.”

The expression on her father’s grizzled face froze Caroline to the marrow of her bones.

Amelia squeezed their father’s elbow. “Daddy.” The baby squirmed in her arms.

Seth and Marian Duer’s third-born daughter. The tomboy son Seth had never had, but longed for. Renowned illustrator. Married to Braeden Scott, senior chief at Station Kiptohanock.

Amelia’s face had shuttered with neither pleasure nor foreboding. Unable to get a read on her sister, Caroline glanced at the redheaded boy. Max. An old ache resurfaced.

Her older sister’s boy. Born moments before Lindi died after a head-on collision with a drunk driver on Highway 13. Adopted and raised by Amelia, Max’s beloved “Mimi.” And Amelia was now also the mother of the toddler in her arms, Patrick Scott.

The silence roared between them until Max in his innocence broke it.

“Who’s that, Mimi?” His eyes were so like Lindi’s. “She looks like the other sister in the picture above the fireplace. The one you told me not to mention around Granddad.”

Caroline flinched.

Seth’s blue-green eyes, the color of Amelia’s, too, flashed. “Don’t worry about learning her name. She probably won’t be around long enough for you to get used to using it.”

Caroline and Honey had inherited their mother’s dark brown eyes. Caroline frowned at the thought of her mother and pushed yet another memory out of her mind.

Amelia shifted the baby to a more comfortable position. “First, let’s see why she’s here.”

“Please...” Caroline whispered.

Her father snorted. Then the tough, old codger scrubbed his face with a hand hard with calluses. “Come to rub our noses in her highfalutin jet-set lifestyle.”

She lifted her chin. “You don’t know anything about my life.”

“Whose fault is that, girl?”

He’d yet to say her name, Caroline couldn’t help noticing. As if he wanted no part of her. Her insides quivered. She wrapped her hand around the cuff of her left sleeve.

Seth crossed his arms over his plaid shirt. “There’s two kinds of people born on the Shore, Max, my boy. Best you learn now how to identify them both.”

Caroline gritted her teeth.

“Those who don’t ever want to leave...”

She knew if she didn’t get out of here in the next few minutes, she was going to implode into a million, trillion pieces.

“And those, like my runaway daughter.” Seth speared her with a look. “Who can’t wait to leave and who never return.”

“Until now, Dad. Caroline’s come home.” Always the peacemaker, her sister Honey. Far more than Caroline deserved from the baby sister she’d abandoned.

Caroline examined the set expressions on her family’s faces. What had she expected? What else did she deserve?

“She never returned after her mother died,” Seth growled. “Not for her sister’s funeral. Not during Max’s chemo. Not after the storm almost leveled our home.” He clenched his fist against his jeans. “Not for a wedding. Or a birthday. Not even a postcard, much less a phone call.”

And Caroline suddenly understood that nothing she could ever say would erase the damage she’d inflicted. Nor wash away the hurt of the past. This... This illadvised, ludicrous attempt at reconciliation was for naught. She spun on her heel.

“Don’t go,” Honey called.

“Let ’er go,” Seth grunted. “Let ’er run away like before. It’s what she does best.”

“Daddy... Stop it,” barked Amelia.

Caroline wrested the car door open and flung herself into the driver’s seat. Whereas she’d found mercy and forgiveness in God, with her family there’d be none of either. She jerked the gear into Drive.

In a blur, she fishtailed onto Seaside Road. She pointed the car south and drove until the shaking of her hands wouldn’t allow her to drive any farther. She pulled over on the other side of the Quinby bridge and parked.

Her shoulders ached with tension. Spots swam before her eyes. She leaned her head on the headrest, and struggled to draw a breath as her throat closed.

This had been a mistake. A terrible, perhaps unredeemable, mistake. She felt the waves of the darkness she’d spent years clawing her way out of encroaching. Like an inexorable tide, ever closer. A headache throbbed at her temples.

Her breathing came in short, rapid bursts. Hand on her chest, she laid her forehead across the steering wheel. Willing the anxiety to subside and the blackness to erode.

But the waves mounted and towered like a tsunami. Cresting, waiting to consume her whole. To drag her under for good this time into the riptide of blackness.

God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Where was her purse? She fumbled for the tote bag in the passenger seat. The pills. It’d been so long since she’d relied on them.

She hadn’t suffered an anxiety attack in several years. But with her so-called reunion facing her this morning, surely she’d had the foresight to tuck them inside her purse in case of an emergency.

Digging around through the detritus that filled her life, she came up empty. She slammed her hands on the wheel. Of all the days not to...

She breathed in through her mouth and exhaled through her nose in an exercise she’d learned from the counselor. And she repeated the Scriptures she’d memorized at the suggestion of a friend, a marine biologist working in the Bahamas.

Until the dizziness passed. Until her vision cleared. Until the pain in her lungs subsided.

Dripping with sweat, she took a few steadying breaths before shifting gears. Lesson learned. Despite the size of Kiptohanock, she’d avoid contact with her family.

