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She shook her head.
At the end of the driveway, she turned up the hill. “I’d better get back. My son…isn’t Van’s responsibility.”
Information on that missing husband would require digging. The thought, completely out of character, stopped him in his tracks. “Okay. Nice to meet you.”
“You, too. Let us know if you need anything.” Gas-lit Victorian lamps helped her up the drive. A sudden thought turned her toward him, and he took a step in her direction. She pressed her fingers to her lips, and then she rammed her hands into the shallow pockets of her sweats. “See you around.”
Gravel spurted behind her as she ran up the hill.
What had she almost said?
He’d give a lot to know. He’d give a lot to run at her side. His doctor had insisted on walks at first. Feeling like his great-aunt’s favorite old beagle, Aidan lumbered down the hill. He stared at the sky above, mouthing his frustration in words he wouldn’t have spoken to Beth Tully.
He’d refused to take the time to see his own cardiologist on the way out of D.C., but he’d agreed to an appointment with a local cardiologist to get rid of the strictures against activity.
And then he could run like that woman. He laughed out loud, and his step lightened.
STILL BREATHING HARD, Beth Haddon Tully climbed white-painted stairs to her brother’s porch. Aidan Nikolas. His business deals had skyrocketed Nikolas Enterprises to international prominence after his parents, the founders, had retired.
She almost dropped onto one of the Adirondack chairs that squatted along the sweeping porch. Aidan Nikolas could save her—save her lodge anyway. The bank had turned down her loan application today, and Jonathan Barr, who’d clearly forgotten she was more than the child who’d been his daughter’s high school best friend, had let slip the news that he suspected Van would be visiting him for a loan in the near future as well—in the Haddon tradition of trying to save failing family ventures.
Van must be around the house somewhere. He’d returned from a business trip earlier in the afternoon. She ran inside the blue-and-white period Victorian she wouldn’t have been able to afford if lottery tickets started flying at her head.
“Van?”
He didn’t answer. Beth took off her shoes to keep from spreading dirt or wet grass. Van’s housekeeper, the dour Mrs. Carleton, wouldn’t approve. “Eli?” Beth’s eleven-year-old son had been playing video games, but she’d asked him to take time out for reading before she’d left for her run.
“Hmm?” he said from the living room.
She went to the doorway. Beside Eli, a big, black Lab looked up, thumping her tail at Beth.
“Lucy, girl.” Beth ventured into the room and ran a hand over the dog’s silky head. “Have you walked her yet?”
“Read? Walk the dog? Anything else I should do?”
“I’ll think of plenty.” She bent to Lucy, trying not to smile at Eli’s tone. After the lodge had burned down, he’d run to his father’s house, and he’d been reluctant to come back, claiming he was only a burden to her.
Since then, Eli had been quiet and too cooperative. Bad dreams had begun to plague him. Every time he got up in the middle of the night, Beth heard him. Despite sweat ringing his T-shirt, tears in his eyes and gasping breaths he worked like a grown man to control, he’d never admit something was bothering him.
His simple preteen testiness made Beth want to hug him till he ran from her, screaming like a girl.
“A walk should just about do it,” she said. “And it’ll be good for both of you. You don’t get enough exercise since we moved in with Uncle Van.”
“I’d get plenty if we could afford to replace my skateboard.”
Already turning toward the stairs, she stopped. “I wish we could,” she said, hearing the bank manager’s voice from their afternoon meeting.
“I hate to see you struggling,” he’d said, “but you didn’t even check to see if Campbell had paid that insurance premium after your divorce.”
As if she needed reminding her ex-husband was a deadbeat and a liar.
“Mom, I know we don’t have the money. I’m sorry I asked.”
“It’s okay to be mad at me. I hate when you act all grown up.”
“It’s not okay.” He slid off the couch, easing his hand over the dog’s head. “Lucy, come.”
She scrambled up with a complaining whine. No one in the house felt easy tonight.
“Don’t go past the lawn into the woods this late,” Beth said, to remind him he was a child.
“Mom.” His tone suggested she get off his back.
“I’m serious.”
