Читать книгу Her Daughter's Father - Anna Adams - Страница 9

INDIA GLANCED FROM the adjoining door to her father’s room, to the old beige phone on the bureau. For the first time in years, she craved the comfort of her mother’s serenity. She dialed.

Her mother picked up on the first ring. India broke into her hello. “I saw her, Mom, but she’s in trouble.”

“I should have come with you, too.” Through the telephone lines, Rachel Stuart’s voice sounded tinny and far away and too much like Colleen’s.

“She has purple hair, and a boy tried to drag her into his car. I think he’s her boyfriend. If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have hurt her.”

“Her boyfriend?” Rachel squeaked.

“What kind of parents let their daughter date a boy like that? She’s not old enough to date. Even I know she’s not old enough. Maybe I know better than anyone.”

Rachel’s response came more slowly. “Daughters sometimes do things their parents don’t know about.”

India tightened her hand on the phone. “How am I supposed to answer that? I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to hope Jack and Mary Stephens are more suspicious than you and Dad.”

“So do I, but don’t leap to conclusions. Wait awhile.”

Impatient with the same Zen-like acceptance Rachel had shown her in similar straits, India lashed out. “I don’t plan to use this as an excuse to announce I’m her mother, but I hope her real parents won’t give her the freedom to hang herself.”

Rachel’s silence lengthened. Finally she took a tolerant breath that sounded nearer than her voice. “Maybe she made one innocent mistake tonight. Honey, don’t push me away again. I’m glad you called me first and that you want to talk to me, but I’m not sure how to help you. I don’t want to suggest anything that will make you turn away from me, but I really don’t believe you can judge Colleen’s family situation by one incident. Stay there. Keep your eyes open.”

India shook her head, alone again with decisions about the child she’d given up already. She shuddered. Talk about repeating history. When she’d known she was pregnant, she’d turned first to her mother. And Rachel’s answer? Give the child to someone who can make her a good life.

“I’m sure you’re right, Mom.” Old habits died hard. She couldn’t help saying what her mother wanted to hear. “I’ll get Dad. He’ll want to say good-night to you.”

WHITE PAINT PERMEATED the fine black bristles of the brush India dragged carefully over the window ledge. What am I going to do?

Dip the brush in the paint-spattered can.

I promised not to involve myself in her life.

Wipe the bristles against the can’s lip.

But he could have hurt her—and her father knew him. Her father wasn’t surprised to find them together. India turned her face away from paint fumes that rose with the brush, but she had to look back to paint the trim her father had primed.

“Time for lunch, honey.”

She jumped at Mick’s hesitant voice from below her. Was she so transparent he felt he had to be gentle with her? “You can take off the kid gloves, Dad. I’m all right.”

“I guess, but let me be perfectly honest. Your mother’s worried about you, and I’m not supposed to trust your usual ‘I’m all right’ response.” He climbed her ladder’s lower rungs, forcing her to hold on or topple off. “You’ve lived close by, and you always showed up on the required occasions, but you were always all right. You didn’t want college tuition. You never asked me to help you with stuff a dad’s supposed to do, get your keys out when you locked them in the car, paint your apartment. I guess time between you and me stopped when you were sixteen. I’m not always sure what to say to you or how to put it, but I’d like you to try to trust me.”

India shook her bangs out of her eyes and offered a contrite smile that felt strained. “I didn’t abandon you and Mom. I let you help me make a bad decision, and even though it was completely my decision, I haven’t felt comfortable with you since.”

Mick took the brush from her. “Blame us for it. Be as angry as you can, but stop hiding from me. I came here to help you. When will you forgive me enough to think of me as your father again?”

“I’m guilty, not angry. I’ve even wanted to blame you and Mom, but I know better.”

“Excuse me, Miss—Mrs.—Ms.—ma’am.”

Startled by the gravelly, unsure voice, India leaned around her father. The ladder swayed, but the tall man below steadied it as if she and Mick weighed nothing. Instinctively, her heart ricocheting in her chest, India grabbed her father’s wrist. “Dad.”