One summer. The two-month pilot program. She’d lie low. Something she was good at.

And like Thomas Wolfe had said, you couldn’t ever go home again. Or at least, not her.

* * *

“Daddy! Come quick! Daddy!”

Weston dropped the hammer and raced out of the former lightkeeper’s cottage. He ran toward the beach, where the incoming tide lapped against the shoreline. Where he’d left his nine-year-old daughter alone... The librarian pegged him rightly. He was a terrible father.

“Isabelle!”

Panting, he plowed his way to the top of the dune. “Answer me.” The fronds of sea oats danced—taunting him—in the afternoon breeze.

On the beach below, she windmilled her arms to get his attention. He willed his heart to return to a semblance of normal. She’d gotten his attention, all right. He scrambled down the dune toward his daughter.

She clutched the straw hat on her head. “Look, Daddy.” With her free hand, she gestured to a set of tracks stippling the sand from the base of the dunes to where they disappeared around the neck of the beach. “Turtle tracks.”

Izzie bounced in her flip-flops, a redheaded pogo stick. “Maybe turtle eggs on our beach, too.” She clapped her hands together. The hat went flying.

He sighed, and watched it blow out to sea.

“We could have babies. Just like Max.”

His gaze flickered to his daughter. “If there are eggs, they won’t belong to us. Best thing we can do is leave them and their turtle mama alone.”

Izzie’s face fell.

He tickled her ribs. “Even Max will tell you to give new mamas a wide berth. They’re touchy. And ornery.”

“Was Mama touchy and ornery with me?”

“N-not when you were the most beautiful, wonderful baby who was ever born.” He nuzzled her cheek with the stubble of his jaw.

“Daddy.” She giggled and pushed his shoulder. “You are so prickly.”

He caught Izzie in his arms and gave her a bear hug. “Like a porcupine.”

Laughing, Izzie wriggled free. “I’m gonna follow the tracks to the water.” She disappeared beyond the curve of the dune before he could formulate, much less express, a warning.

One day she wouldn’t be so easily diverted from the rest of the story. And he could never tell Izzie the whole truth.

Behind the dune, Izzie screamed. He jolted, his heart palpitating once more.

“Daddy! Hurry...”

Parenting—not unlike certain Coastie jobs—ought to come with hazard pay. Breaking into a loping run, he jogged around the point.

He found Izzie at the edge of the surf, where the waves curled and skittered over her bare toes like a watery sand crab. She crouched beside a prehistoric-looking sea turtle. A metallic hook jutted from the creature’s neck.

“Izzie, get back.” He waved his arm. “Injured animals are dangerous.”

“The turtle mama.” Izzie sank to her knees. “She’s hurt.”

He came closer. The olive-gray carapace on the turtle’s back was gouged and dented.

“She’s just lying in the sand, Daddy.” Izzie’s eyes swam with tears. “I don’t think she can make it back to her babies without our help.”

How to explain this? “Turtles spend their lives in the ocean. Females only come ashore to lay eggs and then they leave.”

Izzie glared at him. “They leave their babies?” Her voice rose. “Mamas aren’t supposed to leave their babies.”

“No, they aren’t,” he whispered. And he wondered what questions about her own mother he’d field later from Izzie.

“It’s the turtle way, Izz.” He ran his gaze over this relative to the dinosaur. “If this turtle didn’t make it into the water by dawn, she’s been baking in the sun for hours.”

He lifted his ball cap, crimped the brim and settled it on his head again. “It doesn’t look good for her, Izz.”

“Please... Help her, Daddy.” In her face, the unspoken belief her daddy could fix everything.

If only that were so.

He pulled Izzie to a safer distance as the turtle’s flippers thrashed in the sand. He’d seen this before when he was stationed in Florida. One of the turtle’s flippers was mangled, probably from a boat’s propeller.

“We’ve got to save her, Daddy.” Izzie tugged on his arm. “Save her so she can take care of her babies.”

“Izzie.” He squatted to his daughter’s level. “Things like this happen. We have to let nature take its course. Mothers...” He gazed over the whitecaps. Izzie knew this better than anyone.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Mothers die, Isabelle.”

“No.” Izzie jerked free. “You’ve got to do something, Daddy. Don’t let her die, too.”

His breath caught. Was that what his daughter believed? That he’d let her mother die?

But upon reflection of his many failures as a husband, perhaps he had. He stared at Izzie, this tiny replica of him and Jessica. And his heart hurt.

“No guarantees.” But reaching a decision, he fished the cell out of his cargo shorts. “I’m an engineer, not a marine animal specialist, Izz. But I know where to find one.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

How could he not try to save the turtle mother? Especially since it was his fault Izzie’s mother died.

Chapter Three

“It’s a critical time, Caroline. Peak season is approaching. I’m glad your team will be joining us seaside.”

