so beautiful! But then, she was only inches away, so close he could feel the heat of her body. A sigh shuddered through him.
He didn’t know how long he could last.
“Dad?” Lacey’s whisper cut into the silence, surprising him. She’d been so tired he thought she’d be asleep before they shut out the lights.
He rolled to a sitting position. “What?”
Her head appeared above the little wall. “Just checking.” Her grin flashed in the moonlight. “I woke up and thought I’d dreamed it. But it’s true. We’re really here.”
“Oh, yeah,” Nathan muttered. “We’re really here.”
“Good.” She sighed contentedly. Her head disappeared again and she settled back against the pillows. “G’night, Dad.”
“G’night, Lace.”
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“I hope it’s always like this.”
God help him, Nathan thought.
Carin wished it could always be like this.
Well, not the going-to-bed with Nathan just inches away. At least, not if she had to resist him. That was hard. And it didn’t get any easier with each night that passed.
But the rest of the time was far more wonderful than she ever could have dreamed. She’d envisioned a happy little trip for herself and Lacey, a chance to sightsee, the possibility of visiting some of the places she’d known growing up, to show Lacey a little of her history.
But this was so much more.
And they owed it all to Nathan.
One more way in which she was beholden to Nathan. The list went on and on. She didn’t want to feel grateful. But on Lacey’s behalf, she had to be.
Lacey was having a wonderful time. Sierra, with Lily in tow, took her up to see Uncle Dominic in his office the first day, while Nathan and Carin went to the gallery to talk to Stacia. From there, Lacey told her, they all—Dominic included—went sightseeing. They took a boat trip around Manhattan Island. They saw so many things Lacey couldn’t remember them all. She was delighted—as much because she’d enjoyed the day with her uncle, aunt and cousin as because of where they went.
The next day Mariah and Rhys and Douglas took Lacey and the twins to the zoo and to Central Park. Lacey loved it—mostly loved them.
“I wish they would all come to Pelican Cay,” she told Carin and Nathan that evening. “They can come soon, can’t they?”
“Sure,” Nathan said easily.
And Carin smiled, pained and pleased at the same time. “Of course.”
Her own days had been as memorable as Lacey’s—in a far different way. Stacia had asked her and Nathan to come down to the gallery to supervise the hanging of the paintings and photos and to meet with a couple of interviewers. She had been nervous, never having done anything on this scale before.
But Stacia made it easy. And Nathan made it an experience she would never forget. In the gallery she saw the professional Nathan Wolfe. She knew he had an eye for a good photo, but now she saw that he had an eye, too, for how those photos—and her paintings—ought to be displayed.
He countered Stacia’s idea of just having their work in the same gallery and dealing with the same island with his own notion that the paintings and photos ought to work together, side by side, complementing and contrasting with each other, offering two perspectives on island life.
“Island Eyes, isn’t that what you want?” he said to Stacia.
“But you don’t know what paintings I’ve done,” Carin said.
In fact, it seemed that he did. While she’d been laid up, he had helped Stacia pack and ship all her work. He’d taken photos of them. And then he’d gone out and shot pictures that would echo and complement her paintings.
As Stacia and the gallery personnel hung them, with Nathan’s help, Carin sat back and stared. It was like seeing her vision amplified, developed, shaded, sharpened. Each of her paintings became a focal point, heightened by Nathan’s work—and Lacey’s—which surrounded it.
Carin was amazed at the quality of Lacey’s work.
“She’s good,” Nathan said simply. He had picked half a dozen of their daughter’s photos to use in the show and had matted and framed them himself.
“With Lacey’s help,” he told Carin. “That’s what we were doing some of the mornings when we were gone.”
“Does she know they’re going to be up?” she asked.
He shook his head and smiled. “One more little surprise.”
Lacey would be over the moon. Carin felt a lump grow in her throat.
One more thing they owed Nathan.
The third day—the day of the opening—Sierra came over and fixed both Carin’s hair and Lacey’s.
“Will you dye it blue?” Lacey begged. “Or