“I’m Jack Stephens.” The man, his blacker-than-black hair in silky curls that stroked his up-tilted head, eyed them with embarrassment. “I couldn’t hear you until I got close enough to realize I was interrupting.”

India gripped the aluminum ladder’s cool edge. What had she said? What could he have heard? Nothing that would expose her connection to Colleen, but plenty she and her father should have discussed years ago in private.

“No.” Mick curved his hand around India’s. “We’re on our way down. I came up to remind my daughter the Fish Shop stops serving lunch in twenty minutes.” With a quick pat, he released her hand and started down. “I’m Mick Stuart, and this is my daughter, India.”

Skipping the last several rungs, Mick dropped to the ground. Taking his cue, India tried to remain calm. Act normal. She clung to the sides of the ladder, but at the last minute, she couldn’t risk touching Jack Stephens. Even brushing against him would feel like involving herself with Colleen. She skipped the same rungs her father had, to leap away from Jack.

Confusion lined Jack’s broad forehead. She searched his face, high cheekbones, dark chocolate eyes that returned her intense interest. Jack smiled. He looked far younger than the forty-two she knew him to be.

His smile called up every defense she’d ever constructed. This man was her child’s father. Colleen’s father, as India could never be her mother.

“Hello, Mr. Stephens.” India stepped to Mick’s side. “My father handles the business. Dad, I’ll go on to the Fish Shop and order for you, okay?”

“No, wait.” Jack reached for her arm, but she pulled away. As his fingers drifted through air, he looked slightly embarrassed. “I came to see you. I believe we met at the festival.”

India swept her ponytail over her shoulder. Nervously she inspected the pale yellow strands splayed across her palm. “No, I think I’d remember.”

“You helped my daughter. I’d like to thank you.”

For fifteen years, she’d handled every situation life tossed her way, including a plane crash and a heart that stayed empty no matter how hard she tried to fill it. She might not have made the right choices, but she’d chosen. She flipped her ponytail back and took control. “How did you find me, Mr. Stephens?”

“Jack. My name is Jack.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “This is a small island. I just asked if anyone had seen you, and a friend told me Tanner’d hired you and your father to paint his house.”

India couldn’t hold back an admiring smile. He’d worked her own plan against her. “You didn’t have to come. I’m sure anyone would have helped your daughter. She didn’t want to go with that boy anyway.”

In obvious relief, he braced his hands on his hips. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that, but I can say how grateful I am for what you did. Colleen’s friends said Chris almost dragged her into his car.”

So Chris was his name. India tried to look through Jack’s handsome self-consciousness to the man beneath. Shouldn’t he know what kind of boy this Chris was? His grip on the kid’s neck implied he’d understood.

“Fortunately, she held on until I got there.” India wiped her hand on her shirt and held it out to him. “Thanks for stopping by. I was glad to help.”

Sliding one foot forward on the grass, Jack took her hand. India released her fingers from his, uncomfortable with a sudden warmth that sizzled up her arm. She noted the dusty jeans that clung to his muscled thighs, the faded Georgetown sweatshirt that stretched across his chest beneath a dark blue field jacket. How did a fisherman get so dusty?

The same pale dust flecked her father’s clothes, but he’d spent the day stripping old paint off Mr. Tanner’s trim. Had Jack lost his fishing business since he’d adopted Colleen?

Could this situation disintegrate any faster? Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. She needed time to think. At any moment, Jack might see something of Colleen in her. She couldn’t let him have even the smallest suspicion. She had to escape his observant gaze.

“I’m starving, Dad. Mind if we go now?”

Mick’s weathered skin flushed with embarrassment at her brisk tone. India squeezed his arm, amazed he didn’t see her point.

He hung back. “We shouldn’t leave our equipment out, India.”

She turned him toward Mr. Tanner’s crushed-shell driveway. “It’ll be fine. Come on.”

