Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor (Friday Harbor #1)(4)

“It’s not forever.”

“No, just the rest of my youth.” Sam lowered his head to the table as if to pound it, then settled for resting it on a forearm.

“How are you defining your youth, Sam? Because from where I’m sitting, your youth jumped the shark a couple years back.”

Sam stayed motionless except for the middle finger that shot up from his right hand. “I had plans for my thirties,” he said in a muffled voice. “And none of them included kids.”

“Neither did mine.”

“I’m not ready for this.”

“Neither am I. That’s why I need your help.” Mark let out a taut sigh. “Sam, when have I ever asked you for anything?”

“Never. But do you have to start now?”

Mark made his tone quietly persuasive. “Think of it this way…we’ll start off slow. We’ll be Holly’s tour guides to life. Easygoing tour guides who never come up with crap like ‘reasonable punishments’ or ‘because I said so.’ I’ve already accepted that I won’t do the best job raising a kid…but unlike our dad, my mistakes are going to be benign. I’m not going to backhand her when she doesn’t clean up her room. I’m not going to make her eat celery if she doesn’t like it. No mind games. Hopefully she’ll end up with a decent worldview and a self-supporting job. God knows however we do this, it’ll be better than sending her off to be raised by strangers. Or worse, our other relatives.”

A few muttered curses emerged from the hard-muscled crucible of Sam’s arms. As Mark had hoped, his brother’s innate sense of fairness had gotten the better of him. “Okay.” His back rose and fell with a sigh before he repeated, “Okay. But I have conditions. Starting with, I want the rent from your condo when you lease it out.”

“Done.”

“And I’ll need your help fixing up the house.”

Mark gave him a wary look. “I’m not great with home renovations. I can do the basics, but—”

“You’re good enough. And the sight of you refinishing my floors will be a balm to my soul.” Now that Sam had the promise of rent money and cheap labor, some of his hostility had faded. “We’ll try it out for a couple of months. But if it’s not working for me, you’ll have to take the kid somewhere else.”

“Six months.”

“Four.”

“Six.”

“All right, damn it. Six months.” Sam poured more whiskey. “My God,” he muttered. “Three Nolans under one roof. A disaster waiting to happen.”

“The disaster’s already happened,” Mark said curtly, and would have said more, but he heard a soft shuffling sound in the hallway.

Holly came to the kitchen doorway. She’d gotten out of bed and was standing there with a bewildered, sleep-dazed expression. A small refugee, dressed in pink pajamas, her feet pale and vulnerable on the dark slate floor.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Mark asked gently, going to her. He picked her up—she couldn’t have weighed more than forty pounds—and she clung to him like a monkey. “Can’t sleep?” The round weight of her head on his shoulder, the soft tangled mass of her blond hair, the little-girl smell of crayons and strawberry shampoo filled him with unnerving tenderness.

He was all she had.

Just start by loving her…

That would be the easy part. It was the rest of it he was worried about.

“I’m going to tuck you in, sugar-bee,” Mark said. “You need to sleep. We’ve got a lot of busy days ahead of us.”

Sam followed as Mark carried Holly back to her room. The four-poster bed was fitted with a frame at the top, from which Victoria had hung an assortment of fabric butterflies with sheer gauzy wings. Settling her on the mattress, Mark pulled the covers up to her chin, and sat on the edge of the bed. Holly was quiet and unblinking.

Looking into her haunting blue eyes, Mark smoothed the hair back from her forehead. He would have done anything for her. The force of his own emotions surprised him. He couldn’t make up for what Holly had lost. He couldn’t give her the life she would have had. But he would take care of her. He wouldn’t abandon her.

All of those thoughts, and more, flooded his mind. But what he said was, “You want me to tell you a bedtime story?”

Holly nodded, her gaze flicking briefly to Sam, who had come to lean against the doorjamb.

“Once upon a time,” Mark said, “there were three bears.”

“Two uncle bears,” Sam added from the doorway, sounding vaguely resigned, “and a baby bear.”

Mark smiled faintly as he continued to smooth Holly’s hair. “And they all lived in a big house by the sea…”

Two

The bell on the shop door jingled as the man of Maggie’s dreams walked in. Or more accurately, he was the man of someone else’s reality, since he was holding the hand of a small girl who had to be his daughter. While the child hurried to look at a huge carousel that revolved slowly in the corner of the toy store, her father wandered in more slowly.

Low-slanting September sunlight passed over dark hair cut in short, efficient layers, the ends curling slightly against the back of his neck. As he passed a mobile dangling from the ceiling, he ducked his head to avoid colliding with it. He moved like an athlete, relaxed but alert, giving the impression that if you threw something at him unexpectedly, he’d catch it without hesitation.