Temporary Father. Anna Adams

not your son.”

      “Are we all in bad moods tonight? Mrs. Carleton keeps an immaculate house, and I hate seeing her have to pick up after us.”

      Van bent down and picked up his lettuce. “I can see why Eli gets fed up.”

      Taking his shot to heart, she stopped. “You told me someone was coming. You didn’t mention my possible deliverance was moving in down the hill.” She felt guilty. Aidan had been nice to her. For a second—only a second—she’d been attracted to him. It wasn’t polite to think of him in terms of the money he handed out for investment each quarter.

      “How’d you find out?”

      “I ran into him while I was out.” For some reason she didn’t admit she’d thought he was dying. Hearing a cough that had sounded more like choking, she’d gone straight through Van’s landscaping.

      “Something’s on your mind, Beth?”

      “Salvation,” she said.

      He studied his sandwich. “Jonathan Barr didn’t give you the loan?”

      She turned back to her laundry and tossed Eli’s blue soccer jersey on top of her underwear.

      Barr’s voice whispered ingratiatingly in her ear again. “From what I hear, your brother will soon be asking for a loan so we can’t count on him to bail you out if you can’t repay.”

      Van didn’t want to talk about it. Neither would she.

      She shook her head.

      “Let me help you,” Van said as promptly as if he had no secret need of his own.

      “I can’t take money from you.” Nor could she look at him. She fished the jersey out and put it in the pile with Eli’s dark-colored sweatshirts. “I have my own two feet to stand on.”

      “Why do I have money if not to help my family?”

      Touched by the offer of his last dime, she hugged him before she realized he might wonder why. “Thanks, but I can’t. You know how it is. Campbell thinks steady work is a bad habit. He’s no example to our son. I have to get a business loan from someone who doesn’t love me.” She piled her jeans and Eli’s on the end of the table and then started loading light colors into the wash. “But I was thinking…” She wouldn’t be human if she couldn’t see safety in a venture capitalist. “Is Aidan Nikolas here to do a deal with you?”

      “With me?” He stared at her, and then he looked away. He was hiding something, as surely as Eli. “What could Aidan do for me?”

      She watched detergent spin into the water. “Good.”

      “Good, what?”

      “Good that he’s not here because of your business.” Dark eyes in a pale face floated into her memory. He could save her lodge, with an amount that would be nothing to him. “Jonathan Barr only wants to offer me enough to rebuild the lodge as it was. I told him I wanted to make improvements so that families would come instead of just fishermen. He thinks I won’t be able to repay it.” She shut the washer lid, trying to hide her frustration. “My typical visitor will continue to be a guy who can’t stay long and won’t pay much for the bare essentials. I have to get ahead, Van.”

      He touched her arm. Did she imagine the unease in his eyes? “That’s why you’re glad Aidan’s not here to work with me?”

      “I’d like to ask him for—”

      “No, Beth. Didn’t you see he’s been sick?”

      “What are you talking about?” His wife had died a year ago. She vaguely remembered that, but the news hadn’t mentioned anything about him except his successes. “I have to ask for help.” She opened the utility closet and took out a broom to sweep grass that had fallen from Eli’s jeans onto the tile floor. “He’s my match made in heaven. I need investment. He helps businesses that can’t make it on their own.”

      “He takes those businesses over. He doesn’t give people money and expect nothing in return.”

      “I’ll pay him back. You’ve seen my projections.” Her spreadsheets were an inch thick. “What would he want with a lodge in Honesty, Virginia?”

      “That was my next question. Any small return you can offer him isn’t worth his effort. He looks for profit, not the golden glow of having been generous.”

      She stared at her brother, hoping he wasn’t speaking from experience. “I just have to make him care. It takes devotion to make a business work. And determination. I have both.”

      Van got a dustpan and held it for her. “When did you start believing in fairy tales?”

      “Since my banker let me down. I need a fairy godmother, and don’t try to talk me out of it. If he’s not here to work with you, you’re too late and I’m too desperate.”

      “He had a heart attack, Beth.” Van dumped the dustpan into the wastebasket and took the broom from her. “Aidan came here to recuperate. Do you want to kill him?”

      CHAPTER TWO

      “KILL HIM? He’s in his early forties.” Returning to the kitchen, she glanced toward the cottage. “Although he was coughing when I ran into him.”

      “Coughing?” Van picked up newspapers from the counter and put them in the recycling box. “I never heard of that as a heart attack symptom.”

      She went to the fridge and took out a bottled water, which she offered her brother. He shook his head so she opened it herself. “No problem, then. I’ll call him in the morning and make an appointment to present my business plan.”

      “No, you won’t. He doesn’t want his shareholders to know what’s happened until he’s ready to tell them. He doesn’t want the press telling them so I offered him the cottage.”

      “Are you saying you think I’d call the papers?”

      “Beth, listen to me. Don’t bother Aidan Nikolas. You are not a woman who can risk another person’s health and be okay with it later.”

      Damn him. “I want to be that woman.” She leaned into the back stairs and took a deep breath, using it to make her voice seem normal. “Eli?”

      “Okay, Mom—I’ll take a shower,” he promised in the snarl of a stranger. Uneasily, Beth let his temper pass.

      Van gestured toward the second floor. “Is that why you’re desperate?”

      “He’s not himself. He ran away to live with Campbell after the fire, and he’s smart enough to sense Campbell was glad when I brought him home.”

      “You really are scared.” With both hands on her shoulders, Van steered her into the family room, switching to big-brother mode. “Tell me exactly what Jonathan Barr said today.”

      Beth sat on the sofa. In front of her, on a tufted, square ottoman, a pile of towels and linens she’d washed after dinner waited. She picked up a towel, her hands actually shaking.

      “I’ve told you before, you don’t have to do laundry.”

      “And I’m telling you again, I don’t love housework, but Mrs. Carleton has enough to do without cleaning up after Eli and me.”

      Van shook his head. “Why won’t you let anyone help you?”

      “You mean you? You’ve helped me all my life. I can do this myself, if someone will just take a chance that I’ve done my projections correctly.”

      “But that won’t be Jonathan Barr?”

      “He said I want too much money and I’m not a good risk.”

      “His reasoning?”

      When he was upset, Van tended to talk to people