The Mommy Wish Read online

  Molly couldn’t stop herself

  “Your daughter let you know exactly how she feels about not having a real home. And what did you do? You put her off. Maybe if she had a taste of the life she so desperately wants to lead, it wouldn’t live up to her expectations. But she deserves to find that out for herself. She deserves the best you can give her, Eric Norvald, and the life of a boat bum isn’t it.”

  Stunned, Eric stared at her openmouthed throughout this diatribe. When she stopped, she inhaled a deep breath.

  “I’m going out.”

  Molly set off down the dock at a fast clip and refused to look back. It might not have any effect on what he did, but it sure felt good hauling off and giving him a piece of her mind.

  Dear Reader,

  When I was a kid, I woke up from a nap one day and found my mother emptying the guts of our vacuum cleaner onto a newspaper. I was convinced she’d killed it, and I was inconsolable. Turns out she was only dumping the dirt, but what did I know? I was only three.

  I’m sure I was emotionally connected to that upright vacuum cleaner; otherwise, why would I have cared so much? At the time, I was only a child. Our vacuum seemed friendly, with that little bright light on its face, and all-powerful. It had a bag made of shiny blue material, and I thought it was pretty. Everyone else in our house was tall, but it was just my size.

  When friends told me of their grandson, who is fascinated with vacuum cleaners, who wants to play with them, and take them apart, and draw them, I recognized something of myself. Thus I created Phoebe.

  Love doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The bad things that happen to us cannot be swept away. And sometimes the stars don’t have all the answers.

  But when love comes along, it has the power to change our lives. I hope you enjoy the story of Eric and Molly and Phoebe, who learned that lesson in a very special way.

  Love,

  Pamela Browning

  P.S. Please visit me at my Web site:

  www.pamelabrowning.com.

  THE MOMMY WISH

  Pamela Browning

  Books by Pamela Browning

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  854—BABY CHRISTMAS

  874—COWBOY WITH A SECRET

  907—PREGNANT AND INCOGNITO

  922—RANCHER’S DOUBLE DILEMMA

  982—COWBOY ENCHANTMENT

  994—BABY ENCHANTMENT

  1039—HEART IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

  1070—THE MOMMY WISH

  With thanks to the real Molly Kate, for her input into the plot and for Meehan lessons; and thanks to Ralph and Eileen, whose family vacuum cleaner stories helped me find Phoebe.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Molly didn’t see what caused her to trip and fall. All she knew was that one minute she was walking down B Dock at the Tarheel Marina somewhere in coastal North Carolina, and the next minute she was sprawled across the weathered boards, staring up into the curious face of a bedraggled moppet who appeared to be somewhere over the age of four and under the age of nine.

  “You’d better get out of my way or I’ll vacuum you up,” said the child. She spoke cheerfully and without malice.

  Since the fall had knocked the air out of her lungs, Molly was unable to reply at first, although she managed a couple of feeble gasps. It was a few moments before she was able to push a hank of red-gold hair out of her eyes and haul herself up on her hands and knees, all the while glaring balefully at the spike-haired apparition who had witnessed her unnerving tumble.

  “And just how are you going to do that?” she asked when she could talk again. Pushing back on her haunches, she inspected her elbows for abrasions and found none. Knees, ditto.

  “With my Model 440 Hoovasonic Sweeper. Varoom, varoom.” The speaker appeared to be of indeterminate sex and had dark-brown hair that stuck out as if groomed with a glue stick.

  Molly leveled a skeptical gaze at the kid, who was about four feet tall and unaccompanied by a vacuum cleaner as far as she could tell. “All right,” she said. “Go ahead and suck me up. I warn you, though, I’m hell on vacuum cleaners.”

  “Oooh. You said a bad word.”

  “Not really. I was merely being descriptive.”

  Round eyes watched as she brushed off her hands and stood. Molly’s gaze fell on her Irish harp case, which had landed next to a piling. As she grabbed it, she noticed for the first time that the child wore one pink sock. The other one was a grungy white. The pink sock gave Molly the impression that this was most likely a female child, albeit one that could use some spiffing up.

