Читать книгу Love, Marriage And Family 101 - Anne Peters - Страница 6

Mr. Michael John Parker was fifteen minutes late.

Through the glass partition of her socalled office—the only private office available—Halloran McKenzie glared at the large clock on the far wall of the school gymnasium, fingertips doing an impatient drumroll on her battered metal desk. It was her opinion that since she’d been accommodating enough to agree to a meeting after school hours, the least Corinne Parker’s father could do was to show up on time.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have plans of her own. This was the first day of her aerobics class and it was due to start in forty-five minutes. She owed it to her hips and thighs to be there. Not to mention that Garnet Bloomfield would think she’d once again reneged on her commitment to lose those saddlebags.

Impatience urged Hally to her feet. She paced the confines of her cubicle, thinking it was a good thing she’d at least had the foresight to change into her workout gear. This way she could be out of here and on her way the minute she was done laying down a few pertinent ground rules to the father of her truant young student. Provided he showed up within the next—Hello!

Hally’s dark thoughts careened to a halt as, through the glass in her door, her eyes homed in on the man dodging the junior varsity basketball team’s practice shots as he strode hurriedly toward her office in the back corner of the gym. Well, well.

If that was Mr. Parker—and who else would be bearing down on her office at this hour?—then he was everything she’d ever imagined a typical corporate army’s top general to look like: grim-faced and pulled-up socks to the max.

In other words, precisely the kind of father most redblooded teenagers would feel honor-bound to rebel against, not that that excused Corinne Parker’s absences and chronic tardiness. It did throw some light, however, on the girl’s penchant for grunge fashion and hacked-off bleached hair. No doubt she wanted to spite a father who expected his fourteen-year-old to wear pinafores and Mary Jane shoes.

Who should know better than she?

Hally pulled back from the glass a bit lest the man catch her watching his approach. She was appalled by the strength and instantaneousness of the antipathy she felt toward him, a man she’d never met It had been years, after all, since she had been a rebellious fourteen-year-old with a father whose only resemblance to the man approaching her office lay in the sternly set facial expression, the immaculate business suit and flawless haircut:

All of which, admittedly, provided quite a startling contrast to the sweaty group of scruffy adolescents he was skirting with preoccupied grace and agility.

And to their coach, too.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Moving away from the door altogether, Hally impatiently chastised herself for that disloyal observation. After all, Gilbert Smith was her…well, “boyfriend” would do as well as anything else. And when he wasn’t in ratty sweats and red as a beet from yelling at his team, Gil looked quite presentable, too. She on the other hand…

Hally glanced down at herself dressed in workout clothes and was suddenly irrationally self-conscious about her appearance. She wished she hadn’t changed clothes, after all. More, she wished she already weighed five pounds less so that she wouldn’t look as if she were stuffed into her leotard like a five-foot sausage into its casing. And though she scolded herself for these unprecedented and idiotic thoughts and feelings, she frantically cast around for something with which to cover as much of her lessthan-perfect shape as possible.

She spotted a denim shirt and snatched it up. She had one arm in a sleeve when, after a cursory knock, the door opened.

“Ms. McKenzie?” It was the GQ cutout, of course. Entering at her distracted nod, he introduced himself. “Mike Parker. Sorry I’m late. Traffic…”

“That’s all right.” Struggling to appear composed, Hally fought to get her other arm into a maddeningly uncooperative garment.

“Here, let me…”

Mike Parker was helping her into the shirt with efficient courtesy before Hally could do more than stammer a flustered, “Th-thank you.”

Up close, the man was physically even more imposing than he had seemed across the gym. He towered over her by a good head. Heat radiated from him—it had been ninety degrees out at noon and now it was certainly hotter. He smelled of clean male, starched linen and crisp aftershave. Hally stepped away from him the instant her shirt settled across her shoulders.

Excruciatingly aware of the glance with which he swept her leotarded frame, she retreated behind her desk and sat, all the while bemoaning her uncharacteristic lapse in professional appearance and demeanor. Ordinarily, given her lack of physical stature and—to her—terminally cute blondness, to establish credibility she always strove to dress and conduct herself with reserved dignity during first meetings such as this.

