LITMIR.BIZ

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heavily, reluctant to admit he might have overreacted. “Couldn’t you have found another way to raise their spirits?”

      “Maybe. But that was the first thing that came to me. They were restless and upset this morning. I don’t know if it was the rain or reality finally sinking in that Peter and Shelly are truly gone but they needed something to distract them, some way to work off that snarl of emotions. Swimming seemed like a good idea. But perhaps next time I’ll try to think of something else. Jumping on the beds, maybe, or timing which of us can slide down the bannister the fastest.”

      He shuddered, imagining the mayhem she could wreak if let loose. Sophie only gave one of those low, sexy laughs of hers he remembered so well, one of those laughs that always used to strum through him.

      “I’m doing my best, Tom,” she said, sobering. “I’m sorry for everyone’s sake that I’m not better at this, that I don’t really know what I’m doing with the children. But I am trying.”

      For how long?

      The question burned in his mind but he didn’t voice it. How long before she packed up her gear and caught a plane away from Seal Point, leaving the children with yet another loss to struggle through?

      He couldn’t ask, not when she gazed at him with such earnest entreaty in her green eyes.

      “Fine,” he said tersely. “But no more swimming in the middle of a rainstorm.”

      She gave him a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain.”

      “That’s lieutenant.”

      “Right. Sorry.” She smiled and for a moment the usual tension that writhed between them was gone.

      He wanted to bask in that smile for a while and forget the past and all his unanswered questions.

      But he also wanted to think he wasn’t quite the idiot he’d been a decade ago. He forced himself to lean back farther in Peter’s leather chair. “How are the children now?” he asked with studied casualness.

      “Grand. At least they were when I left them. Mrs. Cope popped a big batch of buttery popcorn and they’re eating it while they watch an old movie. Swaddled in plenty of warm blankets, I might add.”

      “Now that sounds like just the thing for a stormy Saturday afternoon like this one.”

      She studied him for a moment and he wondered if she could tell the effort it cost him to pretend indifference to her. “Why don’t you join us, Tom? The children would be thrilled to make room for you on the couch. You look as if you could use a break.”

      Was it that obvious how much he dreaded dealing with the thousand details awaiting his attention? Her invitation held undeniable appeal. It was far too tempting.

      He glanced at the small mountain range of paperwork. “Thanks, but I’ve got to put some order to at least some of this chaos by Monday when I’m meeting with Peter’s attorney.”

      She straightened from the desk, her lithe body unfurling like one of Manny Reyes’s flowers. “Okay. But we’ll save some popcorn for you if you change your mind.”

      To his vast relief, she headed for the door.

      “Thanks,” he said before she reached it. “Oh, and I’m, uh, sorry for jumping on you like that earlier.”

      Her eyebrows lifted a little at his apology, then she offered him another swift, dazzling smile and walked out.

      He gazed at the closed door for a long time after she left. For a moment there, she had reminded him so painfully of the woman he had known a decade ago. The girl, really. She hadn’t been much more than that, barely twenty.

      He had been twenty-four, new to the Coast Guard and stationed in Juneau, Alaska. His two-week furlough happened to coincide with Ali’s birth so he’d flown to the peninsula to meet his new niece and spend a few days at Seal Point.

      He had expected a quiet, uneventful trip home.

      Instead, he’d found Sophie and had fallen for her like a Sikorsky with a bent rotor.

      He hadn’t expected the instant and fierce attraction between him and the sister of his kid brother’s sweet new wife. But she had been completely irresistible—fresh and exuberant and intoxicating.

      He had fought his attraction to her for days, reluctant to start what he knew could only be a fling. What else could it have been? She lived in New York, he’d been stationed in Alaska. Besides the five thousand miles between them, he wasn’t looking for a relationship, especially not with a twenty-year-old kid just beginning to explore the world.

      But then he’d kissed her on a dawn-drenched cliff overlooking the Pacific and all the arguments he had spent days constructing collapsed like a sandcastle at high tide.

      He had fallen for her hard, hadn’t been able to help himself.

      He thought she had returned his feelings. She had kissed him and laughed with him and shared her dreams, her soul, her body.

      And then she had left him without a word, only hours after they made love for the first and only time.

      Tom jerked his mind away from that particular memory, of silky skin and soft sighs and eager kisses. He didn’t need to dwell on something so transitory, so ephemeral.

      Their moments together had been one tiny slice of time. Something that obviously had little meaning to her or she wouldn’t have walked away so abruptly or offered excuse after excuse not to talk to him when he tried to contact her after she returned to New York.

      He should be doing his best to keep a safe emotional distance between them, not dredging through the murky waters of their past.

      It wouldn’t be easy, he was very much afraid. Not when something about Sophie Beaumont still called to him as strongly as ever.

      Chapter 5

      This wasn’t a bad way to spend a few hours.

      Sophie leaned back in one of the deep leather sofas in the media room of Seal Point and tucked a brightly patterned quilt around Zoe. The child nestled closer on her lap but didn’t take her eyes off the animated Disney video showing on the huge plasma-screen TV.

      The controversial swim had accomplished exactly what Sophie had hoped. The physical activity seemed to have relieved the restlessness that had made the children cranky and out of sorts.

      Now they appeared relaxed and snug and were even laughing at some of the funnier bits of the movie.

      As soon as she returned from speaking with Tom, Zoe had crawled into her lap while Ali and Zach had claimed the floor, propped on a mountain of pillows they’d pulled from a corner of the room.

      The media room was the perfect retreat and looked as if it could easily accommodate a crowd of a dozen or more. The couch she and Zoe used was one of four arranged at angles on the sloped floor so occupants all had a clear view of the screen.

      Shelly had designed the media room, Sophie was sure of it. It was exactly her twin’s style—cozy and comfortable and warm. A place designed for family and friends to enjoy time together.

      She could feel her sister’s presence here in the plump pillows and the campy old movie posters framed on the wall and the fountain drink dispenser near the back wall.

      Zoe cuddled closer and Sophie smiled and pressed a kiss to the little girl’s blond curls. Not a bad way to spend a few hours at all.

      How often had Shelly done this with her children? she wondered. Snuggled with them and watched a movie on a rainy evening? It seemed routine enough to the children that she had to assume it had been a frequent enough occurrence.

      Peter had enjoyed the Monterey social scene, she knew. But she imagined Shelly would have been much happier spending her evenings here with her children than out at cocktail parties and gallery openings.

      She sighed, wondering how she would ever

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