Oh, puhleese. Marin rolled her eyes. Missy was letting the boys stay up late tonight, as it was their first night on the island, and Marin felt obligated to hang with the family. In truth, though, she’d had all the Kodak moments she could take for one day.
“I’m going to call it a night,” she said during a break in playtime. “See everyone in the morning.”
After a round of pleasantries, she went out Missy’s rear patio door, letting Slim out with her, and walked through the backyard toward her house. Slim took off toward the front yard, but the moment Marin exited the periphery of glowing lights from Missy and Jonas’s house, she stopped.
The glow of stars in the dark sky was magnificent, a spectacle that was almost too vibrant to be real. Missy’s backyard was at the top of the hill overlooking Mirabelle’s village center. The view of Lake Superior, black as ink this time of night, was amazing. It was a warm, balmy evening and in no real hurry to go to bed, she moved even farther away from the lights and let go a long sigh as the sky turned even more brilliant.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She spun and found their neighbor Adam sitting behind her and leaning up against the trunk of a large oak tree. Apparently, she’d wandered closer to his yard than she’d realized. “It’s gorgeous,” she said. “Never see anything like it living in Manhattan, that’s for sure.”
It wasn’t apparent now, given that he was sitting, but he was a tall man, over six feet. It was one of the first things she’d noticed when they’d met earlier that day. That and his disheveled hair. Even now, he looked as though he’d just dragged his fingers straight over the top of his head.
Was his hair always a mess? Probably. It was a bit too long, for one thing, as if he were a few weeks late making an appointment with his barber. The slight wave in texture was more than likely the cause of his bangs hanging down over his forehead and the rest of his hair appearing tousled. Add a five o’clock shadow to the picture and he should’ve come across as rumpled. Except that even after what had likely been a long and drawn-out day for him, his shirt was still crisp, his khakis creased. What he looked was tired.
That’s when she noticed his fingers curled around a bottle of beer, and the six-pack, one bottle already empty, sitting in the grass next to him. He still wore a wedding ring, and she couldn’t help but wonder how long ago his wife had died.
“Would you like a beer?” he asked with a touch of a Southern accent.
“Sounds good.” She was on vacation, right? She could talk, just talk, to a guy. It wasn’t as if anything was going to happen between them. Cross-legged, she sat in the grass next to him, cracked open a bottle and took a long swig. “That hits the spot.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He had the most amazing lower lip, full and almost too lush for a man. The most striking thing about their neighbor, though, was his eyes. Dark brown and soulful, slanting downward ever-so-slightly, they could only be described as puppy-dog eyes. Eyes that very likely made women incapable of deciding when looking at him if they should sigh, “Oh, poor baby,” or “Oh, baby, baby.” Marin sure couldn’t make up her mind.
I honor my commitments.
Adam’s comment when she’d cornered him about the impact his nanny leaving would have on his job came back to her as if he were whispering in her ear. She had no doubt he believed what he was saying, but after the stunt Colin had pulled Marin was going to have to see that kind of follow-through to believe it from any man.
“Your kids asleep?” she asked.
“Finally. They’re having a hard time without Carla.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to find a replacement?”
“A couple weeks, at least. The agency sent me the first round of prospects today. Only five of them. It’s difficult finding a person on a long-term basis who’s willing to travel the way we do from town to town.”
“How long was Carla with you?”
“Three years.”
Probably since his wife had died. That was a long time to still be wearing a ring. “And you traveled that entire time?”
He nodded. “We go to where the jobs are. Tornado Alley, for the most part. Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee.”
“You’re a bit too far north, aren’t you?”
“They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Besides, most of the work will be done before Christmas. We’ll be gone before the worst of the weather hits, and then a small crew will return in the spring to wrap up any loose ends.”
“Ever work on areas hit by hurricanes?”
“Once or twice. It depends. Dealing with water damage from hurricanes and floods is different. Tornadoes are my specialty.”
“How did you get into this line of business, anyway? It seems like a strange specialty.”
“I suppose it does.” He studied her. “I guess I fell into doing this so naturally, I never thought of my business as unusual. One day I was a successful commercial contractor and the next day I couldn’t win a bid to save my soul. A small town near my home where a friend of mine was mayor was hit by a tornado. He asked me to fix them up. To treat the entire town as one client to generate overall cost savings and that was that. One thing there’s never a shortage of is tragedy.”
“So where are you from originally?” Someplace a little south of here, she’d wager, based on his accent.
“Missouri,” he said, sounding sad. “Outside of St. Louis.”
“You still have family there?”
He nodded. “We see everyone a couple times a year. Between jobs. And I take several weeks off over the holidays and head home.” Then, as if the turn in conversation toward family had made him uncomfortable, he asked, “So what do you do in Manhattan?”
“I work…used to work…for a Wall Street investment firm.”
“Used to?”
“I quit. Last week.”
“Sounds like a spur-of-the-moment decision.”
“You got that right.” She took a swig of beer.
“So now what?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“What brings you to Mirabelle?”
“Needed some time away. A lot of time away.”
“Hmm.” He considered her. “Something else happen?”
“I suppose you could say that. Nothing short of my world collapsing around me.” She took another drink of beer. “The firm I work for had been cheating customers without my knowledge. My parents are getting a divorce. And the last straw was finding out my fiancé of the last four years has been cheating on me almost since day one.”
“Huh. That all?”
The words themselves could have been taken in a compassionate context, but the tone of his voice sounded rather unsympathetic. She studied his face, trying to discern exactly what he’d meant by those two words. “Excuse me?”
“I thought something really bad had happened.”
“I tell you my life is falling apart and that’s what you come up with?” She shook her head. “Wow.”
“So you found out there are unethical people in this world and some of them work at your firm. Your mom and dad made some mistakes in their lives, but they’re no different than, what, fifty percent of this country? And you found out in the nick of time that your guy is a lying, stinking