“I’ll walk with you.” Jack’s deep voice stayed at her side as he lengthened his stride to keep up. India looked anywhere but at him.

At the top of the driveway, she slid into the passenger seat of her father’s panel truck. Mick took his time coming around the hood, talking to Jack Stephens in quiet words she couldn’t decipher. Tapping her feet on the floor, she was breathless when her father finally lifted a farewell hand to Jack and opened the door.

“Nice to meet you,” Mick called.

Jack nodded. His questioning gaze made him look vulnerable, despite his height and work-hardened body. Wind lifted his silky jet curls again. India shifted in the truck seat. What color would Colleen’s hair be under all that purple?

WAITING FOR COLLEEN outside the Arran Island House of Beauty, Jack tipped his soda can up. The cool drink tasted good on such an unnaturally warm spring day. As he dragged the back of his hand over his mouth, he eyed the woman balancing her groceries, her keys and the bulky D.C. newspaper while she pushed through the grocery’s front door.

In baggy overalls and a dark blue shirt, with the sleeves rolled up her slender arms, she looked more child than woman. Her long corn-silk ponytail didn’t help.

If not for her, Chris Briggs might have hauled Colleen into his car. He might have killed them both, driving under the influence. With a shudder, Jack took another swig of soda that bit at the back of his throat.

His father-in-law came out of the market carrying his own copy of the newspaper. Hayden nodded toward India Stuart as he passed behind the commercial van emblazoned with the words, Stuart Painting. He spoke to her, but she shook her head. With a friendly shrug, he crossed the street in four strides and stepped onto the curb beside Jack. “She’s the one?”

Jack nodded. “She’d rather spill everything in those two bags than ask for help.”

Hayden grinned. “I offered. Did you?”

“No.” Jack smiled, unsure of his response to India. “I figured I’d irritated her enough when I thanked her this morning.”

Hayden thwacked the paper against his thigh. “She’s cute, though.”

“Cute?”

“Go over there and help her, son.”

Jack opened his own truck’s door. “I have enough woman trouble, and I thought you stayed on to help me.”

Hayden cocked an eyebrow at the apparent non sequitur.

Jack looked at Hayden with affection. “Your advice just keeps getting worse.”

Watching India Stuart, Hayden came around the truck and took the other seat. “Yeah, I guess. Maybe she’s too young for you.”

Shouldn’t the guy feel some sort of loyalty toward Mary? Jack danced uncomfortably around thoughts of her, himself.

He’d tried. He’d tried as hard as he could with Mary, accepting her accusations when she’d told him he’d driven her to do what she’d done to their marriage. He’d wanted a child as badly as she had. But as he peered through the House of Beauty’s plate glass window, trying to identify which shadow belonged to his daughter, Jack wished he’d never found out the truth about Mary’s affair. Wished he’d never known she’d settled for him only to keep the child they couldn’t make together.

“There she goes.”

Jack thought Hayden meant Colleen, but when she didn’t stroll through the beauty salon’s doors, he turned to the other side of the street in time to watch India’s van rumble dustily away. Jack curled his fingers around the steering wheel.

“When I thanked her, she acted almost angry. She couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

Hayden offered a sage nod. “People don’t like to get involved. Maybe she’s just a nice woman who helped Colleen because she couldn’t pass a child in need, but she doesn’t want to be thanked. Wouldn’t you have helped a child in Colleen’s position?”

Being in the right place at the right time didn’t explain the ice in India Stuart’s dark blue eyes. “I think there’s more. She had to force herself to look at me.” He pushed her from his mind. “Colleen is my first concern. I’ll talk to Chris as soon as he crawls out from under his rock again.”

“Didn’t you speak to his mother?”

“I tried to talk to Leslie, but she isn’t the same since Tom left them. The whole time we talked she nursed her youngest, and her twin boys climbed all over us. I think Chris requires more energy than she can give him. I suggested he should help more, and she told me he puts all his time and money into that fancy car of his.”

