Читать книгу The Daughter Merger - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 9

DINNER WAS BUBBLING on the stove when the door-bell rang. Surprised, Grace wiped her hands on a dish towel and hurried to answer it. No clatter of feet from upstairs; Linnet must have her headphones on, or else she’d be racing to beat Grace, sure one of her friends was here.

Grace opened her front door and was immediately sorry that the caller wasn’t Erica from down the street, wanting to share a new music CD. Because, instead, a very angry man stood on her doorstep.

Claire’s father was a devastatingly attractive man with dark brown hair, hooded eyes and bulky shoulders that belonged on a construction worker, not an executive. If he would just once smile…But on those few occasions when they’d met while exchanging daughters, his expression ranged from preoccupied to tense.

Today, he didn’t bother with a hello or a “we need to talk.” He glowered. “How dare you tell Claire she could move in with you!”

A spurt of anger surprised Grace, who rarely let herself be bothered by other people’s foul tempers. Suppressing it, she gripped the open door. She didn’t want the neighbors to hear a brawl on her front doorstep.

“I did not,” she said very carefully, “say that your daughter could live here. What I told my daughter is that I would discuss with you having Claire stay here on a temporary basis and with stipulations. If you agreed.”

“Really.” David Whitcomb’s voice was soft and yet icy. “Claire announced to me that you had given permission and she was ready to pack.”

Thank goodness for the headphones that kept Linnet deaf while she did her homework. Grace had tried to give this man the benefit of the doubt and to convince Linnet to do the same, despite all of Claire’s complaints. If Linnet saw him in a towering rage once, she’d be ready to do anything to aid her friend. Which, given their age, might be something very foolish.

Trying to lighten the mood, Grace said, “Surely you know better than to take every word a thirteen-year-old says at face value.”

If anything, his voice hardened. “And yet, you professed to be shocked when I questioned whether Linnet was telling the truth.”

This time, she let herself be offended. “My daughter knows when it’s important to be honest.” If she spoke crisply, she didn’t care. “Which doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes have to delve for the real truth, not the truth as she sees it.”

He swore and shoved his fingers through his disheveled hair. “Why in the hell should there be a difference?”

For the first time, Grace felt a pang of sympathy. The lines in his face were carved deeper today than on the other occasions when she’d met him. Genuine bafflement was tangled with the anger in his eyes. He wore a beautifully cut dark suit, but the silk tie was yanked askew and the top button of his shirt was undone. He’d probably come home from work and hoped to pour a martini, put on dinner—although she had difficulty picturing him cooking—read the newspaper. Instead, his daughter had hit him with this, using all the subtlety of a jackhammer.

“Would you like to come in?” Grace suggested. “Probably we should talk about this.”

He grimaced. “I can’t imagine why you would want to.”

“I like Claire.” At his open disbelief, she smiled ruefully. “Okay. I feel sorry for Claire. And I like my daughter, who has faith that I will extend a generous hand to her best friend. How can I fail her?”

His expression closed, became stony. “Let me count the ways.”

“What?” she asked, startled.

“I seem to be failing my daughter on a regular basis. The only trouble is, I’m not quite sure how. Or why. When I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”

“Oh, dear,” she said on a rush of real compassion. “You do care, don’t you?”

He rocked back, that same hard stare not disguising the faint shock in his eyes. “You thought I didn’t?”

“Some parents don’t, you know,” Grace said gently. “How was I supposed to know?”

He frowned. “I was hunting for her.”

“That didn’t mean you loved her.”

David Whitcomb made a guttural sound. “It’s hard as hell to love her.”

“But you do.” Why she was so certain, she couldn’t have said, but she would have bet her paycheck that this man was hurting right now. “Please.” She stepped back. “Come in.”

He hesitated, then gave an abrupt nod and stepped over the threshold, the glance he gave toward her living room wary.

Grace took a guess at the reason. “Linnet’s upstairs.”

Another nod was the only response, but he seemed marginally less tense when she led him into the kitchen of the compact town house. “I was working on dinner,” she explained.

She had gradually and completely remodeled since buying the place after Roger’s death. The pale colors that seemed to be standard issue these days had struck her as cold, echoing too much the bleakness of grief. Now the floor of the kitchen was tiled in terra-cotta, the countertops in peach. She’d stripped and stained the cherry cabinets herself, until they glowed to match the antique table in the small dining room. Touches of copper, baskets and rough-textured stone-ware all added to the warmth of her kitchen.

As she went to the stove, she covertly watched her guest. His expression showed surprise and, she thought, reluctant admiration.

“Can I pour you some wine?” she asked.

He stood by the table looking awkward, a state that was probably rare for a man with his presence. “Thank you,” he said.

When she handed him the glass, she was careful not to let their fingers touch. Why, she couldn’t have said.

He took a deep swallow, then met her eyes. “This isn’t a good time. Why don’t I come back?”

“And what are you going to say to Claire in the meantime?” Grace stirred the sauce simmering on the stove top. “No. Actually, right now is fine. Dinner won’t be ready for fifteen or twenty minutes, and Linnet is occupied with homework. Let me say my piece.”

His frowning gaze continued to hold hers. She kept stirring to give herself something to do.

“Linnet tells me Claire has run away several times.”

He gave another of those sharp nods that seemed to be his speciality.

“Apparently going to live with her mother is not an option?”

“No.” For a moment it seemed he would say nothing more, but finally he added grudgingly, “My ex-wife is an alcoholic. She is also seeing a new man who is apparently not interested in being a stepfather.”

“Oh.” Poor Claire, Grace thought sadly. She’d been wrenched from a drunken mother who had lost interest in her into the care of this remote, uncommunicative man who admitted it was hard to love her.

