Nathan's Child by Anne McAllister Page B

hand?”
    â€œYes, damn it, I’m sure. And no, damn it, I don’t!”
    â€œGiving you a hard time, is she?” Douglas said, sounding almost sympathetic.
    â€œI don’t want to talk about it.”
    He knew what he was doing. He hoped. Besides, for the moment progress on the Carin front was at a standstill. There was nothing to talk about. She was painting—or so she said. And he was spending the days with Lacey.
    He and Carin talked stiltedly when he picked Lacey up or dropped her off. Occasionally Hugh was there when Nathan brought her home.
    â€œHelping you paint, is he?” Nathan found himself snarling more than once.
    She didn’t answer. It was hard to pick a fight with someone who ignored your provocation. And she did seem pretty paint-spattered much of the time, so he didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.
    Still, having to leave Lacey there with her mother and Hugh didn’t make for restful evenings.
    Actually, it made Nathan nuts. He took to going to The Grouper after he dropped Lacey off. There was sure as hell no point in going back to his place. All he’d do there would be to pace the floor and mutter things about Hugh McGillivray’s maternal ancestry. Knocking back a beer or two or three with the locals was a much better idea.
    At least, though his relationship with Carin was nonexistent, he and Lacey were getting on like a house afire.
    He spent most days with Lacey. The day after the dinner at his house, they’d helped Miss Gibbs move library books. Then they’d gone back to his place and had begun to look at slides and talk photography. They did that now almost every day. She was smart as a whip and she had a goodsense of composition. When he explained something, she asked questions, and she got the point.
    Every day he spent with her, he learned more about her—and her mother—and felt twin twinges of anger and sadness that he hadn’t had a part in her life until now. He blamed Carin. Sometimes he wanted to throttle Carin.
    But if he was honest, he understood why she hadn’t told him.
    He’d been so focused in those days. He knew he was going to be a photographer, knew in his gut he could do it. But he also knew how much it would demand of him, how hard the work would be, how single-minded he’d have to be.
    Fighting his father’s determination that he go into the family business had been nothing compared to the obstacles he’d had to overcome to get where he was. He hadn’t needed more obstacles.
    Carin had known that.
    It wasn’t easy looking in the mirror when he thought about how self-absorbed he’d been.
    He wasn’t self-absorbed now. He wasn’t single-minded. Gaby, his agent, was calling him every few days making offers and suggesting ideas—all of which would mean traveling—and every time, Nathan said no.
    â€œI’m staying put,” he told Gaby.
    He was enjoying his time with Lacey. He was opening up the world to her. And she was opening up a particular small slice of it for him.
    She was an eager student. She always wanted to take photos. Every day, no matter what else they did, they spent time doing that. At first he just let her take photos that interested her. But after a few days of that, he suggested she start looking for specific things. Patterns, themes, specific subject matter.
    They shot trees, they shot flowers, they shot buildingsand birds and kids and fishermen. They shot old men at work and playing dominoes under the shade trees.
    Sometimes they picked a topic—heat, water, happiness, symmetry—and spent the day shooting whatever they saw that expressed it.
    In the evenings they developed the black-and-white film together. They took the slides to Deveril’s, which had an overnight developing facility, then spent the next morning comparing the differences and similarities in the way they viewed things.
    It was as instructive for Nathan as he hoped it