Iris Read online

  “Where are you going?” She slammed the bench shut and taking a quick glance at the kids, beat him to the anchor. “Sit.”

  “I can—”

  “So can I.” She slid out of her lightweight jacket. “It’s not much but put this on your shoulders until we get to shore.”

  He didn’t dare say another word. The woman had taken over the situation much like he suspected her grandfather would have. Pulling back on the throttle, she steered the boat away from the cove and across the lake considerably faster than the speed at which they’d arrived. He had to make a considerable effort not to smile at her. The woman was seriously amazing.

  “I’m sorry.” Emily moved to sit next to him, her expression not one of sorrow that he’d come to see so often, but of concern. For him.

  “Me too.” Gavin climbed into his lap, apparently not caring at all that from the waist down, Eric was sopping wet.

  “Me three.”

  “You?” Emily asked. “Why?”

  “For a lot of things. But for now, let’s make a deal.” He waited for each of the kids to nod. “If something makes you sad, tell me. If someone or something hurts you, tell me. And from now on, we share everything in this family.”

  Gavin looked at his soggy Cheetah still lying on the floorboards, climbed out of Eric’s lap, picked it up and handed it to him. “I don’t think we can eat the cookies now.”

  “No. I don’t think we can.”

  With a child tucked safely under each arm, Eric blew out a sigh of relief, pleased when Iris looked at him over her shoulder and nodded. Maybe he would get the hang of this yet.

  ***

  “Well, there certainly will be no jogging the trails for you this afternoon.” Lucy filled Eric’s cup with more warm tea, and walked away muttering, “Diving into the lake.”

  It was going to take a lot more than Lucy’s hot tea or homemade soups for Iris to totally relax. Not even when the elephants in India had scared the bejeezus out of her had her heart rate shot through the ceiling like it had when she saw Eric dive overboard. Even after reaching the shore and being greeted by half the family, including Cole and one of his EMT buddies, just to be sure Eric didn’t need to go to the hospital, her nerves were still raw.

  “Didn’t Lily tell me you’re a mechanical engineer?” Cole leaned back in his seat.

  Swallowing a sip of tea, Eric nodded. “Yes. That’s my degree and training.”

  “So tell me, how does a pencil pushing, math calculating engineer come out of an ordeal like this almost as if nothing had happened?”

  That was what Iris wanted to know.

  Eric put the mug of hot tea on the table beside him and loosened the blanket that Lucy kept tightening around his shoulders. “That would probably be because all I do now is make repairs when the tool I designed has a problem.”

  “The one for deep-sea oil rigs?” the General asked.

  Cole leaned forward. “Deep-sea oil rigs?”

  “Yep. There are only a handful of divers in the world who can make the repairs.”

  “Divers?” Iris muttered. As far as she knew, both deep sea diving and oil rig work were dangerous on their own. Combined, the hairs on the back of her neck lifted on end. No wonder the man had not given a second thought to throwing himself overboard. And here she was worried about the cold lake temperatures.

  Eric nodded at her. “My career choice keeps me in excellent physical condition. I’m really sorry I scared everybody, but diving in cold water is what I do. So I really could go running this afternoon. It wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Not happening.” The General shook his head. “There are two people in this house who have the last word. My wife Fiona, and Lucy. If they agree you’re not going running…”

  “I guess I’m not going running.” Eric smiled.

  Cole held up one hand. “One word of advice. Wear neon colors, avoid the dark early morning hours, and if you hear a motor coming, dive.”

  “Are you never going to let me live that down?” Lily came through the porch door. “Got here as soon as I heard. So glad everyone is okay. Brought you a little something special.”

  Eric’s eyes tracked the white paper bag Lily held up. The same way he had lifted his chin and sniffed the air when picking a spot to fish, he sniffed the air over the open bag as she set a piece of her mandel bread onto his plate.

  “That boring cup of tea will go down much easier if you dunk these in it.”

  Everyone in the room pushed to their feet reaching for the white bag.

  “Ah ah.” Lily shook her head. “These are for our guest.”

  “No fair,” Cole almost whined.

  Lily reached into the bag and held one up. “What were you telling Eric about jogging on Hart Land?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” Cole smiled at his fiancée. “Enjoy yourself.”

  Lily laughed handed him a piece of mandel and kissed him soundly on the lips. “That’s the man I love and almost killed.”

  Everyone in the room laughed along with her. Eric leaned left at Iris. “What am I missing?”

  “Long story. I’ll tell you later.”

  Eric nodded, took a bite of the cookie, and swallowed a soft moan. “Outstanding.”

  “Thank you.” Grinning sweetly, Lily sat down next to her fiancé and sidled against him. “How are the children holding up?”

  “Pretty well. They’re on the veranda with your grandmother painting,” Eric replied.

  “Frankly,” Iris reached for one of the mandels Lily had brought, “I don’t think they understood the potential danger. I think they realized he was wet and cold, but they have no idea how dangerous diving into that icy lake can be for the average person.” Heaven knows every fear under the sun ran through her mind in what had to be less than a minute.

