Christine Flynn - Suddenly Family

He didn’t know what to make of her. As a pilot he knew what it was to go with his gut, to rely on training and instinct to make split-second decisions. But he could back up those decisions with years of experience and advance preparation.

He had no idea what she based her decisions on.

The warm sea breeze blew through the truck’s open windows as he drove past the pier and the ferry dock and skirted the fourteen square blocks of businesses and weather-grayed buildings that comprised the town of Harbor. He would have thought that a woman who tended a small zoo of high-maintenance animals in addition to working part-time and raising a child on her own would need to be organized to survive. An organized person would think twice before committing herself to something that would eat up a hefty chunk of her time. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that her idea of preplanning was simply to take a deep breath before she plunged in.

His scowl of incomprehension was threatening to become permanent by the time he swung onto the long open road that edged the ocean and led to the airport. Logic told him he didn’t need to understand her. All he had to do was trust her. And there, he supposed, he really had no problem.

Her little boy had appeared well cared for. He’d been clean and healthy and had obviously been raised to be friendly and caring. Just meeting the child spoke well of his mother. Aside from that, anyone who rescued and cared for injured animals would have to have a very soft heart.

The arrangement was only temporary, anyway. Hopefully, it wouldn’t have to last more than a few weeks. Just that morning he’d received a promising response to one of his ads. He had an interview for a week from Saturday with a woman from Bellingham who was leaving her position as nanny. She’d be available as soon as the family moved east at the end of the month.

In the meantime, it seemed he was going to teach a woman with a soft heart and no apparent sense of logic how to fly.

T.J. was intimately familiar with nearly every square mile of Harbor Island. She knew the lush mountainous forest that filled its interior and the hiking trails, caves and clear creeks meandering through it. She knew its coves and tide pools and had introduced her son to all manner of seals, urchins and starfish. She knew who lived in the secluded cabins, houses, shacks and the occasional mansion tucked into the trees or overlooking the shore.

She disturbed little of it. Not the wildlife and not her neighbors. She regarded herself and her son simply as part of the ecology, custodians of their own small space in the woods and observers of all the rest.

She felt safe on Harbor now. Secure in a way that had eluded her all the years she’d been growing up. That was why she’d come back after only a year away at college. It was why she wanted to raise her child in Harbor. But that hard-won sense of security felt threatened at the moment. It had ever since Maddy had told her about Brad.

Try as she might, T.J. simply couldn’t shake the feeling that she hadn’t heard the last of him.

She wasn’t sure if she was simply being cautious or actually getting paranoid, but she checked her rearview mirror twice before she pulled her ancient Jeep off the shore road and headed for the blinding-white hangar at the edge of the airstrip. She had no idea what she expected Brad to do. Or if he would do anything at all. As she glanced at the child craning his neck from the seat beside her, she just knew she didn’t want Andy to know she was concerned.

Not that he was paying any attention to her. His focus was glued to the half dozen private airplanes parked away from E & M Air Carrier’s huge hangar.

He practically vibrated with excitement as he grappled with the latch on his seat belt. “Can I go look at a plane? I won’t get too close. I promise.”

“Jason’s dad is expecting us in the office, honey.”

“Is Jason here?”

“He’s visiting his grandma in Seattle right now.”

Seat belt unfastened, he reached for the rusting handle on the door. “Can I see a plane after, then?”

“If it’s not too dark.”

Her son grinned. “’Kay,” he murmured, not bothering to press.

He was such a good little boy. Affectionate. Obedient. He never demanded anything the way she often heard children do in the bookstore when they would beg, cajole or cry for just one more toy or treat. He simply accepted what she said and moved on to whatever next claimed his interest.

Tugging her heavy denim bag over her shoulder, she climbed out of the battered, but blessedly reliable, old vehicle and automatically took Andy’s hand. She didn’t know why he was always so agreeable. It could have been because he knew there wasn’t money for extras. Or because he instinctively understood that she already gave him everything she could and that it all came from her heart. Maybe it was because, even with Crystal living nearby, he knew it was really just the two of them and that they had to take care of each other because there wasn’t anyone else who would.

Whatever it was, she told herself, pushing open the door next to the black letters indicating Office, she was simply grateful he was hers.

Andy looked up at her, confused. “There’s nobody here.”

“I see that.”

The small waiting room with its huge map on the wall was empty. So was the space across the long counter where filing cabinets and two gray metal desks—one cluttered, one painfully neat—occupied the area.

Sam had said he would be available that evening. He’d told her that yesterday when he’d brought her the book weighing down her bag. Though she hadn’t talked to him since then, she had left a message with one of his employees that she would be by after she got off work at eight and asked that he call if the time wasn’t convenient. Since she hadn’t heard from him, she’d assumed the timing was fine.

Still clutching Andy’s hand, she moved to the end of the counter to peek through the open door behind it. The door opened directly into the hangar. Wondering if the guy named Chuck who had taken her message had forgotten to pass it on, she glanced into the cavernous space.

A white aircraft far larger than the tiny two-and four-passenger planes outside occupied the middle of the huge hangar. The cargo pods on its underbelly hung open.

While her son whispered a reverent “Wow,” T.J.’s attention settled on the big man in a khaki shirt and jeans.

Sam was shifting boxes from the underbelly of the plane to a low flat dolly—large boxes that he handled two at a time and that were heavy enough to make the dolly buck when he hefted them onto it.

He didn’t seem to notice her and Andy when they moved to stand in the doorway. Not sure if they should enter, she simply watched, unwillingly fascinated by his strength. She was intrigued, too, by the concentration etched in his features. No one could deny the sense of capability surrounding him, or the masculine beauty in his sculpted profile.

Sam Edwards was an incredibly virile and handsome man. T.J. had always thought him so—much as she had always thought redwoods mighty and the ocean vast. It was simply a fact of nature, and she appreciated beauty in nature wherever she found it. She had just never before considered exactly how broad his shoulders were. Or how strong the muscles in his back and thighs had to be to raise him up so easily as he hefted the heavy loads. His arms had to feel as solid as stone.

She imagined his arms felt rather empty, too.

Her grip tightened slightly on her son’s little hand. She couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been for him to be left alone to raise his children, or how hard it had to be for his children to have lost their loving mother. She had known Tina. T.J. had even helped her out on occasion at the preschool where Tina had worked by bringing animals for the children to learn about and helping when the aide wasn’t available. She had been on school field trips with Tina, too, where they had talked about measles and how to get their offspring to eat vegetables. When Tina had brought Jason and Jenny into the bookstore, they had talked about children’s books.