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And Baby Makes Four
Mary J. Forbes
She never imagined that an unexpected pregnancy–or handsome new passenger–would push her carefully mapped-out plans wildly off course! But charter pilot Lee Tait had to focus on her business–and she couldn't bear the thought of getting hurt again. She and her baby would be just fine on their own. She never imagined that an unexpected pregnancy–or handsome new passenger–would push her carefully mapped-out plans wildly off course!But charter pilot Lee Tait had to focus on her business–and she couldn't bear the thought of getting hurt again. She and her baby would be just fine on their own.
The plane’s engine roared to life.
“You can do anything you want.” Lee’s voice glided along his senses. “Long as you don’t touch the controls.”
Pinching his eyes shut, he folded his arms, tried not to clutch the fabric of his suit coat.
Perspiration dampened his forehead. His stomach whirled.
“I’m right beside you,” Lee said into the headphones when the plane began to move.
He listened to her voice while she gave their coordinates to the Seattle tower, and the plane skimmed the ocean, lifted, buzzed into the sky.
He listened to the tone of her words more than their meaning. That assured tone. The quiet, steady tone.
And when he bit the inside of his cheek, he felt her fingers curve around his forearm. “You’ll be okay with me.”
And in that heartbeat, Rogan believed her.
He really did.
Dear Reader,
In this second installment of my HOME TO FIREWOOD ISLAND miniseries, I wanted to write about a woman working in a predominantly male field. So I made my heroine a pilot, though not just any pilot. She flies single-prop seaplanes across mountains, canyons and forests…and lands on rivers, lakes, fjords and inlets.
And Baby Makes Four is her story. However, Lee Tait—eldest of the three sisters on Firewood Island—has come to a roadblock in her life. She must piece together her past with a man who could tear apart her future—or chance losing every dream. Will she take the ultimate risk?
Warm wishes,
Mary
PS—Their Secret Child (Addie’s story and first in the series) is available at online bookstores. Details about Kat—the third sister—are on my Web site at www.maryjforbes.com.
And Baby Makes Four
Mary J. Forbes
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARY J. FORBES
Her rural prairie roots granted Mary J. Forbes a deep love of nature and small towns, a love that’s often reflected in the settings of her books. Today, she lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest where she also teaches school, nurtures her garden and walks or jogs in any weather. Readers can contact Mary at www.maryjforbes.com.
With many thanks to my editor, Susan Litman
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
The man stood watching her in the early-April twilight.
Had he been alone, Lee Tait might have worried. This was, after all, the third time in as many days he stopped to observe her tinker on the Cessna 206 seaplane docked at the end of the boardwalk that curved within Burnt Bend’s tiny cove. As before, the child accompanied him, a boy of perhaps six or seven whose dusty blond hair caught the sun’s setting rays. His eyes, Lee noted, were plate-round with curiosity.
Still, the guy’s presence—yet again—couldn’t stop the cold sluice of adrenaline down her torso. What did he want? Why didn’t he continue along the shoreline path, which extended from the marina and wended past a smattering of cottages before looping back into the village, a distance of a quarter mile?
Why stop each time to stare at her for five minutes, and then turn around?
He stood in the fading light, rangy as a mountain climber, attired in gray cords, brown boat shoes and a black pullover. Except for a pair of gym shoes, the child emulated the dress code.
Obviously, father and son.
Two peas in a pod, her mother would say—if Lee explained the strange visitations to Charmaine. Which she would not.
The boy murmured something and, while low and indistinct, she heard the man’s quiet response drift down the wooden dock.
Trying to avoid the duo, she opened the seaplane’s door, stepped on the pontoon and hopped inside for a final check before tomorrow’s flight across the Puget Sound.
Last fall, she had signed a year’s contract with the Burnt Bend post office to courier expedited mail and parcels to the mainland. The daily service ensured a steady paycheck, while weekend visitors and tourists to the region kept her fledgling charter company viable. One day soon—when she could afford rising fuel costs—she hoped to include a scheduled weekday passenger service.
Lee winced at the thought. Cutting into Lucien Duvall’s passengers-only ferry service would not make the old guy happy.
Hopefully, when the time came, they’d be able to work something out.
Scanning for forgotten items left by passengers, she thought how the Cessna was the only good thing to come from her ex-husband. She hadn’t selected the best of his Abner Air fleet out of spite, or because he’d impregnated that cocktail waitress three years ago.
Then again, maybe she had….
Truth was, she’d picked the six-seater seaplane as the cornerstone of Sky Dash, a company she’d dreamed of founding since her twentieth birthday.
Spotting a crumpled island brochure under the farthest passenger seat, Lee recalled her last customer clutching the pamphlet in a death grip. Ah, well. Edgy fliers came with the territory.
Reaching down, she snagged the leaflet.
“Hello, there,” a deep voice said from behind.
Snapping around, she bumped her head on the cockpit’s ceiling.
She hadn’t heard him approach, but there he and the boy stood on the weathered pier, gazing at her rump in army-green coveralls, no less, as she leaned over the seat.
Swell. The guy wanted a tête-à-tête now? While her backside hung in his face?
Ignoring the warmth climbing her neck, she scrambled into the pilot’s seat.
“Hey,” she said, as if they hadn’t seen each other three times at precisely 6:30 p.m. in the past seventy-two hours. Be friendly, Lee. He could be a future weekend fare.
His eyes held humor. “Are you Amelia Earhart the Second?”