  “That’s one of the joys of being a child. Ignorance is bliss.” Lucy came back into the room waving a piece of paper. “I forgot in all the commotion to tell you that you got a phone call.”

  Eric accepted the small sheet of paper, and as he read, pushed to his feet, letting the blanket fall into the chair.

  The frown that settled between his brows had Iris pushing quickly to her feet and instinctively moving beside him. “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. But if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to take a short walk down by the water.”

  Hands on her waist, Lucy huffed, preparing to bark orders when the General raised a hand at her palm out, shaking his head. Something was clearly up. Now the question was should Iris stay put and mind her own business, or follow after him. Technically, she had merely been keeping the family company, helping when she could, nothing more than a casual friend. So why for the second time today was she worried about one Eric Johnson?

  ***

  Roberta. No last name. No discernable information. “We need to talk. Call me when you can” with a phone number he didn’t recognize left a great deal to the imagination. An imagination running in all sorts of directions, from someone related to the last repair request he’d turned down, to someone from the children’s solicitor’s office, to a telemarketer wanting to sell him on a new investment portfolio. Heck, it might even be a dethroned king wanting to share his wealth with Eric.

  The moment he broke free of the line of trees, he pulled out his phone. With everything happening of late, since arriving at the lake he’d failed to check voicemails and messages, having answered the few calls that reached him. One number in particular popped up multiple times over the last few days.

  “Is there a problem?” Iris stepped off the path onto the sand beside him.

  “I don’t know.” He handed Iris the note. “I’d hoped who ever left the message with Lucy would have left me a more detailed message on voicemail.”

  “But nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Iris handed him back the note and grinned up at him. “Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  She was right. He could stand here gue
ssing until the next millennium and the only way to get answers was to simply call the number. On the third ring, a digital recording kicked in. Unable to glean any further information from the generic preprogrammed announcement, he left a message of his own and a request for a call back. The last thing he wanted was to play telephone tag, but he’d be the first to admit his curiosity was piqued. He just hoped it didn’t turn out to be a telemarketer or a bogus prince. Then again, maybe that would be the easiest scenario. To solve that situation would only require blocking the number and then he could move on with life. “Are you up to a short walk?”

  “Always. Especially along the lake.”

  “You love this place a lot.” He took a step forward and waited for her to fall in beside him.

  “We all do. There’s a special about this place. Almost magical. I don’t think anything has changed in over fifty years. There’s even a rotary phone on the wall in the kitchen at Hart House.”

  “Really? That’s got to be a hard to find item nowadays.”

  Iris laughed. The sound seeped into his pores and made him want to laugh too. He really did like being around her. For some insane reason he felt like a teen, itching to hold her hand and if he got lucky, steal a kiss in the moonlight. Except it was broad daylight, he wasn’t a teen, and he had more serious things to deal with right now and none of them involved kissing Iris Colby.

  “Have you given any thought to something you could do around here?” he asked, shifting to a safer topic of discussion.

  Her steps slowed as she turned to look at him. “Funny, I was thinking about that this morning before we met up for breakfast. The obvious thing would be working with children again, but I don’t know that I’m up for it anymore.”

  “You seem to do well enough around Emily and Gavin.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Why?”

  She stopped fully and turned to face him. “Emily and Gavin are sweet kids.”

  “Don’t people say that about a lot of young children? I mean, how many four and six year olds have been tainted by the world?”

  Bobbing her head, she picked up the pace, kicking sand behind her. “Don’t know that I have an answer, but you’re right, it’s definitely something worth considering.”

  It struck him with every passing day that there were a lot of new possibilities worth considering. Especially anything involving Iris Colby.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You just may have a world class baker on your hands.” Iris handed Eric another cup of tea. “Sorry, but I promised Lucy.”

  “My kidneys are probably wondering what has come over me.” He set the cup aside on the end table. “Please don’t tell me you promised to wrap me in another blanket?”

  Iris couldn’t help but laugh. “No, but I promised to start a fire.”

  Poor guy looked like he’d been told someone had run over his new puppy.

  “It was that or put you in a guest room at the house so she could hover over you personally. Feeding and fussing over folks is in that woman’s DNA.” Iris crossed the small living area to the stacked fireplace.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be difficult. I know she means well, it’s just not that big a deal for me. It’s not like we were on the Titanic.”

  “I know.” Pushing to her feet, Iris blew out the match and watched the kindling flare before moving the grill into place and turning to face the man who only a few long hours ago she thought they were going to lose. “You do seem to be fine.”

  “That’s because I am.” He reached for the tea cup and brought it to his lips. “Now, tell me about this baker thing?”

  “Oh.” Iris had almost forgotten. “Emily is having a blast helping Lily bake.”

  “And Gavin?”

  “He seems to just like being with Emily. But she’s really paying attention to everything Lily says to her and she’s taking it very seriously.”

  “As seriously as a six year old can.”

