A Better Father (Harlequin Super Romance) (9 page)

Sam’s words pounded through Libby as she stalked down the path
to the dining hall. She let the door slam behind her, startling Phoebe and Alex,
the counselor assigned to double-team with Sam, who were lurking in the corner
but who jerked apart at Libby’s arrival. Phoebe gave her shirt a
semisurreptitious tug.

“Libby. Hey. How are you— Whoa.” Phoebe stepped back and
reached for Alex’s hand. “Are you okay?”

“Just ducky.” Libby strong-armed the swinging doors to the
kitchen and scanned the alien world of butcher block and stainless steel.
“Cosmo?”

No answer.

“Cosmo?” she repeated, louder this time, but the only answer
was a small voice from behind her.

“He went down to his cabin,” Phoebe said.

Well, duh. If Libby hadn’t been so furious she couldn’t think
straight, she would have realized that Phoebe and Alex wouldn’t have been
playing tonsil hockey with the cook in residence.

“Is it an emergency? Do you need me to get him?” Alex sounded
all too eager to escape, which told Libby everything she needed to know about
what kind of an impression she was making on her—correction, on
Sam’s—
staff. She forced herself to take a deep breath
and dug up something that she hoped resembled a smile.

“No. I just need something, but I’ll leave him a note. Thank
you.”

Alex nodded and disappeared back into the dining area. She
heard whispers, then the door closing as he and Phoebe undoubtedly got away
while the getting was good.

“Cowards,” she shot in their direction, but there was no heat
in the word.

She opened cupboards and drawers until she found what she was
looking for—a five-pound bag of chocolate chips. She slung it over her shoulder,
scribbled a message for Cosmo and hoofed it back to the office.

You need to get a life. You can’t let go.
You’re doing what’s best for Libby Kovak.

Seriously? He had just pulled the bonehead move of the century,
and he was accusing
her
of looking out for number
one?

The door to the office stood wide-open to the critters and the
elements, causing her to narrow her eyes and fling some more mental arrows in
Sam’s direction. She slammed it closed, took a step and smacked her ankle into a
file cabinet drawer that he had undoubtedly left open.

“That miserable, puck-brained son of a—” She gave the drawer a
vicious kick and let out a satisfied
hunh
when it
latched. Then she hobbled to her desk, slid the bag of chocolate chips off her
shoulder and tore it open.

There was a reason God had given chocolate to the world. She
was pretty sure it had something to do with the continuation of the species.

She tossed a handful of the chips into her mouth, chomping with
satisfaction before turning to the computer. Sam the idiot had also left a file
open on the desktop—a file filled with staff information.

Come on. He left stuff like this lying open for anyone to see,
and he had the nerve to hurl insults at her?

You can’t let go.

With a few clicks she accessed her private email. She scanned
her in-box quickly, noting with a pang that Myra had replied to her, but ignored
the posts while she opened a blank email. A few quick sentences, a fast
attachment and she hit Send before she could change her mind.

There. She shoved another handful of chocolate chips into her
mouth and fist-pumped the air when the your-message-has-been-sent screen
appeared.

“That’s right, Catalano,” she said to the empty room. “I’m just
looking out for number one.”

The words were scarcely out of her mouth when the impact of her
actions began to sink in. She had just applied for a job. A teaching job. And
she hadn’t done it after careful consideration, but in a reactionary “I’ll show
you” fury.

Oh, great. She hoped to hell her cover email had made some kind
of sense. Otherwise she might have killed her chances at one of the few local
teaching positions before she even had a chance.

“It’s all his fault,” she muttered around a mouthful of
chocolate. “Him and his secrets and his games and his—”

I have a kid.

Well, of course he did. Why wouldn’t he? He’d had a big, loving
family while she had only Gran. He’d had a free ride to a degree that he then
turned his back on, while she squeezed classes and student teaching around work
and a needy grandmother. He had the Stanley Cup and romances with starlets and a
commercial that made him an object of desire for a good chunk of the female
population of North America, while she had...while she had...

While she had the camp. Until he took it from her.

Which did
not
mean she needed to
get a life.

It just meant that the life in question had just had another
chunk ripped out of it.

* * *

H
E
’
D
MANAGED
TO
PISS
OFF
two members of
his staff in twenty minutes. One more
and Sam would have a frickin’ hat trick.

