Ember In The Heart

Scowling at him, I responded, “You asked me to look after her. This is me looking after her. Holding her in my arms while she cried over her mother’s abandonment was heartbreaking.” Tears glistened in my eyes at the memory. “I’m just trying to help.”

He seemed stunned as he studied my face. Then to my shock, his expression softened, those dark eyes of his warmed. And suddenly he was unbearably good-looking. “Fine,” he said, voice gentle. “Then I’ll accept your judgmental advice came from a good place and forgive you.”

I grimaced. “I can die happy.”

He leaned into me. “You are such a pain in the ass.”

“Back at you.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You take everything I say the wrong way and assume the worst.”

“Back at you,” he retorted.

Then his dark gaze dropped to my mouth and just like the flick of switch, electric tension crackled between us.

Feeling my body react, wanting to melt toward him, I retreated. “Well then … maybe we should call a truce. From this point onward, we both agree to assume that the other has only good intentions.”

Foster considered this. “I suppose we can try that.”

It was really difficult not to offer a pithy response to his bored tone.

“Fine. Good. That’s settled then. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I’d turned toward his door when he murmured, “Do you swim every night?”

Halting at the strange question, I glanced over my shoulder at him. His expression was unreadable. “I try to. Why?”

“Why do you do it?”

“Because I … I like it.”

For some weird reason he seemed disappointed by my answer.

I frowned. “I started night swimming when my parents died. Jade and I became guardians to Celeste and Luna. Moon had just left for college. Jade was getting her teaching degree and was almost finished … so I dropped out of college to look after the girls.” An ache still flared inside me at the reminder of what might have been. “I wanted to be a teacher too. But the girls were more important. Losing Mom and Dad, bearing the responsibility of parenthood at twenty-one … suffice to say, I didn’t sleep well at night for a while.”

His expression was filled with understanding and something even more dangerous.

Tenderness.

“So you swam to exhaust yourself.”

I nodded, struggling to regulate my breathing. “Yeah. Then it just became a habit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For what I said at the engagement party. For the unfair comments I’ve made since.”

Shocked, in a good way, I smiled at him. Really smiled at him.

Suddenly, he looked stunned, like I’d kicked him in the gut. He blinked a few times.

“Thank you,” I said. “And I’m sorry for insulting you in return. Let’s do better.”

Foster swallowed hard and nodded.

An awkward, tension-filled silence fell between us and I took that as my cue to leave.

4

Foster

He was obsessed.

There was no other word for it.

Ember Bonet had become an obsession.

At night, he’d watch her swimming like a stalker from his bedroom window, waiting for her to return safely into the house before he’d go to bed. When he got home from work, he wanted her to linger and not because he didn’t love spending time with G but because he liked the changes he saw in G around Ember.

Upon taking her advice that night in the office where she’d smiled at him and he’d felt the beauty of it like a gut punch, he’d talked with Georgie and assured her of his love. And every night since, after he read to her, he’d tuck her into bed and tell her how much he loved her and how glad he was they got to be together all the time now.

Between that and Ember’s influence, Georgie was back to her old self again, proving kids really were resilient.

At work he interviewed nannies but he had a hard time picking one when the woman next door had captured G’s heart. But he knew it wasn’t fair to Ember to keep asking her to work her schedule around his daughter, so he’d narrowed the choices down to three women.

And he needed to choose soon.

Not just for Ember, but for Georgie to give her stability, and, selfishly, for himself.

Because he needed to get over Ember.

He needed to rid himself of this overwhelming desire to be in her company all the time. Why? Colt asked when he confided his attraction to her to his best friend.

The answer:

It all came down to his parents and having Georgie so young.

Carolyn got pregnant when they were in college. Which was a mammoth disappointment to his father, Edward Darwin. His father was the president of an insurance corporation and the Darwins had been leading members of New England society for over a hundred years. His mother was Madeline Bourne—her family really did date back to the Mayflower. As their only child, Foster was required to act, think, and succeed with the family reputation in always in mind. Having a kid at twenty was the end of the world for the Darwins. Determined it wouldn’t derail them, they insisted Foster remain at college and tried to force him to marry Carolyn. He refused. Another point against him. But he did stay in college and accepted his parents help with childcare. For the first couple of years, Foster wasn’t the best father. He’d worked hard at business school but he’d also been working his ass off attempting to make connections. Through hard work and a bit of luck he met Colt and the rest, as they say, was history. However, one weekend, it was his turn with Georgie. She was barely two and toddling all over the place … his parents had fallen in love with their granddaughter and he was watching his father have a conversation with G.