Even though something about that blue-eyed boy had touched her, she didn’t need to run into him again. Or his father, either, thank you very much.
Chapter Two
But Avon was a small town. Running into acquaintances was the rule, not the exception. Only, Kenzie didn’t expect to see Ross Calder and his son again quite so soon—like that very evening.
She had spent the afternoon inking her drawings and preparing them for mailing. Afterward she’d gone down to the dock behind her house to check on the minnow traps. They were filled with fish, including one or two good-sized spots and a croaker, but as usual there wasn’t enough for all the hungry mouths she had to feed. So she’d driven up to Avon to spend some of her precious cash at the bait-and-tackle store.
She was walking back to her truck when someone called her name. Shifting her packages to one hip, she turned. “Angus! What are you doing here?”
“Going to the movies.”
He was wearing a navy T-shirt with “England” written on it in red and white, khaki cargo shorts and high-topped black sneakers. She’d forgotten how cute he was. Or how good-looking his father was. Ross Calder was wearing khakis, too, and a denim shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He folded his tanned arms across his chest as he came around the car he’d just locked. The movie theater was right across the parking lot.
“Good evening, Ms. Daniels.”
“Hi.” Kenzie looked beyond him for Angus’s mother, but the two of them were alone.
Angus was hopping excitedly in front of her.
“What’s in the bag?”
“Angus,” his father warned.
“No, it’s okay,” Kenzie said quickly. “Minnows.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Can I see?”
Obligingly she opened the container. As he leaned over it, she caught his father’s eye and smiled. Was there anything more endearing than a curious seven-year-old? Besides, it gave her an excuse to look at Ross, because he was certainly what you’d call easy on the eye.
Only, Ross didn’t return her smile. The expression on his rugged face was that of a man looking at a…a specimen under a microscope or something. It was a probing look, as though he was trying to figure out what made her tick.
“Are you going fishing with those?” Angus was obviously fascinated with the contents of the foam container.
“I’m going to feed them to my birds.”
“Wow!” he breathed. “What kind of birds eat minnows?”
“Shore birds, mostly. Like herons and egrets.”
Could those blue eyes get any wider? “Do you own a heron, Kenzie?”
She laughed and felt something wicked stirring inside her. Maybe because Ross Calder was standing there looking so impatient, as though letting Angus talk to her was the last thing he wanted. “Tell you what. If you’d like, and your father says okay, you can come over to my place tomorrow and see for yourself. I think you’ll be pretty impressed.”
Angus whirled. “Can we?”
“We?”
“I can’t drive myself, can I?”
Kenzie bit her lip to keep from grinning. He was a cheeky little Brit all right, and more of his father’s son than had been evident at first.
“We’ll see.” Ross’s tone didn’t hint at what he was thinking. But his expression made Kenzie wonder if maybe he wasn’t having trouble making up his mind. He almost appeared to be feeling uncertain about whether to give in to the boy’s wishes or tell him no outright. Surely an odd reaction coming from a man who seemed as self-confident as Ross Calder?
“Please?”
“Angus. We can talk about it tomorrow. Right now we’re late for the movie.”
“Better hurry,” Kenzie agreed. “It’s the only theater around and it fills up fast. Come on over after ten, okay?” She gave them directions to her house, said goodbye and walked off feeling pretty pleased with herself for having made up Ross Calder’s mind for him.
Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have. After all, she wasn’t stupid, and she strongly suspected that Ross Calder didn’t want to have another thing to do with her. You’d have to be blind to miss the body language. He was obviously used to giving orders and having them followed. And his orders were clear: Keep away from my kid.
Not that Kenzie didn’t respect those wishes. But it irked her that he could be so standoffish when Angus was so much the opposite.
Besides, she hadn’t given him a single reason to dislike her, had she? Was she sending out the vibes of an ax murderess or something?
Oh, the heck with Ross Calder. Angus’s reaction when he saw her birds up close would be well worth his father’s unwilling participation. Kenzie had joined the local shorebird rescue society about a month after moving to Buxton. Her whitewashed cottage had had an aviary in the back, and when Kenzie’s landlord had told her that the former tenants had been rescue volunteers, Kenzie had immediately decided to do the same. The moment she had been given her first orphaned baby bird to hand feed, she’d been hooked. Now she had more than a dozen feathered orphans under her care, and a tour of the aviary was a real treat for any youngster. Kenzie ought to know—she’d hosted Hatteras Elementary School field trips often enough.
But even as she stowed her bags in the back of her pickup, Kenzie’s thoughts returned to Ross. Why did he act so uptight all the time? If he wasn’t careful he’d wipe that sunny smile off Angus’s face for good.
“I should know,” Kenzie muttered ruefully.
But she wasn’t going to think about her own father right now. No, sir. She’d only end up feeling as grumpy as Angus’s dad.
It was a beautiful evening and she intended to enjoy it. Once she got home and finished her chores, she was going to sit on the dock, dangle her feet in the water of Pamlico Sound and watch the sun go down. And she would pretend she didn’t have a care in the world.
Which, at the moment, she hadn’t. She’d finished enough drawings to meet publication deadlines until the end of the week, and she didn’t have any appointments in Norfolk until Thursday. That meant she was free to do whatever she wanted tomorrow, a delicious thought after all the work of the past few weeks, when she’d sat up all night waiting for the drawing muse to hit and enduring harassing phone calls from her editor, because Maureen hated missed deadlines.
As for Ross and Angus Calder, if they didn’t show up tomorrow she wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Only, to be honest, a little disappointed.
I must be crazy, Ross was thinking to himself. Taking Angus to a strange woman’s house to look at her birds. What on earth did the kid want to do that for? After all, he’d spent nearly an hour that morning tossing bread crusts to the seagulls on the back deck. Surely Kenzie Daniels’s birds couldn’t be as interesting as those dive-bombing
