dying to.” India slumped on his neatly made, rust-colored hotel comforter. In the silence, water dripped from a faucet. The heater struggled to live but gave in with a gurgle. India lifted her head. “Thank you for coming with me. I’m so grateful I can be honest with you.”
“See? I don’t know how many times I’ve told you to come to me when you have a problem. Tell me about Jack’s heart.”
She froze. “I usually don’t come to you because you hear and see too well.”
“We painters.” He waved an admonishing finger at her. “People talk to us. You might think bartenders hear it all, but give a man a paint can, and he looks like he’s waiting to solve all your problems. Remember Tom Sawyer.”
“He worked his way out of painting.”
Mick gave a move-it-along motion with his right index finger. “Jack’s heart?”
“Colleen came to the library to look at her mother’s picture, but Jack was in the picture, too.” Searching for the meaning underneath, India frowned. “Maybe she wanted to see her parents together again? Anyway, I don’t think she told him she was coming to the library. I think they’d had some sort of argument, and she’d pulled a disappearing act.”
“Familiar story.”
“You mean for her? No, you mean me, but I only disappeared when you couldn’t help me anymore.”
“Your mother and I are your family, just like Jack is Colleen’s. We were supposed to help, especially when you needed us most. Look at Colleen. She’s the same age you were when you got pregnant. Now, make me believe she could provide for a child of her own.”
India refused to contemplate his homespun truth, but neither could she take the absolution he offered. “When Jack showed up, he asked her where she’d been. Instead of answering, she just looked at the picture, and he looked, too. I’ve never seen anything like the pain in his eyes, but he covered it up so fast I almost thought I’d imagined it.” She rubbed her chest. “No, I didn’t imagine it.”
“You like Jack.” Mick leaned against the desk.
“I’m confused about Jack, because he’s Colleen’s father.”
“He’s a good father, but why won’t she talk to him?”
“Exactly.” India slapped her hands against her thighs. “And that’s the one question I cannot ask them.”
“I think you might hang yourself on several questions.” Mick straightened and held out the business card. “Like I said, we have a new client.”
India tilted the card toward the weak gold and green lamp. “Leon Shipp. Power Trucks for Power Men?”
“He wants us to paint his house. We could stay another week or so.” Mick nodded at the card. “If you think we should.”
“No, I don’t.” She blushed. “But I volunteered to help with toddler story time at the library, so we have to stay until Saturday.”
Mick laughed. “Run to the familiar? I’ll call this Leon and tell him to expect us tomorrow morning. Okay?”
India tilted her head sharply to one side. “I’m afraid.”
As if she were his little girl again—and she’d been a daddy’s girl once—Mick sank onto the edge of the bed beside her and tucked her cheek against his rough shirt. “I know you won’t hurt anyone—well, except yourself, and I’m here this time to help you if you make that mistake again. I don’t want you to spend fifteen more years wondering what might have been.”
“She’s your granddaughter, too. And she’s Mom all over again.”
His chin moved up and down against her forehead. “Mmm-hmm.”
Miserably she clutched his sleeve. “I wish I could give you back everything I took from you.”
“Shh. You refused to take anything from us, India.”
“I love you, Dad.”
As she absorbed her father’s silence, she realized how long it’d been since she’d last said those words.
Mick cleared his throat. “I’d paint Leon Shipp’s house and his entire fleet of bumper cars to hear you say that again.”
India smiled. “Power trucks, Dad.”
“Whatever. Try not to ruin the moment, honey.”
AT THE TOP OF THE HOTEL’S rickety wooden steps, Jack hesitated. By the time he reached India’s door, his courage damn near deserted him. Whatever she’d said to Colleen at the library had made his daughter more receptive to him. On the way home, he’d kept silent, afraid anything he said to Colleen might only push her further away. But the moment he parked the truck, she’d announced she wouldn’t see Chris anymore unless they met within a group of her friends.
Which ought to cut down nicely on their time together. And Jack didn’t intend to look that gift horse in the mouth.
Still puzzled over India’s unexpected powers of persuasion, Jack stared at her sea-salted, pale gray door. He rubbed his palms against his jeans. Sweaty as a teenage boy’s, they bumped over the denim. If he didn’t knock now, he never would. He owed India an apology for the brusque way he’d treated her at the library, especially since she’d managed to help his daughter.
He’d shut down the moment he realized Colleen had come to see her mother’s picture. Memories of Mary sprang a truckload of feelings on him, just when he felt least prepared to deal with the past. Hayden had snapped that photo of them together the day they’d heard Colleen was coming.
Jack hated that picture. He wondered that no one else had ever seen the truth in his eyes. That morning, Mary had told him Mother Angelica had called. At the same time, she’d confessed she’d made love with another man. She’d said she couldn’t go on with their marriage without coming clean. The man had been one of the island’s summer people, and Jack hadn’t let her say his name.
“I just wanted to remember what love felt like without a purpose.”
Mary’s words still tore him apart with a deeper emotion than he’d ever felt for her again. Both desperate to have a child, they’d tried every crazy procreation theory anyone suggested. In some horrible, too-sane recess of his mind, he’d understood what she’d meant about needing a different kind of love.
In the same breath as her confession, she’d asked him to stay with her and adopt the infant girl Mother Angelica had offered them. How many times over how many years had he wished she’d kept her secret?
Able to feel such strange compassion for Mary, he’d believed he would be able to forget her betrayal. He never had. He’d loved her still, but he’d never loved her in the same way. He’d hidden from the truth behind work and behind his and Mary’s mutual joy in Colleen. She’d used him to keep the baby who’d, in a way, cost them their marriage. He’d accepted the compromise.
Why now, outside India Stuart’s room, had he lost his long-standing ability to shield himself from those memories?