Very much afraid that in this case she had totally blown it, she tried to regain some lost ground with a cool smile and a hand gesture that silently invited her visitor to sit, as well.

He didn’t. Instead he disconcerted her anew by ambling over to the pegboard wall to study her displayed diplomas. Well, let him, she thought, trying for unconcern. She had, after all, graduated with honors. And anyway, this meeting was about him, not her.

“Mr. Parker.” Hally tightly folded her hands on the desk. Her posture was as erect as ever her mother could have wished it to be. “I’m afraid I have another appointment in a few minutes, so I’ll come straight to the point. Your daughter Corinne…”

“Is lucky to have you for a teacher,” her visitor disarmed her by interrupting. “If your credentials are anything to go by.” He went to the chair and sat.

Not sure how to reply to this double-edged compliment, Hally looked down at her folded hands. Noting whiteknuckled tension there, she willed herself to relax. She decided to forego a reply and to stick to the subject at hand.

“Corinne is a very troubled young woman,” she said. She forced herself to levelly meet the man’s eyes and was momentarily thrown off guard by the flicker of pain her words seemed to cause. It was masked so quickly by an expression of wary neutrality, however, that she decided she’d only imagined it in the first place.

Certainly his tone revealed nothing but skepticism as he said, “Isn’t two weeks a bit soon to make that kind of sweeping assessment, Ms. McKenzie? After all, Cory is not only new to Ben Franklin High, being a freshman, but new to Long Beach, too. We only moved here a month ago.

“I understand that,” Hally said. “And believe me, I’m not the kind of teacher or counselor whose first course of action is a complaint to the student’s parents.”

“I have only your word for that, though, don’t I?”

“No, Mr. Parker, you can check with the principal, too.” Hally kept her tone pleasant but firm. Parker’s bristling defensiveness, identical to every other parent’s reaction to criticism of their child, was exactly what she’d needed to relax and regain a professional perspective. This was familiar ground and she trod upon it with confidence. “I’ve taught here at Ben Franklin for seven years—”

“This isn’t about teaching, though, is it?” Michael Parker injected stiffly. “It’s about you psychoanalyzing a student you barely know and—”

“Mr. Parker,” Hally interrupted. She was not about to let him put her back on the defensive. “Quite aside from the fact that I do have a degree in psychology—”

“A bachelor degree,” Mike Parker said dismissively. “With all due respect, Ms. McKenzie, they’re a dime a dozen.”

“Nevertheless.” In spite of her resolve to remain unruffled, Hally began to seethe with resentment but didn’t bother to point out to the man what he already knew very well from looking at her diplomas—namely her Masters in English. “I have taught school for seven years and I don’t need to be a therapist to know that Corinne is having emotional problems beyond those related to a new environment”

Leaning forward, she drove home her point. “Are you aware, Mr. Parker, that out of the nine days school has been in session, your daughter has been absent four and tardy the rest?”

“Impossible.” Betraying emotion at last, Parker surged to his feet. “I personally drop her at the front steps of this school every morning. Let me see this.”

Hally reflexively shrank back as he reached across the desk and snatched up Corinne’s file. But though she had tensed to object to his high-handedness, she took a deep breath instead and held her tongue.

Let him see for himself the lengths to which a child will go to defy an overly controlling parent, she thought snidely.

And was ashamed of her pettiness the moment she saw the betrayed and thunderstruck expression with which the girl’s father thumbed through the ream of obviously forged handwritten excuses in the file.

After several minutes of heavy silence, he muttered something harsh and succinct. He tossed the folder down on her desk. He turned away from Hally’s gaze, one hand rubbing his mouth, the other clamped to the back of his neck. After a moment he dropped both hands with an audible sigh and the set of his shoulders lost some of its starch.

“I’m sorry,” he said, flicking Hally a dark, sideways glance that, combined with the emotion-rough timbre of his voice, shook her up a lot more than it had any right to. “I had no idea….”