Slamming out of the house, he didn’t answer. Beth flipped on the brighter outdoor lights. Taking the stairs two at a time, she ran to the window in her room. Down on the lawn, Lucy jumped on Eli as he cocked his arm to throw her football.
She hadn’t ever managed to get the hang of fetch. Eli and Lucy went down in a tangle of gangly legs and black fur and a whippy tail. The ball trickled toward the line of solar lights along the driveway. Eli and Lucy both chased the ball, and Beth reached to close the blinds. Before she pulled the cord, another light caught her eye.
One from the cottage’s main bedroom. A golden glow flooded two wide windows in front of a king-size bed. Not that she could see the bed.
Except in her imagination.
Her mouth went dry. She had no time to be interested in a man.
So many business magazines had splashed Aidan Nikolas on their covers, the late-night talk show hosts had started cracking jokes about him moonlighting as a supermodel—which just proved none of them had seen him close up.
He was handsome enough, but he lacked the vanity. He was just a normal man—who’d looked too long at her and made her uneasy. A shadow passed in front of the windows.
Beth flung herself to the side and then laughed. She stepped straight into view and saw Eli waiting for Lucy who’d moved delicately to the edge of the taller grass.
With a wave at her son who merely set his shoulders, she yanked her blinds and then shucked off her running clothes. She dumped the sweats and tank into the laundry hamper and took a quick shower.
Afterward, she dried, ran a comb through her hair and grabbed her full hamper. In the hall, she walked to the landing and leaned over the stairs. “Are you back, Eli?”
“Yeah.” His voice came from behind her. He’d returned to his room—and no doubt to his video games. He was on his spring break. Maybe he deserved time off from chores.
Beth set down her hamper and went to his room. Sweat curled the dirty blond hair that she and Van also shared. The room smelled of boy and dog. Eli barely glanced up.
“Do you have any clothes to wash?”
“In the closet, Mom.”
“You could get them for me.”
“I’m in the middle of a game. Do you want me to lose?”
“Sounds like a possible tragedy so I’ll say no.” She held her breath as the closet assaulted her with even earthier smells. “We have to talk about your showering, son.” She ducked as a shirt and a coat fell off hangers. They’d been hung so precariously, the sound of her voice had rattled them loose. “And maybe you could tidy up in here before Mrs. Carleton stumbles in and quits on your uncle.”
“Hey, Mom, I’m not perfect.”
She hardly recognized the mature, strangely guilty voice. “Something wrong?”
“You’re bugging me. I’m busy.”
She scooped his laundry out of the hamper and then snatched up any clothing near it on the floor. “I’m not bugging you more than usual. What else is up?”
“I’m old enough to decide when to take showers and clean my room.”
Maybe he was, but why would that make him look lost instead of arrogant? Where was her son inside those empty eyes? “I wish you’d tell me.”
“It’s you, Mom, always on my back.” He started playing again. If only someone would make truth serum available to mothers. Breach a few civil rights and find out everything you need to know to keep a child safe.
Beth added Eli’s things to hers and then maneuvered the whole mess down the back stairs. The laundry room was also part of Mrs. Carleton’s empire, but Beth disliked letting the other woman wait on her and Eli.
She turned on the water in the washer and flipped the hamper’s contents onto the Formica folding table. Whites. Colors. Cold. Hot. Impossible. The latter pile would include Eli’s lucky skateboarding socks.
“Beth?”
Uttering a brief, humiliating scream, she landed safely back on the floor. “Van—do you have to sneak up on me?”
Her brother stood in the doorway, a half-eaten sandwich dangling from his left hand, one of those magazines that loved to cover Aidan Nikolas in his right.
“Isn’t it late to start laundry?” he asked.
“Not when I have to work on the lodge tomorrow.” She’d put her pennies together to have the charred remains knocked down. Removing it to clear the lot for new construction seemed sure to take her the next year. She pretended to be vitally interested in the clothing so she didn’t have to look at him. Should she tell him what Jonathan Barr had said? She was hardly in the position to offer help and he must not want her to know or he’d have mentioned it.
She turned instead to the troubling man who could probably help both of them out of their troubles. “Why didn’t you tell me about Aidan Nikolas?”
