Storybook Dad (Harlequin American Romance) (13 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Emily pulled into the parking lot of Bucket List 101,
her thoughts running in a million different directions, yet converging all in
one spot. Seth was safe and sound, and that was all that truly mattered.

It was time to put the rest of the story behind her, where it
belonged. Her passion was her company. She needed to focus on making it the
premier outdoor adventure destination in the region.

No, she didn’t have a husband and the prospect of children to
look forward to, like Kate. But she had a company that was changing lives. Was
one really better or more important than the other?

With a quick shake of her head, Emily grabbed her purse from
the passenger seat and her keys from the ignition and headed toward the large
white barn she’d converted into her offices, on the western edge of town. Here,
she could be herself—adventurous, free-spirited and healthy. At least as far as
her clients were concerned.

She pulled the door open and stepped inside to find the
reception desk empty. “Trish? I’m back. You still here?”

The soft squeaking sounds of her assistant’s shoes preceded her
appearance in the outer office. “My mom just called. She said the good news is
all over the television and radio stations.”

Emily felt the smile spread across her face. “We found him.
Sleeping peacefully inside an old tree house in the woods behind his
grandmother’s place, completely oblivious to the search taking place all over
Winoka.”

“Is that why you went tearing out of here this morning?” Trish
asked, claiming her spot behind the desk.

“I’m sorry about that, Trish. I really am. But all of a sudden
I remembered something Mark’s—
Mr. Reynolds’s—
son had
told me when I saw them at the beach after work the other night. He’d mentioned
a tree house he’d found, and that he liked to go there to be by himself.”

“Be by himself? Why does a four-year-old need to be by
himself?”

Emily placed her purse on the floor, and perched on the edge of
the desk. “Well, considering this particular four-year-old lost his mom to
cancer six months ago, I imagine he’s probably got more reasons than either of
us could fathom.”

Trish tsked softly. “Wow. That’s rough. Thank God you found
him, though.” Reaching into her top drawer, she pulled out a couple of apples
and offered one to Emily.

“Oh, thanks, I missed lunch.” She reached for the fruit and
took a bite, her mind wandering back through the morning, but stopping short of
the many reasons seeing Mark had been so hard.

“Wow. So that guy—the one who was in here for the orienteering
class? He lost his wife and then he couldn’t find his son? Wow.” Trish narrowed
her eyes in thought as she crunched her own apple. “I think if I were that kid’s
dad, I’d be tempted to stick him in a bubble where he couldn’t ever get lost, or
sick, or whatever.”

Pulling the apple from her mouth, Emily tossed the barely eaten
fruit into the trash and stood, her appetite suddenly squashed. “No. Mark’s
preferred bubble isn’t one that keeps Seth
in,
it’s
one that keeps everyone else
out
. Of Seth’s
life.”

She heard the bitterness in her voice, felt the weight of
Trish’s questioning eyes and literally grasped for the first topic she could
find to change the subject. Her hand closed over the first in a long line of
pink sticky notes attached to her assistant’s desk. “I take it I missed a few
calls while I was out? Anything important or truly exciting?”

Trish glanced downward, running her fingernail along the line
of messages. “I signed up this person…and this person…and this one, all for next
week’s Intro to Nature’s Workout Room and…oh, yeah, this woman—” she peeled off
the fourth note and gave it a quick glance before handing it to Emily “—is from
Winoka Magazine.
She wants to do an article on
you.”

Taking in the reporter’s name and information, Emily nodded.
“You mean an article on the company, right?”

“No. On you. She says she’ll touch on the company in the story,
but this particular piece is on female entrepreneurs and the spark that lit
their proverbial match, as she put it.”

“My proverbial match, eh? Hmm. Something tells me a little kid
with a big imagination and a sixty-four pack of crayons probably isn’t the kind
of tale she’s looking for.”

“I’d read it,” Trish quipped, moving her finger to the next
note and pausing.

