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.
The radiator, of course. She’d been nursing the old one longer than she should have with a gallon of coolant she kept in the bed. The tow truck had taken too long, the radiator hadn’t been in stock, and she had whiled away the afternoon at the convenience store across the street reading pulp magazines and wondering how she was going to afford the repairs until a replacement part was shipped down from Elizabeth City.
Now she was stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle and about to succumb to a screaming bout of road rage. Didn’t the driver ahead of her know she had a date—with two good-looking guys, no less? Couldn’t he pull over and let her by?
Angus had sounded so grown-up when he’d called to ask her to dinner. Surprised and flattered, she’d accepted at once. Then she remembered that Ross would be there, too. “Are you sure your dad doesn’t mind?”
“Oh, no. He said you should come.”
Yeah, sure. Kenzie could picture him agreeing with that stoic lawyer’s look that Angus was too young and unsophisticated to read. Still, she was surprised at how much she was looking forward to the evening. She had a number of friends among Buxton’s permanent residents and went out with them often. But she’d never been invited to celebrate a seven-year-old English charmer’s birthday. Not at the Boathouse, which, after all, was outrageously expensive.
“Eight. Angus is eight as of today,” Kenzie reminded herself. She had spent most of yesterday working on his present. She couldn’t wait to see what he thought of it. No doubt Ross would find it silly. Like most of the lawyers Kenzie knew, he probably had no sense of humor.
The dump truck put on its blinker, downshifted, and turned into a construction site. Honking and waving her thanks, Kenzie sped away.
She fed the dogs and the birds in record time, then leaped into the shower. After wrapping her wet hair in a towel, she dried herself off and padded into the bedroom. No time to obsess over what to wear. She seized a dress from the closet and pulled it on, whipped out the blow dryer, then raced to put on her makeup.
“Kenzie!”
Crud! She hadn’t even heard the car drive up, and here she was still barefoot and lacking mascara. “Come on in! Be careful not to let the dogs out!”
The screen door slammed. Angus’s light footsteps sounded, followed by his father’s.
“Where are you, Kenzie?”
“In the bedroom. I’ll be out in a minute. There’s juice in the fridge. Help yourselves if you’re thirsty.”
She slipped on her watch, fastened a thin gold chain around her neck, spritzed on a trace of perfume. Her sandals were by the kitchen door. Barefoot, she waltzed out to fetch them.
“Oh, my,” she said.
Ross and Angus were at the counter, Ross pouring orange juice into a glass. They turned at the sound of her voice. She stared.
“Angus! You look super!”
He was wearing a new set of shorts and a collared shirt, obviously purchased from a local surf shop. The cargo shorts were sage in color, the Hawaiian shirt a riot of palm trees, hibiscus and exotic birds. His shoes were also new, the slouchy kind of sneakers worn by surfers and skateboarders. His still-damp hair was neatly combed.
“Do you really like it?”
“Way cool. I’m glad I dressed up, too.”
She had put on a knee-length sundress with spaghetti straps in periwinkle-blue—her favorite color. She