LITMIR.BIZ

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considering how much Sam loved children, he hadn’t been overly friendly to the girl, either. But it was somehow annoying to Rafe that even his father seemed able to make a small connection with Frannie, when he had not.

      “Francesca,” his mother spoke up. “Will you go tell Mr. O’Dell at the front desk that we need more baskets from the storage shed?”

      The child ran out the double doors to do as she’d been asked.

      Rafe gave his mother a grateful look. “Thanks. I was starting to flounder there, wasn’t I?”

      His mother smiled up at him, touching the back of her hand to his cheek. “You’ll get the hang of it. You just haven’t had enough practice.”

      “I haven’t had any practice.”

      “You were always quick to learn. I have faith that you can handle whatever Francesca throws your way.”

      He shook his head, unable to share his mother’s confidence.

      Of all the things he had envisioned for his life, a future built around kids had never been one of them. They were inconvenient. Noisy. Sticky. They liked to yank a person out of sleep and leave your nerves twitching until noon. Most of all, they needed you, and he didn’t like that. He’d liked the image of himself as unencumbered, and nothing messed up a man’s plans more than the responsibility of kids and family.

      Last Christmas in Los Angeles when Ellen Stanton had called, letting him know she was in town and asking him to come by her hotel, he’d never suspected that the promise of a few hours of reliving old times would turn into a declaration of fatherhood.

      He hadn’t seen Ellen for years, not since they’d been river raft guides together on the Colorado. He remembered her as a woman who had liked sex fast, hard and slightly earthy. Their one evening together had not been a summer night filled with soft breezes and the glow of a full moon overhead. That night had ignited some chemistry that was all sex and excitement, but very little else. They’d coupled wildly, then said goodbye to one another at the end of the week without a single regret.

      Going to Ellen’s hotel suite, they’d barely passed the routine civilities of renewed acquaintance before she had trotted Frannie out of one of the bedrooms, pushed her in Rafe’s direction and stated flatly, “Frannie, this is your daddy.”

      She’d waited for the words to sink in. They’d sunk.

      He could still remember the ripple of shock that had run through his body. For a moment or two, he’d fought it, ready with denials. But he’d canceled that impulse when he’d looked down at the child. She had features alive with intelligence and the potential for sweetness. Her precise little mouth had been sullen and tight, but with little tremors in the muscles around it. He’d known instantly that she was scared to death.

      He’d also known this was no outrageous lie of Ellen’s. Frannie was his. Even as badly as he’d wanted to refute the claim, he could see it in her face and feel the truth of it in his bones.

      The meeting between him and Frannie had been awkward, and when Ellen had sent the girl back to her room, Rafe couldn’t feel anything but relieved.

      That relief had soon turned to anger when Ellen had announced that she wanted Rafe to raise Frannie from now on. She had struggled financially for years, she’d said, but had finally found a great man to marry. An older man, who’d brought up his own kids and didn’t want to have any more in the house. This was her only chance for real happiness, and it was time Rafe shouldered his responsibility.

      He had wanted to run. He had wanted to tell her it was too late to expect scruples from him. A long time too late. The way he’d lived his life, he figured he had sacrificed them years ago.

      He might have been able to pull it off if he’d never seen the kid. But from that moment on, Rafe knew that within him there lay a very fragile thread of scruples after all, a basic sense of fairness that told him that no matter what, he could not simply walk away from this little girl the way Ellen could. Whatever his daughter needed from him, he’d make happen.

      Which was why he was home now, trying to make peace with a father who had no use for him and a family that didn’t know what to expect from him. He needed to settle down, make a stable home for Frannie. Give her as much time as possible with this extended family so that she could feel as though she belonged someplace at last. Most of all, figure out how a father-daughter relationship ought to work.

      It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be quick. But there were bigger things at stake now, like his daughter’s well-being.

      A daughter who didn’t really know him at all.

      SAM D’ANGELO RARELY SLEPT through the night anymore and often slipped from bed unnoticed. After forty years of sleeping beside the same woman, he knew Rosa’s sleep patterns, and that night, when he struggled into the metal cuffs of his crutches, he had no fear of waking her.

      He made his way slowly out of the bedroom, through the family’s private quarters and past the lodge kitchen toward the lobby. It was after 3:00 a.m. and no one was about. The lodge’s sixteen rooms and two suites were full, but quiet.

      Before his illness, Sam would have slipped on a jacket and gone outdoors to the side patio, a place where during the day visitors could pull up one of the hand-carved rocking chairs to enjoy a view of the mountains and Lightning Lake. It would have taken their breath away. The Rockies were giant monoliths watching over them, and even on the darkest night, the lake—now melting in the spring thaw—sparkled through the trees like diamond dust, a hidden treasure that never ceased to enchant.

      But the flagstone surface of the patio played havoc with Sam’s balance on the crutches, and even the view was not worth yet another trip to the hospital down at Idaho Springs.

      He settled instead on the library, though without a fire in the grate and people to enjoy it, it seemed cold and unwelcoming. Disappointed, he slid into the deep leather chair in front of the chess set his father had brought all the way from Italy so long ago.

      Odd to think that he would have found comfort in coming across a fellow insomniac at this hour, even a stranger. Usually, when he was this restless, he preferred his own company, but it might have been nice to share the peace and tranquility of this place, this black velvet night, with someone else who appreciated it the way he did.

      Someone whose presence might help quiet his disordered frame of mind.

      Maybe that was too tall an order from anyone. After all, he’d been on edge for a few weeks now. Ever since Rafe had come home.

      What real hope was there that fences between them could be mended?

      Perhaps it was impossible. Sam knew that Rosa was irritated with him often these days, feeling that he wasn’t trying hard enough to find a way to bridge the gap between himself and Rafe, if only for the sake of the child.

      But how could he when the past was so clearly etched in his brain?

      He vividly remembered those last days before he and Rafe had had their final argument at the hospital. It had been springtime—just like now—but there’d been nothing hopeful and green about it back then. A tardy, disappointing season, muddy underfoot. The lodge’s winter receipts had been weak, too many empty rooms on the weekends due to a lack of fresh snowfall.

      Most of all, the edgy discord between every member of the family had been palpable. Little irritations. Petty warfare between the children. And always, always, too many moments of cold, silent disapproval and heated words that could not be taken back between Sam and his youngest son.

      Rafe had always been their most difficult child. Never as focused and steady as Nicholas, as easygoing as Matthew, or as sweet-natured as Adriana. But Sam had not expected the boy to up and run off the way he had. In his heart, he had expected a minor show of rebellion, then an uneasy peace.

      All hope had died on a night when Sam had picked up the

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