“Yeah, I guess I’d read it, too. And I’d probably send a copy
to my mom for her scrapbook. So I guess we’d have three readers, if nothing
else.”

“Boss?”

At the change in Trish’s tone of voice, Emily glanced up from
the notes in her own hand. “Yes?”

“There was one other call. From a man named Jed Walker.”

“And?”

“He started out as a prospective client at first, but
then…”

She looked from Trish to the note in question and back again.
“But then what? Is there a problem I should know about?”

Her assistant peeled the note from her desk and crumpled it in
her hand, shrugging as she did so. “Nothing we can really do anything about. But
I still felt bad.”

“Bad about what?”

“Not being able to help this guy. I mean, he knows he can’t go
wheeling through the woods with a compass or whatever, but it’s kind of a shame
that he can’t take one of your survival seminars simply because he can’t get
down the stairs and into the classroom, you know?”

Finally, Emily was able to make sense of what she was hearing.
“Is this guy disabled or something?”

“He’s in a wheelchair. Lives on his own. He’s got this dream of
learning how to scuba dive one day despite the fact that he’s paralyzed, and he
was hoping he could sign up for one of your scuba trips to the Caribbean this
winter. I told him that wasn’t possible, but that we might be able to get some
people in here to carry him in and out of the classroom if he wanted to sit in
on one of your survival classes, but he said no. Said he gets where he needs to
go on his own, without anyone carrying him around like a baby.” Trish tossed the
paper wad into the trash beside her desk. “The guy was a real firecracker, I
tell you. Real determined to live life on his own terms, just like you. When I
mentioned the survival class idea, he said it wouldn’t do him much good anyway,
since most campgrounds have gravel parking lots and are situated much too far
from the actual facilities.

“Made me kind of sad when he said that. I guess I’m so used to
being able to walk that I never really stopped to notice how life isn’t set up
for people like Mr. Walker.”

Emily peeked into the trash can. “And this guy wants to learn
how to scuba dive, when he can’t walk?”

Trish nodded. “Said it was his dream long before the car
accident that confined him to his wheelchair—”

The ringing of the office phone cut their conversation short,
sending Trish into full-blown assistant mode and Emily down the hall toward her
office, the image of the wadded-up pink sticky note front and center in her
thoughts.

She understood all about determination. It was why she was
standing in the middle of a building she’d purchased with the intention of
starting her own company. A company that was now thriving, thanks to her own
refusal to give up.

She understood the desire to live life on one’s own terms. It
was why she wouldn’t let Kate cajole her into a life she was no longer meant to
have.

And she understood the man’s refusal to let people carry him
around. The mere thought of being in that position one day with her multiple
sclerosis was enough to drive her batty.

So how could she continue to tout Bucket List 101 as a way to
fulfill lifelong dreams if she wasn’t equipped to do that for
everyone—especially someone as driven and full of heart as the man whose name
was scrawled across a piece of paper now crumpled in Trish’s trash can?

Deflated, Emily reached inside her office door and flipped on
the overhead light, her gaze going to her desk and the pamphlets Mark had left
behind prior to the barbecue and a night she wished she could forget, but knew
she never would.

She’d been so angry when he’d brought the literature by, so
quick to tell him she didn’t need any help from him or his foundation. But now,
in light of the man Trish had had to turn away because they were unable to
accommodate his challenges, maybe it was time to rethink that notion.

When she was sure her assistant was off the phone, she pressed
the intercom button. “Trish?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“We’re about helping people realize their dreams, aren’t
we?”

“That’s what the little thingy out here in the waiting room
says.”

“That’s what it says in here on my desk, too.” Leaning forward,
she poked a finger at the replica of the sign that greeted her customers from
atop a table in plain sight of Trish’s desk. “Which means we’ve got a whole
bunch of work to do to make that happen.”

“Isn’t that what we’re already doing, with the course
descriptions and the classes we keep adding?”

