A Better Father (Harlequin Super Romance) (7 page)

Oh, hell. She’d forgotten everything she’d ever learned in
chemistry, physics and calculus. So why did her memory insist on serving up
these tidbits whenever he got close?

She launched into a fast and furious explanation of the many
camper forms, their purposes and how to record them on the master spreadsheet.
She doubted it made any sense. It came out so fast and garbled that she didn’t
think she could have followed it, and she had been using the system for
years.

“There,” she said with relief. “Lesson one, complete.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He sounded dazed and confused, and in fairness, she couldn’t
blame him.

But it was better to race through and send him on his way than
continue to feel him hovering over her and tell herself he didn’t make her
feel...restless.

“That’s enough for one night. Digest this, and tomorrow we’ll
tackle lesson two, filing.”

“Fine.” He straightened and stepped back. She breathed in
again, and the hit of oxygen cleared her brain enough to make her remember
something that had been tickling her brain since she sat down to attack the
forms.

“By the way, I need your emergency information, too.”

“Mine?”

“Yes, indeed. I need it from everyone—kids, staff, anyone.”

“I’m the owner, not staff,” he said after a moment.

“But you’re living by counselor rules, remember? And face it,
if anything happened to you here, our nurse would be your first responder. So
hand it in.”

His mouth set in a mulish line. Great.

She sighed and crossed her arms. “Are you still allergic to
penicillin?”

His eyes widened. “You remember that?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Catalano,” she said, though even she
was amazed at how much of her previous knowledge was flooding back to her
conscious awareness. “What would happen if, say, you finally pushed me too far
and I whacked you over the head, then ran away? No one here would know.”

“Fine. I’ll fill out the damned form.” A smile tugged at the
corner of his mouth. “Are you planning to off me soon, Lib? Should I update my
will?”

“That’s entirely up to you, isn’t it? Now get out of here and
go back to your party. I’ll be done faster that way.”

“Fine.” He took a step, then stopped and turned back to her.
“But before I go, I— Look, what happened back then, when we were kids and
I—”

“Hung up on me.” Libby finished his sentence with clipped
tones, pushing herself upright in her chair.

Hung up on me.
The words were
totally inappropriate for what she had felt. She had left camp that summer
totally in love, amazed at what she and Sam had done, counting the minutes until
they would start school together and could pick up where they’d left off. Then
had come that horrible moment when Gran sat her down and said, “Oh, Libby, I
don’t know how to tell you, but there’s a problem with your college
money....”

Her first instinct had been to reach for Sam. She had walked
away from her grandmother and closed herself in her room and called him.

She’d poured it all out to him. Cried so hard the words could
barely slip through the tears. And when she was done, he had simply sighed,
said, “I’m so sorry, Lib,” and hung up.

She never heard from him again until the day he walked into the
office and laid claim to the camp that should have been hers.

He crouched in front of her so his eyes were level with hers.
He reached for her hands, but she jerked back against the cracked vinyl of the
chair. Too much. Too soon. He flinched but didn’t move away.

“I want you to know—I’m sorry. I never should have done it, and
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve beat myself up for it over the
years.”

“Well,” she said slowly. “Thank you.”

He nodded.

She held her breath. This was the point when he was supposed to
say why he did it, when he justified his actions. Not that there was any way to
excuse it, but—

“Okay. Well.” He stood and offered her a tentative grin.
“Listen, there’s something else I need to—”

A knock sounded at the door. “Libby? Are you in there?”

Libby scowled as her waterfront director walked into the
office. What else had he planned to say? And how had she not heard Phoebe coming
up the creaky steps? It was terrifyingly like the old days, when the rest of the
world had seemed to operate on another plane whenever she was with Sam.

At least this time she knew that her sense-blocking passion was
of the pissed-off variety.

Phoebe came to a sudden stop in the middle of the room,
forehead furrowed, the multicolored beads in her hair clacking against each
other as she looked from Libby to Sam and back again. “Hey, sorry. Didn’t mean
to interrupt anything.”

