Читать книгу For His Daughter - Ann Evans - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

HIS MOTHER WOULD HAVE SWORN the odd feeling in Rafe’s gut when he held the egg Frannie had decorated was love. Rose would have claimed the feeling was one any father would have toward their child.

But the problem was he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t plain old, ordinary fear.

Truthfully, he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of conversations he’d had with children in his lifetime. He still couldn’t believe he was a father. The father of a five-year-old. A little girl, at that.

But Frannie was his now, and had been since December, the most unexpected, unsettling Christmas present he had ever received.

He looked down at her upturned face. She had the feminine version of D’Angelo features that had been part of the family’s legacy for generations—the firmly cut mouth, dark hair and bold eyes, those very long lashes that drew your attention and held it. She was his daughter, all right. The infinitesimal splinters of chance that went into making up a person’s DNA had left no question of that fact.

He knelt down to her level, examining the blue egg as though it were a Russian Fabergé. He was aware of everyone’s eyes on him. Only his father seemed disinterested in watching the interaction between Rafe and his daughter.

“This is very pretty,” he told her.

Frannie seemed unimpressed by the compliment. “Can I eat it?”

“No.”

“Why not?” she asked, her dark brows drawing together. Rafe had already discovered her stubborn streak.

“Because these aren’t for eating. Not yet.”

“They’re just eggs. I like eggs. I got to eat lots of them with Mommy.”

They were in dangerous territory all of a sudden. This was a situation they’d yet to discuss much. Mommy. He dreaded when that name came up. Someday they’d have to have a deeper discussion of why Mommy was no longer in the picture—something more than the awkward explanation Frannie had been given so far. But not today.

He rose, walked over to the table and placed the blue egg alongside the others on the drying racks. “Not this time,” he said.

Frannie had never seemed to be afraid of him, but neither had she come to terms with the idea that he was calling the shots in her life now. She came right over, gazing up with stormy eyes and a hard jaw that reminded Rafe eerily of his father.

“Why not?” she demanded to know again.

“Because I…” He broke off, uncertain where to go from there. Because I told you so? Hell if he’d fall back on that tired parental cliché.

As though sensing he needed help, his mother came to the rescue. She approached the little girl and turned her around to face her. “Francesca, remember the job I gave you and Aunt Addy this morning? I want you two to make as many pretty eggs for Easter baskets as you can. These are not for eating.”

“But I like hard eggs.”

“Then I’ll give you some to eat for lunch. Not that one. That one goes in the family basket, like a present. That’s your job today—to help me get ready for Easter.” She smiled down at the child, chucking her under the chin. “All right?”

Frannie considered this explanation for a long moment. Then her brow cleared and she nodded. “I guess so.”

“Good. Our guests will be very happy on Easter morning.”

Frannie turned back to Rafe. She waggled her hand over the eggs on the table. “I made all these.”

He pretended to give them serious consideration. Pretended, at least, until he noticed that all the eggs Frannie had colored were two-toned with spots. Red on yellow. Purple on pink. A sickly looking green on orange. Not a solid-colored egg among them. Except his.

Deliberate or subconscious, he wondered? A not- so-subtle attempt to show him that he didn’t fit into the world she liked? Or maybe just an accident?

Deciding to ignore the implications, he cocked his head at the eggs, then gave her an enthusiastic look. “I see you like spots.”

Did her jaw harden again? Just a little? “Spots are my favorite,” she said clearly. “Don’t you like spots?”

His sister Addy jumped in to save him this time. She touched Frannie’s sleeve and drew her attention toward Sam seated near the back door, still working on the handle. “You aren’t the only one. Your grandfather thinks polka dots should be a color in the crayon box.”

All their lives, the D’Angelo kids had known that their father loved polka dots. Every tie at Christmas had been dotted, every pair of socks. One year there had been a weeklong silence in the house when Rose had vetoed Sam’s intent to have all the curtains in the lodge redone in a dotted Swiss pattern.

Rafe didn’t know whether his father had been paying attention to the conversation or not, but Sam suddenly looked over at them and pointed with his screwdriver. “There’s nothing wrong with spots,” he said in a no-nonsense tone. “They’re bold and make life interesting. And why stick with one color when you can have two?”