“I understand.” Hally felt oddly self-conscious suddenly in the presence of this man’s bewilderment and hurt, as if she’d trespassed on some private moment of grief. She felt bad, too, about her initial snap judgment of him. The unsettling resemblance she thought she had discerned between him and her father had long since been dispelled. She knew now that they were nothing alike. Mike Parker, whatever else he might or might not be, cared about this daughter. Whereas James McKenzie….

Well. Hally shook off the disturbing comparisons. Who knew? Feebly, she gestured to the phony excuses in the file. “Could anyone else have written these? A grandmother, or—”

“No.” Mike Parker went to his chair and heavily dropped into it. With his elbows propped on spread knees he bent his head and, his features taut with strain, stared fixedly at the fisted hand he cradled in his other.

Because they were extremely large hands, Hally stared at them, too. Raw-boned farmer’s hands, they struck her as incongruous, sticking out as they did from the sleeves of an unmistakably hand-tailored suit. And they presented another difference between this man and her father whose hands were graceful and slim—the hands of a surgeon.

“Cory and I are alone, Ms. McKenzie.”

“Yes…” It was in the file, of course. She glanced at his face. It was shuttered, devoid of emotion. Still, Hally’s marshmallow heart went out to him even as her mind, after a quick glance at the clock, registered the fact she’d have to cut this conference short right now if she hoped to make her aerobics class on time.

But, of course, she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. They hadn’t resolved anything yet. She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” His glance acknowledged her sympathy, but his tone made it clear he wouldn’t welcome pity, in case that was offered, too.

It wouldn’t have been. Mostly because Michael John Parker looked too tough in spite of his polish to be in need of it, or welcome it. His nose had clearly been broken at some point in his past and never been properly set, giving him the kind of face—interesting rather than handsome—that would draw second glances from men as well as from women. Second glances…but very little empathy.

Yet, Hally, though she fought against it, was filled with it. She’d always been a bleeding heart. “How long since…”

“A year.” He spoke curtly, still staring at his hands. It was obvious he didn’t relish her questions and resented the necessity to answer them.

Hally sighed and stifled a need to apologize. After all, she wasn’t idly prying, she was doing her job. Unfortunately for Michael Parker, it required that they communicate beyond the customary impersonal chitchat of strangers.

“Corinne is your only child?”

A mute nod confirmed what hadn’t really been a question anyway. No siblings were listed in the records, and something about the girl’s solitariness and oddly mature self-possession marked her an only child.

“And the two of you had no problems prior to your move to Long Beach?”

“I didn’t say that”

“Then you did have problems?”

“Doesn’t every family?” Mike looked up from his hands with a dark-eyed glare of resentment.

“Mr. Parker.” Struggling for patience, Hally took a deep breath and quietly let it out. “I appreciate how difficult this must be for you…”

“Do you?”

“Well, y-yes….”

“How?”

“Well, I….” Thrown off balance, Hally momentarily faltered. Her earlier empathy waned in the face of his tightlipped challenge. Affronted, she angled her chin. “Are you baiting me, Mr. Parker?”

“Not at all.”

“Then what was the point…”

“The point, Ms. McKenzie, is that I very much doubt you can have any idea what it’s like to lose your mate and suddenly find yourself on your own with an adolescent child you think you know but don’t.”

On his feet again, Mike paced the few steps of Hally’s confined office space with the same agitation and pent-up violence her cat, Chaucer, displayed in his carrier during trips to the vet.

“I’m at my wits’ end here, Ms. McKenzie.” Parker’s tone was low, but fierce. “And what I need from you is help, not simpering platitudes about knowing how I feel.”

He grabbed the edge of the desk and pinned her to her seat with his eyes. “You don’t know squat about how I feel.”

“I know that you’re angry and that it has nothing to do with me,” Hally said steadily. The flare of alarm she’d initially felt at his outburst had been only that—a flare, as quickly extinguished as ignited by the recognition that frustration, not violence, had driven him to it. “And I’m quite convinced now that you care about Corinne…”

“You doubted that?” He pulled back, his tone as incredulous as his expression.

Hally shrugged. “Corinne is a new student with—you’ll excuse my bluntness—nothing much to recommend her so far. And you…”

“What about me?”