  “Who are you?” the girl said, peering at her through bangs that looked as if they’d been trimmed with a hacksaw.

  “I’m Molly Kate McBryde. I could ask you the same question.”

  “I’m Phoebe Anne Norvald. I’m the only child at the marina. I’m seven and a half years old, and I hate not having someone to play with.”

  “Okay, okay, I sympathize,” Molly said. “Did you trip me on purpose? So I’d play with you?” She poked at a splinter on her left palm, acquired when she fell, and rued the day that she had agreed to a leave of absence from her job as number-two honcho in the corporate accounting department of the family business. Sane people usually did not do such things, even when their grandfathers insisted.

  Phoebe shook her head in denial. “Oh, no. It wouldn’t be nice to trip someone. There’s a loose board on the dock. See?” She demonstrated by stomping on it with one small foot. Sure enough, it wiggled.

  “That’s dangerous,” Molly said. “Someone should fix it.”

  “My dad’s the one. He works around here, but he’s been busy lately. You know, people need to be careful around vacuum cleaners because they can trip over the cord. You could have tripped over the cord.”

  “If there was a cord,” Molly said pointedly.

  “Vacuum cleaners don’t have to have one. The robotic kinds just wander around your house, whooshing up dirt.”

  “How lovely,” Molly murmured. She wasn’t accustomed to children, had rarely been around any. Did they all like to talk about vacuum cleaners?

  She picked up her duffel and her harp, and Phoebe skipped along beside her as she limped down the dock. Molly had to admit that this was an appealing child. Or she would be if she’d do something about that awful hair.

  “So what is this—you hang out with make-believe vacuum cleaners?” she asked Phoebe. Ahead in the last slip she saw Fiona, Grandpa Emmett’s fifty-three-foot ketch, its two tall masts towering above all the others.

  Phoebe looked very serious. “I can only have make-believe ones until we get a house of our own again. My dad says it’s not going to happen soon.”

  Molly slowed her pace. Her knee really hurt. “Why not?”

  “He likes to stay on the move. I’m tired of it. You’ll meet him in a few minutes.”

  “Right now I’m going aboard Fiona to put my feet up and have a beer.”

  “That’s where you’ll meet my dad. He drinks beer.”

  “He’s on Fiona?” All the work that her grandfather had ordered was supposed to have been finished by today.

  “We live aboard. Dad didn’t want you to come here, but then Mr. Emmett called and made it okay. We like Mr. Emmett a whole lot. I gue
ss Dad’ll be glad to see you now. You’re going to help deliver the boat to Fort Lauderdale, right?”

  “Right,” Molly muttered. Grandpa Emmett, when he was arranging for her to supervise the transfer of his boat from the boatyard to his winter home in Florida, hadn’t mentioned any live-aboards. Molly couldn’t imagine why he’d allow a repairman to stake out residence on Fiona, his most prized possession, which at the moment was riding easily on the slight swells, her flag whipping smartly in the wind.

  Live-aboards or no, Molly felt a surge of happiness at the thought of sailing Fiona again. The boat had been the locus of several adventures with Grandpa Emmett for Molly and her brother and sister, all intrepid sailors, though none of them was as skilled at sailing as their grandfather. During the past summer, she, her sister, Brianne, and her brother, Patrick, had accompanied their grandfather on a jaunt to Nova Scotia from his home in Maine. Although they’d been too concerned about Grandpa Emmett’s increasing frailness to let him do much of the work, the trip, like all their previous ones, had been a great family experience.

  But that was then. This was now, and it would be a different kind of voyage. Still, the trip was a break from job stress, and she could postpone shopping for a new winter coat to replace her old one, in which she’d recently discovered moth holes. Also, she’d recently broken up with Chuck the Cheese, alias Charles Stalnecky, and this vacation gave her something far more interesting to do than chowing down cold pizzas alone in her apartment every night. Grandpa Emmett’s request to sign on as first mate on this trip—no, actually it qualified as a command—had seemed reasonable, appropriate, fitting.