Hayden bounced his fist against the knee of his trousers. “You’ll find him. Hey, if he won’t listen to you, maybe you can set that Stuart woman on him again. From what I hear, she held her own.”

“I can’t afford to see the humor.” Jack broke off, pleasantly surprised as Colleen pushed carefully through the shop door.

A breeze lifted her honey-blond hair into her eyes. Impatiently she brushed it away with a furtive glance, as if she didn’t want anyone to see her without her purple rebellion.

Jack’s relief evaporated. “I don’t think she gets it yet, either. Maybe I should have her thank India Stuart in person, too. It’s only polite, and admitting her mistake to a stranger might make her see how big it was.”

AFTER THEY PUT AWAY THEIR equipment the next day, India and her father headed to the town square for an open-air market Mrs. Henderson had told them about. The local library sponsored a booth that sold used books. India stopped there first.

“You’re new in town,” the woman behind the wooden counter said. “I’m Nell Fisher.”

India held out her hand. “India Stuart. Mrs. Henderson told my father and me the market opens here every week.”

“Yes.” The other woman waved a work-gloved hand at the people who strolled up and down the neat rows. Now that the weather had gone back to chilly normal, everyone wore coats that flapped around them and rubbed the wooden stalls. “We probably have something you’d like. I recommend Clem Tyler’s hydroponic tomatoes, and Reverend Goodling’s wife tats beautiful lace collars and cuffs, if you’re in the market.” An excellent saleswoman, she pointed over her shoulder, at a rocky lean-to with its back to her stall. “And, of course, the requisite tie-dyed-anything-you-ever-wanted-to-wear booth.”

India laughed. “Do you always participate?”

Mrs. Fisher nodded. “When I can get away. I don’t have an assistant just now, so I have to close up while I’m here, but I hope to turn a couple of the youngsters into patrons, while their parents shop for better prices than we can get in the stores out here. You’ll notice we don’t have room for a mall, and we pay the price for our isolation.”

India picked up a dog-eared copy of Peter Pan. “Do you read to the children?”

“If I gather a large enough crowd. You seem pretty interested.”

India hesitated. Gossip ran both ways. Would a house-painting librarian make Colleen’s neighbors suspicious? But no, she and her father had agreed on what she should say, to cover her failings as a painter. She was helping him out, the best he could afford. “I usually work as a librarian. I’m on sabbatical, and my father needed a hand.”

“Really?” Interest lit Mrs. Fisher’s eyes. “And how long do you plan to stay on the island?”

“Depends.” India’s breath grew short. “We don’t know how much business we’ll find for my father.”

“Maybe you’d like to help me out if you have some free time in the evenings. We have a volunteer program.” Mrs. Fisher lifted a stack of books onto the counter. “I just don’t have a volunteer to man it at the moment.”

“Volunteer?”

“Yes. Unless you’re too tired in the evenings?”

“No.” Drawn to the work she loved best, India leaped at the chance for more contact with the people who lived in this community with Colleen. “I’d love to help. My father might be able to spare me for a couple of hours some days, too.”

“Good. Drop by the library tomorrow—” Mrs. Fisher broke off as a gleaming car braked at the curb next to the stall.

Hard to miss that car, or the girl who climbed out to stand, impossibly tall, unexpectedly uncertain. She’d washed that purple right out of her hair. With the palest brown cap of silky strands hugging her chin, she looked exactly like pictures of India’s mother at fifteen.

India gripped the pole supporting the library booth. She should run for all their lives. This slender child, teetering on the razor blade of adolescence was definitely the daughter she’d given up.

Warmth, as big and bright as the sun, and twice as powerful, exploded in India’s chest. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she could contain the astounding happiness that burst and blossomed to life inside her. She felt the same compulsion she’d had the day Colleen was born, to count all her fingers and toes, to make sure she was all right. And just as she hadn’t then, she couldn’t now. India moved her head from side to side. How could this happen?

