Читать книгу Faith, Hope and Family - GINA WILKINS - Страница 10

“…And my teacher’s name is Ms. Montgomery, and I like her because she’s nice. My best friends this week are Tiffany and Benjamin. Benjamin got lost in the woods at Cooper’s Park for a long time, but Officer Smith found him. Danny made fun of Benjamin for getting lost and made him cry. I don’t like Danny and Bryson because they’re mean to me. They said my daddy was a bad man, but Nate and Gideon told me not to pay any attention to them.”

Her fingers clenched around her coffee mug, Deborah gazed at the child on the other side of the kitchen table with somewhat stunned fascination. Isabelle had spent the last fifteen minutes eating an entire orange without pausing once in a seemingly endless monologue about her life in Honesty. Deborah had a hard time following everything Isabelle said—even though she had long since figured out that the only response required was an occasional nod or murmured “mm-hmm”—but that last comment grabbed her attention.

“Who said what about your father?”

Licking a drop of orange juice from her lips, Isabelle answered easily, “Danny and Bryson, mostly Danny. He doesn’t say it much anymore because Miss Thelma said he had to miss playtime every time he talks about my daddy. Gideon told Miss Thelma to make Danny stop saying bad things about my daddy,” she added.

“Um, Gideon did that?” Deborah hadn’t realized Gideon had ever gotten involved at Isabelle’s school. After all, Nathan was officially Isabelle’s guardian.

Isabelle nodded. “It was when Nate and Caitlin were gone on their honeymoon and Nanna’s sister got hurt so I had to stay with Gideon. I told him Danny said mean things about my daddy and he made me cry, and Gideon got really mad and he went to my school and talked to Miss Thelma and now Danny leaves me alone. Mostly.”

Deborah tried to picture the confrontation between her tactless, blunt-spoken brother and the equally forceful and intimidating owner of Miss Thelma’s Preschool. It must have been quite a showdown, but she wasn’t surprised that Gideon had accomplished his goal.

Realizing that Isabelle was studying her gravely from across the table, she asked, “What is it?”

“Gideon said my daddy wasn’t really a bad man, but some people got mad at him when he married my mommy and moved to California.”

Deborah frowned at her coffee cup, wondering what the child expected her to say. Obviously, Gideon had been trying to soothe Isabelle’s feelings about her late father and he seemed to have done so with more sensitivity than Deborah would have expected from him. After all, Gideon had been estranged from their father for several years before Stuart’s ultimate betrayal of the family. Like Deborah, he’d had no contact with Stuart during the three years before Stuart and his second wife died.

As for herself, Deborah had never talked to anyone about what her father had done to the family or her feelings about his death and she had no intention of starting now, with Isabelle. “You can always believe Gideon,” she said instead. “He says exactly what he thinks.”

“I know.” Isabelle wiped her sticky hands on a paper napkin. “I saw some pictures of you with my daddy when you were little. Nanna showed them to me. She said I looked just like you when you were little. I liked the picture of you sitting on Daddy’s shoulders. You were laughing and you had a red balloon. You know that one?”

The muscles in Deborah’s face felt stiff when she nodded and replied somewhat curtly, “Yes, I know the one you mean.”

She could picture the photograph as clearly as if it were sitting in front of her—herself at five or six, blond hair in pigtails, her expression pure joy as she rode her handsome, golden-haired father’s wide, solid shoulders. He had been a god to her then, and she his little princess. Workaholic that he’d been, those leisurely family fun days had been rare and she had treasured every brief moment.

He had spent so little time with his first family, his days filled with business and the demands of his active political involvement. Yet he hadn’t been too busy to start an affair with a young campaign volunteer even during his run for the governor’s office, and Deborah had heard that he’d been a devoted husband and father to his second family. Rumor had it that the tragic vacation in Mexico had been the first time he and his second wife had spent any time away from their then three-year-old daughter.

Was it any wonder Deborah hadn’t been enthused about having Isabelle become an integral part of her life? She didn’t blame the child for their father’s sins, but she couldn’t help being reminded of them every time she saw a reflection of her own childhood innocence in the little girl’s uncomfortably familiar face.

She glanced at the kitchen clock, wondering how much longer it would be before Lenore returned home. She couldn’t take much more of this salt-in-old-wounds conversation with Isabelle. “Aren’t there any TV cartoons you like on Saturday mornings?” she asked, seizing on the first distraction that popped into her head.