“I’m Lee Tait,” she stated, a little irked the guy would zero in on a nickname the townsfolk had given her when she received her wings fifteen years ago. “Owner and pilot of Sky Dash.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” He looked askance as if another thought chased through his mind. Then, with the boy close to his side, he offered a handshake. “Nice to meet you, Captain Tait.”
She leaned out the door. His grip was firm, large. A frisson of electricity shot up her arm. “No apology needed.” I’m used to the nickname. “And you are…?”
Shaking his head, he issued a short laugh. “I’m losing it. Rogan Matteo.”
“Rogan.” She tested the name, found it oddly pleasing. But…something niggled. Where had she heard his last name…?
He had quiet, gray eyes and soot-black hair. Although his voice suggested the South, his face revealed a none-too-genteel life. A nose too brash to be handsome, a square, tough jaw and cheekbones embracing the genes of a Spanish ancestor. Not handsome, yet appealing in a rudimentary sense.
Disregarding a scurry of nerves at how his eyes imprisoned hers, Lee jumped out of the plane. On the dock, she saw he was taller than she assumed; she could lay her head on his chest, if she chose.
Shaking off the image, she closed the seaplane’s door and picked up her metal toolbox. “What can I do for you, Mr. Matteo?” she asked, starting down the floating dock toward the boardwalk and its array of quaint stores and food outlets.
“I understand you make daily flights to the mainland.”
“I courier the island’s critical mail Monday through Friday.”
“Do you take passengers on those runs?”
“Sometimes. However, it depends on their destination and schedule. If I’m flying mail and we’re going in the same direction and at the same time, passengers are welcome.”
“Are they welcome at other times during the day?”
She stopped. They were at the junction of her dock and the boardwalk, and the boy held his dad’s hand.
“Of course,” she said. “As long as I’m back on time if there’s a mail run.”
“Ah.” Matteo gazed momentarily across the water where the sun sank below the horizon, leaving a bloodstain on the ocean. Glancing down at the boy, his eyes softened; on her they were all business. “In a week or so, I’ll need temporary shuttling to Renton, Captain Tait. Three, four days at most. My son’s attending the elementary school here, so I need to be back in time to pick him up.”
“What’s wrong with Lu’s foot ferry?” she asked. Let Lucien Duvall take the man on his sixty-passenger water taxi. It made three daily trips.
“Nothing’s wrong with his ferry, but you stop at Renton, which means I can walk to work. Lu docks at Seattle, and he leaves at 7:30 a.m. with a five-thirty return. Your eight and three o’clock schedules fit my son—” another glance at the boy “—and me better.”
My son and me. Did that mean the child’s mother lived elsewhere? Oddly, the notion of a wife waiting in the wings sent a shaft of disappointment through Lee.
“I’m willing to pay the going rate,” Matteo went on.
Unable to withhold her amazement, Lee blinked. Temporary or not, a week of daily return flights would cost him. Either he or his company had money. Since he was a stranger to the island—she knew practically every one of its two thousand souls—she’d bet he was the one with money. Probably another of the rich who came to Firewood Island looking for a chunk of so-called “nature,” while building a mansion with an ocean view.
Although the idea bothered her, where he built his home had nothing to do with her hesitancy. She did not wish to be near him. He was a man with a child. A man who could make her heart skip with a simple hello, there.
Her no-nonsense black shoes clicking against the wood, she started for the apartment she rented above Art Smarts, a whimsical shop catering to the island’s artsy community.
Matteo took the heavy toolbox from her grip. “Do you always maintain your own plane?”
“Every day.” She noticed he carried the toolbox easily, and wondered if he was always a gentleman. Her heart beat a little harder.
“So, you’re a mechanic, too?” he asked with that Southern inflection.
“Not officially, but over the years I’ve learned a few things about plane engines.” Most of it from my ex who owns a charter airline. “Don’t worry, Mr. Matteo,” she said, mentally batting Stuart Hershel out of her mind. “I hire a professional to overhaul my plane twice a year.”
Halting again, she retrieved the toolkit from his grip. Suddenly, she didn’t like his questions. And she certainly didn’t like that she noticed too much about him, which vexed her even more, especially after his scrutiny of the last three days.
“I could probably help with your situation,” she went on. “However, I won’t be responsible for getting you to work on time. If something goes wrong and I’m late, you’ll be late. And vice versa. If something holds you up here or on the mainland, I can’t wait for you.”
He held up a hand. “I understand. However, I’ve checked your flight history. Since you were hired by the post office seven months ago, you haven’t missed a day or a time. Nor have you missed your other fares.” His smile canted left. “I’m a lawyer, Miss Lee. Comprehensive research comes with the job.”
A lawyer. Who’d had her investigated. What else had he discovered? A chill spilled through her bones. Three years ago, she had returned to her hometown to escape a past that haunted her nights.
He dug a card from a hip pocket. “Call anytime and we’ll set up a schedule. I don’t go to bed until eleven.”
She studied the print. Rogan B. Matteo, Law Offices of Matteo and Matteo. Address: Renton, where she often docked. Was he part of a husband-and-wife team?
He said, “I’m having a new one printed up this week, but the cell phone number will stay the same.”
“Sure,” she said. Intent on reaching her apartment, and trying to shake off his magnetism, she hurried down the boardwalk. All right, she would admit the man seemed like a nice guy. But then lawyers were always nice guys—when they were on your side.
“Thank you,” he called. “By the way, in case you want to reach me, I’m renting a cabin at The Country Cabin B and B until our new house is ready.”
