Nathan's Child - By Anne McAllister Page 0,9

Mom told me you were a photographer. I asked if she had any pictures you took, and she said no. I asked if she could find some. So on my birthday when I was eight, she gave me one of your books. Now I have all of them. They’re great.”

Nathan didn’t know whether to be flattered or furious. Certainly he was flattered that Lacey approved of his work. But he was also furious that Carin had decided that having his books was all of him that Lacey would need.

“But I like Zeno the best,” Lacey said. “Did you live with him?”

Zeno was a wolf. He had been, for want of a better word, the hero of Nathan’s last book and in some cases, it seemed, his alter ego, as well. Zeno’s “lone wolf” status had been similar to Nathan’s own.

“I didn’t live with him,” he said. “But I spent a lot of time watching him, observing, studying, trying to get to know him.”

Lacey bobbed her head. “You did. You knew him. He was my favorite.”

“Mine, too.” The book itself was called Solo and dealt with several years in the life of one young lone wolf. The project had grown incidentally out of an earlier book Nathan had done on Northern wildlife. While there he’d come across a small wolf pack with several young pups. One of them, a young male, often wrestled and played with the others, but seemed more inclined to go off scouting around on his own. Intrigued, Nathan had shot a lot of photos of him.

A year later, when a magazine assignment had taken him back to the same area, he had, coincidentally, happened across the wolves again. The young loner had been an adolescent then, and Nathan had shot more rolls of film of the wolf by himself and interacting with the pack.

After that encounter he’d looked for more assignments in the area, always trying to track down the wolf, who by this time he’d begun to think of as Zeno.

Two years ago he’d simply indulged his desire to learn more by taking the better part of a year to live in the woods up there and study Zeno’s comings and goings.

Solo had been published this past spring, the story in text and pictures of one young lone wolf. It had garnered considerable critical praise.

It had also fueled a ridiculous amount of comparison between Nathan Wolfe’s own life as a “lone wolf” photographer. He and Zeno were somehow connected in the public’s perception.

More than one magazine article had asked, Who would be the woman to settle him down? And it wasn’t Zeno they’d been talking about.

By that time, though, Nathan had learned of Lacey’s existence, and the question of which woman would “settle him down” had already, to his mind, been decided.

It was just a matter of coming to terms with her—and tying up all the loose ends first.

“Are you going to go back and see Zeno again?” Lacey asked him.

“I don’t know.”

He had planned to. He’d intended to go there again this summer after he’d finished his other jobs. Gaby had been pushing him to do so. But he’d made those plans last summer, before he’d learned about Lacey. For the moment at least, Zeno was going to have to wait.

“I wish you would,” Lacey said. “We gotta know what happens to him.”

“Maybe,” Nathan said. “But I’ve got work to do now here.”

“You’re going to shoot here?”

He shook his head. “I’m writing here. I’ve done the shooting. Now I have to organize the photos for a book.”

“What’s it about?”

“Sea turtles.”

“Oh.” Lacey’s expression said she didn’t think that would be nearly as intriguing as another book on wolves.

“I got to dive with some,” Nathan told her.

“Do you know how to scuba dive? I want to learn to scuba dive. Mom says maybe when I’m older, but it’s expensive. Hugh said he’d teach me, but she thinks it would be presuming.” Lacey wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think Hugh would mind. But as long as you’re here…”

“Who’s Hugh?”

Lacey giggled. “Hugh the hunk. That’s what Mom and Florence call him.” Lacey giggled.

“Who’s Florence?” Hugh’s wife, Nathan hoped.

“Lorenzo’s mother.”

Not Hugh’s wife, then. “So what does this Hugh do, when he isn’t scuba diving?” What sort of “hunk” was Carin running around with?

“He runs the charter service. He’s got a seaplane and a helicopter and three boats. Last summer when Lorenzo had to have his appendix out, Hugh flew him to the hospital in Nassau. When he came home, Hugh