Chapter Ten

It’s Fox.”

Lacey just stared, and tried to breathe despite the six-hundred-pound boulder that had just landed on her chest.

“I go by Fox now.” He took a step closer, the world behind and around him fading into black and white as David Fox, a man she had once loved with every fiber of her being and more, stood bathed in sunlight, a dark-haired, green-eyed devil.

“You look fantastic, Lacey.” He held out the drawing. “Self-portrait?”

She snatched away the paper, her heart wrenching as a corner tore in her hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see Ashley. And you, of course. And… wow.” He angled his head and openly admired her. “As good in three dimensions as”—he nodded to the drawing—“two.”

She covered her chest with the paper, painfully aware that she was in nothing but bright pink strips of silk that barely covered breasts that David had once suggested she have reduced.

“So how are you?” he asked with a wide smile that showed masculine dimples in hollowed cheeks with a hint of whiskers. A linen shirt hung over his lean body, and despite the trousers he wore, he didn’t show a bead of perspiration anywhere. In ninety-two degrees.

“I’m…” Dizzy. Stunned. Hoping to wake up any second. “You might have warned me you were coming.”

He gave her a look of disbelief. “Didn’t Ashley tell you?”

Ashley?

She thinks you’re going to get back together with David.

“Have you talked to her?”

“Not exactly,” he said, turning to look at Ashley in the water, offering his classic, handsome profile to her. “We’ve been communicating online. Today, in fact. She told me you’d be here.”

He was chatting online with her daughter?

“Is it safe for her to be out that far?” he asked.

Lacey took a few steps to see over the rise to the water. “She’s just past the sandbar. The water’s still shallow there, but it drops off after that.”

“I don’t know. It looks far.”

Irritation fired through her. “She’s with my friends. She’ll be fine, David.”

“Fox,” he said. “I really don’t answer to David anymore. Are your friends CPR trained?”

She choked a little. “Seriously? After thirteen years of doing a complete disappearing act, you’re going to show up here and question my parenting skills?”

“I’m not questioning them.” He squinted at Ashley. “She seems well adjusted enough.”

Seems? He’d determined that from “communicating online” with her and seeing her from three hundred feet?

“She is,” Lacey said. “But this is going to throw her for a loop.”

“Are those the same women from the dorm you RA’d in college?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t surprised he remembered them. The year David and Lacey had been together, she’d spent every other minute with her three best friends.

“David, why don’t we go somewhere and talk?”

“I want to see Ashley.”

Her heart sank. “Just let me…” Get my head around this. “Talk to you. Privately. So you can tell me why you’re here and how long you’re staying.”

“I told you why I’m here. And I’m staying for a while.”

A while? What was a while? Five minutes was too long a while. “You’ll find it pretty boring here, believe me. No cliffs to scale, no rapids to navigate, no icebergs to climb.”

“But one very beautiful woman to thaw.” He did the head-tilt thing again, letting his gaze roll over her as slowly and sensually as the waves on the sand. “If she’d just relax and say hello.” He held out his arms.

Instantly she backed away, toward the van. Feeling silly, she turned and lifted the hatch door, tucking the drawing away safely and grabbing the shirt she’d just taken off.

“I can’t believe she was e-mailing you,” she said.

“Not e-mail, exactly. We message on Facebook.”

“You’re her Facebook friend?” Why, oh why, had she stopped looking at Ashley’s Facebook page? Because it was a bunch of “you’ve been tagged” photos and silly middle-school jokes and Farmville announcements. There’d been no David Steven Fox when she’d last checked Ashley’s page.

“She friended me.”

“Of course. You’d never seek her out.”

He made her jump by putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I? Can’t I get some credit?”

Actually, no. “Look,” she said, letting out a breath as she stabbed her arms into her shirtsleeves and buttoned up with maddeningly unsteady hands. “This has really thrown me, David.”

“Please call me Fox. I have a new career now and, as part of that, I legally dropped David from my name.”

“A new career? I didn’t know you had an old one.”

“I’ve been studying with some of the greatest chefs in the world. What started out as a new adventure became my passion. You know I love to cook, and now I’m formally trained.”

“That’s great. Congratulations.” She still didn’t see why he’d change his name, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was here and Ashley—

Surely Ashley wouldn’t go running into his arms after being ignored her whole life? She glanced again at the beach. Ashley was still swimming, just past the sandbar but visible.

“Let’s go over by the table and talk.”

He started to follow her through the reeds of sea oats. “You can’t keep me from her forever,” he said softly.

“David—er, Fox. You can’t just spring yourself on a fourteen-year-old who’s been through a trauma.”

“Ashley told me you spent the storm in the bathtub.”

Resentment coiled through her and knotted deep in her gut. It was bad enough that Ashley had told him about their ordeal and forgotten to mention that she was on Facebook with her father who hadn’t seen her since she was a baby. But the slight reprimand in his tone really irked.

“There really wasn’t time to evacuate safely,” she said. “And I kept her alive.”

“She shouldn’t have been here.” Nothing slight about that accusation.

“Oh, right, David, like you would have been a better parent. Like you wouldn’t have her hiking into African villages for an evening of body piercing.”

“She should see Africa. Once you’ve slept in the mud houses of the Bamako, you see life differently.”

“She sees life fine.” Lacey leaned against the trunk of the poinciana for support. “I don’t know how your appearance is going to affect her.”

“I’m her father. And it’s a reunion, not a return from the dead.”

“Reunion?” She had to laugh softly. “You haven’t seen her since the week of her first birthday.” When he’d stayed exactly forty-eight hours. She could only hope history repeated itself.

“I’ve sent her cards and presents.”