Libby’s cheeks burned as she thought of what Phoebe would have
seen if she had walked in a few seconds earlier, when Sam had curved around her
to inspect the screen.

“No interruption at all,” Sam said with a wink. “I was just,
uh, getting ready to head down to dinner.”

Libby had never been punched in the stomach, but she had a
pretty good idea that the sudden breathlessness she felt was a damned close
approximation. Seriously? He barged in on her while she was working, messed up
her staff, tossed her some half-assed excuse for an apology and then expected to
just waltz out of the room like—

The door flew open again, this time admitting the craft
director. “Libby, we have— Oh.” Her big blue eyes widened and her slight frown
left her face, replaced by a goofy kind of smile. “Oh. Hi, Sam.”

“Hi, Tanya.”

Good Lord, was the girl blushing? Libby rubbed her forehead.
Great. Tanya had picked Sam for her annual crush. It was going to be an even
longer summer than she’d anticipated.

“What’s up, ladies?” she asked, hoping they wouldn’t hear the
fatigue in her voice.

“I have some ideas. About our cabin.” Phoebe looked at Tanya,
who was alternating between staring at the floor and peeking through her lashes
at Sam.

Sam himself shot a semiapologetic glance her way before edging
toward the exit. “Okay. Well. I’ll leave you ladies to your discussion. Catch
you later, Libby.”

Coward.

The minute the door slammed behind him she massaged her
forehead, caught somewhere between old hurts and frustration and a vague
disappointment, as if she’d been on the brink of something and had it snatched
away from her. Which, in a way, she had.

“Libby?” Phoebe’s voice was small. “Are you okay?”

Libby shook her head and pulled herself upright. She would not,
could not fall apart now. There were questions to be answered, people to be
reassured, papers to be pushed. She still had a pile of work before she could
call it a night. Her job was waiting.

Somehow, the prospect wasn’t quite as compelling as it had been
before Sam waltzed in.

* * *

A
COUPLE
OF
HOURS
LATER
, Sam grabbed a slice of pizza
from the box left on the serving table in the deserted dining hall and spied
exactly what he needed in the far corner of the dim, echoing space: a place to
hide.

He didn’t need long. A couple of minutes, just enough to catch
his breath and have a bite in peace. And if he remembered correctly, the
floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace halfway down the wall provided a small but
private corner on the other side. He kept his steps as quiet as possible until
he reached the spot. Yep. He could prop himself at the nearest picnic table,
watch the stars from the window, but no one could see him unless they knew where
to look. Which was a damned good thing because he needed a minute to
himself.

Sharon had called during dinner to try to talk him out of
moving Casey. Brynn, stuck with the task of closing up the house and supervising
the move, had done an amazing job but still had needed to run an endless stream
of questions past him. Casey had been fretful and fussy the last time they
talked.

And on top of all that, he was supposed to learn about his new
staff and his new job and line up a pediatrician and stock the house with
groceries and still have the energy to convince himself that he was doing the
right thing.

Oh, and mollify Libby enough that he could tell her about Casey
without feeling like he was pouring salt into wounds that he had caused.

He had hoped that the pavilion plans would do the trick, but
when he showed them to her that morning, she had brushed them aside with barely
a glance. The pizza night had turned out to be another mistake. Shit, he’d even
pretended to be interested in paperwork. He was running out of ideas, and worse,
running out of time. Brynn would be there with Casey in just three days.

He was going to have to tell her. Soon, before it became an
issue.

As soon as he finished catching his breath.

He took a slug of coffee, gasped at the unexpected heat and
backhanded the drops away from his mouth as the door creaked open.

Libby stepped inside. From where he sat he could see her give
the hall a quick once-over. Seated in the shadow of the fireplace as he was,
with her eyes still adjusting from the bright glare of sunset to the relative
shadows inside, she probably hadn’t seen him. Fine by him. He’d give her a
moment to do what she’d come for, then he’d scrape together his brain cells,
chase her down and come clean with her.

“Cosmo?” she called in the direction of the kitchen. “Hey,
Cosmo, are you there?”