Frannie nodded as though this logic made perfect sense, though she didn’t make eye contact with her grandfather. From the moment they’d met, she’d seemed shy of him, and unexpectedly, considering how much Sam loved children, he hadn’t been overly friendly to the girl, either. But it was somehow annoying to Rafe that even his father seemed able to make a small connection with Frannie, when he had not.

“Francesca,” his mother spoke up. “Will you go tell Mr. O’Dell at the front desk that we need more baskets from the storage shed?”

The child ran out the double doors to do as she’d been asked.

Rafe gave his mother a grateful look. “Thanks. I was starting to flounder there, wasn’t I?”

His mother smiled up at him, touching the back of her hand to his cheek. “You’ll get the hang of it. You just haven’t had enough practice.”

“I haven’t had any practice.”

“You were always quick to learn. I have faith that you can handle whatever Francesca throws your way.”

He shook his head, unable to share his mother’s confidence.

Of all the things he had envisioned for his life, a future built around kids had never been one of them. They were inconvenient. Noisy. Sticky. They liked to yank a person out of sleep and leave your nerves twitching until noon. Most of all, they needed you, and he didn’t like that. He’d liked the image of himself as unencumbered, and nothing messed up a man’s plans more than the responsibility of kids and family.

Last Christmas in Los Angeles when Ellen Stanton had called, letting him know she was in town and asking him to come by her hotel, he’d never suspected that the promise of a few hours of reliving old times would turn into a declaration of fatherhood.

He hadn’t seen Ellen for years, not since they’d been river raft guides together on the Colorado. He remembered her as a woman who had liked sex fast, hard and slightly earthy. Their one evening together had not been a summer night filled with soft breezes and the glow of a full moon overhead. That night had ignited some chemistry that was all sex and excitement, but very little else. They’d coupled wildly, then said goodbye to one another at the end of the week without a single regret.

Going to Ellen’s hotel suite, they’d barely passed the routine civilities of renewed acquaintance before she had trotted Frannie out of one of the bedrooms, pushed her in Rafe’s direction and stated flatly, “Frannie, this is your daddy.”

She’d waited for the words to sink in. They’d sunk.

He could still remember the ripple of shock that had run through his body. For a moment or two, he’d fought it, ready with denials. But he’d canceled that impulse when he’d looked down at the child. She had features alive with intelligence and the potential for sweetness. Her precise little mouth had been sullen and tight, but with little tremors in the muscles around it. He’d known instantly that she was scared to death.

He’d also known this was no outrageous lie of Ellen’s. Frannie was his. Even as badly as he’d wanted to refute the claim, he could see it in her face and feel the truth of it in his bones.

The meeting between him and Frannie had been awkward, and when Ellen had sent the girl back to her room, Rafe couldn’t feel anything but relieved.

That relief had soon turned to anger when Ellen had announced that she wanted Rafe to raise Frannie from now on. She had struggled financially for years, she’d said, but had finally found a great man to marry. An older man, who’d brought up his own kids and didn’t want to have any more in the house. This was her only chance for real happiness, and it was time Rafe shouldered his responsibility.

He had wanted to run. He had wanted to tell her it was too late to expect scruples from him. A long time too late. The way he’d lived his life, he figured he had sacrificed them years ago.

He might have been able to pull it off if he’d never seen the kid. But from that moment on, Rafe knew that within him there lay a very fragile thread of scruples after all, a basic sense of fairness that told him that no matter what, he could not simply walk away from this little girl the way Ellen could. Whatever his daughter needed from him, he’d make happen.

Which was why he was home now, trying to make peace with a father who had no use for him and a family that didn’t know what to expect from him. He needed to settle down, make a stable home for Frannie. Give her as much time as possible with this extended family so that she could feel as though she belonged someplace at last. Most of all, figure out how a father-daughter relationship ought to work.

It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be quick. But there were bigger things at stake now, like his daughter’s well-being.

A daughter who didn’t really know him at all.

