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“Very,” he said amiably and took the phone she held out. “Hi, Elliott.”
“Duff!” Elliott said, his voice urgent. “I’m so sorry to do this to you, but I’ve been called overseas. They’re sending a chopper for me in twenty minutes. Would you mind very much taking Maggie home with you? I don’t want her to be alone.”
“I wouldn’t mind at all,” he replied.
Her expression darkened, though she obviously wasn’t sure what he and her father were saying. She threatened him with a pointing finger to his chest. “No!” she whispered. “Say, no!”
“Yes, of course,” he said into her glower. “I’ll be happy to take her home with me. Don’t worry. Just do your job and know that she’ll be safe and sound.”
Maggie put both hands to her face and fell back into her chair.
Duffy hung up the phone and handed it back to the flight attendant with a smug “Thank you!”
“You’ll like Lamplight Harbor.” He held up Maggie’s seat belt as the light went on.
“I’m going to Arlington,” she said, lowering her hands to put her belt together with an angry snap.
“With what?” he asked. “I’m holding your ticket.”
She threatened him with a look. “I’m going, anyway.”
“How are you going to get there?”
“Rent a car.” She wasn’t seeing the problem.
“And what are you going to pay for it with?”
“With…” she began, then remembered that all she had was seventeen dollars and no credit cards. That wasn’t going to get her a car.
She straightened in her seat and firmed her lips. She looked magnificent but not as confident as she probably imagined. “You’re going to rent it for me. Or let me have my ticket.”
He smiled. “Guess again, Lady Bellows.” When she looked surprised that he knew the name of her current role, he explained, “Eponine told me you’ve played her for so many performances that you take on some of her qualities when you’re stressed.”
“Look,” she said, clearly clutching her temper in both hands, “I came to the States to see my father, not to visit Lightbulb…what is it?”
“Lamplight Harbor,” he provided.
“Lamplight Harbor,” she repeated, “so that you can get some kind of payback for all the years you had to do what I said, by bullying me. I’m forty years old, Duffy,” she said with a sigh as though it were eighty. “And while some women love the forceful male, I’ve never been a fan. So, please. Lend me money to rent a car.”
“I have no intention of bullying you,” he said. “The deal I made with your father was to deliver you safely, and I…”
“I’m not a girl!” she said a little too loudly. Several nearby passengers turned to look at her. She lowered her voice. “I’m an adult woman,” she said. “Almost middle-aged. No one has to deliver me from one man’s hands to another’s!”
He caught the hand with which she gestured emphatically. “You’re thirty-nine,” he corrected, “not forty. That’s hardly middle-aged, and your father wants to know you’re being looked after, not because he thinks you’re not capable of caring for yourself, but because he loves you and you’ll always be his little girl. So let a man with heart trouble have a little peace about the situation.”
That last statement distracted her as he’d hoped it would. “He does have heart trouble?” she asked worriedly.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, “but do we want to risk worrying him further when he’s in a tight spot as it is?”
She finally fell against her seat back with a groan. “If you hadn’t butted into my life,” she said, “I could be in my bathtub right now, listening to Russell Watson and planning to go to Le Caprice for dinner.”
“What were you going to buy dinner with?”
“Oh, shut up.”
HE CANCELED MAGGIE’S TICKET for the connecting flight to Virginia, then pushed the luggage cart toward the little blue American-made sedan rental at the end of an aisle. She carried his cappuccino and her caramel latte. He always preferred to drive home from New York, enjoying the beauty and peace and quiet. It gave him time to readjust from his work life to his life as a parent.
“I thought you intended to stay only for a week,” he said, indicating her three large bags and train case. “There must be enough clothes in there for a four-hour fashion show.”
“Ha, ha,” she said, holding the cart handle while he unlocked the trunk. “Nice clothes is one of the perks of being in the public eye. Designers court you.”
“Well, they’ll certainly be able to find you. I’ll probably have to rent a horse trailer to get it all home.”
“Or to hold all the horse stuff you’re shoveling.”
He gave her a challenging look over his shoulder as he rearranged her bags several times before making them fit. The cart empty, she handed him the drinks, then pushed it toward a cart rack at a midway point in the aisle and hurried back to the car.
In the front seat he placed their drinks in a caddy between the seats, then backed out of the lot and onto the road that would lead them to northbound traffic.
“How far?” she asked when they were firmly ensconced in rush hour traffic.
“A little over four hundred miles,” he replied.
“So, we’re not going to make it tonight.”
“No. I thought we’d stay over in New Hampshire.”
She didn’t applaud the plan, but she didn’t dispute it, either, so Duffy just drove. She fell asleep outside of Connecticut and he watched the traffic as he reached behind him for his jacket to drop it across her.
She looked troubled, even in sleep, he thought, and hoped he had what it took to pull her out of the past and into a future with him. He’d thought he would have to play it cool, give her time, invite her and her father to his home. But Elliott’s sudden mission had been a fateful intervention forcing her into his path. He had to take advantage of it.
She awoke in northern Massachusetts. It was dusk.
She sat up guiltily and stretched, a gesture he was grateful he couldn’t watch because of the thinning but steady traffic.
“Where are we?” she asked on a yawn.
“Almost to the New Hampshire border. You ready for dinner?”
“I’m starved,” she admitted.
“Okay.” He pointed to a highway sign that promised Good Food and Cozy Cabins. “Looks like a good place to spend the night.”
The cabins were small and rustic, but each boasted a tidy bathroom and a television set. That was all Duffy needed, but after having seen Maggie’s town house, he wondered if she considered the cabins adequate.
He dropped her bag on her bed and watched her perusal of the pine-paneled, plaid-curtained room. She sat on the edge of the bed that was covered in a spread that matched the curtains, and bounced a little.
“It’s been such a long day,” she said. “This feels comfortable.”
He winced at the bold decorating. “The rooms