From above, Salt Spring Island resembled three chunks of land that some unseen hand had smooshed together, a solid-looking mass furred by pine trees covered in snow.
So much snow.
Thanks to the modern wonder that was social media, Emma had quickly tracked her father to the tiny Canadian island off the coast of Vancouver. There had been no denying that the man in the Facebook photos was the right Michael Nagorski. In fact, she’d gotten quite a jolt when she’d first clicked on his profile.
Emma looked nothing like her mother, who was of average height, with curves that she controlled carefully through strict diet and rigorous exercise. She had sleek dark hair that always made her look like she’d come straight from the beauty salon.
Emma, on the other hand? Emma was tall and slender, like she’d never quite gotten over the gawky phase of adolescence. Her hair was so blond it was nearly white, like corn silk, and her eyes, set in a pale ivory face, were the light-blue of ice. Next to her mother, she’d always felt washed-out, a photocopy that didn’t quite capture the detail of the original.
Looking at the photo of Michael Nagorski, Emma finally understood where her unusual coloring had come from. The man didn’t have many pictures uploaded, and those he did were all candid, preventing her from getting a clear look at his face, but there were things that leapt right off the screen—the sunshine-colored hair, the ghost-white skin, often reddened with a sunburn since he clearly didn’t share Emma’s affection for SPF 50.
Yes, she believed that he was her father. And that was why, two and a half weeks before Christmas, she was one of five passengers seated in a tiny Cessna 208 seaplane, clutching her stomach to keep herself from heaving as the pilot landed on the rollicking waves and maneuvered the plane into the dock.
When she finally set foot onto the dock’s wooden planks, she gulped in the brisk air, and her stomach settled slightly. With sweat drying on her brow and one arm wrapped around her waist against the cold, she grabbed for the handle of her practical brown suitcase and hurried toward one of two taxis that waited by the small building at the end of the dock. Goose bumps pricked her arms as the light wind bit through her thick sweater.
She’d read up on the local weather before she’d left Georgia. The temperatures here were about half of what they were back home, but all of her research indicated that the Vancouver area was mild compared to some regions of Canada. Being here now, with dampness hanging over the frigid air, heavy as wet wool, she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be touring anywhere else in the large country anytime soon.
The taxi driver shoved Emma’s suitcase into the trunk and she sighed with relief as she scrabbled to get into the backseat, where the dry blast of warmth from the heater chased the chill from her skin. A faded Santa Claus ornament hung from the rearview mirror, making her grin. Pulling out her phone, she read off an address, then settled back in the seat to catch her breath.
She was really here. She’d really done it. She’d called off the wedding, and she’d gone against her mother’s orders to leave well enough alone.
She was going to meet her birth father.
Outside the window, the greenery was a snow-laden blur as the taxi headed inland. Emma couldn’t focus on it with the nerves that were suddenly doing a tap dance in her belly.
What would this man who had supplied half of her genetic code be like?
It was a curious thing, discovering that what she’d believed all her life had been a lie. She’d never known Sawyer Kelly, the man her mother had created as her father figure, so she’d never loved him, not exactly. Still, the loss of that ideal hurt, or maybe it was more that it had turned her life upside down when she thought her path was finally set.
She knew half of her story, but the rest was unwritten. Or rather, it was written, she just couldn’t read the pages. She knew that she looked like him…Michael…her father…what was she supposed to call him? Yes, she looked like him, but she didn’t know anything else. His Facebook profile had helped her track him to an art gallery in Vancouver and, from there, his studio on this small island. So she knew her father was an artist whose focus was sculpture, but until she met him, what meaning did a fact like that have?
“This is it.” The driver, a man with his plaid sleeves rolled up like it was the middle of summer, stopped the taxi in front of what appeared to be a shabby double garage, its cornflower-blue paint faded and even peeling in some places. One of the doors was open, and Emma could see sparks coming from inside.
Was her father in there right now, working on one of his pieces? Would he be happy to see her? Angry? Shocked? How would she feel in return—what would replace this gnawing anxiety that she couldn’t seem to shake?
She paid the driver, looking closely at the change he gave her in return, certain he was shorting her because it was all coins, but apparently in Canada there were no one- or two-dollar bills. It only enhanced the sensation that she was Alice, steps away from falling down the rabbit hole.
The snow in the driveway was a milky blanket, untouched until she stepped gingerly forward, wary of ice beneath her ankle boots. It was becoming increasingly clear to her by the second that these boots were inappropriate for the weather. Behind her she tugged her suitcase, which left stripes from the wheel tracks in the snow.
This was it. She’d literally left prints here—there was no leaving and pretending that none of this had ever happened. Sucking in a deep breath, she looked up, studying the string of Christmas lights draped crookedly from the roof. The string alternated red and green, except for a swatch by the open door, where two reds stood beside each other. The change in sequence caught her eye and held it, and her fingers twitched with the need to pull the string of lights down and fix it.
Get a grip, Emma. They’re Christmas lights. Not a big deal. They don’t have to be perfect.
Except, up until a few days ago, she’d lived with the notion that that was exactly how her life was supposed to be—perfect. Anything that marred that image was cause for upset.
She didn’t want to be the person who had to fix the pattern in a string of stupid Christmas lights to feel comfortable or even happy. The thought spurred her forward, the sound of her steps muffled by the white carpet underfoot.
The sound started as a quiet, discordant buzz, and by the time she stood in the open door it had intensified to something that sounded like bacon sizzling in a frying pan. The garage was of an average size, but crowded with what at first glance looked like junk but on closer inspection proved to be scrap metal and tools. There was so much clutter that it almost blocked any sign of life, but from the corner came those sparks that Emma had first seen from the end of the driveway.
Was that her father?
“Hello?” The crackling noise drowned her out, so she slowly skirted a pile of jagged metal. On the other side, bent over a workbench, was a tall, sweaty man. Dressed in ripped jeans and a filthy white undershirt, he wore a visor that obscured his face, but even if she hadn’t been able to see a shock of chestnut hair, she would have known that this wasn’t her father.
Have mercy. Setting aside his—was that a welding torch?—the man straightened, lacing his fingers together and stretching his arms out over his head as he studied the thing he’d been working on—a sculpture. The movement caused the fitted cotton of his shirt to rise up, giving Emma a glimpse of a rock-solid abdomen, and she was pretty sure that her mouth actually watered.
Have mercy was right. Just looking at him, she had to stomp down the urge to go run her hands over the exposed skin. The need shocked her, because she’d never felt that kind of raw attraction for Matthew—Matthew, the man she’d been about to marry.
This man was a stranger—one whose face she still hadn’t seen—and he was in her father’s studio. Her father didn’t seem to be anywhere around.
So who the heck was this guy?