Isabelle shrugged. “We’re usually too busy on Saturdays to watch TV.”

“Oh. Well, since we’re not particularly busy today, why don’t you go see what’s on? Mother should be home soon, and maybe she’ll have something planned for you this afternoon.”

“Okay.” Isabelle stood obligingly. “You want to come watch TV with me?”

“No, thanks. I have some things to do. Just, uh, don’t watch anything inappropriate.”

When Isabelle gave her a puzzled look, Deborah added, “Watch kid shows, okay? Cartoons or ‘Sesame Street’ or something like that.”

As if she knew what kid shows were on TV these days, she thought as Isabelle left the room. None of her friends had children. Isabelle was the only child Deborah actually knew personally and theirs could hardly be described as a close relationship.

She stood to set her coffee cup in the dishwasher and throw away the peel from Isabelle’s orange. She hoped her mother would be home soon.

Fate had not been very kind lately about granting Deborah’s wishes. Lenore was detained by a crisis in her club that kept her busy for hours, leaving Deborah responsible for Isabelle for the entire afternoon.

Faced with trying to entertain the child herself for several hours or to let someone else do the entertaining, Deborah opted for the latter. “Why don’t we eat a quick sandwich for lunch and then catch the Saturday matinee at the movie theater?” she suggested.

She wouldn’t have to try to carry on a conversation with a four-year-old in a movie theater. Even if the film was completely inane, it seemed preferable to an entire afternoon of being studied by Isabelle’s curious blue eyes. A couple of hours in a quiet, dark theater seemed very appealing to her just then; she could use the time to consider her options for her future.

It had been a very long time since she had attended a children’s movie matinee.

A handful of popcorn hit her in the side of the head before the film even started. What seemed to be a full battalion of ear-splittingly noisy preadolescents dashed up and down the aisles, squealing and spilling sodas and snacks. Someone’s cell phone played the “William Tell Overture” in lieu of a ring, and a couple of babies wailed. Deborah shook her head in disbelief, wondering who’d bring either to a movie theater.

Seemingly accustomed to the chaos, Isabelle sat quietly in her seat beside Deborah, sipping orange soda and delicately munching her popcorn. Okay, Deborah thought, so the child was as well-behaved as Lenore boasted. That didn’t mean Deborah wanted to spend any more afternoons baby-sitting.

The audience settled down—though only slightly—when the lights dimmed and the feature began. Just as Deborah resigned herself to watching animated animals singing and dancing for the next couple of hours, a few stragglers entered the theater, taking the empty seats in front of Deborah and Isabelle. The woman directly in front of Deborah was of average size, but the one who planted herself in front of Isabelle was very large and wore her hair in a high-teased bouffant that would have been stylish several decades earlier. Isabelle might as well have been staring at a blank wall.

“I can’t see,” she complained to Deborah, straining upward in her seat.

The rest of the theater was full; apparently, this was the premier of a highly anticipated family feature. “Switch seats with me,” Deborah suggested in a stage whisper. “Maybe you can see better here.”

The swap was accomplished easily enough, but it didn’t make a difference. “I still can’t see,” Isabelle informed her, and this time her tone edged close to a whine. “Can I sit on your lap? Please? Nate lets me when I can’t see.”

The large woman with the big hair threw them a stern look over her shoulder, accompanied by a hiss that let them know she wanted them to be quiet. Deborah bit her lip to hold in a remark that would have accomplished nothing but ill will.

“Stand up,” she instructed Isabelle quietly. “We’ll sit in that chair, since the view is less obstructed there.”

She didn’t bother to whisper the latter words. She was forced to find her small satisfactions where she could, she told herself as she returned to her former seat and helped Isabelle climb onto her knees.

“That’s better,” Isabelle whispered. “Thank you.”

“Glad to oblige,” Deborah muttered. And prepared herself for an uncomfortable couple of hours rather than the peaceful interlude she had envisioned at the start of this outing.

Dylan figured that everyone deserved a small vice or two. His was ice cream. His favorite flavor was butter pecan, but he occasionally indulged a craving for rocky road or strawberry. Most folks who knew him well were aware that he could often be found at the popular ice-cream parlor next to the mall Cineplex when he was on a break from duty.

The mall was predictably crowded on this nice Saturday afternoon in late May. Dylan was lucky to claim a small table in one corner of the ice-cream parlor just as a group of giggly teenagers abandoned it.

