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An Unexpected Father

by Lisa Ruff

After a decade on the road, single mom Mimi Green gives up her rock star dreams and goes home to Crab Creek, Maryland. Her troubled son needs stability. Grandparents. A good school and friends his own age.

She’s not looking for a new father for Jack—but when she meets Ian Berzani she may need the handsome sailor for herself!

When Ian nabs a nine-year-old trespasser in the family boatyard, he thinks, miniature rebel without a clue. One look at the kid’s mother and Ian’s thoughts veer into dangerous, uncharted territory. Mimi was tempting him to stay.

The timing couldn’t be worse for a man three months, seven days and eleven hours from a lifelong dream of sailing around the world. He doesn’t want an instant family to change his plans, but how can he set sail and leave his heart behind?

I just got news that I have to share: An Unexpected Father, my April release, was chosen as one of Romantic Times Magazine’s ‘Top Picks’. They gave it four and a half stars, too! I am stunned and honored.

For me, writing a book and sending it out for publication feels a little like sending my children off to school. How are they going to do? Will the other kids like them? Will they behave? Will anyone understand the effort I put in to raising them right? I know that you have to just send it off and hope for the best, but it’s difficult mothering such an unruly child. When a review and kudos like this comes along, they can bring grateful tears to the most jaded eyes.

When I was a teenager, my dad came home one night from work and hugged me. Just out of the blue. Now, my dad’s not really a demonstrative guy. I’d never had any doubt that he loved me, but hugs were for special occasions: birthdays, injuries, good report cards. If you’d away on a trip—not just a weekend sleepover—yeah, a hug was due. He was glad to see me and I was glad to see him. But his return home from just another day at the office was not a ‘huggable’ event. A kiss from my mom was enough of a greeting for him.

On this particular evening, as far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything spectacular. I was a teenager; no one expected spectacular from me. Getting through those teen years was sometimes all anyone hoped for really, me included. Mostly, I think I was a relatively easy kid to raise—especially after my older brother. My parents didn’t pull their hair out too much over my moodiness, I paid attention in school, I was popular enough. You know, normal. So, I had no idea why my dad hugged me. When I asked, I was embarrassed by his answer. In a good way, though.

I had just spent the weekend with a close friend and gone out on a hike with her family. I didn’t know it, but my dad, a forester, was managing a timber sale with my friend’s father. At work that day, this father asked my dad if I was his daughter. After my dad admitted it was so, the guy shook my dad’s hand and congratulated him on having a good kid. He was impressed because I had picked up some trash on our hike and carried it back out of the woods.

This wasn’t a special thing to me; it was the way I had been raised. But it sure was to my dad. He got to find out—from a complete stranger—that all the hard work of being a parent had paid off. I feel that way about my book. The characters I loved writing went out into the world and did good something good. It’s a small thing, like picking up a piece of trash, but they made me proud.

Of course, after I read the review from Romantic Times, I hugged the little darlings, too. Just like my dad had once hugged me.

My mother has a tradition at Thanksgiving. We all hold hands, the meal spread before us on the table, and tell everyone assembled what we’re thankful for this year. When I was a kid, this made me cringe. First, the tradition made sure everyone was staring at me—horrifying when I was a self-conscious teenager. Second, what the heck was I going to say? I would obsess for days ahead of time to come up with the perfect short, thoughtful phrase. Inevitably, I would flub it and a slight titter (or out-right guffaw from my brother) would circle the table. Eventually, as I matured, I learned to play to the crowd, keep it simple and the moments eased on by.

These days, it’s so easy to focus on the worst. Crisis after crisis hits the headlines and pops out of every mouth, TV, blog or tweet. The stories are frightening and devastating. Every-day life is full of small calamities, too: the car breaks down, the toilet backs up, the cat throws up on the new sofa, bad hair, really bad dust-bunnies. Sometimes it seems like there’s nothing to be grateful for. Then Thanksgiving arrives and I remember my mother’s tradition. I spend a few days thinking about all the great things in my life and I re-focus on what’s important: family, love, laughter.

This Thanksgiving, I won’t be sharing a meal with my family, but maybe that’s a good thing. The turkey would need a sweater to keep from catching a chill while I list all the things I’m thankful for this year. I have a wonderful husband. I have terrific friends, some of whom just helped us move. You have to be grateful for people who help you haul an eight-foot sofa up five flights of stairs. I get to write every day. I have romance readers who enjoy my stories. The list goes on and on.

Now I’m going to pass this wonderful tradition on to you. Join hands, everyone. What are you thankful for this year?

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Last Friday I moved my sailboat into a small marina in Annapolis, Maryland. It’s one of a dozen or more marinas that crowd the shores of Back Creek. When you step off the docks, you are in the Eastport neighborhood—known locally as the Maritime Republic of Eastport. A less-touristy area than Annapolis proper, Eastport has none of the bustle that accompanies the capitol of a state. If you didn’t know the State House was just a short walk across the Spa Creek bridge, you’d never guess it. The streets are lined with small charming houses. Trees arch out to form a canopy of green overhead. From around every corner you catch a glimpse of water and, of course, boats.