“Just a minute.”

As far as Sam could tell, Cosmo hadn’t changed a bit since he
first barked an order at preteen Sam and almost made him wet his pants. He was
still big, still burly and still inclined to wearing brightly flowered Hawaiian
shirts beneath his apron. Sam had yet to have a conversation with the man in his
new position as owner that hadn’t ended with Cosmo grunting and telling him he
had a hell of a lot to learn.

Right. Just in case Sam wasn’t painfully aware of that
already.

“What’s up?” Cosmo emerged from his lair, wiping his hands on a
towel.

“I’m doing a staff campfire tomorrow night. Do we have enough
marshmallows for s’mores?”

“We should have plenty. Thanks for checking.”

“Just doing my job.” She grabbed the clipboard from the table
and flipped through the papers. “Hey, have you seen Sam around?”

“Can’t say I have.” He tossed the towel over his shoulder.
“Course, can’t say I’ve been looking, either.”

Sam gritted his teeth and eased deeper into the corner,
pressing himself against the cold stone of the fireplace. Libby laughed, soft
and low, and he held his breath so as not to miss whatever might come next.

“Now, Cosmo, is that any way to talk about your new boss?”

“Humph. Just because his name’s on the deed, it don’t mean he’s
the boss.”

Sam was seized by a sudden urge to start handing out pink
slips.

“Give the devil his due,” Libby said. “He’s doing everything I
tell him to do.”

Libby was defending him?

“There ya go,” Cosmo replied. “Y’ever hear tell of a boss who
lets someone else tell him what to do?”

Well, hell. Sam was more than ready to turn that trend around.
Step one: tell Cosmo where to go.

Libby laughed again, a bit more freely this time, which made
Sam’s jaw tighten with words that could never be said. “Be that as it may, if
you see him, would you please be a doll and tell him I’m heading into town
tonight? I’ll be back before the morning session.”

“Sure thing. Got anything else for me to tell him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like if he doesn’t have the brains to stay away from you this
time around, he’s gonna wish he had?”

Sam was too far away and the shadows were too deep to see if
Libby blushed or not, but he’d bet his Stanley Cup ring that her cheeks were
firing almost as red as her hair. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’ve been here a lot longer than you have, missy. There’s not
much that gets past me. I saw the way you two were that summer. Velcro. Myra
thought she was going to have to turn a hose on you sometimes.”

Sam grinned to himself. And they thought they had been so
surreptitious.

“I shared Sam’s cabin that year, you know. Saw him sneaking
back in that last night. Stupid fool was practically glowing.”

“I really should go,” Libby said, and stepped toward the
door.

Cosmo’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm. “Funny thing,” he
said. “You two were all over each other when it came time to say goodbye, but
not two weeks later, there you were in Myra’s office, hunting for a job instead
of going off to school, and turning all white and pinched whenever Sam’s name
came up.”

Ah, damn. He’d known it had to have been hard on her. But it
was one thing to know that he’d hurt her, and a totally different thing to hear
Cosmo, of all people, lay it out so plainly.

“Not much of one for sticking around after the fun, is he?”

Cosmo’s question was quiet but still packed a punch—one that
went straight to Sam’s gut. Especially when Libby sighed softly and said, “It
doesn’t seem that way, does it?”

It’s not what you think, Libby. There’s so
much you don’t know.

He was halfway to his feet, ready to reveal himself and pull
her out of the room and tell her everything about then and now, but she picked
up her clipboard and pasted on a smile that he could see was fake, even from the
other side of the hall.

“Listen,” she said, “this is way too depressing for such a
gorgeous night, okay? Let’s save it for another time.”

“Like when?” Cosmo asked. “After Sam fires you?”

“He can’t fire me. He needs me—well, someone with my
qualifications, and I happen to be the most convenient. I’m the one who’s
calling a halt.”

“Huh. First Myra, then you. Place is going to the dogs.”

Her smile was sad. “Thanks. Oh, I talked to Myra last night.
She said to say hi to you, and that she can’t eat meat loaf anymore because it
makes her miss you.”