One dark eyebrow arched. “I need to go because you feel guilty?”
“You need to go because you have a date.”
She’d obviously overheard his conversation with his partner. Not that it mattered. Like Pax’s unveiled allusion to the care and feeding Erik had told him he was sure she’d require, nothing had been said that he’d rather she hadn’t heard. He’d bet his boat she already suspected he wasn’t crazy about being there, anyway.
“Right.” He wasn’t in the habit of leaving a woman waiting. “We’ll get to the inventory later this week. I won’t have time until Friday.”
“Friday will be fine. I’ll be here. And thank you,” she added again, touching his arm when he started to turn away. The moment he turned back, she dropped her hand. “For letting Tyler help,” she explained. “I haven’t seen him smile like that in a really long time.”
Thinking the cute little kid had just wanted to be one of the guys, he murmured, “No problem,” and picked up the toolbox and his briefcase. There was no reason for her to be looking all that grateful. Or all that concerned.
Still, as he told her he’d call her later and turned for the door, adding, “Bye, sport,” for the little boy who’d just appeared behind his mom, cradling a toy boat, he really wished he didn’t have the date with the bubbly event planner he’d taken out a couple of weeks ago. He didn’t know the striking blonde all that well, but she’d been easy on the eyes, into sailing and, had he been interested in pursuing her hints, not at all opposed to a little casual sex.
He just hoped she’d need to make it an early evening so there’d be no awkwardness at her door. His head wasn’t into games tonight. He wasn’t much up for a party, either, though he wasn’t about to stand up a client.
For reasons he didn’t bother to consider, what he wanted to do was stay right where he was.
The last thing Rory wanted Friday morning was to be late for her meeting with Erik. Or for him to be on time.
As she turned her car into her gravel parking lot, she realized she wasn’t getting her wish on either count.
She’d also just confirmed her suspicions about the gleaming white seaplane she’d seen tied to the dock at the bottom of the rise. It was Erik’s. He was on her porch, leaning against a post.
The fact that her mentor flew his own plane meant that he hadn’t had to queue up for the ferry or get caught in traffic the way she and the rest of the mortals had crossing the sound and navigating surface streets that morning. It also meant that it had only taken him minutes to make the flight that was now a ninety-minute-each-way expedition for her to Tyler’s school.
Hating that she’d caused him to wait, she left her little car in the otherwise empty lot in front of the store rather than park it in her garage and hurried toward where he’d straightened from the post. “I’m sorry I’m late. I was the last car off the ferry,” she called, praying he hadn’t been there long. They’d agreed on eleven o’clock. It was only a few minutes after. Still... “How long have you been here?”
The ever-present breeze ruffled his dark hair as he pushed his cell phone into a front pocket of his jeans and picked up his worn briefcase.
“Long enough to figure out you weren’t going to answer the back door or the one to the mudroom. I didn’t realize you’d be gone. I was just going to call you.”
His cloud-gray eyes slid from hers as a muscle jerked in his jaw. His skin looked ruddy from the chill. In deference to the cold, he wore a leather flight jacket—open, though, as if in defiance of the need for it.
She hadn’t thought of him as defiant before. Or rebellious, or rash, or anything that might even hint at irresponsibility. He seemed too much in control of himself for that. Yet the finely honed tension surrounding him alluded to a sort of restiveness that implied far more than his impatience with her, and made her acutely aware of how restless a man with flying and sailing in his blood might be. Restless. Daring. Bold.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything that wasn’t tempered by the numbness that lingered deep inside her. And she’d never felt bold in her life.
What she felt most was simply the need to keep pushing forward. Especially now. Forward was good. Looking back made it too easy to fall apart.
He didn’t need to know that, though. As she crossed the porch planks, searching her crowded key ring for the unfamiliar key, she figured all he needed to know was that she would make this venture work. Exactly how she would do that was as much a mystery to her as the dawn of creation, but she figured the basics would be a good place to start. And basically, she knew she needed this man to help make it happen.
His footsteps echoed heavily as he came up beside her, his big body blocking the wind whipping at her hair. “Where’s your son?”
“At school. He only has tomorrow and next week before winter break, so we’re commuting.”
“To Seattle?”
Conscious of him frowning at the top of her head, she tried to remember if the key she’d just selected was for the store’s front door, its emergency exit, the door to the house or the side door to the garage.
“I don’t want him to miss working on the holiday projects with the other kids. He already missed the first of the week because of the move and he really wants to help decorate the school’s big tree.” He wanted a big tree, too, he’d told her. A huge one. How she’d make huge happen currently fell in the mystery category, too. “Since he won’t be going back there after Christmas, it’s about the only thing keeping his mind off the need to change schools right now.”
“How long does that take you?”
“An hour and a half, if you include queuing up for the ferry.”
“You’re spending three hours over and back in the morning, and another three hours every—”
“That’s just today,” she hurried to assure him. “I’ll usually only make the round-trip once. Kindergarten is only four hours, so I’ll run errands while he’s there.” And maybe see if she could slip into her friend Emmy’s yoga class, since seeking calm seemed more imperative by the moment. “A friend is picking him up with her son this afternoon. He’ll play at their house until I get there.”
His tone went flat. “So you came all the way back just to keep this appointment.”
“You said it was the only time you had this week.”
“You could have told me you’d be in Seattle,” he insisted. “I never would have expected you to come back here for this.”
“You said we had to go over the inventory. We have to do that here, so there was no point in mentioning it.”
The key didn’t work. Her head still down, his disapproval doing nothing for her agitation, she picked out another.
Before she could try that one in the lock, Erik reached over and snagged the wad of keys by the purple rhinestone-encrusted miniflashlight dangling below them.
“That’s to the garage.” He paused at the practical bit of bling, chose one beside it. “You want this one.”
He held a duller brass key by its blade.
“Next time something like this comes up,” he continued, biting back what sounded a lot like frustration, “mention it.”
All her rushing had left her jumpier than she’d realized. Or maybe it was the edginess in him that fed the tension she did not want to feel with this man. Taking the key, conscious of how careful he’d been not to touch her, she forced the hurry from her tone.