mother says it must’ve been something he did.”
“Yeah, well,” Tom Dunbar dribbled the ball in a circle, “Aunt Fiona doesn’t need a boyfriend anyway. She might be goin’ to England. Or Italy.”
Italy?
“What’s with this Italy?” Lachlan demanded.
But the kids didn’t know. So he went to the shop and asked Hugh and Molly.
Hugh was as baffled as he was.
But Molly was a woman, even though she was working on Hugh’s truck and had a streak of grease on her cheek and a baseball cap on her head. And women apparently understood these things genetically.
“She’s applied to art school in Italy. It’s where she was hoping to go back before her dad got ill.”
“Oh, yeah?” First he’d heard of it. But then, when it came to Fiona, he apparently hadn’t heard a lot. “Where in Italy?”
He hadn’t heard of the school, but he knew the town. It wasn’t a long way from where he’d played soccer.
“When was that?” he said, trying to do the arithmetic.
“Maybe ten, eleven years ago,” Molly said.
What if she’d gone to school there when he’d been just down the road? Would he have ever run into her? Would she have come to watch him play?
Had she had any idea he was there?
Probably not, he thought. If she had, she’d have steered clear of Italy! But second thoughts told him just the opposite. She must have known. Molly surely would have told her.
And that meant…
But even at his most egotistical, Lachlan couldn’t believe she’d applied to art school in Italy all those years ago because he was playing in goal twenty miles down the road.
He stomped out, kicking the air compressor and almost breaking his toe in the process.
“Cranky, isn’t he?” Molly said.
“I would be, too,” Hugh said, “if Fiona’d kicked me out.”
WITHIN DAYS, Fiona heard on the island telegraph, their affair was over.
“You two didn’t last long, did you?” Nikki at the bakery asked. “What’d he do?”
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Carin demanded.
“I know he’s my brother and I know he can be an idiot, and I realize you might not want to tell me,” Molly said, “but why did you kick him out?”
Anything she answered, Fiona knew was going to be wrong.
“Lachlan is going his way and I’m going mine,” she said. That seemed most diplomatic—and actually closest to the truth.
Or it would have been if Lachlan hadn’t started turning up on her doorstep again and again.
The first time she opened the door and found him standing there, a disarming grin on his handsome face, she’d been momentarily speechless. “What are you doing here?” she asked at last.
“You mean you don’t want me to strip off my clothes and model for you?” His grin broadened at the sight of her mouth opening and closing like a fish. He shrugged. “Just thought you might like to come to the game today.”
“The game?”
“The soccer game,” he clarified patiently. “The island team. Boys and girls. The one I’m coaching at your suggestion. I thought you might like to watch us play. That’s all.”
“Why now?” She hadn’t been to a game yet.
“Because you haven’t been to a game yet,” he said. “And I think the kids would appreciate the support.” There was a brief twinkle in his eyes before they got a faraway look.
‘“People who are going to take advantage of local amenities,” he quoted from memory, “should be willing to contribute their skills—however meager—to the betterment of the island’s children.”’ He gave her a meaningful look. “Even if it only means you stand there and cheer.”
“Yes, I…I see what you mean. I’ll…do that. Sometime. Not now. I have work to do now.” She started to close the door.
“Got a new naked guy in the studio?”
“I’m doing Lacey Wolfe. Fully clothed.”
He grinned. “Glad to hear it. Well, another time then,” he gave her a wink and bounded off the porch leaving her staring after him.
He stopped by late that evening to tell her about the game. “Thought you’d want to know we won,” he said and walked straight past her without an invitation and went into the kitchen where he opened the refrigerator, took out the jug and poured them each a glass of iced tea. Then he paced the room, glass in hand, describing the game in vivid detail.
Fiona huddled against the counter, clutching Sparks in her arms, as she feasted her eyes on him at the same time she wished desperately that he would go away!
“Your nephew Tom, he’s a good player. You should have come to watch