Butternut Summer by Mary McNear Page A

Jack,” she said, trying not to laugh. “You’ve never saved a penny in your life.” Not if you could sink it into a card game instead .
    But Jack didn’t argue the point. He only lifted his shoulders a little, as if to say, We’ll see .
    â€œAll right then,” she said challengingly, “what do you do when you’re done with the cabin? Sell it to some unlucky soul?”
    â€œOr I stay,” Jack said casually. “Put down roots in this fine community.”
    â€œThis fine community that you’ve always hated , Jack,” Caroline pointed out. “Or have you forgotten?”
    But he sidestepped the question and said, with his infuriating nonchalance, “Towns change, Caroline. So do people.”
    â€œTrust me, Jack, this town hasn’t changed.”
    â€œThen maybe I have,” he said, his dark blue eyes suddenly serious.
    â€œThat’s what your daughter thinks,” Caroline said. “But I know better. And, Jack, I give you two weeks here; a month, tops.”
    â€œWe’ll see,” he said, sipping his coffee again. “But in the meantime, I’m looking forward to spending the summer here.”
    â€œAnd seeing my daughter?” Caroline asked.
    Jack hesitated. “Yes, Caroline. And seeing our daughter.”
    Caroline flinched. Our daughter . That sounded strange. That sounded . . . wrong . It had been years since Caroline had thought of Daisy as anything other than her daughter. She squeezed her lemon wedge, angrily, into her glass of tea and tried to organize her thoughts. Because what she was going to say next was the real reason she’d asked him to come here today—and the real reason, too, she hadn’t been able to sleep last night. So she chose her words carefully now, or as carefully as she could when you considered how furious she was.
    â€œLook, Jack, I don’t know why, after all this time, you’ve resurfaced in Daisy’s life. And I don’t know why she has developed such a touching faith in you either. But I don’t share that faith, Jack. I know how this is going to end. And it’s going to end badly.”
    â€œYou can’t know how this is going to end, Caroline. None of us knows that.” And there was that shadow, again, crossing so quickly over his face she wondered if it had been there at all.
    â€œLook,” she said, changing tack. “I can’t tell you what to do, Jack; I never could. Just don’t . . . don’t hurt her, okay?”
    He nodded slowly, his blue eyes serious. “I have no intention of hurting her, Caroline; at least not any more than I already have. And don’t think I don’t know how much I’ve already hurt her,” he added. “I’m not an idiot, Caroline. And even if I were one, Daisy spelled it out for me the first time I saw her again.”
    â€œShe did?” Caroline asked, surprised. Since she’d found out about these meetings, Daisy had volunteered very little information about them, and Caroline hadn’t wanted to pry. But the truth was, she was curious, damned curious.
    Jack nodded. “She was so angry that morning I met her for coffee,” he said, “in this little dive coffeehouse near the university, that it put the fear of God in me. She told me she hadn’t known until the last minute whether she’d come and meet me or not. She said that I was a sorry excuse for a father, and that if I thought I could just walk back into her life again after all these years, I was dead wrong. She told me, too, that the two of you had done just fine without me the whole time she was growing up, and if you hadn’t needed me then, there was no reason you needed me now.” With an admiring smile, he added, “There was more, but that was the gist of it.”
    â€œDaisy said all that?” Caroline asked, wonderingly. She’d never even guessed at the depth of Daisy’s