Caroline smiled at Dr. Roland Teague, a fellow marine scientist. They’d walked from the nearby Virginia Institute of Marine Science facility—VIMS—in Wachapreague to the Island House for a lunchtime meeting. Situated over the inlet on pylons, the bank of windows in the restaurant overlooked the tidal marsh.

She’d known Roland since her undergrad days at Virginia Tech. The fifty-something scientist had been a friend and professional mentor ever since. Clad in an outlandishly tropical shirt, Bermuda shorts and boat shoes, Roland hadn’t changed much over the years. Except for the streaks of silver in his thinning Jimmy Buffet–style mane.

Catching her staring, Roland laughed. “What’s gray, stays.”

She laughed as he’d meant her to. “How’s Danielle?” She owed Roland and his wife more than she could ever repay. They’d been a blessing in an otherwise very dark time in her life.

“Busy with the end-of-quarter classes at the community college. She said to tell you hello. She wants you to come over for dinner soon.” Roland paused to take a deep swig of sweet tea. “I’m excited about this plan you’ve spearheaded with the aquarium board of directors in Virginia Beach.”

After what had happened this morning with her father, she was no longer so sure that her personal involvement in the sea turtle project had been a good idea.

Roland set his glass on the tabletop with a dull ping. “Last year, we found sixteen nests on the Eastern Shore, though we’re on the extreme northern limits of their nesting grounds. This year biologists are predicting record high numbers. We’re overdue on the Shore for a rescue center of our own.”

She swirled the batter-fried hush puppy in the small tub of butter. “Nesting is up along the entire coastline of the southeastern United States. We’re not sure why. Maybe climate change and warmer weather has raised water temperatures.”

“That’s why your expertise is so invaluable to us here. You’ve got an impressive résumé. Everything from the Caribbean and Central America to coordinating one of North Carolina’s Outer Banks stranding teams.”

An expert in aquaculture, he winked. “Not to mention you’re a hometown girl and have an ‘in’ with the locals.”

Caroline refrained from disabusing him of that notion. On her last research assignment in Virginia Beach, she’d pushed the idea of creating a rehabilitation center staffed by a few professionals and manned by interns in the high season to educate the local populace and serve as another Eastern Shore tourist draw.

She’d spent long hours with a planning committee formulating a cost-effective strategy. If the center was successful, she hoped the aquatic veterinary hospital would also eliminate the need to transport injured marine animals to treatment centers farther away. The animals most often did not survive transport. A hospital on the Eastern Shore would mean the difference between life and death.

“The center will bring much needed jobs on the Shore,” Roland added.

She thought of her father and his stubborn refusal to accede gracefully to any change. “I hope Kiptohanock and the other coastal villages will catch our vision. If they decide to balk...” She bit off the end of the hush puppy.

“That’s why the board sent you. You’re our public relations secret weapon. With ‘small-town girl makes good’ as our leading advocate, what can go wrong?”

She traced the condensation on her tea glass with her finger. What could go wrong indeed? Without the backing of influential locals—like Seth Duer—the proposed center would die a quick death in the face of resistance to change and a deep-seated distrust of outsiders.

The Eastern Shore was isolated by nature. And the Eastern Shore population preferred it that way.

She grimaced. “No pressure there, Roland.”

He popped a hush puppy into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. “I have all the faith in the world in you, Caroline.”

Glad somebody did. If she didn’t believe so strongly in this program... If God hadn’t clearly shown her it was time to go home and make amends, she’d... She’d be on a beach off the turquoise waters of St. Kitts.

“It’s all hands on deck at this time of year. Sometimes we get ten calls a day from home owners, the Guard, game wardens and watermen.”

She nodded. “Thanks for offering us access to your laboratory here during the pilot program. My graduate students will arrive later today.”

“They’ll bunk in the dormitory with my summer interns.” He speared a sea scallop with his fork. “I guess with family here, you’ll be living with them and not on the economy as the Coasties say.”

She was saved from making an embarrassing admission when Roland’s cell, clamped to his belt, beeped.

“Teague here.” His eyes widened. “Where?” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “I’ll send her right away.”

She tilted her head as he ended the call.

“You’ve got your first case.” He grinned. “It was the marine animal hotline. There’s a turtle stranded on a nearby beach.”

“What species?”

He pocketed his phone. “Home owner didn’t say. Probably wouldn’t know a loggerhead from a leatherback anyway.”

“Where did you say the turtle’s beached?”

“Out on the Neck by the old lighthouse.”

She scraped back her chair. “I haven’t been out that far in years. Does the access road still connect the barrier island to the peninsula? Or was it washed out in the hurricane last year?”

“I’ll text you the precise coordinates. But the causeway is still intact. In great shape, actually, since a new owner bought the lighthouse from the Coast Guard. He’s in the process of renovating the entire structure.”

She rolled her eyes. “Another ’come here?”

He pushed his plate aside. “Speaking as a ’come here myself, don’t sell us short too quickly. Go and do your thing. Saving the turtle plus winning the hearts and minds of our Shore neighbors.”