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“That’s Johnny Savage and his friend, Major Stanton.”
“Oh? What do they do?”
“Fight aliens. Most of the time they’re humanoid. But that one’s an octopus. He’s a bad guy. His men squirt ink on people to capture them.”
“I see,” said Ross, who didn’t. What had happened to the simple cartoons of his childhood? Elmer Fudd hunting wascally wabbits? The Road Runner foiling Wile E. Coyote?
His brother’s words came back to haunt him. What makes you think you can raise a seven-year-old?
Ignorance, obviously. Would he ever get the hang of this parenting thing? Not just learning how to look after a kid, feed him, clothe him, keep him from harm, but find common ground for a relationship? And did he have it in him after all this time to embrace a whole new culture?
Ross wasn’t sure.
And at the moment he felt very much alone.
“So,” he said with forced gaiety when the cartoon ended. “Given some thought to what you’d like for your birthday? I need ideas, you know.”
Angus’s eyes widened. “Is it Wednesday already?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“And you—you want to give me a present?”
“Why not?”
“I heard you telling someone on the phone that you’d already gotten me something.”
“When was that?”
“The morning we left to come here.”
That must have been Delia, calling to remind Ross about Angus’s birthday; offering to buy a gift and send it to their beach house in the event he had forgotten.
But Ross had already bought the model train set Angus had fallen in love with at the toy store last month. Because of its size he’d brought along only the engine for Angus to unwrap on Wednesday, plus a few other things he hoped the boy would like.
Now he frowned, wondering if he should remind Angus not to eavesdrop on telephone calls between grown-ups. Surely this was a good time to drive the message home?
But the memory of how the boy had withdrawn from him in Kenzie Daniels’s aviary earlier that day stopped him cold. Back then he’d only mentioned his dislike of pelicans, not chastised the boy for bad behavior. Still, he didn’t want to be the cause of the boy’s frustrated tears again. The thought made him ache inside.
“So obviously you know you’ll be getting presents on Wednesday,” he said instead. “So much for a surprise. But you also get one birthday wish.”
“A wish? What kind of wish?”
“The best kind. You can ask for anything you like. Within reason, of course. Something special you’ve been wanting very badly.”
“For real?”
The boy’s eagerness tore at Ross’s heart. If only it was always this easy. “Sure. My mother started the tradition when I was just a bit younger than you. Each year my brother Alex and I were allowed to make one birthday wish, which Mom did her best to fulfill. She always said it was better than blowing out candles and just hoping it’d come true.”
“That never happens,” Angus agreed.
“I know.”
“Did your dad help make those wishes come true?”
My dad was the wish, Ross thought, then cleared his throat. “He sure did. So go ahead and tell me. What would you like?”
Angus’s eyes widened. “I can wish for anything?”
“As I said, within reason.”
“Can we go out to dinner?”
“On Wednesday night? Is that your wish?”
Angus nodded.
“Sure we can. Is that all you want?”
“Um, well…” Angus looked down at his sneakers. “Can we take Kenzie along?”
“What?”
He must have spoken sharply, because Angus’s face fell.
“You said I could have a wish,” he mumbled. “And I want to have dinner with Kenzie.”
Ross set his plate aside and drew in a deep breath. The last thing he wanted was to encourage further contact with a beautiful-but-lawyer-hating woman his son seemed to be unnaturally drawn to. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Angus nodded.
“Not that inflatable kayak at the hardware store across the street?”
Angus shook his head.
“Or that fishing trip on Pamlico Sound?”
“No, thank you.” He was still mumbling and he wouldn’t look at Ross.
“Or that train set you saw at Garrison’s Toy Store?”
He saw the struggle on his son’s face and realized he was being unfair.
“Angus, wait a minute—”
“No, I told you what I wanted. I want to have dinner with you and with Kenzie.”
Those weren’t Penelope’s vivid blue eyes staring back at him all at once. They were Ross’s own, and they were too darned determined. The tilt of that chin was all too familiar, as well.
“Okay, okay. We’ll invite her to dinner.” Ross took a deep breath and struggled to make his tone lighter. “Got a restaurant in mind?”
Angus brightened. “There’s one on the sound near the place where we turned to go to the lighthouse. It has a deck on the water. Can we go there?”
“Did you happen to notice the name?”
Disappointed, Angus shook his head.
“Would you recognize it if we drove by again?”
“I think so. Does that mean we can eat there?”
“If we can find it.”
“Can we look now?”
Ross glanced out of the windows. The sun had set, but there was plenty of daylight left. He drew another deep breath. Anything to make the boy smile again. “Come on.”
Following Angus down the steps, he couldn’t help thinking how unfair it was that the one thing that seemed to make Angus happy was the one thing he would have preferred to deny him: more time in the company of one MacKenzie Daniels.
For God’s sake, he didn’t want Angus getting emotionally attached to someone he’d never see again once they returned to New York! And he himself definitely didn’t want a woman cluttering up his life, not even for the week and a half that remained of his vacation. After Penelope, it was the last thing he wanted, ever. Never mind that Kenzie Daniels seemed to be everything Penelope had never been: sweet, unassuming, very kind and generous. Not to mention funny and warm and such a natural with kids that he couldn’t help envying her that ease.
In the car, he cleared his throat. “Mind if I ask why you want to invite Ms. Daniels so badly?”
“Because I like her.”
“I agree she’s nice, but you shouldn’t get so intimate with strangers, son.”
“What’s intimate?”
“Eh…make friends with them so fast. We don’t know anything about her.”
“But we do! She can fly kites and she rescues birds and has two greyhounds and draws cartoons!”