“Well, to be frank, everything about you shouts ‘upwardly mobile executive,’ which leads me to wonder just how much of your time you can spare to hands-on parenting.”

“I can spare as much time as it takes,” Mike growled, furious at the implication of parental neglect when he’d been knocking himself out trying to do the right things. “But I do have to make a living, I can’t be in two places at once, and until you finally did your job and notified me, I had no way of knowing that my daughter wasn’t in school when she was supposed to be. Now did I?”

His eyes drilled into her, daring her to refute his logic. Hally couldn’t, but that didn’t mean she was prepared to back down. She stared at him with all the authority she could muster and waited in silence until he sat down.

“Thank you,” she said coolly, much as she would say to one of her students after she’d subjugated them with one of her looks.

So secretly—and unprofessionally—thrilled was she with this minor victory over the formidable Michael J. Parker that she forgot all about the extra inch on her thighs and the fact that her tights offered nothing in the way of camouflage.

She shoved her chair back from her desk and crossed her legs. “Now that that’s out of the way,” she said briskly, “let’s discuss how the situation should be handled….”

Troubled and pensive, Mike slowly traversed the nowdeserted school parking lot on his way to his car. Strange woman, that Halloran McKenzie, he thought. Talk about contradictions—the mind of Dr. Joyce Brothers in Shirley Temple’s head and Marilyn Monroe’s body. Combined, those traits made for a very tantalizing package, however, he had to admit. And he doubted many boys missed her English class.

This somewhat wry reflection abruptly recalled him to his troubles since it reminded him that his daughter evidently did miss English and every other class with frightening regularity.

Grimly, he started the car and pulled out into traffic, knowing he would have to have a serious talk with Cory when he got home. He dreaded it. It seemed not a day went by that they weren’t at each other over something. And, man, he was tired of it. In fact, he was tired period. Being mom and pop, housekeeper, breadwinner and disciplinarian to a recalcitrant teenager was wearing him out.

Cruising the route home on automatic pilot, and removed by time and distance from the dedicated Ms. McKenzie’s ardently persuasive plea for patience, Mike thought that giving in to Cory’s demands just might be the best thing to do after all.

Why not let her go back home? Why not let her go back to Idaho, to Marble Ridge, to Becky’s folks? Lord knew they were at him about it almost as much as Corinne was, if for different reasons. Cory professed to hate him, whereas the Campbells simply didn’t deem any man alone capable of raising a teenage daughter.

And maybe that was why he wasn’t letting Cory go—because his in-laws were right and, aside from the fact that he didn’t much care to be pressured, he needed to prove them wrong.

Mike knew that wasn’t really the reason he had so far hung tough, though. Part of it, sure. But another part was that, while alive, his wife had clung way too tightly to her parents, and even to his, only three miles further down the road. Becky’s dependence had given the older folks the impression they could butt in whenever they felt like it, an attitude that didn’t fly with Mike at all.

But even that wasn’t the main reason for his determination to bring up his daughter himself from here on in. That had strictly to do with himself and Cory. She was his daughter, his child. She was the baby he and Becky had been so happy to have created. And she’d grown to be a stranger.

His fault. Drilling for oil all over the globe didn’t leave a man with much family time. Nor was three weeks of home leave every four months anywhere near enough time for a father to bond with his child. A child who didn’t understand why he wasn’t around like other daddies; who considered his long absences a form of desertion no matter how often he tried to explain the real reason for their lifestyle.

Not that he hadn’t understood Cory’s bewilderment and agonized over her increasingly resentful attitude. After all, what could something as intangible as the dream of a horse ranch possibly mean to a young child? Or for that matter, to anyone other than Becky and himself?

It was their dream. Just as it had been their decision to live as they had—he overseas in his oil camps, Becky home with Corinne in Marble Ridge—to one day make that dream a reality.

Where else could a geologist earn the kind of money Mike had brought home than in those faraway oil fields? Money a fair chunk of which they had faithfully put into savings each month. Watching it grow—every dime and dollar reducing by minutes and hours the time they’d have to wait to be a family again—was what had made it all bearable.