“But we can do better. We can do more. If we don’t, we’ll need
to take down the sign we’re both looking at right now.” She swiveled her chair
to the right and flipped on her computer, ready to begin the initial legwork for
something she should have done a long time ago. “Oh, and Trish? When you get a
chance, would you bring that message in here?”

A pause gave way to a funny little snort. “Uh, boss? I already
gave you all your messages.”

“I’m talking about the one in your trash can…the one with Mr.
Walker’s phone number on it. There are some things I’d like to discuss with
him.”

* * *

M
ARK
PULLED
HIS
CELL
PHONE
from the side pocket in his
car door and scrolled through his recent calls, finding the number for Bucket
List 101 among them. He found it hard to believe it had been only five days
since he’d first laid eyes on Emily. So much had happened.

She’d affected him in a way he hadn’t seen coming. Sure, he
wished things were different, that they could have met twenty years in the
future, when he didn’t have to worry about Seth quite so much. But they hadn’t
and he did.

His son had to come first.

Seth.

Leaving him with Gram for a much needed nap had been difficult.
But the only reason Mark had been able to tuck Seth in for a nap at all was
because of Emily. The least he could do was say thank-you.

Unfortunately, it was all the other things Mark wanted to say
and do to her that kept pushing their way into his thoughts and leaving him more
than a little unsettled. He wanted to shower her face with kisses of gratitude.
He wanted to run his hands down her exquisite body. He wanted to peel off her
clothes and make love to her all over again.

But he couldn’t.

She was sick. And he was a father.

His mind made up, he pressed the button for Emily’s office
number and put the Blue Tooth device to his ear, the clamminess of his hand a
shameful reminder of why he was suddenly so nervous. If a friend had led on a
woman the way he’d led Emily on the other night, Mark would have been
disgusted.

And he was. At himself.

Emily deserved an apology as much as she deserved a thank-you,
and he would make sure she got both by the time their call was over. As he
listened to the phone ring, he prepared himself for what to say and how to say
it. But when it became apparent no one was going to pick up, his nerves gave way
to disappointment.

What was with him? Why couldn’t he just shut this girl out?

A sixth ring yielded to a seventh before the call was finally
answered. “Bucket List 101, this is Trish, how can I help you?”

He steered his car around a parked car at the end of his mom’s
road and stopped, his uncertainty over what to say rivaled only by his
uncertainty over where, exactly, he was going in the first place.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Say something, idiot…

“Uh…yeah, hi. This is Mark. Mark Reynolds. I took a class on
orienteering from your company the other day and I—”

“Mark, hi. Wow. I couldn’t believe it when Emily told me the
missing boy was yours. I bet you haven’t let him out of your sight since she
found him in that tree house for you.”

He closed his eyes momentarily, the image of his son alive and
well in the corner of the dilapidated tree house bringing a tightness to his
throat. It was all still so surreal. “You have no idea, Trish. No idea.”

She paused, then said, “I bet you want to talk to Emily and say
thanks, huh?”

Among other things, he thought. To Trish, he said, “I do. Can
you put me through to her?”

“Emily is out of the office at the moment. And since she didn’t
tell me where she was going, I can’t be sure when she’ll be back—if she even
comes back this afternoon at all. But I can certainly put you through to her
voice mail, if you’d like.”

It wasn’t the way he wanted to do it, but maybe it was for the
best. That way he could thank her for finding Seth, apologize for his own
shortcomings and then leave her to her life. “Yeah, okay, that’ll work.”

But the second he heard Emily’s voice in his ear, he knew he
couldn’t leave a message. Calling her wasn’t just about saying thanks. Or even
apologizing. He wanted to hear her voice—talking specifically to him. He wanted
to look into her eyes, wanted to scale a mountain with her by his side, wanted
to learn about her past. He wanted to tell her one of Seth’s jokes and hear the
way she laughed with her whole being. Heck, he just wanted to be close to her
again....

No. A voice message was not the way to tell her how he felt, or
to explain why he couldn’t see her again.

Ending the call, he turned left at the next cross street, his
destination suddenly clear.