Walking out of the marina parking lot to look around, you find the Leeward coffee shop two blocks to the east. About a half-block west is Davis’s Tavern, a former mercantile store in the 1930’s, converted to a local watering hole. Really, this is about as perfect as it gets for a writer: libations for either end of the day all within walking distance.

The evening after we tied up, we decided to go see what was happening at the tavern, see what the locals do for fun after the long work-week. To our surprise, Davis’s was crowded. Outside, people stood in clusters under the green awnings or sat at the tables. Inside, the barstools were full. We took a table nearby and overheard several lies . . . I mean sea stories being told. Most of the patrons had houses nearby, or boats at the marinas across the street, or both. It was a happy, convivial atmosphere that made you want to stay and mingle.

That’s when my first attack of déjà vu hit: I had been there before. No, I don’t mean that I had ever been in Davis’s Tavern. Before that evening, I didn’t even know it existed. But there was a feel to the place that was very familiar, except I couldn’t figure out the connection. The next morning, writing away on my latest book, I realize that Davis’s shared some striking resemblances to the bar I had created for my characters. My bar—The Laughing Gull—is in an old, historic building on the waterfront. You can see boats from its windows. The vibe I get from the bar I created is a lot like the real one: warm, welcoming and boisterous.

A few days later we stopped into the tavern again. It wasn’t so busy on a weeknight, so we pulled up a stool. As I was sipping my wine, a man walked up to the bar next to me, smiled and ordered a drink. He had a thick accent that sounded Italian. After the bartender served him, he took his beer outside to a table. Through the windows, I could see him sit down with several other older men who all seemed to be talking at once and having a great time. Forgetting my manners, I started to stare. He looked very like my image of Antonio Berzani, patriarch of the Berzani clan and father to my hero, Ian. Did he have an Italian accent? Yes. Did he talk with his hands? Yes. Was he tall, have silver hair and dark eyes with a twinkle lurking in their depths? Yes, yes, yes.

Whoa.

Did one of my characters just come to life? And was he in a bar that came out of my imagination? The universe isn’t supposed to work that way, but what if this is one of those mysterious anomalies? What I love most of all about this “déjà vu” experience (I’m sure there’s a better psychological term for experiencing something you imagined beforehand) is that it shows I’ve successfully translated my experiences on the Chesapeake Bay extracted from a myriad of small communities—Chestertown, Deltaville, Oxford, Easton—into a “real” fictional place, somewhere my characters really would live, laugh and love.

So far, none of my other characters has made an appearance at Davis’s or around the neighborhood, but I’m not giving up. Any day, I expect to see Kate and Patrick with their baby, strolling along Chester Avenue, or Ian lugging his tool box into a boatyard, or Mimi strumming her guitar and singing at a local hangout. I believe that there’s a thin spot in the fabric of the universe somewhere around here and through it, my stories are entering this reality.

How cool would that be?

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Thalia, the sailboat that my husband and I live aboard, has been anchored at the mouth of Weem’s Creek for the past week or so. We are here to attend the Annapolis Sailboat Show, which we’ve come to see for the past eight years. There are hundreds of boats and endless booths with all kinds of stuff for sailing; the basics, like rope and paint, to the latest technology in electronic navigation and chart plotting. We go as much to meet our friends, old and new, as to see the boats and the gear on display. This year I was lucky enough to have a new friend along: Patrick Berzani.

Patrick is not your usual guy. He races big, fast sailboats across oceans. Storms, calms, snow, icebergs, big seas, Patrick tackles it all—not a sport for the timid—and goes back for more every time. Patrick’s also in love with Kate Stevens, who is not so sure that she’s in love with him. Kate’s a glass blower and not ready to commit her heart or her baby to a dare-devil like Patrick. Kate had an art show the same weekend and could not come with us. This gave Patrick and me the chance to talk about sailing and boats, two subjects close to our hearts.

Did I mention that Patrick is also the hero in my novel, Baby On Board?

Before you think I’ve gone nuts, give me a chance to explain. I’ve known Patrick for over a year now. I’ve spent many days writing his story, worrying if he will find love and win Kate’s heart. His struggle has consumed months of my waking life and, at night, drifted through my dreams. I like Patrick. I learn new things from him about sailing, sailboat racing and love. He’s become more real to me than some of the people I have known for years. I look at a new laminate sailcloth or a smart-looking foul-weather jacket and wonder “What Patrick would think about this?” And poof! Patrick sort of pops out of my imagination and begins to tell me what he thinks about it.

Am I crazy? Maybe. But I like being crazy like that.

So there we were, Patrick and I, walking the docks of the Annapolis sailboat show, looking at boats and talking to the brokers and builders, asking all kinds of questions. Well not exactly. Patrick is invisible and can’t really speak for himself. I must be his spokeswoman and ask his questions for him. He likes light-weight, high-tech racing boats. As a cruiser who makes her home on a boat, I’m more interested in things like large water tanks, comfortable berths, stout construction and lots of room to store food and my shoes. Patrick wants to know about hull construction, upwind performance, movable ballast—the things that make a boat go fast.

So with Patrick along, I see things at the boat show that I missed all those seven other times. I’m curious about them, because he is curious about them. Thanks to Patrick (and Kate and Ian and all my other characters), the world opens up to me and becomes a much more interesting place.