SAM D’ANGELO RARELY SLEPT through the night anymore and often slipped from bed unnoticed. After forty years of sleeping beside the same woman, he knew Rosa’s sleep patterns, and that night, when he struggled into the metal cuffs of his crutches, he had no fear of waking her.

He made his way slowly out of the bedroom, through the family’s private quarters and past the lodge kitchen toward the lobby. It was after 3:00 a.m. and no one was about. The lodge’s sixteen rooms and two suites were full, but quiet.

Before his illness, Sam would have slipped on a jacket and gone outdoors to the side patio, a place where during the day visitors could pull up one of the hand-carved rocking chairs to enjoy a view of the mountains and Lightning Lake. It would have taken their breath away. The Rockies were giant monoliths watching over them, and even on the darkest night, the lake—now melting in the spring thaw—sparkled through the trees like diamond dust, a hidden treasure that never ceased to enchant.

But the flagstone surface of the patio played havoc with Sam’s balance on the crutches, and even the view was not worth yet another trip to the hospital down at Idaho Springs.

He settled instead on the library, though without a fire in the grate and people to enjoy it, it seemed cold and unwelcoming. Disappointed, he slid into the deep leather chair in front of the chess set his father had brought all the way from Italy so long ago.

Odd to think that he would have found comfort in coming across a fellow insomniac at this hour, even a stranger. Usually, when he was this restless, he preferred his own company, but it might have been nice to share the peace and tranquility of this place, this black velvet night, with someone else who appreciated it the way he did.

Someone whose presence might help quiet his disordered frame of mind.

Maybe that was too tall an order from anyone. After all, he’d been on edge for a few weeks now. Ever since Rafe had come home.

What real hope was there that fences between them could be mended?

Perhaps it was impossible. Sam knew that Rosa was irritated with him often these days, feeling that he wasn’t trying hard enough to find a way to bridge the gap between himself and Rafe, if only for the sake of the child.

But how could he when the past was so clearly etched in his brain?

He vividly remembered those last days before he and Rafe had had their final argument at the hospital. It had been springtime—just like now—but there’d been nothing hopeful and green about it back then. A tardy, disappointing season, muddy underfoot. The lodge’s winter receipts had been weak, too many empty rooms on the weekends due to a lack of fresh snowfall.

Most of all, the edgy discord between every member of the family had been palpable. Little irritations. Petty warfare between the children. And always, always, too many moments of cold, silent disapproval and heated words that could not be taken back between Sam and his youngest son.

Rafe had always been their most difficult child. Never as focused and steady as Nicholas, as easygoing as Matthew, or as sweet-natured as Adriana. But Sam had not expected the boy to up and run off the way he had. In his heart, he had expected a minor show of rebellion, then an uneasy peace.

All hope had died on a night when Sam had picked up the telephone and found the police on the other end, asking him to come down to the hospital in Idaho Springs. He’d made that trip down the mountain in record time, refusing to allow Rosa to accompany him, fearful of what he’d find there, a cramping terror in his gut.

What he’d found had been his angry and unrepentant son in the process of being stitched up, his body scraped and bruised from the fight he’d been in with a drug dealer. The jagged knife-cut along his thigh was not life-threatening, but Sam could barely breathe for thinking how a few centimeters one way or the other could have changed that fact.

He was as furious as he was frightened, of course, and even after all these years he knew he had handled the incident badly. Condemnation. Mistrust. The unwillingness to see his son’s side of things at all. As a result, Rafe had not come home. Instead, he had disappeared out into the world for twelve long years, and nothing would ever change the loss that defection had brought to their lives.

Sam became aware of movement beside him and discovered his wife slipping onto the arm of the chair, pulling him close so that she could plant a kiss on the top of his head.

“Come back to bed,” she said softly. “You can’t solve anything tonight.”

It was uncanny, how well Rosa knew him after so many years. Still, he had to try to keep her from thinking he had no surprises left to give her. “What makes you think I’m trying to solve anything?” he asked. “I’m just restless.”

“Samuel…”

“We need a new mattress. Let’s go shopping for one in the morning.”

