Single Dad Helped a Lost Girl at the Airport Then Her Billionaire Mother Saw the Name on His Dog..

Chapter 8

The weeks that followed were not dramatic. They were slow and careful and real.

Maris did not fly back to her world and disappear. She stayed in contact. At first, their conversations circled around Adrien — stories, memories, details that had been lost to time. She wanted to know everything. Rowan had hundreds of stories, and he found that telling them did not hurt the way he had expected. It healed.

Then the conversations began to drift. She asked about Callum. He asked about Sienna. She told him about a business deal that was falling apart. He told her about a boat engine he was rebuilding. They talked about nothing. They talked about everything.

The children became inseparable. Sienna asked every week when they could see Callum again. Maris found herself booking flights that had nothing to do with business.

She arrived in North Carolina on a Friday afternoon, three weeks after the airport. Rowan met her at the airport — the same airport, the same terminal, but everything was different now. Sienna ran ahead and threw her arms around Callum. Maris walked toward Rowan, and they stood there for a moment, uncertain.

“I brought lunch,” she said.

“I brought a boat,” he said.

She laughed. It was a real laugh, not the polished one she used in boardrooms.

He took her to the harbor. The boat he was restoring was an old sailboat, its hull scarred by weather and time. He was replacing the deck fittings and rewiring the electrical system. It was not glamorous. It was the kind of work that left grease under his fingernails and salt in his hair.

Maris sat on the dock and watched him work. Sienna and Callum searched for seashells along the shore, their voices carrying across the water. The sun was warm. The breeze smelled of fish and diesel and summer.

“You know what Adrien would say if he saw us right now?” Maris asked.

Rowan looked up from the engine compartment. “What?”

“He would say, ‘About time.'”

Rowan smiled. It was a small smile, but it reached his eyes.

“Maybe he’s been watching this whole time,” he said.

“Maybe he has.”

They went to lunch at a small restaurant near the water. Maris did not check her phone once. She did not think about the emails piling up, the meetings she was missing, the world that was spinning without her. She sat in a booth with a man who repaired boats and his quiet son, and she felt something she had not felt in years.

Peace.

“Tell me about Elise,” she said.

Rowan was quiet for a moment. “She was kind. She was patient. She was the only person who could make me laugh when I didn’t want to.” He paused. “She died when Callum was four. I was overseas when she got sick. I came back as fast as I could, but I was too late. I missed the last months of her life.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Some days I still feel guilty about it. About not being there. About all the time I lost.”

Maris reached across the table and took his hand. “You’re here now. That counts for something.”

He looked at their hands. Her fingers were soft against his calloused skin.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think it does.”