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“I’ll find my own dates, thank you.” He kept his tone dry, but when Addie burst out laughing, he had no choice. He reached down, picked her up, and marveled at how beautifully strong and healthy she was after such a rocky beginning. “Now say goodbye to these nice ladies. I’ve got a meeting at three, and I can’t be late.”
“Goodbye.” She flashed the ladies a grin while she hugged him, and if he didn’t know any better, he was pretty sure he’d been blessed beyond belief the day this little lady came into his life. She was the bright light in a sea of mourning. She made every day fuller and happier. He’d never thought about settling down and having children, and when his sister’s marriage fell apart, he was pretty sure he’d made the right choice. Now, as he held the niece who was now his adopted daughter in his arms, Jacob was 100 percent certain he’d never have it any other way.
He settled Addie into the back seat of the SUV, watched while she adjusted her shoulder strap, and when she snapped it to show him she’d tightened it correctly, he high-fived her. He’d just climbed into his seat when she surprised him from her perch. “Why was that lady mad at you?”
He could pretend that Josie Gallagher wasn’t mad, but he’d be lying, and he never lied. “My company is buying her land and she has to move and she didn’t want to move.”
“You’re making her move?” Surprise hiked Addie’s gaze to his.
“Well…” He backed up, turned the car around and aimed for the two-lane road. “I’m not. But she has to move, yes.”
“But you’re building the new big place,” she said reasonably. “So it’s like you’re making her move.”
It was kind of like that, so he nodded, but wasn’t happy to do it.
“And I get to go to big-kid school soon!”
Not much fazed Addie, and he loved that about her. They’d moved twice as he followed huge projects up the East Coast, and Addie seemed to find happiness wherever they landed, although now it was different. She was different. She was older and in need of schooling, and he was pushed to make some hard decisions about life and career. She needed roots, and after running projects on the fly for a dozen years, he might need some, too.
A boat horn sounded across the water as the Canandaigua Lady completed a lunchtime cruise. Bits of color tipped the trees, hinting new leaves. Daffodils and tulips brightened the landscapes surrounding the water, and the grass had gone from dull sage to kelly green in the past week. Spring was surging, and he had three months left on the Eastern Shore Inn project. By mid-July the project would be complete, and then what?
He wasn’t tired of building. He loved putting jobs together, and he loved being a dad, two things he’d have never predicted as a younger man.
But since Addie came to him, he’d grown tired of pulling up stakes every few seasons.
He turned onto the road, and glanced back at the two women.
The taller one had moved forward and put an arm around Josie Gallagher, but Josie Gallagher wasn’t looking at her friend.
She was watching him pull away, and the sorrowed look on her face made him want to pause. Turn back. Find out what was really wrong, what put that deepened sadness in her gaze.
He did no such thing. He had a business to run for the next few months, and she was facing changes she didn’t want or need, but they weren’t his fault.
“She looks sad, doesn’t she, Daddy?”
Right now he wished his beautiful daughter wasn’t so intuitive. “Everybody gets sad sometimes, Addie-cakes.”
“A little sad,” she agreed, but when he glanced back, his daughter’s troubled gaze was on the beautiful woman standing outside her soon-to-be-demolished restaurant. “But I think she’s not just a little sad, Daddy. I think her heart hurts, like mine does sometimes.”
What could he say to that? To have a father walk out because parenthood dragged him down, and then lose a mother to a tragic accident within months of Addie being declared cancer-free?
Addie had known heartache, and when foolish people reassured him she was too young to remember those early life tragedies, he bit his tongue to keep from lashing out.
