“Come on,” she urged, taking his hand.
He had stuffed the hair paraphernalia in his jacket pocket, so he grabbed the manila envelope from where he’d set it on the roof of the truck. “Okay, okay.” He had to admit, her enthusiasm was always contagious.
As soon as they entered the doors and pushed through the hanging plastic strips, Lilly immediately pulled back and tucked herself close to his legs. At least a dozen folks were milling about in the front visitor area, all adults.
Morgan instinctively rested his hand on her shoulder. Usually Gabe and occasionally, his wife Anne, along with the small crew of college interns and volunteers, were the only ones in the facility. There had never been more than a couple visitors, dropping in to check out the facility.
Morgan spied Gabe on the far side of the room, talking with two of the members of the group. He lifted a hand in a short wave, but the good doctor was so intent on whatever conversation he was having he didn’t notice.
Suddenly Lilly was tugging on Morgan’s hand again. He glanced down and noticed she was looking through the sea of bodies to the doorway leading to the labs and the rehab area. He followed her gaze . . . straight to Kit, who was standing in the doorway.
She lifted a hand in a wave. They waved back, Lilly’s a little more enthusiastic. Morgan was just hoping for the best, and wished he knew what that was.
Kit was wearing a turquoise blue lab coat with the center’s sea turtle insignia stitched over one pocket. The rich color offset the vibrancy of her red hair and made her creamy skin look luminous. He wasn’t close enough to see her eyes, but he bet that turquoise added a little flash to the green. His thoughts went to how that green had flashed when they’d almost kissed and how much he wouldn’t mind seeing them flash like that again. He wasn’t sure any amount of time was going to change his reaction to her.
“Come on, Moggy,” Lilly whispered, and somehow managed to stay all but glued to his leg while simultaneously winding them through the throng with laserlike precision.
“Hey,” he said to Kit as they arrived at the doorway. “What’s with the crowd?” Yep, up close, everything about her was luminous.
She smiled easily at them, and he relaxed a little, telling himself he’d be happy to find a comfortable middle road. For Lilly’s sake. Speaking for himself. . . he still wanted more. But it was what it was.
“One of the professors from the college in Savannah where Gabe occasionally teaches has family in for the holidays and they’re doing some sightseeing. Apparently several of them are in the same field and wanted to see firsthand the work Gabe was doing.”
She leaned a little closer, which surprised him, until he realized she was peering past him through the doorway. “I think I heard something about a donation.” She straightened and smiled. “A sizable one. Apparently Gabe’s professor friend is from a family with some pretty deep pockets.” Almost immediately her smile faltered. “Uh—yeah.” Her smile turned self-conscious, but her green eyes sparkled with humor. “Awkward.”
“Nah. You don’t get to pick your family.” His smile froze for a moment. “Now I’m sorry.” He smiled. “Awkward.”
Her smile spread. “Well, you’re right, you don’t get to pick your family. Or, more to the point, who certain members of your family choose to marry. So . . . I guess you did your research on me. All that curiosity and tenacity, huh?”
He lifted a shoulder in a half shrug, but his smile was unrepentant. “I did. Nothing invasive, just wanted to know what happened. Seems like neither of us is a stranger to family issues.”
“Mine are a more recent acquirement. My family is—was—the best.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For? I thought you didn’t apologize for your family.”
“I don’t. Can’t. My apology was for the loss of your family business. From what I read, it seemed you and the Bellamy women who came before you were a dedicated, passionate bunch. I think that’s pretty great.”
“I thought so, too.”
She didn’t add anything more, and the silence grew beyond a few seconds.
He didn’t want to offer what would surely sound like empty platitudes to her, no matter how sincerely he meant them. Regardless of the fact that he’d played no personal role in the matter, he doubted she cared much what any Westlake thought of her recent misfortunes. Instead, he asked, “What was it like, growing up in a happy family business?”
She took a moment to consider the question, or more likely his possible reasons for asking it. “It was unique, different, to be sure. But it was my whole world, so I didn’t know anything else. I absolutely loved it.”
She smiled, and the sincere affection and love he saw reflected in her eyes caught at something inside him.
“My mom, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother were wonderful women, great role models. It was impossible not to get caught up in their passion and enthusiasm for what they were doing. Well, impossible for me. My younger sister was clearly immune.”
She tried to pass that last bit off with dry humor, but he hadn’t missed the flicker of pain, of hurt, and the even greater flash of guilt. It had been so recent, he understood why she was still feeling raw.
“Well, not everyone falls easily into the family way of life,” he said wryly. When her chin came up, he added, “Of course, I just walked away from mine.”
“Right.” She considered him for a moment. “Growing up in your family business was probably a great deal different from mine.”
“You have no idea,” he said, maintaining the humor.
“I’m sure I don’t.” She said it simply and honestly.
Her expression shifted again, and the walls lowered once more. “I’m . . . I never got the chance to say it, but I’m very sorry for your loss, too. I—” She broke off, glanced down at Miss Lilly, then quickly back to him, looking a little stricken that she might have spoken out of turn, with the child present who’d also suffered the same tragic loss. “I’m . . . I didn’t—”
“It’s . . . don’t worry,” he said. “And . . . thank you. I know you’ve experienced loss of loved ones, too. It came up when I read some articles on you,” he explained. “I wasn’t prying—well, I was, but . . .”
“I understand. A lot was written about the court proceedings over the Tas-T-Snaks sale, so you could hardly miss the details about every aspect of the Bellamy family. I guess we’ve both been through . . .”
“A lot,” he finished for her, when she seemed unsure just what to say.