He had lived in this area for most of his life and had a highly visible job, so he knew quite a few of the other patrons. He greeted them with nods and waves before diving into his treat—a double scoop of butter pecan.

As he spooned a second bite of ice cream into his mouth, he thought of the only lawbreaker he had apprehended the night before. Deborah McCloud. He hadn’t been prepared for that late-night encounter or for the flood of memories of other, more intimate midnight meetings between them.

Those memories had been haunting him ever since. It had been seven years, damn it. They’d been little more than kids when they broke up; he’d been barely twenty-three and Deborah had just turned twenty. You’d think he’d have put it behind him by now. God knew he had tried.

Yet all it took was one brief encounter with her to have him wanting her again.

He might have come a long way in the past seven years in a lot of respects, but when it came to Deborah McCloud, he was still an idiot.

A girlish shriek somewhere behind him drew his attention away from his ice cream. He turned just in time to catch the little blond rocket who launched herself into his arms.

“Hi, Officer Smith,” she said, hugging him fiercely. “Where have you been?”

He chuckled as he returned the hug, then set the little girl on her feet in front of him. “Princess Isabelle. Aren’t you looking pretty today in your royal purple?”

She patted her hair and preened a bit, showing off the purple knit T-shirt dress she wore with white socks and sneakers. “It’s new,” she confided.

“Very nice. But where’s your tiara?”

She giggled. “I left it at home today.”

“Ah. Traveling incognito this afternoon?”

“In…cog…?” She frowned in confusion. She was very bright for four, but that was a new word for her.

“Incognito,” he repeated clearly. “Sort of means that you aren’t calling attention to yourself.”

“Oh.” She smiled again. “I’m in-cob-neat-o.”

“Close enough.” He’d assumed she was there with Lenore McCloud, since he knew her guardians were out of town. Looking away from the child’s beaming face, he was caught by surprise to find Deborah scowling at him over her little half sister’s golden curls. “Oh. Hello.”

Deborah looked a bit frazzled, he decided, trying to study her objectively. Her dark-blond shoulder-length hair was tousled, and there was a popcorn kernel stuck in a strand at the back. What might have been the beginnings of a tension headache had carved little V-shaped lines between her intriguingly winged dark brows.

It looked as though some dark liquid had splattered one leg of the jeans she wore with a thin, dark, scoop-necked sweater. When she moved to one side of Isabelle, he thought she dragged one foot a little, as though her leg had gone to sleep and was just tingling painfully back to life.

She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

Isabelle gazed upward. “Deborah, do you know Officer Smith?”

“Yes. I wasn’t aware that you knew him so well.”

“He’s one of my best grown-up friends,” Isabelle replied happily. “Adrienne likes him, too, and so does Caitlin. And Gideon and Nate are being nice to him now because I told them to.”

“I see.”

It was obvious to Dylan that Deborah didn’t at all see how he had suddenly become so friendly with her brothers, with whom he had a long history of animosity. Actually, friendly was a bit too warm a word to describe his new truce with her brothers, but he liked both her sisters-in-law. As a matter of fact, he and Gideon’s literary-agent bride, Adrienne, had recently signed a business contract together, something he had no intention of mentioning just then.

As far as Dylan knew, Deborah hadn’t been told that Dylan and her newest sister-in-law were now professional associates. Deborah didn’t even know he had any aspirations other than being a small-town cop, working for his uncle, the police chief. He’d just as soon leave it that way for now.

“Deborah took me to the movie,” Isabelle said, clinging to Dylan’s knee. “A lady with big hair sat in front of me and I couldn’t see, so I had to sit in Deborah’s lap the whole time, and there was a baby who kept crying, and the boy beside us jumped up to cheer when the good guys won and he spilled his soda on Deborah’s leg. It was fun.”

Dylan knew better than to laugh, but it was a close call as he eyed Deborah’s expression. He sincerely doubted that she would have described the experience as fun. “It was very nice of your sister to bring you to the theater,” he said to Isabelle.

“Yes. And she’s going to buy ice-cream cones because I told her Nate always buys ice cream when we come to the movies.”

“Yes, well, we’d better let Officer Smith finish his own ice cream before it melts,” Deborah said, avoiding Dylan’s eyes.