And then, just like that, time had run out

First, Becky had become strange and secretive, increasingly so. And then her illness had taken its toll, draining their savings account as relentlessly as the cancer had sucked the life from her body. And their dream had collapsed like a house of cards in a windstorm with Becky’s death.

Cory’s grief had been as terrible as his own bewilderment. He couldn’t seem to figure out how everything could have gone so wrong. And while the loss should have drawn them closer, it had, instead, driven them further apart.

Cory had been livid, wild, out of control with rage when she’d seen him packing to fly back to Saudi three days after the funeral. She didn’t want anything to do with him, was more than happy to live with her maternal grandparents, but she was nevertheless outraged that he was leaving.

Nothing he or Becky’s parents could say had been able to make her understand the necessity. She didn’t care about Mike’s unbreakable contract, didn’t want to hear that they were practically bankrupt, or that the sizable sum he’d earn in the next six months would allow him to take another position with his company for less pay and with virtually no travel.

That was the position he now held here in Long Beach, California. A town that, in many ways, was as far removed from Marble Ridge, Idaho, as the moon. But even so, it was a community in which Mike had hoped to make a new beginning for himself and his child. To make up for lost time. To become a family.

So far, their month here together had been a disaster.

Sighing, Mike pulled into the lot of the supermarket he’d come to know better than he ever thought he’d have to. Grocery shopping was just one of the many new dimensions to his life.

Pushing his cart up and down the aisles, he hoped to spot the items they were out of since he’d forgotten—again—to bring the list he’d made that morning. Cruising the aisles wasn’t the most efficient way to shop, but what the heck.

He detoured abruptly when he spotted the by-nowfamiliar—and dreaded—redhead who lived two doors down from him. A forty-ish and still quite attractive divorcée, Pamela Swigert had been the first to welcome Corinne and him into the neighborhood. She had two children, both of whom had names Mike considered as strange and outlandish as their mother’s flamboyant wardrobe. The daughter, Latisha, was Corinne’s age, while the poor kid named Warlock was twelve.

Latisha didn’t go to Corinne’s school, but the two girls had struck up a desultory friendship of sorts. Though not sure how or whether to discourage the association of these two vastly dissimilar girls, Mike was nevertheless uneasy about the changes Cory’s appearance had undergone with Latisha’s tutelage. Instead of the preppy, brown-haired young girl from Idaho who favored Laura Ashley, Corinne now dressed in Goodwill castoffs and had bleached her chopped-off hair a sickly white.

As to Pamela Swigert, upon learning that there was no Mrs. Parker, she had taken to unexpectedly dropping in with offerings of food and parenting advice, neither of which Mike particularly appreciated any more than the flirty come-hither attitude that accompanied them.

He had neither the time nor the inclination to enter into any kind of romantic liaison with a woman, any woman. But most certainly not with a neighbor, even if she had been his type, which Pam decidedly was not. Trouble was, he had no idea how to let her know that without hurting her feelings.

Which was why Mike chose avoidance whenever possible, inconvenient though that was. Like right now, with Pam Swigert in the frozen food section where Mike needed to get some things, as well. A pizza, for one thing. It was Cory’s favorite food and Mike figured if they shared one for dinner, the talk they were going to have to have just might go a little easier. Hell, he’d get her Rocky Road ice cream, too. As soon as the coast was clear.

Mike backed up a few steps and peered around the corner. And stifled an oath when he found himself practically nose to nose with a delighted Pamela Swigert.

“Mike!” she exclaimed, fluttering night-black eyelashes that never failed to fascinate Mike, they were so impossibly thick and long. False, Corinne had scornfully proclaimed them. “I thought that was you I saw skulking by a minute ago.”

She tapped him on the arm with a flirty moue. “Not trying to avoid me, were you?”

“Lord no.” Mike mustered a grin. “Just a bit preoccupied, I guess.”

“Problems?” Pam was instantly all sympathetic concern. “Anything I can do?”

“Oh, no.” Heaven forbid. To change the subject, Mike craned his neck to look past her. “This the frozen food aisle?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. “Thought I’d get us a pizza—”

“Pizza?” Pam squealed, pointing to the two large rounds in her own cart. “Can you beat that! Great minds do think alike, I swear. I’ve got enough here for you to join Warly and me. It’ll be fun.