  Well, whatever. The morning’s itinerary had involved a harrowing predawn succession of trains, planes and automobiles, and now Molly was ready to kick back and take it easy. She mounted the boarding stairs. Phoebe scrambled up right behind her as she clamped her fingers around the railing and made the transfer from stairs to boat.

  “Hey, wait a minute. Be careful,” Molly cautioned. One misstep and Phoebe would fall into the water, which was slightly choppy today.

  Phoebe neatly negotiated the space between the stairs and the deck, though the gap widened perceptibly due to the motion of the waves. “It’s okay. I do this all the time.”

  “You can swim?” Molly slowly descended the few steps to the cockpit and set her luggage on one of the benches along the sides.

  “Sure. My dad says I swim like a champ. Oops, I forgot my vacuum cleaner. I’d better go get it.” She prepared to climb back over the side of the boat, but Molly wasn’t about to let this kid return herself to harm’s way to retrieve something that didn’t exist. As Phoebe prepared to make the leap, Molly seized Phoebe’s shirttail and hauled her back.

  “Wait a minute,” Molly said. “I’ll bet your vacuum will be perfectly happy on the dock for a while.”

  “You’re probably right. What’s that?” She pointed at Molly’s harp case.

  “That’s my Irish harp.”

  “I saw someone playing a harp on TV once. It was big—real big.”

  “That was a pedal harp. This is a folk harp. Folk harps can come in any size, like the kind meant to be played in your lap, such as this one, or the kind that stand on the floor.”

  “Can you play it?”

  “I certainly can. It’s my hobby, like you and your vacuum cleaner.”

  Phoebe seemed to be considering this. She stared up at Molly. “Can you cook?” she asked.

  Molly smiled. She was starting to like this kid. “I make a fantastic grilled-cheese sandwich.”

  Phoebe’s face crinkled into a grin of delight. “I love grilled-cheese sandwiches. I used to call them sand wishes, you know. That’s when I was little.” She hollered down the open companionway. “Dad! Molly McBryde’s here.”

  Molly massaged her sore knee and admired the sparkling blue water of Pamlico Sound, the pelicans wheeling overhead, the sails scudding in the distance. This was a far cry from Chicago, where at this very moment, people were enduring the first snowfall of the year. At least that was what Mrs. Brinkle, her treasured assistant, had informed her when Molly called the office to say that she’d arrived safely at her destination. That was before she’d fallen on the dock, of course. But then, there was no reason either Lorraine Brinkle or her boss, Francis X. O’Toole, needed to be informed of Molly’s klutzier moments.

  A tattered gray baseball cap emerged from belowdecks, followed by a high forehead bisected by a thatch of sandy hair, blue eyes and more beard stubble than was fashionable in her social circle. “I’m Eric Norvald,” the man said, looking her up and down. The pungent aroma of diesel fuel accompanied him.

  “Molly Kate McBryde,” she said briskly, extending her hand.

  “Sorry. I can’t shake hands,” he said, and she realized that he was wiping grease from his palms onto a filthy towel.

  She let her hand drop. “I thought the repairs were finished. That’s what my grandfather told me.”

  “They were. Things happen.” He spoke gruffly, curtly. She didn’t like the way he was staring at her, making her feel as if she were an insect mounted on a board. Suddenly she felt uncomfortable in her jeans, which she had discovered only yesterday were a shade too tight.

  She drew herself up to her full height of five feet seven inches. “I expected everything to be in order.”

  “It isn’t. I suggest you find yourself a comfortable hotel room and let me take care of the problems here.” His voice sounded as though he’d roughed it up with sandpaper. He tucked the greasy rag into his back pocket, where it flapped in the breeze.

  “Wait a minute,” Molly said. “I’m staying on Fiona. I’m supposed to leave tomorrow.”

  “We’ll leave on schedule.”

  “‘We?’”