“I did.” He bit into his sandwich.
“You’re dropping lettuce on the floor.”
“I’m not your son.”
“Are we all in bad moods tonight? Mrs. Carleton keeps an immaculate house, and I hate seeing her have to pick up after us.”
Van bent down and picked up his lettuce. “I can see why Eli gets fed up.”
Taking his shot to heart, she stopped. “You told me someone was coming. You didn’t mention my possible deliverance was moving in down the hill.” She felt guilty. Aidan had been nice to her. For a second—only a second—she’d been attracted to him. It wasn’t polite to think of him in terms of the money he handed out for investment each quarter.
“How’d you find out?”
“I ran into him while I was out.” For some reason she didn’t admit she’d thought he was dying. Hearing a cough that had sounded more like choking, she’d gone straight through Van’s landscaping.
“Something’s on your mind, Beth?”
“Salvation,” she said.
He studied his sandwich. “Jonathan Barr didn’t give you the loan?”
She turned back to her laundry and tossed Eli’s blue soccer jersey on top of her underwear.
Barr’s voice whispered ingratiatingly in her ear again. “From what I hear, your brother will soon be asking for a loan so we can’t count on him to bail you out if you can’t repay.”
Van didn’t want to talk about it. Neither would she.
She shook her head.
“Let me help you,” Van said as promptly as if he had no secret need of his own.
“I can’t take money from you.” Nor could she look at him. She fished the jersey out and put it in the pile with Eli’s dark-colored sweatshirts. “I have my own two feet to stand on.”
“Why do I have money if not to help my family?”
Touched by the offer of his last dime, she hugged him before she realized he might wonder why. “Thanks, but I can’t. You know how it is. Campbell thinks steady work is a bad habit. He’s no example to our son. I have to get a business loan from someone who doesn’t love me.” She piled her jeans and Eli’s on the end of the table and then started loading light colors into the wash. “But I was thinking…” She wouldn’t be human if she couldn’t see safety in a venture capitalist. “Is Aidan Nikolas here to do a deal with you?”
“With me?” He stared at her, and then he looked away. He was hiding something, as surely as Eli. “What could Aidan do for me?”
She watched detergent spin into the water. “Good.”
“Good, what?”
“Good that he’s not here because of your business.” Dark eyes in a pale face floated into her memory. He could save her lodge, with an amount that would be nothing to him. “Jonathan Barr only wants to offer me enough to rebuild the lodge as it was. I told him I wanted to make improvements so that families would come instead of just fishermen. He thinks I won’t be able to repay it.” She shut the washer lid, trying to hide her frustration. “My typical visitor will continue to be a guy who can’t stay long and won’t pay much for the bare essentials. I have to get ahead, Van.”
He touched her arm. Did she imagine the unease in his eyes? “That’s why you’re glad Aidan’s not here to work with me?”
“I’d like to ask him for—”
“No, Beth. Didn’t you see he’s been sick?”
“What are you talking about?” His wife had died a year ago. She vaguely remembered that, but the news hadn’t mentioned anything about him except his successes. “I have to ask for help.” She opened the utility closet and took out a broom to sweep grass that had fallen from Eli’s jeans onto the tile floor. “He’s my match made in heaven. I need investment. He helps businesses that can’t make it on their own.”
“He takes those businesses over. He doesn’t give people money and expect nothing in return.”
“I’ll pay him back. You’ve seen my projections.” Her spreadsheets were an inch thick. “What would he want with a lodge in Honesty, Virginia?”
“That was my next question. Any small return you can offer him isn’t worth his effort. He looks for profit, not the golden glow of having been generous.”
She stared at her brother, hoping he wasn’t speaking from experience. “I just have to make him care. It takes devotion to make a business work. And determination. I have both.”
Van got a dustpan and held it for her. “When did you start believing in fairy tales?”
“Since my banker let me down. I need a fairy godmother, and don’t try to talk me out of it. If he’s not here to work with you, you’re too late and I’m too desperate.”
“He had a heart attack, Beth.” Van dumped the dustpan into the wastebasket and took the broom from her. “Aidan came here to recuperate. Do you want to kill him?”
CHAPTER TWO