“Come on,” she insisted prettily, gripping his arm when Mike pulled back, ready to say no. “Don’t be a poop.”

A “poop"? Mike shook his head, chuckling a little ruefully as he gently but firmly peeled Pam’s fingers off his arm. Sparkly little hearts on. her inch-long, deep red nails momentarily arrested his gaze before he lifted it to her skillfully made-up face.

“Thanks for the invite, Pamela,” he said. “But I’m afraid it’s just not a good time for us to be sociable right now….”

Pam’s smile remained in place, but one pencil-sharp eyebrow arched. “Since by ‘us’ you obviously mean yourself and Corinne, dear heart, I suppose that means you don’t know after all.”

“Don’t know what?” Anxiety slammed into Mike’s gut like a boxer’s fist.

Pamela’s light laugh held an edge of uneasiness. “About the rock concert at Milton Stadium. I dropped the girls off there half an hour ago.”

“What?” Mike had to hold on to his cart with both hands to keep himself from grabbing the woman and shaking her till her capped tceth rattled. “You took Corinne to a rock concert without my permission?”

Faced with his barely leashed fury, Pamela blanched. “W-well,” she stammered before gathering herself together with a flare of indignation. “I thought she had your permission.”

“Did she say she did?”

“Not in so many words, no.” Pam tossed her glossy mane with obvious pique. “But she certainly had, the money.”

“Money?” Just that morning Corinne had demanded her allowance—fifteen dollars—because she was broke. Mike had told her she’d get it as soon as she did her chores.

“How much money?” Mike asked, sickness gathering in the pit of his stomach.

“She had a fifty-dollar bill.”

She had a fifty-dollar bill. Letting himself into the house, Mike was still reeling from that statement and its implications. His daughter was no longer just a rebel at odds with herself, her father and her circumstances, she was a thief. A thief!

Thunderstruck, Mike had abandoned his grocery cart and walked out of the store without another word to the visibly shaken Pamela.

Dropping onto a chair at the kitchen table where a cereal box and two milky bowls bespoke this morning’s hasty departure, he felt as if he had taken a beating—defeated and sore right down to his bones. He felt so deeply and utterly betrayed that he would have wept had he had the tears.

Putting his elbows on the table, he dug his fingers into his scalp and despaired of ever being able to reach his daughter after this.

What had the teacher said after he’d spelled out to her how things were between Corinne and him?

“Time, patience and love, Mr. Parker. That’s what your daughter needs from you right now. Except for the basics such as pulling her weight around the house, leave the rules and the discipline to me here at school for the time being….”

So how do you propose I handle this, Ms. McKenzie?

Mike raised his head. He looked around the cozy kitchen, his eyes flicking over each familiar item they’d brought with them from Idaho as if he’d never seen any of it before. His gaze stopped at the white porcelain cat with its slightly chipped, raised black paw.

It was Becky’s cookie jar, which now served as the bank for the emergency cash he liked to keep around the house. A couple of hundred dollars, for those unexpected incidentals. It was a carry-over from his parental home, and probably no longer even necessary in this day of credit cards and ATMs.

Slowly, his eyes never leaving the silly cat, Mike rose from his chair and walked over to the shelf on which it sat. He stood in front of it for a long time, staring at it and debating with himself whether he really wanted to do this or not. He leaned heavily toward not. There really was a certain comfort in not knowing the truth.

Coward? No.

Jaw set, Mike grabbed the jar. Putting one hand on one of the cat’s ears, he raised the lid. He set lid and jar down on the counter and reached inside. Irrationally, his heart lifted a little as his fingers latched onto several bills. As if having Cory steal from strangers was better than having her steal from him. He pulled the bills out There were four of them. He fanned them a little. Three twenties and a ten.

His chin dropping to his chest, Mike closed his fist around the bills, crumpling them. A sound very much like a dry sob rose into his throat and refused to be swallowed. It burst from him with terrible force as he blindly stared at the crumpled bills in his hand and raggedly exhaled.

In all, the bank was short one hundred and thirty dollars.