How to argue with that kind of logic? Ross took a stab at it. “You know a lot about Marty, don’t you?” Marty was the handyman at Ross’s apartment building.
“Yeah.”
“And you think he’s nice, too. But you’ve never asked me to invite him to supper.”
“That’s different.”
Lord, the boy was stubborn. “In what way?”
“He’s nice to me, but he’s not a friend. I mean, it’s different with Kenzie. She doesn’t work for you and doesn’t have to like me if she doesn’t want to…and…and…”
He was clearly struggling to find the right words. Ross racked his brains to do the same, desperate to keep the line of communication open. This was the first time Angus had ever tried sharing his feelings with him.
“I think I see what you mean,” he said slowly. “Marty’s nice, but he’s really just doing his job.”
Angus looked relieved. “Yeah. But Kenzie doesn’t need to be nice to me. She just is. She didn’t yell when my kite landed on her, and then she showed me how to fly it.”
Ross’s eyes left the road to settle on his son. “You hit her with your kite?”
Angus blushed. “I didn’t mean to. It fell on her. Well, next to her. But I think it scared her. She was sleeping on her towel.”
“Oh.” So that was it. Nothing like a disaster to break the ice between strangers. The fact that she hadn’t berated him had obviously made a big impression on Angus. And his gratitude had strengthened into liking the more time he spent with her. Ross had to admit that, to a seven-year-old, Kenzie Daniels must seem very exotic and interesting—much more interesting than having a dour old lawyer for a father.
Ross’s spirits sank at the thought. Angus certainly hadn’t indicated any interest in his father’s career the first time he had been shown Ross’s office in Queens, where he had been introduced to Delia and the others in the practice. Granted, the run-down warehouse that served as headquarters for Calder & Hayes LLC wasn’t much to look at. Not like the glass-fronted high-rise on Madison Avenue, where Ross had practiced corporate law for eight years. Where he had been a full partner, highly paid and widely respected, and had lived only a few blocks away in an elegant town house he shared with Penelope, surrounded by the stores, restaurants and the theater and museum districts she had loved to haunt.
And now? What had the bitter battle for Angus—blown out of all proportion first by Penelope and then by the bloodthirsty English tabloids—cost him? He was no longer a high-powered attorney in a prestigious Manhattan firm, but a partner in a tiny law office that no one in midtown Manhattan had ever heard of, doing more pro bono work than not because most of his clients were the indigent and homeless of the city who couldn’t afford to pay. Nowadays he supposed he was barely one step above being a public defender—something Penelope had thought utterly amusing when she’d found out.
“My, my, how far the mighty have fallen,” she had said to him at her bitchiest best. That had been at their last meeting, back in February, after Ross had shown up at her parents’ elegant London town house to demand one last time that Penelope bring the boy back from wherever it was she had hidden him, to be reasonable, to at least allow father and son to meet, for God’s sake! But Penelope wasn’t interested in talking about Angus. She had wanted to hear all the sordid details about his downfall, how Ross’s senior partners had asked him to step down, that the publicity—the firm had an office in London—was damaging their image, how it wouldn’t do for the firm to become entangled in a custody battle between Ross and the daughter of Sir Edmund Archer.
“Hey! Hey, stop! There it is!”
Jerked from his black thoughts, Ross hit the brakes too hard. A horn blared behind him. “Sorry. Where?”
Angus pointed. The Boathouse. A two-story restaurant set back against the sound, the parking lot filled with cars. The wide front porch was packed with people waiting to be seated.
“You sure know how to pick ’em,” Ross said with a crooked smile. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get reservations for Wednesday night.”
They could. And Ross had to admit that the dining room was cheery with its cypress-paneled walls and nautical decorations. The food didn’t look bad, either.
“I want to sit at the window,” Angus whispered. “Can you ask?”
The hostess, writing down their names, overheard and smiled. “I’ll be sure and save the best table for you. You can watch the sun go down over the sound.”
Angus smiled back at her shyly. “Thanks.”
No doubt about it, the kid was opening up. Maybe Delia had been right. All he needed was to give it time.
“Nice choice,” Ross said, giving in to his feelings and tousling Angus’s hair in the doorway.
For once the boy didn’t draw away. “Really?”
“Really. Kenzie’ll love it.”
That earned him a shy smile all his own. Side by side they went back to the car, Ross feeling swellheaded with pride. Maybe he was starting to get the hang of this thing after all.
And if Angus’s happiness meant being nice to Kenzie Daniels, well, he could do that, too. At least long enough to give the boy a birthday dinner he’d remember.
“I don’t believe it!” Kenzie gritted her teeth and pounded her fist on the steering wheel. If the dump truck ahead of her slowed down any further they’d both be crawling. She’d been following him since Nags Head, unable to pass because of all the oncoming traffic. Usually Saturdays were the worst time to try and navigate Highway 12, but this was midweek, for crying out loud.
She downshifted as the dump truck slowed to veer around two cyclists, then glanced at her watch. Ross and Angus were picking her up in an hour and she was still twenty miles from home.
Nothing like a hissy fit to sour her mood even further, she thought. She was already tired and cranky after a morning spent in the Norfolk Messenger offices, summoned to a meeting that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, when she’d already planned to show up anyway. At least Maureen, her editor, had felt bad about springing the planning session on her without warning and had taken her to lunch—though they’d ended up waiting seemingly forever for their food.
Then the long drive back, with Kenzie starting to feel a little pressured about the time. The situation had worsened when her pickup had stalled just north of the Oregon Inlet bridge, the needle on the temperature gauge buried on Hot.