If he’d had a brain he would have holed up in the house for a
beer’s worth of unpacking, but instead Sam watched Libby disappear around the
corner, then hightailed it down to the waterfront. There was nothing like
hauling rocks to work off the adrenaline rush that came with a good fight.

Because much as he hated to admit it, Sam felt more pumped than
he had in weeks.

He curled his fingers around a hunk of solid something, grunted
and heaved. He’d only been a camp owner for a couple of weeks. He’d been a
hockey player since he was old enough to make the stick connect with a puck,
close to thirty years. Hockey players didn’t do subtle. They didn’t do
nit-picking. Hockey players went for the goal. Anything and anyone that got
between them and the goal was fair game.

He’d be a liar if he tried to pretend he didn’t miss the clear
focus of hockey. He’d be a damned liar if he tried to convince himself that he’d
handled the Libby situation well.

But God, it had felt good to be on the edge again.

He had the old feeling back, the awareness of his skin and his
muscles that had been such a part of flying over the ice. He’d felt back in his
element up there with Libby, dodging, shooting, drawing a line and letting her
know which way it lay. He was probably going to strain something by shoving
around rocks that were too heavy to lift alone, but right now he felt like he
could haul enough boulders to dam the whole St. Lawrence.

He owed Libby an apology. He knew that. He also owed her an
explanation, though he still had no idea what the hell he was supposed to say to
her.

But as he dropped a giant stone on top of the pile, he couldn’t
keep from grinning.

He still had a thousand worries and he still had screwed up,
but somehow he couldn’t help feeling like he was finally back where he belonged.
Back to himself.

CHAPTER SIX

L
IBBY
SPENT
THE
REST
of the day attacking her to-do
list. She flew through tasks with a focus and efficiency that frightened even
her. She debated going back to the town house that night, but two times in a row
was too much at this point in the preparations. She also didn’t want anyone to
think that Sam had the power to drive her away from camp. So she decided to
stay. The fact that she wouldn’t be able to sleep was inconsequential. She was
there, ready to hear Sam’s apology and/or explanation whenever he should decide
to offer them.

Not that she was holding her breath.

She dealt with the filing and went to dinner and led a session
on discipline, congratulating herself when she got through the whole thing
without once making eye contact with Sam or referring to him as an example of
someone in need of correction. She did notice that he abandoned his usual seat
at the back of the dining hall to stand up near the front, off to her side, as
if he were an emcee waiting to resume running the program as soon as she
finished her portion. It left her rattled, but she refused to let him see
it.

She did, however, allow herself a few moments of wondering
about the teaching job she had applied to. As she stood at the front of the
room, leading the counselors through theory and examples, she couldn’t help but
think how it might feel to lead a group of third-grade students in the same way.
Would they be more or less attentive? Would they need more explanation? Would
she be able to handle months of working inside without regular trips outdoors to
walk her rounds and refuel herself with a shot of blue sky and green trees?

When the session was over and staff had been dispersed with
instructions to get a good night’s sleep because there was another full day
ahead, she watched Sam trudge off to his cabin without a word to anyone. That
was unusual.

Come to think of it, everyone had seemed somewhat subdued that
night. Not just during her talk, but before that, at dinner. She would have
liked to blame it on exhaustion but she had a guilty feeling that news of her
shouting match with Sam had left everyone uneasy and uncertain.

Not exactly the greatest way to get people psyched for the
arrival of the kids in a few days.

In the good old days, when Myra was in charge, things would
never have reached this point. Libby was great at organization and motivation,
but Myra had always been the one who saw the potential personality issues and
headed them off before they could reach a crisis point.

On an impulse, Libby made her way to her car—the one place at
camp where she could be assured of both a little privacy and a decent cell phone
connection—and called Myra.

“Libby, dear!” Myra sounded tired but happy, the way Libby
always thought of her. “How are you? And Sam, and everyone? And Cosmo. Does
he... Has he adjusted?”

Libby gave Myra the high points first: the staff members were
starting to work as a team, Cosmo was only mildly grumpier than usual, they were
a bit behind schedule with the cabin and activity area prep but she was sure
they would be ready to start checking kids in on Sunday afternoon. They talked
about Myra’s adjustment to life with her sister, and how she and Esther were
planning a trip to Victoria in a couple of weeks.

“Esther is still well enough to do something like that?” Libby
asked.

“She has more good times than bad,” Myra said slowly. “We want
to make the most of them while we can.”