“And she saved every one,” she assured him. “But Hurricane Damien stole them, along with a lot of stability. So I’m just really worried about… this.”

“And the money?”

Was he accusing her of taking it? “Ashley has an account with every dime you’ve ever sent her. You are free to audit that. I’m saving it to pay for college and whatever else she needs. She knows you’ve sent it and appreciates it.”

But the truth was that every check seemed to make Ashley sad, and Lacey’s heart had broken for her daughter, who deserved to be loved, not bought.

“You owned this house outright, didn’t you?” He gestured toward the exposed foundation.

Just how much had Ashley shared with him? “Granny Dot left it to me when she died, about a year after my grandfather died. Ashley and I’d been living in an apartment, so it was a blessing. Without any rent or mortgage, I was able to start a small baking business, mostly cakes for weddings and functions.”

His eyes lit. “So we’re both in the food industry.”

“No. I’m… doing something different.”

“What’s that?”

She took a deep breath and jumped. “I’m building a resort.” Ooh, that sounded nice. “As a matter of fact I just hired the architect.”

He nodded, gave a slight smile. “I saw his, um, blueprint.”

Heat burned her cheeks. “You have no idea what you saw, David. But none of that concerns you.”

“Everything about Ashley’s life concerns me.”

She reared back as if he’d hit her. “Really? Is that a fact? Is that why you’ve been completely missing from her life even though I told you you could see her anytime?”

“I understand you might be bitter, but I really hope that we’re all mature enough to co-exist, and maybe even forgive.”

Could she forgive him? His choice to leave her had hurt Lacey, but his decision to stay away had hurt Ashley. And that was unforgivable to a mother.

“I forgave you long ago,” she said brusquely, not wanting to get into it with him now or ever.

He was looking around at the post-hurricane mess, his brows knit. “How on earth are you going to afford to build a resort, Lacey? Don’t you think you should start with something a little more modest?”

Exactly the opposite of what Clay thought she should do. That gave her a boost of confidence. “Insurance. Investors. Loans.” She tilted her head up, smiling. Clay had done that for her, she thought fleetingly. In one morning, he’d given her confidence. “I have a plan.”

“A plan, huh? Not always your strong suit.” He tempered the tease with a smile and leveled her with that magnificent green gaze that had melted the clothes right off her about forty-eight hours after he’d guest-lectured in one of her college classes.

“I’ve changed,” she announced.

“You have.” When his eyes crinkled she could see his lashes were still thick, and the tiny crow’s-feet just made him great looking instead of merely good looking. “And you look terrific, Lacey, considering what you’ve been through.”

“Fourteen years of single parenthood?”

“I meant the hurricane,” he said. “But I don’t imagine either one was easy.” There was an apology in there, she could sense it, and the tone brought her resentment down a notch.

“Thanks, David. Fox. You look good, too.” He was thirty-nine now, a full ten years older than the man she’d been with all morning. Ten years and ten million miles apart, she mused. Clay Walker was light, bright, sexy, easy, sunny brilliance. David Fox was dark, threatening, difficult, a sliver of cloud-covered moon impossible to follow and even more impossible to hold.

Reminding her that regardless of his latest career move, David’s next trip to Timbuktu couldn’t be much farther than his next breath. That’s how he rolled. Away.

“Can I stay with you at your parents’ place?” he asked.

What hadn’t Ashley told him? She tried to think of a good, reasonable explanation for saying no, but none came. Except that she was kind of planning to have sex with her architect.

“Yes, of course you can. For a few…” Minutes. “Days. I’m very busy with my building proj—”

The scream from the beach made them both whip around, startled.

“Ashley! There’s a shark!”

“Oh my God!” Lacey leaped forward.

“Helllllllllp!”

All three women stood on the beach screaming at Ashley, who was frozen on the sandbar, the Gulf waters splashing at her thighs. She looked to her left, the horror on her face visible even this far away.

The fin popped up not twenty feet from her, between her and the beach.

Lacey ran, shells stabbing her feet, a scream caught in her throat. Before she’d even reached the girls David tore past her, his long legs eating up the sand, kicking it in his wake, his arms outstretched. Fully clothed, he bounded into the shallow waters, headed directly for Ashley, who kept screaming.

The four women followed, running toward the water, gasping and calling in horror.

The fin popped up again, directly between David and Ashley, making her wail.

“Don’t move, Ash!” David called to her, and she froze, staring at him now.

Once again the shark emerged and David lunged in the opposite direction, forcing the creature’s attention to focus on him, making it leap and turn toward him, the white teeth of a tiger bared for a horrifying split second.

“Run, Ashley!” David yelled before throwing himself in the water, drawing the shark farther away.

Ashley screamed again and followed the order, her skinny arms flailing as she stumbled through the waist-high water. Lacey ran toward her just as David made a loud noise and—dear God, had he punched the shark? Kicked it?

The fin disappeared, then popped up again, fifteen feet away and headed out into the Gulf.

Instantly David dove into the shallow water toward Ashley, popping up in front of her just as Lacey reached them both.

She threw her arms out to grab Ashley, but her daughter turned and fell into David’s embrace.

“Daddy!”

“Baby girl.” He kissed her head and hugged her like… like he actually cared about the child he’d demanded Lacey abort.

“Daddy, you saved my life.”

“No, sweetheart, you saved mine.”

Crumbling into the water, an adrenaline dump and cold reality bit Lacey harder than the rare tiger shark in the Gulf of Mexico ever could. Silhouetted in the sunshine, Ashley and David hugged like there was no tomorrow.

But there was, only now it included a man with the totally apt name of Fox.