Dylan hadn’t realized quite how much Isabelle resembled Deborah until a very familiar, very stubborn look crossed the little girl’s face. “I want to talk to him.”

“We need to get home soon,” Deborah countered. “Mother will want to see you when she gets home from her meeting.”

“I’m staying with my nanna because Caitlin’s mommy went to heaven, like my mommy and daddy did,” Isabelle informed Dylan.

He spoke gently. “Yes, I heard.”

“Will you come visit me at Nanna’s house?”

Not a good idea, he thought with a glance at Deborah’s forbidding expression. “I’m pretty busy with work right now, Princess Isabelle. But I’ll visit you soon.”

Her lower lip protruded a bit. “Deborah, tell Officer Smith he can come visit us. Maybe he could have dinner with us?”

What might have been consternation darkened Deborah’s blue eyes. “Oh, I…”

Letting her off the hook, Dylan focused on Isabelle when he said, “I have to work tonight, Isabelle. But I promise I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Isabelle didn’t appear at all satisfied, but she finally nodded her head. “Okay.”

Looking relieved now, Deborah reached down to take her little sister’s hand. “Let’s order our ice cream before the line gets too long.”

“’Bye, Officer Smith.”

“’Bye, princess. Nice to see you, as always, Deborah,” he added dryly.

“Good afternoon, Officer,” she returned, her voice chilly enough to refreeze his melting ice cream.

What kind of fool, he wondered as they moved away, carried a seven-year-old torch for a woman who could hardly stand to look at him?

A chance glimpse at the decorative wall mirror across the room gave him his answer.

He was that kind of fool.

Going to the movie had seemed like such a good idea at the time, Deborah mused as she combed her tangled hair, scowling at the popcorn kernel that fell to the floor. How could she have known what an ordeal it would become?

How could she have possibly predicted that they would run into Dylan?

Isabelle hadn’t stopped chattering about him since they’d left the ice-cream parlor an hour ago. What a nice man he was. How kind he had been to Adrienne and Isabelle when they’d been involved in a minor traffic accident a couple of months ago. How strong he had been to carry Adrienne all the way to his patrol car when she hurt her ankle. How funny he was when he teased Isabelle and called her princess.

Apparently, Deborah wasn’t the only McCloud woman to have succumbed to Dylan’s lazy charms. It had been all she could do to prevent herself from warning Isabelle not to give her heart to the man; he would only turn around and break it. Shatter it into so many pieces that she would never be able to find all the parts.

The relationship between Deborah and Dylan had been too passionate, too complex and too volatile for her, as young and as sheltered as she’d been. At times, she had felt smothered, at others overwhelmed by the intensity of their feelings. Because of those factors, it had ended devastatingly—and perhaps inevitably, considering the differences between them. What few parts of Deborah’s heart had been left intact after her breakup with Dylan had crumbled beneath the weight of her father’s betrayal such a short time later.

“Deborah?” Lenore appeared in the open bedroom door, her smile both weary and apologetic. “I’m home. I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long.”

Because Lenore looked so tired, Deborah didn’t have the heart to complain about being left in charge of Isabelle. “That’s okay. We managed.”

“Yes, Isabelle told me you took her to a movie. That was nice of you.”

Deborah shrugged and set the comb on the cherry dresser in her bedroom. “I didn’t know how else to entertain her. She seemed to enjoy the outing.”

“Yes, she was just telling me all about it. She had a lovely time. Um…she mentioned that you saw Dylan Smith at the ice-cream parlor.”

Deborah scowled. “Yes. We saw him. Why on earth has Nathan let her get so attached to that…to Dylan?”

“I believe it all began while Nathan and Caitlin were on their honeymoon, when Isabelle was staying with Gideon and Adrienne. Dylan helped Adrienne when she was injured in a car accident, and the friendship grew from there. Adrienne seems to have grown almost as fond of Dylan as Isabelle—in a purely platonic way, of course,” she added unnecessarily.

“I’m still surprised that Gideon doesn’t object to his wife being buddies with one of his oldest enemies.”

“Obviously, Adrienne is free to choose her own friends. And, actually, I think Gideon and Dylan are getting along a little better these days, which is a good thing, since they’ll probably be interacting on occasion because of Adrienne. I wouldn’t call Gideon and Dylan friends, exactly….”

“I would certainly hope not,” Deborah muttered, appalled by the very idea.