  “Don’t underestimate her because of her age. Lily was baking away on her own at eight.”

  “Eight?” The whites of his eyes widened around whiskey colored circles.

  Iris chuckled softly. “It was an easy bake oven and yes, eight.”

  “Wow.” Eric shook his head. “What was my sister thinking leaving the kids to me? I don’t know anything at all about raising the rug rats.”

  “You did pretty good today.” She had two choices now, sit in the lone easy chair to one side, or slip onto the sofa near him. Intending to shift left to the chair, she found herself instead on the end of the couch, tucking her legs underneath her. “I mean, aside from scaring the hell out of me, you handled the situation well.”

  “I don’t know about that. He’s hoarding.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I realized that. But it’s probably not very unusual. Everything is all new and different for him. He’s so little.”

  “Tell me about it.” Eric’s head fell back against the sofa. Eyes closed, muscles taut down his neck, she had an odd urge to run her finger along that strong jaw line. His eyes popped open and he turned to face her. “How do parents do this day in and day out? Your grandmother told me not to worry, that no child comes with a handbook, but what if they wind up in therapy the rest of their lives because of me?”

  “They won’t.”

  His brows shot up high on his forehead before he sat up. “You sound awfully sure.”

  “I am.” She grabbed a nearby pillow and hugged it against her. It was all she could think of to resist the urge to reach out and wipe away the creases angling between his brows.

  Shifting to raise one knee onto the sofa, he draped an arm across the back. “Care to enlighten me?”

  She probably would if the warmth of his knee almost touching hers wasn’t scrambling her brain cells.

  “Change your mind?” One side of his mouth tilted north in a shaky smile.

  “Not at all.” Pushing to stand, she walked to the kitchen island and grabbed a cookie out of a glass jar. “You have good instincts—”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” He came beside her, reaching for a cookie as well, then sank onto the nearby stool.

  “And,” she continued, doing her best to ignore that he was once again only inches away from her, “you care.”

  The cookie froze halfway to his mouth. “Of course I care. They’re Adele’s kids.”

  “It’s more than that. You want them to be normal. You want them to be happy. You disobeyed the therapist’s instructions, followed your gut, and bought them books. Why? Because you have instincts that told you books are good. Maybe because you enjoyed them with your parents as a kid, maybe because you read an article a thousand years ago and don’t remember. Doesn’t matter why, what matters is you cared enough to do what was right.”

  He stared at the cookie as if it held the final word.

  “Why did you take them fishing?” she asked.

  Eric tore his gaze away from the cookie and focused on her.

  “Want me to tell you?” She smiled.

  “Because it made me feel good as a kid,” he supplied, putting the cookie down.

  “And…”

  “And I thought it might give us common ground.”

  She nodded and grabbed his cookie. “See? You care.”

  “That was mine!”

  Hefting one shoulder in a lazy shrug, she bit into the cookie, mumbling, “You snooze, you lose.”

  He pointed to the now empty glass jar. “And the last cookie.”

  “Oops.” Breaking the cookie in half, she said, “I’m willing to share.”

  “Oh, gee. Thanks.”

  “Seriously, though.” She handed him the broken cookie. “I think you love those kids more than you realize. Probably have for years even though you don’t see them often.”

  Extending his hand, he accepted the proffered treat and she almost jumped back when his fingertips brushed against hers. When was the last time she’d had this response to a man? Wasn’t
that thought laughable? She wasn’t at all sure any man had ever had this affect on her. The real question was what the heck was she going to do about it.

  ***

  There was no denying Iris was a beautiful woman. Heck, from what he’d seen so far there wasn’t an ugly Hart granddaughter in the bunch, but keeping his thoughts to himself was becoming increasingly difficult.

  He hadn’t meant to touch her. Not that most people would consider a brushing of fingertips for a brief second or two touching, but he’d felt the jolt all the way to his toes. And from the startled look in her eyes, so had she. Which left one remaining question, what was he supposed to do about it?

  “I, uh,” Iris shifted away, her gaze landing on the crackling logs, “need to check the fire.”

  All he could do was nod. Then he cursed himself for noticing well rounded hips when she squatted in front of the burning wood. What would have happened had they met under different circumstances? No kids? No sadness? Just two people, at a romantic lake, under the spring skies.

  “How is Richard’s family taking all this?” She poked at the smoking fire.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to any of them.”

  “Not even at the funeral?” She pushed to her feet and brushed her hands quickly.

  “There wasn’t a funeral.”

  The crinkle in her forehead spoke more than any words.

  “At least I don’t think there was.”

  “You don’t think?” Confusion twisted to utter surprise, possibly disbelief.

  This wasn’t going well. Walking to where she stood, he stopped a foot in front of her. “I was working a rig in the North Sea. I’d just returned home when I got word of the accident. Because it had only been a day or two, the bodies hadn’t been released yet, but the kids were packed and ready to board a plane as soon as I answered the phone.”

  “Who was caring for them?”