Driftwood Cottage Read Online Free PDF Page A

on the hooks,” Mick told him firmly. “I just showed you how to do it.”
    Davy wrinkled his nose. “But it’s yucky.”
    Connor grinned. “That it is. Give me a minute with your granddad and little Mick, then I’ll come help you.”
    While listening to the exchange, Mick studied Connorcuriously. “What brings you home? Were we expecting you?”
    “Do I need to make a reservation these days?” Connor asked defensively. For a time he’d been banished from his home for trying to interfere in his father’s plan to wed his mother again, but he’d thought his exile was in the past. In fact, he’d even moved in for a time when Heather had left his son here for several weeks. He’d commuted to work in Baltimore during that time.
    “Of course you don’t need a reservation,” Mick said impatiently. “You just haven’t come back here since the wedding. Or should I say since Heather took your boy to be with her?”
    “I was persuaded that I was overdue for a visit,” Connor admitted wryly.
    Mick chuckled. “Then the mission was a success. You can thank your mother for pulling that together.”
    Connor frowned. “Mom sent Kevin and the others to Baltimore? I’d figured you were behind it.”
    “Not this time. It was your mother who planted a few seeds here and there,” Mick admitted.
    “I suppose it was all about getting me down here so I could discover that Heather’s living in town with my son.”
    “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Mick agreed.
    Connor directed a sour look at his father. “It’s not going to work, you know.”
    Mick reached over to put another worm on Davy’s hook when he saw the boy struggling with it, then glanced up at Connor. “What’s not going to work?”
    “Throwing Heather and me together. We’re not getting married.”
    Mick shrugged. “Up to you, though it seems a shame for this boy of yours not to have a full-time daddy in his life.” He frowned at Connor. “And before you say a word, I may have been gone too much, but I was a full-time father, and all of you knew it.”
    Back on the defensive, Connor said, “My son knows I love him.”
    “How’s he supposed to know a thing like that when he never sees you?”
    “I see him all the time,” Connor said. “Heather brought him for a visit just last week.”
    “For an hour or two, I’ll bet,” Mick scoffed. “What kind of parenting is that?”
    “He’s little more than a year old,” Connor protested. “Right now he needs his mother more than he needs me. When he’s a little older, he’ll spend more time with me.”
    “And he’ll still grow up to complain that he hardly knew his daddy,” Mick said, then held up a hand to forestall Connor’s retort. “Pot calling the kettle black, I know, but that makes me the voice of experience. Don’t let these precious years pass by without being a part of them. Learn from my mistakes.”
    Connor considered another quick, heated comeback, but instead dropped down onto the dock next to little Mick. “Hey, buddy, catch anything?”
    His son gave him a wide grin and happily waved his tiny fishing rod in the air. He crawled off Mick’s lap to lean into Connor’s side, snuggling close, and reminding Connor in ways that Mick’s words never could, of just what his stubbornness was costing him.
     
    When the quilt shop had emptied of customers around lunchtime, Heather called next door and reached Megan. “Do you have a minute?”
    “Jane’s about to go pick up a couple of sandwiches, so I can’t leave just now. What’s going on?”
    “Could you just meet me out front? We’ll both be able to see if any customers come this way.”
    “Sure. Do you want Jane to bring back something for you, too?”
    Food was the last thing on Heather’s mind. All she’d been able to think about for the past hour was Connor’s unexpected appearance earlier.
    “If she’s going to Sally’s, have her bring me back a tuna fish sandwich on a croissant,” she said eventually. “I’ll