Suddenly, Libby’s problems with Sam seemed small and petty. She
couldn’t dump her worries on Myra. That would be the worst kind of
thoughtlessness.

But before she could redirect the conversation to happier
topics, Myra jumped in. “I spoke to Verna Collins today. She told me she ran
into you at the library.”

Oh, Lordy. Trust the small-town gossip line to beat her to the
punch even after Myra had moved.

“She said she gave you quite a surprise.”

Libby slumped lower in her seat. “Well, yeah. Not her fault,
though. Really. I hope she doesn’t feel guilty or anything.”

“Heavens, no. Verna is far too wise to waste energy on that.
But she was worried about you. She said you seemed rather upset.”

That was one way to describe it. “I was...not very happy. This
is something I should have found out a long time ago. It’s going to have a major
impact on Sam’s ability to do the job, which is absolutely okay. He has a
kid...he needs to be with the kid. That’s fine. But I do the scheduling. I
should have known.”

“Yes, you should have, and I’m very surprised that Sam didn’t
tell you already. He assured me he would, once he’d had a chance to smooth
things over with you.”

“Smooth things over? He said that?” She couldn’t hold back a
sigh. “Myra, if he was going to wait for that to happen, I wouldn’t have found
out about this until the kid was in high school.”

Myra’s familiar
hmm
carried across
the miles, making her sound so close and reliable that tears pricked at the back
of Libby’s eyes. The camp had been one of the few constants in Libby’s life. So
had Myra. From her first summer at Overlook when she was eleven, Myra had been a
steady oasis in an otherwise rocky life. Libby would never forget the day, a
couple of years after she started working for Myra, when she was weeding the
files and found a folder with her name on it. Inside she found a note from her
fifth grade teacher recommending her for one of that year’s free camperships.
There followed a series of other correspondence, copies of letters between Myra
and Gran and other teachers, all ensuring that Myra always knew how to find
Libby and bring her back to camp for free each year.

When Myra found her crying over the file, she had pressed a
tissue into Libby’s hand, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and said the
words that had carried Libby through many a hard time since then: “I always knew
you could be more than life had dealt you, dear.”

“Libby,” Myra asked now, “did Sam say why he hadn’t mentioned
this fact to you?”

“He said it was none of my business.” Her fingers tightened on
the phone at the memory.

“Oh, dear. And that was all?”

“No.” Libby breathed out her anger, fogging up the windshield,
so as not to make things any harder for Myra. “There were some other points.
Mostly about me.”

“I see.”

Myra might have been waiting for more details, but Libby
refused to go into specifics. For one thing, repeating Sam’s accusations would
only make her angry all over again. For another, Myra shouldn’t have had to hear
even this much.

“I’m sure we’ll work it all out somehow,” Libby said.
“Meanwhile, have you read any—”

“Would you say that things between you and Sam are any better
now than when he arrived?”

So much for hoping Myra would let it drop. “Excuse me?”

Myra sighed. “Libby, it’s no secret that you and Sam had some
sort of very painful falling-out in the past. I understand how that would make
things awkward at first. But has there been any improvement?”

For some stupid reason, her mind immediately threw up the
memory of Sam leaning over her the night before. Her toes curled.

“There have been a couple of times when I thought there might
be some hope. But...”

“Ah. And what have you done to address that problem?”

“Me?”

Okay. Myra didn’t know what had happened. She couldn’t know
that Sam was the one who had walked away, who had kept secrets, who had—

“Exactly. What have you done to improve things between you and
Sam? Because, Libby, dear, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I have
known you since you were quite young. I know how determined you are. If you had
decided to work on creating a more peaceful working relationship between you and
Sam, I have no doubt whatsoever that it would have happened within three hours
of his arrival.”

The impact of Myra’s words sank in, making Libby slide even
lower in her car seat as the events of the past weeks rolled through her memory.
She remembered Sam showing her the plans for the pavilion, and the way she had
brushed him off; Sam coaxing her down to pizza and karaoke night, only to have
her self-righteously proclaim that she needed to work; Sam asking her for
guidance in learning the job, only to have her try to dissuade him with
paperwork.

The awful truth hit her like a cold river wave flat in the
face. Sam had screwed up, but in between, he had been trying to make things
better between them. And she...

“Oh, crap. I have been such a bitch.”

“I doubt that it went that far. And let’s be honest, dear. You
were probably focusing your anger on him because you didn’t want to be mad at
me.”