“…but Gideon has become mature enough to put the past behind him. Gideon has probably realized how silly it is to carry a grudge for so long just because he and Dylan had a few confrontations in their schooldays. And Nathan was simply being the overprotective big brother when he objected to you being so intensely involved with Dylan at such a young and vulnerable age. But that all happened so long ago. I don’t know why you can’t let it go, as well—unless, of course, you still have feelings for—”

“I don’t,” Deborah snapped to prevent her mother from even finishing that sentence. “As I have told you plenty of times, the only feeling I have for Dylan Smith is extreme dislike.”

“Well, I like him!” Deborah hadn’t seen Isabelle appear in the doorway behind Lenore, but the angry outburst certainly got her attention. Isabelle was glaring at her, her little fists on her hips. “Officer Smith is my friend, and you should be nice to him like Nate and Gideon are.”

“Isabelle.” Lenore spoke quite firmly, a tone Deborah remembered very well from her own childhood. “We don’t raise our voices like that. It isn’t polite.”

“And, besides,” Deborah added when Isabelle subsided into a pout, “I was perfectly civil to your friend at the ice-cream parlor.”

Almost nobly polite, in her own opinion. It hadn’t been easy to resist the impulse to snipe at him, but she hadn’t wanted to upset Isabelle. But she would be darned if she would answer to a four-year-old.

“Go wash your hands, Isabelle,” Lenore instructed. “We’ll be having dinner soon.”

“That child is in danger of becoming spoiled,” Deborah muttered when Isabelle shuffled away. “It seems that everyone in this family indulges her. Even Dylan.”

Princess Isabelle, indeed.

“We are going to have to be careful,” Lenore agreed. “She’s had a rough time in her short life, being orphaned so young and moved around so many times. I suppose we try to overcompensate for that. I’m sure she’s a bit unsettled today because Nathan and Caitlin have been called away, changing her routine again. Routines are important to four-year-olds, you know. And she really is very fond of Dylan.”

“Fine. That’s between her and Nathan, I suppose. But don’t expect me to start cozying up to him just because the rest of the family doesn’t want to hurt the kid’s feelings.”

Lenore took a step nearer to lay a hand against her daughter’s cheek in a gesture that was as familiar as the no-nonsense tone she had used with Isabelle earlier. “You’ve never told me the details of your breakup with Dylan, but I know how badly it hurt you. And then your father broke your heart when he left us for Kimberly. He broke mine, too, you know.”

Deborah swallowed a hard knot in her throat. “I don’t—”

“You don’t want to talk about it. I know. You never do. But I need to say one more thing. Better than anyone else in the family, I understand how hard it is for you to accept Isabelle into this household. Into our lives. I know what you see when you look at her. Don’t you think I sometimes see it, too? I only agreed to accept her into our family when I realized that refusing to do so would place an insurmountable wall between Nathan and myself, something I simply couldn’t allow. His kind heart wouldn’t allow him to abandon his orphaned little sister when she had no one else to turn to, even if it cost him the rest of his family.”

“Okay, Nathan’s a saint….”

“Hardly,” Lenore murmured with a smile. “But he’s my son, and I love him. So I accepted the child he will raise as his own. And, in doing so, I found my life immeasurably enriched. As hard as it may be for you—or for others—to understand, I’ve grown to love Isabelle very much. The joy and laughter and affection she brought with her replaced the anger and bitterness and hurt that I had lived with for so long. And it isn’t just me. Nathan and Caitlin adore her, and even Gideon has learned to express his feelings more easily. It’s impossible not to smile when Isabelle is around. We haven’t forgotten how she was conceived, but we’ve put it behind us. And, in doing so, I think we’ve learned to forgive Stuart—to different degrees, of course.”

Blind instinct had Deborah moving back, away from her mother’s tender touch. Away from the unexpressed request she simply couldn’t fulfill. She would certainly never be cruel to Isabelle—to any child, for that matter—but she couldn’t promise to accept the little girl the way the rest of the family had. Not if it meant forgiving what Deborah still considered to be unforgivable.

“I think I’d like to take a quick shower before dinner,” she said. “I still have sticky cola all over my leg from the movie theater.”

Lenore sighed, but didn’t push, since she knew it would serve no purpose except to make Deborah more defensive. “All right. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

Half an hour wasn’t very long to repair a major crack in an emotional wall, Deborah mused as her mother left the room. But she could do it.

She’d done so plenty of times before.