  “You, me and Phoebe.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “I’m expecting a licensed captain to help me sail Fiona to my grandfather’s house in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Emmett hired me himself. We became friends when he was down here supervising repairs to this boat a couple of months ago. Now, do you want to go on exchanging chitchat or shall I continue my work on this engine?”

  “You mean you’re the licensed captain?” This guy looked only one eye patch short of a pirate.

  He tilted his cap to a more rakish angle and treated her to a slow grin, maddening in its nonchalance. His teeth were very white. “If you care to see my certification, you’ll have to come below. I’d better get back to work.”

  As he swiveled toward the ladder descending into the cabin, his forearm brushed hers. An unexpected shiver rippled across her skin. She jerked backward, earning a mildly surprised glance from those impossibly blue eyes. They caught and held hers, and it was all she could do not to be drawn into their warmth. She detected a glint of wry humor in their depths, and just as quickly as it had come, it disappeared.

  With a cock of one eyebrow and an abrupt nod, he disappeared down the ladder. Molly rubbed her arm where his had touched it.

  Phoebe leaned over the companionway. “Dad, Molly said she’s going to make me a grilled-cheese sandwich. It’s way past lunchtime.” She slipped her hand into Molly’s.

  Though exasperated to the utmost, Molly didn’t have the heart to pull her hand away. “I did not—”

  Eric’s drawl drifted up from the engine room. “If Ms. McBryde wants to take charge of the galley, it’s all right with me.” A clatter, a clang, a muffled curse, and then all was silence.

  “I’ll help you with the sandwiches.” Phoebe’s trusting eyes, blue like her father’s, gazed up at her.

  “Well,” Molly said, suddenly feeling sorry for the child. Phoebe wore an air of neglect, and who knows if this Eric person took good care of her? If her clothes were any indication, he barely gave his daughter a passing thought.

  “I like mustard on mine—do you?”

  “Mustard. Hmm. I’ve never tried it. I like tomato and onion, though.”

  “We don’t have those. There�
�s lots of mustard.”

  Molly sighed. “Okay,” she said, relinquishing her hopes of a quiet interlude with only herself for company.

  “You go down first. Then me,” directed Phoebe.

  Molly climbed backward down the ladder, to encounter Eric’s head crooked around the edge of the engine room door.

  “Would you mind handing me that pair of pliers next to the sink?” He jerked his head in that direction, but not before a quick and not very discreet assessment of her derriere.

  Molly tossed him the pliers. “Thanks,” he said offhandedly. “The mustard’s on the shelf over the microwave. The bread’s next to the toaster.” He slammed the engine room door.

  “Charming fellow,” Molly muttered, as Phoebe’s legs appeared and the rest of her followed.

  Fortunately Phoebe didn’t hear her. Molly peeked into the chart room and spotted a plaque leaning up against the polished teak paneling. Eric Norvald had been telling the truth—he was a licensed captain. Too bad, because she couldn’t fire him on the grounds that he wasn’t qualified. Mulling this over, she turned her attention to the galley.

  At least the man kept things neat on Fiona, she thought as she moved around the familiar galley assembling ingredients and equipment. Everything was clean and in its proper place. The small stainless-steel sink was newly scrubbed; the refrigerator was well ordered. No spills marred the bright surface of the three-burner range, and the oven was spotless. The teak floors appeared freshly waxed.

  “You still want a beer?” Phoebe asked, hoisting herself up on the counter and all but falling into the top-opening refrigerator as she retrieved a can of soda.

  “No, I’ll have what you’re having.”

  “Not beer. It tastes like earwax.” Phoebe climbed down again and popped the tabs on two soda cans.

  Molly was pondering this startling answer when Eric opened the engine room door.

  “I’ve already eaten, in case you’re wondering,” he informed her.

  “I wasn’t,” Molly said.

  “That’s what I figured.” He dug in a drawer, found a flashlight and aimed something that resembled a smile at her before retreating again to the engine room. Molly didn’t like him. He was insolent. But she had to admit that there was a certain roguish attraction about him, unkempt though he was.