Myra’s suggestion sounded a little too on-target for the sake
of Libby’s conscience.

“But,” Myra continued, “I do wonder if half the reason he found
it difficult to open up to you was because you were too busy keeping yourself
firmly closed off.”

Myra was right. Sam had been trying to build a bridge between
them. A clumsy, awkward one, to be sure, filled with gaping holes left by old
hurts, but a bridge nonetheless.

And Libby had not only refused to meet him halfway, she’d been
too determined to cling to the past to take even a baby step forward.

Worse, as she remembered the way her body had reacted to his
nearness the previous night, she had a horrible feeling that a lot of her
reluctance to move forward had very little to do with what Sam had done to her
in the past and a whole lot to do with what she feared could happen between them
in the future if she didn’t throw a pile of nasty between them.

She was better than that. She would do better than that.

Starting right that minute.

She thanked Myra and said her goodbyes while climbing out of
the car and navigating the path to Sam’s place. She slipped the phone into the
pocket of her shorts, knocked at the door before she could talk herself out of
it and twisted her shirttail between her fingers, smoothing it while waiting for
Sam to answer.

The door opened.

He stood before her, framed by the opening and backlit by the
light of his living room. Wet hair and blue flannel sleep pants told her she’d
caught him on his way to bed. The absence of anything above his waist—and the
accompanying spike in her heart rate—told her that her suspicions as to why
she’d been behaving so very badly were dead-on.

“Lib.” He spoke cautiously, as if waiting for a shoe to
drop.

“Hi. I...” Crap. What was she supposed to say? She should have
waited until tomorrow, should have given herself a chance to figure out the best
way to—

No. No, she needed to do this now. And if her words weren’t as
polished as she would like, well, maybe that would make it easier for him to
hear that they were coming straight from her heart.

“We still need to talk about how to handle things. About your
son, I mean. But I—”

“Casey.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. She tried not to
look.

“Sorry?”

“His name is Casey.”

“Oh. Of course. Well...” She inhaled to steady herself and
caught the subtle peppery scent of his body wash. The tiny corner of her brain
still operating on a rational level noted that it wasn’t the stuff from his
commercials. “I just wanted to say...I’m still not happy about the way you kept
this from me, and we will need to figure out how to make this all work.
Tomorrow.”

“He’ll be here late tomorrow morning.” Something flickered in
his eyes. “He usually naps in the afternoon.”

“Okay. I... If you can jot down his schedule for me first thing
tomorrow morning, I can look at ways to work around it, and then we can go over
things while he naps. Will that work for you?”

“It should.” His head dipped to one side. He shifted a little,
narrowing his stance so he didn’t look quite so intimidating. For the first time
she realized that he had probably been ready for another blast from her.

“I’m still not happy about the timing of this. But I wanted to
say...I...”

His eyes narrowed. She pushed the words out before she could
stop herself.

“I realized tonight that I wasn’t exactly making it easier for
you to tell me things. That I was deliberately making things more unpleasant
between us than they needed to be. And I just want to say, I shouldn’t have done
that. I’m sorry.”

He studied her as if waiting for her to change her mind. After
a moment his shoulders relaxed and his hands slipped down to his sides.

“Thanks.” He hesitated before adding, “And for the record, I
know I should have been more up-front. You deserved that. I didn’t mean to make
things more complicated for you, and I blew it. I’m sorry.”

The big
why
burned inside her,
pushing to be asked, but she bit it back. She deserved some answers, absolutely.
But she could wait. She—they—needed time to take the raw edge off everything
that had been said and done.

So she murmured her thanks for his apology and stuck out her
hand.

“Fresh start?”

His palm brushed hers. Awareness, heat, memories shot through
her, and she had a terrifying moment of wondering if she had bitten off a far
more potent mix than even she could chew.

Then his hand enveloped hers, surrounding it, and he grinned in
that old cocksure way, and even though she knew things were still dicey, knew
they had some rocky times ahead, she had this feeling that maybe—just maybe—they
would get through this.

There had once been a time when she had believed she could do
anything with Sam on her side. She was no longer that naive.

But maybe, perhaps, they could make it through the summer
together.

* * *

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
, Libby was halfway through the final session on camp
policies and guidelines when Sam pulled his phone from his pocket, grinned like
an idiot and practically ran out of the dining hall. Her gut contracted.