growing between them? But they weren’t and they couldn’t. They might share a mutual infatuation but it could never move beyond that.
Something told her that if she gave her heart to Ian Summerhill, it would be damaged forever.
* * *
IAN WALKED BACK to his rented house, his thoughts whirling and his face hot with mortification.
Good Lord. He really was an idiot. Had he really blurted out that he was infatuated with her?
What had he been thinking?
The answer to that was quite simple. He hadn’t been thinking at all. The words had slipped out without a moment’s thought behind them.
He was hopeless. Utterly hopeless. Put a beautiful woman in his arms and he completely lost his head.
He should never have kissed her. He still didn’t know what had come over him. That was twice now that he had acted without thinking and had simply taken what he wanted like some kind of Neanderthal. And that was probably being unfair to Neanderthals.
He had to be far more careful around her. He meant what he had told her earlier. He wasn’t looking for a relationship, even if one between him and a woman who lived five thousand miles away was even possible. The children needed him right now. It would be hard enough for them to pack up their lives and move at the end of the summer. They had already endured far too many life changes for children so young. He had vowed he wouldn’t date anyone until Thomas was at least through grade school, which right now seemed eons away.
The thunderstorm had blown over as quickly as it had arisen, leaving the air cool and the lake churning and restless—much as he felt inside.
He hurried through the wet grass, managing to wrestle most of his emotions under control by the time he entered the house. Inside, he found his father reading the newspaper. Amelia and Thomas were showing Margaret their assortment of stones collected in the short time they had been in Idaho.
“Puppies all managed?” Henry asked.
Ian could feel his cheeks heat and hoped like Hades that his father wouldn’t notice his reaction.
“Yes,” he answered. “All tucked in, safe and dry.”
“Nice of you to help out your neighbor,” Margaret said, looking up from a heart-shaped stone Thomas had found along the lakeshore.
“More like she’s helping me. Samantha has been very kind to us.”
“She’s letting Dad park his boat at her house,” Amelia informed her grandparents.
“Is that right?” Henry asked.
“When we rented this house, I thought the dock out there belonged to our rental,” he explained. “I must have misunderstood something the estate agent said. It turned out the dock belongs to Samantha’s property. She’s been kind enough to let me moor my research boat there and use it whenever I need it.”
“She’s very pretty,” Margaret observed.
“Isn’t she?” he replied as blandly as he could.
“Gemma says she’s nice, too. I just spoke with your sister to tell her Samantha had agreed to help me find a new dress for the wedding.”
He could only imagine how that conversation had gone. He had a feeling the topic of mother-of-the-bride dresses had only filled a portion of it. The idea of his mother and sister in cahoots, working together to push him and Samantha Fremont together, filled him with apprehension.
It didn’t matter how hard they pushed, Ian thought. Nothing would come of their efforts. How could it? He might be infatuated with her but anything beyond a few kisses was completely impossible.
* * *
“I UNDERSTAND YOU went hiking this morning with Ian Summerhill and his children.”
Samantha gaped at Katrina later that evening as they sat together on the terrace of Serenity Harbor, the luxurious house where her friend lived with her family.
“How on earth could you know that?”
“Jennifer Hyer said she saw you going up the trail to Bridal Veil Falls when she was coming down.”
She barely remembered bumping into Jen on the trail among all the other hikers they had passed on their way up, maybe because she’d been so busy trying not to wheeze her way up the trail and to keep her attraction to Ian under wraps.
Now that she thought of it, she remembered seeing Jen running down the trail with another of her fit friends and having a completely petty urge to trip her skinny butt. One she would never act on, of course.
“And she had to phone you the moment she had cell service again so she could gossip about it?”
“Are you kidding? When Samantha Fremont is caught out and