“Yeah.” She offered up a brief smile.
“It was a great story, your family business. Your great-grandmother starting up a pie business in her own kitchen during the war, then taking off with it as she did. Very unusual for a woman at that time.”
“She had the support of her brother. He was infirm and couldn’t go to war, but he had this mathematical genius brain and put it to work to help grow the business.”
“He was in banking, right?”
Kit nodded. “All the Bellamy men were. It was as much their tradition as it was for the women to run the pie business. They invested the money Mamie Sue made, and Mamie Sue, her daughter-in-law, and hers after that—my mother—all relished the challenge.” Kit smiled briefly, and he saw the love and the loss . . . and the guilt starkly in her eyes. “I did, too.”
He wanted to cup the curve of her cheek with his palm, ease the sadness, the self-recrimination. From what he’d read, she never saw it coming. Her faith in Mamie Sue’s had been as blind as it had been absolute. He didn’t fault her for that, but he was certain, from the look on her face and the emotion that colored her words, that she did. Unfortunately, he doubted she’d be receptive to any kind of solace from him.
“I am sorry, Kit,” he said, realizing he was speaking of the loss of her business, but also for the loss of the opportunity to ever find out what could become of this . . . thing they had between them. It was still there, just as palpable as before. More so, perhaps, given their determination to ignore it. She captivated him, and that feeling was deepening with each subsequent meeting.
“I’m just glad they didn’t live to see how horribly I screwed it up.”
“From what I read, you didn’t. You trusted your sister and your brother-in-law to have the company’s best interests at heart, just as you did. Given Carruthers’s own personal fortune, there was really no reason to think otherwise.”
“Did you know Teddy? I think he was a frat brother to one of the Westlakes. That’s how he came to hire the firm.”
“Maybe my brother, Asher, or one of my many cousins, but no, not me. I know the family name, though.”
“Your . . . family business,” she said, after a moment. “How did that begin?”
The question surprised him. “I’m not entirely sure.”
That wasn’t true. He’d been educated in the Westlake ancestry by his tutors as if it had been another schoolroom subject, right along with geography and science. But he doubted she really wanted to hear the murky details.
“Westlakes have been working in various positions within the court system so far back, those courts were originally run by royals rather than judges.”
“Quite a history, then.”
“Yes . . . it is that.” The corners of his mouth curved up. “I managed to crush not only my mother’s hopes, but those of veritable legions of my ancestors, by not taking my rightful place in the family empire.”
“You did follow their footsteps into law, however.”
“It was the wrong kind, so that didn’t count.”
“Wrong kind?”
He smiled. “Helping those in need. The kind who generally don’t have deep pockets to pay for big hourly billing.”
“Ah.”
“Indeed.”
“How did you manage it? That’s a lot of pressure.”
“It took some doing, plotting the big escape.”
“My guess is that’s an understatement.” Kit’s attention became more focused then, more personal. “So . . . when, exactly, did you know you wanted out? My sister never had the slightest interest in peanut pie or the business of making and selling it. No interest in any aspect of it, even as a little girl.”
“Maybe not as early on as that. It took me a while longer to figure out what I wanted . . . and what I didn’t. I think maybe in your sister’s case, it wasn’t the family, just their chosen profession, she wasn’t interested in.”
“True. So . . . it was the other way around for you?”
“I actually like my profession, very much, in fact. I just had to find a branch of it that called to me personally.”
“And that wasn’t good enough for your family? I mean, you did follow your ancestors at least to some degree.”
His tone was quite wry, as he said, “In my family, there are no degrees, no shades of gray.”
She surprised him by smiling back with the same bit of a dry twist to her lips. “Well . . . yeah. I got that.”
Both were smiling as they shook their heads. Still, the differences between them, their pasts, the roles they played in their own family dynamics, and how those dynamics had impacted them . . . and in the case of his family, impacted her directly . . . couldn’t have been more clearly stated.
He was going to have to accept that his interest in her, his attraction to her, had no future. It meant he was going to have to stop thinking about her like that.
Their gazes caught just then and their smiles widened easily, naturally. The amused kind of smile that spoke of personal jokes and shared, insider knowledge. They “got” each other, as the saying went.
It was the kind of connection he’d never shared with anyone.
Good luck with the getting over it part,
he thought.
Lilly chose that moment to squeeze in between them and slither through the gap in the doorway. “Can I go see Paddlefoot?”
“Sure,” he said, reluctant to end the conversation, but grateful for the intrusion. No point in furthering things. “Let’s go on back and—”
“Morgan?”
Morgan turned at the sound of Gabe calling him. Lilly was still tugging on his hand.
“I’ll take her back,” Kit offered.
Morgan’s head swiveled from Gabe back to Kit, but before he could say anything, Lilly let go of his hand . . . and took Kit’s extended one.
“I wore my sweatshirt for him,” Lilly was telling her. “Moggy got it for me. It’s got a turtle on the front.”
He traded smiles with Kit over Lilly’s head as the two headed back to the rehab area.
Thank you,
he mouthed, then shook his head as he turned back to Gabe. Lilly was such a mystery to him. On the one hand, she was shy and withdrawn around new people, new things. On the other, she’d take the hand of someone she’d only recently met and walk off with her, chatting up a storm. He should probably have a talk with her about that, but . . . in this case, he couldn’t say he faulted her instincts.
“Hey,” Gabe said as he met Morgan in the doorway. “I need a favor. A big one.”
Morgan turned to face him. “Sure. Big how?”
“Can you spare me a few hours?” Gabe seemed flustered.