Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,39
to sit up. “Fine. I’m fine.”
She managed to stay awake until Hugh set the copter down on the small landing field near the cricket grounds. Then he carried her bags to his waiting van and Nathan carried her.
“I can walk,” Carin protested.
But Nathan ignored her. “Humor me,” he said. “I love carrying wriggling females.”
She shot him a look of annoyance and stayed perfectly still to spite him, then realized that was exactly what he had in mind.
He tucked her into the second seat of the van and clambered into the back one, then reached up and slung the door shut. “All set,” he told Hugh who was in the driver’s seat.
Hugh put the van in gear, and they rumbled out of the field and onto the road. Carin was leaning forward eagerly now, looking forward to seeing the town, to seeing her house, to being home again. It felt as if she’d been gone a year, not merely a few days.
“Hugh! My house is that way!” She pointed to the right fork when Hugh took the left.
Hugh just kept driving, bouncing them along the rutted road toward the far end of the island.
The penny dropped. “Oh, no.” Carin protested. “You’re not taking me to Nathan’s!”
“You can’t stay at your place,” he said practically.
“Certainly I can! Stop this car! Hugh, turn around!”
But Hugh neither stopped nor turned. He wound through the jungly woods heading directly for Nathan’s place.
“Damn it!” Carin shoved herself up, making her arm hurt. “You can’t kidnap me like this!”
“Fine. We’ll just go back to the copter and take you back to the hospital.”
“Take me home!”
“Can’t.” He shook his head. “Doc said you need care.”
“I’ll get care. Lacey can—”
“Lacey’s a child,” Nathan said firmly. “And you are an adult. So why don’t you try acting like one.”
Carin glared at him, furious at being told off that way. “How dare you! She’s my daughter! She can—”
“No doubt she can,” Nathan cut in. “Our daughter is bright and capable and she would probably bend over backward to do whatever you wanted her to do because you’re her mother and she realizes how much you’ve done for her. But—” he fixed her with a hard level stare “—I would hope you’re not selfish enough to ask her to do it.”
Carin opened her mouth, then closed it again. She sat, rigid, glaring at him, hating him for putting her at such a disadvantage, for being right, for making her feel like a fool. She didn’t speak, just glowered.
He didn’t back down. “She’s at my place now, fixing up a room for you, making it nice for you. She and Estelle have been working on turning my dad’s office into a bedroom for you so you can be on the main floor and you won’t have to climb stairs, which you would have to do at your house…”
“I could have,” Carin said sulkily.
“And the very least you can do,” Nathan went on, “is to be grateful to her for her efforts. You can stop acting like a spoiled child and start acting like a mother.”
Carin felt as if steam was going to come right out of her ears. “I’m not selfish! You’re the one who’s being selfish! Pushing into our lives, taking over, shoving into my gallery opening, forcing me to stay at your place—”
“Get it out of your system now,” Nathan said implacably. “Because you’d better not carry on like this in front of Lacey. Bad enough you’re doing it in front of Hugh.”
Hugh? Dear God, she’d forgotten about Hugh, driving silently on toward Nathan’s, listening and not responding at all.
“Whose side are you on?” she asked him now.
His gaze flicked up, and their eyes met in the rearview mirror. He looked abashed and apologetic. “Nath’s just trying to help, Carrie.”
Carin arched a brow. “Nath?” she echoed. “Are you two buddies now?” She looked at Hugh accusingly.
“We’ve, um, talked…”
“Talked? And what did he tell you? Did he tell you he’s trying to run my life?”
“And you’re making it such a pleasure,” Nathan said dryly.
Carin flushed and glared at him.
“The doc said you couldn’t be going up and down stairs and you had to have someone with you or he wouldn’t let you leave. You know I don’t have any place to put you up. And Lachlan’s place is full this time of year. And it would be a hell of an imposition on Estelle and Maurice.”
“I know that,” Carin muttered.
“So Nathan said you could stay with him.”
“Out of the kindness of his