“Hi.” The girl twined her fingers in front of her. “My name is Colleen Stephens.”

India managed a stunned nod. “I figured.” She cleared roughness from her throat. Her heart pounded a drum solo. “I met your father.”

“He told me.” With an apparent eye for reinforcements, Colleen looked back at the car.

Her reminder of the boy who waited behind the steering wheel dragged India back to reality in a heartbeat. “You came with him?” she asked before she knew she was going to.

Colleen blushed. “Chris isn’t always like he was that night at the festival.” She swallowed hard and stared at Mrs. Fisher until the older woman moved to the back of her booth. Colleen thrust out her hand, offering to shake. “I just wanted to thank you.”

India spiked a swift glance over Colleen’s shoulder. Did Jack know she was out with Chris? She took her daughter’s hand. It felt small and warm and totally vulnerable.

Her heart contracted. Chris could hurt this child so easily, and she didn’t even recognize the danger. Protective instincts rose in India, as strong as if she’d raised Colleen from day one. Instincts she had to check.

“Colleen!” A tall white-haired man’s sharp voice made the girl jump.

“Grandpa,” she said, turning around.

“I take it you’re with him?” The man tilted a contemptuous chin at Chris, and India swallowed a cheer.

“You’re embarrassing me.” Colleen looked stealthy. “He’s not a bad guy.”

Her grandpa shared India’s doubts, but he broadcast them, not caring Colleen had left the car door open. “Has that boy had anything to drink today?”

“No.” A quick blush reddened her skin. “We had a Coke after school. He’s not like that.”

“All the same, I’ll take you home.” The man looked at India. “You must be Miss Stuart.”

“My grandfather, Hayden Mason.” Colleen rammed her hands into her pockets. “I’m not coming home with you, Grandpa. I’m old enough to take a ride from a friend without you calling the angst police.”

“I have no idea who the angst police might be, young woman, but I’m taking you home. Say goodbye to Miss Stuart.”

“India.”

He looked startled, and India realized he welcomed her contribution to the conversation no more than his grand-daughter’s. “India, then. Colleen, I’m busy this afternoon. Come now.”

Colleen twisted her mouth in a frown India recognized. It usually came just before her mother put her foot down so hard the house rumbled. But Colleen gathered her wits with a wary look at Mrs. Fisher. “Goodbye, Chris,” she called, a hint of panic edging her voice.

Without another word, he yanked her door shut and squealed away on smoking tires. India planted her feet firmly on the ground, instead of comforting Colleen, who broke her heart with a forlorn expression.

Colleen followed her stern grandparent as he turned, but she looked back at India. Defiance and a puzzled awareness struggled in her eyes. India dragged herself to her full height. If she couldn’t stay out of Colleen’s life without looking like a cyclone victim, she needed to leave. Colleen offered a halfhearted smile and lifted one hand that quickly flopped back to her side as her grandfather reached for her other sleeve.

India waved back, but Colleen looked away so fast, India wasn’t even sure she saw. Realizing her daughter had truly come and gone, India shivered, finally feeling the cold air that snaked into her heavy sweater. She stopped waving and wrapped her arms around her waist.

“Great. I’ve turned into Granny Clampett.”

Mrs. Fisher leaned across the booth’s counter. “I didn’t know anyone your age ever saw that program.”

“JUST TALK TO HIM, DAD,” Colleen whispered through the small opening in her doorway. “I’ll never be able to show my face in front of my friends.”

“What friends? Even you said Mrs. Fisher and India Stuart were the only ones close enough to hear.

“And Chris.”

“Chris is out-of-bounds to you. He’s too old, and he tried to hurt you.”

“No one understands him except me.”

“I understand him, and that’s why I’ve told you to stay away. I need to be able to trust you, Colleen.”

“Trust me? If you did, you wouldn’t set Grandpa on me. Did you have him follow me after school?”

