Think About Love by Vanessa Grant Page A

 
    She'd grown up on Gabriola Island. Here, in this house? Or was this someone else's house? The next of kin listed in her employment records was Dorothy Marshall, at this address. He hadn't checked the phone book to see if Dorothy Marshall really lived here. This house could belong to someone else.  
    The baby's father, perhaps? Sam's parents?
    Whose baby was Sam putting to bed? Who owned the Honda outside? And what the hell had happened to the Sam he'd appointed to Tremaine's board of directors?
    Sam returned without the baby. "I think she's really asleep this time."
    "I've never seen your hair down before."
    "It's not businesslike."
    "The computer industry has a pretty loose dress code."
    She shrugged and that half smile appeared. "People say I look about sixteen with my hair down. It's hard to get people to take you seriously if you look like a teenager."
    She looked all woman, and she wasn't wearing a bra. The sweatshirt was thick, loose, but when she moved he saw the motion of her breasts.
    He jammed his hands in his pockets again. The last time he'd felt so uncomfortable in a woman's presence he'd been fifteen.
    "Do you want coffee? A soft drink? Dorothy doesn't keep alcohol in the house."
    "I want an explanation. Who's Dorothy?"
    "My grandmother."
    "So there is a grandmother."

    When she brought the coffee into the living room, she found him staring at Dorothy's collection of pictures and certificates in the stairwell leading up to the loft. He pointed at a picture of a young girl sitting on a tall horse. "You?"
    "My mother. She was fifteen there." The picture had been taken less than a year before her mother met an American drifter on Drumbeg Beach, fell in love, and ran away with him only weeks later.
    "You look very much alike."
    "Looks can be deceptive."
    He shot her a penetrating glance, then moved to the next frame, a document certifying that Moonbeam Jones had successfully completed the beginner's swimming class.
    "Who's Moonbeam Jones?" he asked as he took the steaming mug from her hand.
    No one had called her Moonbeam in so many years, except her mother of course, and her grandmother occasionally slipped.
    She took her own coffee mug and settled on the big armchair. At this point, keeping her private life to herself was the least of her worries.
    "My mother named me Moonbeam and my sister Star. I had swimming lessons here one summer." The first time Dorothy rescued Samantha and Susan from foster care, at the ages of ten and eight.
    "Samantha M. Jones. M for Moonbeam."
    "There's something I need to tell you. Can you sit down? You're making me nervous."
    "You're never nervous."
    She wasn't answering that one.  
    She waited until he settled on the sofa, until he'd taken a sip of the coffee. What she had to tell him wasn't going to improve his mood.
    "I can't leave until tomorrow afternoon. I'm keeping tabs on preparations from here, though, and I've got a web conference set up first thing tomorrow. If you can fly me with the chopper, we can get to Tremaine's mid-afternoon."  
    "And?" he asked. "There's more, isn't there?"
    "I'll need to leave early, before the open house is over. I have to get back to Nanaimo tomorrow night before the last Gabriola Island ferry sails at ten fifty-five."
    She heard Cal set his cup on the end table.
    She stared at the floor, not at him, and said, "After that, I need two weeks off."
    Some hair had fallen forward over her face. She pushed it back with her free hand and muttered, "I should have put my hair up."
    "I need an explanation, Sam."
    She was a businesswoman. Time to stop sounding like an airhead and give him the explanation he deserved.
    "The baby is my niece. My grandmother is her guardian, but Dorothy's been hospitalized. I know it's bad timing." She gestured to the computer. "I am in touch. Telephone. Web conferencing."
    "So you said. Where's your sister?"
    "She and her husband died in an air crash last December."
    "Last December? Five months ago?"
    "Yes." She