His smile called up every defense she’d ever constructed. This man was her child’s father. Colleen’s father, as India could never be her mother.
“Hello, Mr. Stephens.” India stepped to Mick’s side. “My father handles the business. Dad, I’ll go on to the Fish Shop and order for you, okay?”
“No, wait.” Jack reached for her arm, but she pulled away. As his fingers drifted through air, he looked slightly embarrassed. “I came to see you. I believe we met at the festival.”
India swept her ponytail over her shoulder. Nervously she inspected the pale yellow strands splayed across her palm. “No, I think I’d remember.”
“You helped my daughter. I’d like to thank you.”
For fifteen years, she’d handled every situation life tossed her way, including a plane crash and a heart that stayed empty no matter how hard she tried to fill it. She might not have made the right choices, but she’d chosen. She flipped her ponytail back and took control. “How did you find me, Mr. Stephens?”
“Jack. My name is Jack.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “This is a small island. I just asked if anyone had seen you, and a friend told me Tanner’d hired you and your father to paint his house.”
India couldn’t hold back an admiring smile. He’d worked her own plan against her. “You didn’t have to come. I’m sure anyone would have helped your daughter. She didn’t want to go with that boy anyway.”
In obvious relief, he braced his hands on his hips. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that, but I can say how grateful I am for what you did. Colleen’s friends said Chris almost dragged her into his car.”
So Chris was his name. India tried to look through Jack’s handsome self-consciousness to the man beneath. Shouldn’t he know what kind of boy this Chris was? His grip on the kid’s neck implied he’d understood.
“Fortunately, she held on until I got there.” India wiped her hand on her shirt and held it out to him. “Thanks for stopping by. I was glad to help.”
Sliding one foot forward on the grass, Jack took her hand. India released her fingers from his, uncomfortable with a sudden warmth that sizzled up her arm. She noted the dusty jeans that clung to his muscled thighs, the faded Georgetown sweatshirt that stretched across his chest beneath a dark blue field jacket. How did a fisherman get so dusty?
The same pale dust flecked her father’s clothes, but he’d spent the day stripping old paint off Mr. Tanner’s trim. Had Jack lost his fishing business since he’d adopted Colleen?
Could this situation disintegrate any faster? Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. She needed time to think. At any moment, Jack might see something of Colleen in her. She couldn’t let him have even the smallest suspicion. She had to escape his observant gaze.
“I’m starving, Dad. Mind if we go now?”
Mick’s weathered skin flushed with embarrassment at her brisk tone. India squeezed his arm, amazed he didn’t see her point.
He hung back. “We shouldn’t leave our equipment out, India.”
She turned him toward Mr. Tanner’s crushed-shell driveway. “It’ll be fine. Come on.”
“I’ll walk with you.” Jack’s deep voice stayed at her side as he lengthened his stride to keep up. India looked anywhere but at him.
At the top of the driveway, she slid into the passenger seat of her father’s panel truck. Mick took his time coming around the hood, talking to Jack Stephens in quiet words she couldn’t decipher. Tapping her feet on the floor, she was breathless when her father finally lifted a farewell hand to Jack and opened the door.
“Nice to meet you,” Mick called.
Jack nodded. His questioning gaze made him look vulnerable, despite his height and work-hardened body. Wind lifted his silky jet curls again. India shifted in the truck seat. What color would Colleen’s hair be under all that purple?
WAITING FOR COLLEEN outside the Arran Island House of Beauty, Jack tipped his soda can up. The cool drink tasted good on such an unnaturally warm spring day. As he dragged the back of his hand over his mouth, he eyed the woman balancing her groceries, her keys and the bulky D.C. newspaper while she pushed through the grocery’s front door.
In baggy overalls and a dark blue shirt, with the sleeves rolled up her slender arms, she looked more child than woman. Her long corn-silk ponytail didn’t help.
If not for her, Chris Briggs might have hauled Colleen into his car. He might have killed them both, driving under the influence. With a shudder, Jack took another swig of soda that bit at the back of his throat.
His father-in-law came out of the market carrying his own copy of the newspaper. Hayden nodded toward India Stuart as he passed behind the commercial van emblazoned with the words, Stuart Painting. He spoke to her, but she shook her head. With a friendly shrug, he crossed the street in four strides and stepped onto the curb beside Jack. “She’s the one?”
Jack nodded. “She’d rather spill everything in those two bags than ask for help.”
Hayden grinned. “I offered. Did you?”
“No.” Jack smiled, unsure of his response to India. “I figured I’d irritated her enough when I thanked her this morning.”
Hayden thwacked the paper against his thigh. “She’s cute, though.”
“Cute?”
“Go over there and help her, son.”
Jack opened his own truck’s door. “I have enough woman trouble, and I thought you stayed on to help me.”
Hayden cocked an eyebrow at the apparent non sequitur.
Jack looked at Hayden with affection. “Your advice just keeps getting worse.”
Watching India Stuart, Hayden came around the truck and took the other seat. “Yeah, I guess. Maybe she’s too young for you.”
Shouldn’t the guy feel some sort of loyalty toward Mary? Jack danced uncomfortably around thoughts of her, himself.
He’d tried. He’d tried as hard as he could with Mary, accepting her accusations when she’d told him he’d driven her to do what she’d done to their marriage. He’d wanted a child as badly as she had. But as he peered through the House of Beauty’s plate glass window, trying to identify which shadow belonged to his daughter, Jack wished he’d never found out the truth about Mary’s affair. Wished he’d never known she’d settled for him only to keep the child they couldn’t make together.
“There she goes.”
Jack thought Hayden meant Colleen, but when she didn’t stroll through the beauty salon’s doors, he turned to the other side of the street in time to watch India’s van rumble dustily away. Jack curled his fingers around the steering wheel.
“When I thanked her, she acted almost angry. She couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”
Hayden offered a sage nod. “People don’t like to get involved. Maybe she’s just a nice woman who helped Colleen because she couldn’t pass a child in need, but she doesn’t want to be thanked. Wouldn’t you have helped a child in Colleen’s position?”
Being in the right place at the right time didn’t explain the ice in India Stuart’s dark blue eyes. “I think there’s more. She had to force herself to look at me.” He pushed her from his mind. “Colleen is my first concern. I’ll talk to Chris as soon as he crawls out from under his rock again.”
“Didn’t you speak to his mother?”
“I tried to talk to Leslie,