Jack almost laughed, but her frustration made him empathetic. Mary had told him how strict Hayden could be. “No, but he can’t walk away when he sees you doing something dangerous.”

“I don’t want him here if he’s going to embarrass me like that. He was worse than you.”

Jack really had to hold back a grin. Maybe he owed Hayden some gratitude. “I’ll talk to him, but try to see this afternoon from his point of view.”

“No, thank you.” She shut her door with a firm click.

Jack turned, wanting to whistle. She hadn’t thrown herself back into Chris’s car, and she’d come to him for help. Parenthood looked a little brighter tonight. He’d better find Hayden and explain the art of making good ideas seem as if they’d come from Colleen first.

He ran down the stairs, two at a time. Hayden looked up from his paper in the living room.

“We need to talk.” Jack sprawled on the sofa. “You made me look good to her.”

INDIA FIDDLED WITH THE SWITCH on the paint sprayer she was trying to clean. “Dad, I can’t make this thing work.”

“Let me see it.”

But as she turned to him, paint and cloudy water spewed from the nozzle, covering Mick in a smelly cloud. He stopped, a frame from an old cartoon. She couldn’t help laughing as he pulled off his glasses and stared at her, his eyes circled perfectly in white.

“Spray painting the boss?” he teased in a tone that promised retribution.

As he grabbed for the nozzle and she fell, a truck pulled up at the edge of Mr. Tanner’s driveway. Somehow, India knew who’d be driving.

“Jack.”

He leaned out his window, worry creasing his forehead. “I’m sorry to bother you again. Have you seen Colleen?”

India clambered to her feet. Mick stood swiftly beside her. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

“We haven’t seen her.” Mick glanced down the road. “Shouldn’t she be in school?”

“She should be.” Jack shielded his eyes, more from their gazes than from the sun. He seemed intent on the sails just visible over deep trees at the end of the road. “Sometimes she goes to the marina. I thought she might have passed by here.”

Chris and his shiny car tumbled in India’s mind. “No.” She wished him on his way so she could look for Colleen without his knowing. Mick’s elbow in her ribs startled her.

“Tell him.” Mick nodded toward Jack, his ghostly face not funny anymore.

“Tell me?”

India stared at her father. “Tell him?”

“About yesterday.”

“I know what you want me to tell him, but Dad—”

“Tell me what?”

India grimaced. “I’m sorry. I’m being thoughtless, or maybe we’re both butting in.” She glanced her father’s way. “You probably already know, but I ran into Colleen yesterday. She wanted to apologize. And Chris was with her.”

“Hayden told me. You haven’t seen her today?”

“No.”

With a thank-you wave he hit the gas and headed toward the marina. India stared after the dusty cloud that rose behind him. “I’m supposed to stay out of her life, Dad. Remember?”

“At the cost of her safety? What if her grandfather hadn’t told Jack?”

“I feel like a tattletale. I wish I could go look for her, too.” But she’d given up that right fifteen years ago. India reached for the sprayer they’d left on the ground. “How serious do you suppose this is?”

Her father answered with silence. For several seconds, he only stared at her, his thoughts and his gaze uneasy. “It was serious with you.”

“I don’t know what to do. What if I’m as big a threat to her as Chris? What if she finds out about me, and they didn’t even tell her she was adopted?” She glanced at the road again, clear now of Jack’s dust. “Where is her mother anyway?”

“Maybe she works out of town.”

“I pictured a close-knit, Beaver Cleaver family.” Jack’s hurt had deepened her concern for him, as well as for Colleen. It confused her. Worse, it seemed to create a bond between them. She still felt the emotional brush of his telling gaze, swiftly averted to hide his thoughts.

“India, be careful with that. You could cut yourself—”

Too late. She let the sprayer tumble to the ground and covered the gash on her palm with her other hand. She eyed her father, thoughts of Jack and Colleen weighting the air between them. “None of this was supposed to happen.”