“We don’t need a new mattress. Do you want to talk about what we do need?”

“No.”

“Samuel…”

He knew that tone. He cocked his head at her, settling for a portion of the truth. “He’s not going to stay, Rosie.”

She didn’t need to ask who he meant. She simply shrugged. “He’s a grown man. He shouldn’t have to stay if he decides he doesn’t want to. But if he does, then we’ll make a place for him here.”

“It won’t be easy. The two of us…we don’t communicate.”

“That’s because you are both hardheaded and proud. Too much alike.” He heard the smile in her voice. She brought her hand to his chest, rubbing across his heart gently. “But you know something inside you is hungry for reconciliation.”

“Perhaps. But on my terms.”

“What terms?”

“I don’t know the real reason he’s come home, but I will not have this family put in harm’s way. Not twelve years ago. Not now.”

Rosa made a disgusted sound in her throat. “I should have tried harder to make you see reason back then. Rafe would never do that.”

“Have you completely forgotten what a rebellious child he was?”

“Children grow up.”

“And men grow hard.”

She angled her head so that she could catch his eyes. “Sam, I know my children. And in your heart, you do as well. Rafe never did drugs. He would never have brought them into this house. Even that night, the doctors told you there were no drugs in his system.”

“Maybe not at that particular moment. But you weren’t there, Rosa,” Sam said stubbornly, remembering the terrifying spectacle he had witnessed. “You didn’t see what I saw. It was a miracle that he wasn’t killed.”

“You should have brought him home.”

He had no reply for that. Since there had been no charges against Rafe, bringing his son home was precisely what Sam had wanted that night, to bring his boy back to the safety and security of the lodge. Instead, he knew he had driven Rafe even farther away.

He couldn’t bear to think of all the mistakes he’d made that night, so he said, “Rafe made the decision to walk away from this family. No one else.”

“But he’s back now. We have been given a second chance.” Rosa squeezed his arm. “This is not a bridge to burn, Samuel. It is a bridge to cross.”

“You’re wasting your time. We might as well be strangers to him.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you want. I’m afraid—” He broke off, unsure how to express himself.

His wife slipped off the arm of the chair and knelt beside him. She cupped his hands in hers. “What are you afraid of? That he will stay with us? Or that he won’t?”

“We should go back to bed,” he said roughly. “Today will be busy with the holiday coming.”

She ignored him, instead placing soft kisses along the knobby ridges of his knuckles. When she looked up at him, the sweetest smile was on her lips. “She looks like you, you know?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, though he knew perfectly well who she referred to.

“Of course you do.”

“I find it irritating that you continue to be a woman who enjoys little mysteries.”

“There’s no mystery, really. Francesca looks like you. I’ve seen you looking at her. You have noticed the resemblance.”

“I’m naturally curious about any child Rafe claims is his.”

“And yet you take pains to stay away from her. Why is that?”

“The wheelchair frightens her.”

She sighed. “Samuel…”

Annoyed, he lifted his hands out of hers, spreading them in disgust. “Am I not allowed to take my own time? She may be my blood, but that doesn’t mean we’re automatically simpatico, you know?”

“She has your fondness for polka dots.” Her hands plucked at the smooth pattern of his pajama sleeve. One of his favorites—white spots on a royal blue background. “I find that shared quirk rather strange.”

“Liking polka dots is not a quirk. And it means nothing.”

“She’s just a little girl, Sam. No doubt she’s frightened by all the sudden changes in her life. I’ve told Rafe I want her to spend as much time as possible with us. She needs family. More than Rafe, she needs our love and understanding.”

“Give me time.”

“Your heart understands what your head cannot yet conceive. Trust those feelings.”

Sam shook his head. Rosa was too generous, too willing to forget. “He won’t stay,” he said again, more forcefully this time. “We’ll open up our home and our hearts and they’ll both be gone by Christmastime. Mark my words.”

Her poise could not be shaken by the pessimism of his tone. She simply nodded, as if accepting that possibility. “I have decided that this is a chance worth taking. Meeting your son halfway is no more frightening in the long run than living a life without him.”