“Claire is convinced her mother needs her.”

Grace stirred, processing the information. “I see.”

“Do you?” His gaze was ironic.

“Well, no.” She hesitated, knowing she was crossing an invisible line but choosing to do it anyway. “What I don’t understand is why she is so determined not to live with you.”

“You haven’t been fed stories of abuse?”

“No-o, not exactly.”

He gave a rough laugh that held no humor and turned from her to stare out the window at her tiny brick patio. “Do you want to know the honest-to-God truth?”

She felt unforgivably nosy, but… “If I’m to become involved…yes. Yes, I do.”

“Then here it is. I don’t know. I have no idea why my own daughter hates my guts.” He faced her, expression raw. “I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t buy that.”

Did she? Was it possible to be genuinely ignorant of where you had taken such a monumental misstep?

“I don’t want to ask,” Grace said slowly, “but will you tell me more of the background? How long you’ve been divorced, for example?”

He picked up the wineglass from the table, looked at it, set it down. “Six years. Claire was seven. Miranda’s drinking was a problem between us, but she didn’t drink and drive, and I thought Claire was better with her. I thought, for a girl, that her mother was important.”

At last Grace put down the spoon. “And Claire?”

He shook his head. “There was so much tumult, I just don’t know. I assumed she’d rather stay with her mother.” Sounding stiff, he added, “Obviously now she wants to be with her, so I guess I was right.”

Or very, very wrong, Grace thought but didn’t say.

“I assume you continued to see her.”

He began rubbing the back of his neck. “Not as often as I should have. I was transferred up here from the Bay Area. I talked to her on the phone, but when you’re not living with someone it gets harder and harder to think of anything to say. She was supposed to spend summers, but Miranda had her in swimming lessons and an arts program, and I work long hours, so—” his eyes closed briefly “—I took the easy road.”

“She never came?” Grace couldn’t help sounding shocked.

“Oh, two weeks here and there. It was…not comfortable.” His eyes met hers, his hooded. “I’d take time off, but she didn’t want to do anything. She was always sullen. I thought it was her age. Or later I figured it was me. I wasn’t real life for her. Eventually—” he grimaced “—I realized that real life was doing the grocery shopping and coaxing her hungover mother out of bed in the morning and making excuses to the boss if she couldn’t. The first couple of years, Claire would show off her report card. This past couple, she stopped. I found out that’s because she had so many tardies and unexcused absences, she was flunking. I flew down for a visit at the end of the last school year and talked to teachers and Miranda. Claire threw a fit, but I packed her up and brought her home with me. She’s been trying to run away ever since. And that,” he said, “is the whole pathetic story.”

“I’m sorry.” She stirred uselessly again. “This must be very difficult.”

“Being her father?” he asked ironically. “Or admitting to you how inadequate I am?”

“Well, both.”

He said something under his breath that she suspected was profane, and then took a swallow of the wine. The stare he gave her held a challenge. “You were the one who was going to say your piece, as I recall. Somehow, I seem to have done all the talking instead.”

“Yes.” She made a business of turning off the stove, setting the pan to one side. “Well, here it is.” She lifted her chin. “If it would help you and Claire, if you need some space to work out your problems, she is welcome to stay here for the time being.” Here was the hard part. “But only if you both make some promises. And keep them.”

His eyes narrowed. “These being the stipulations.”

She nodded, mute.

“And they are?”

“Claire has to promise not to run away. And to go to school every day. No cutting classes. Plus to, well, follow my house rules.” She gestured vaguely. “You know. Help clean the kitchen. That kind of thing.”

David Whitcomb inclined his head, his watchful gaze never leaving hers. “And what do you expect from me, aside from support money?”

“That you become very involved in her life. Take her places, join us for dinner, call her, look over her schoolwork…be her father.”

He scrutinized her for the longest time. “I’d be over here constantly.”

“That’s okay.” Was it? she asked herself, with a faint, fluttering sense of panic. Too late.

“Claire won’t want me here.”

“But that’s the deal,” Grace said firmly. “She, too, has to promise to work at being your daughter. And one of my house rules is that we are all polite to each other and to guests.”

“Guests.” He tasted the word as though it was questionable wine.

And who could blame him? His position would be awkward, to say the least. His daughter was choosing to live with someone else because she detested him. He would feel constantly as if he was foisting his company on strangers—and on Claire, who would be civil, if at all, simply because her foster mother insisted on it.

Not a palatable option. Except that his only other one was to go on the way he had been—with his thirteen-year-old daughter determined to hitchhike to her mother in California.

The struggle, visible on his face, was severe but short. She had to give him that much credit.

Jaw muscles flexed, and then he gave one of those brief, off-putting nods. “I’ll talk to Claire.”

Grace pressed her lips together. “If you think I’m presuming—”

“What?” Irony edged into his tone. “That I can’t cope with my daughter? You’d be right.”

“I’m trying to help,” she said gently.

He looked at her with a disquieting lack of expression. “I know you are.”

“Mr. Whitcomb…”

“Hadn’t you better make it David?” he suggested sardonically. “Since we’re going to be one big happy family?”

A gasp from behind him startled them both. Linnet stood in the doorway, Lemieux draped in her arms. The big snowshoe Siamese struggled as she squeezed him.

“Claire’s going to live with us?” Linnet’s face glowed with hope.

“Her dad will talk to her,” Grace said repressively. “And, you know, if Claire does come to stay, it won’t be one long sleepover. You’ll both have to do homework and chores.”

“But it’ll be like having a sister.” She hugged the cat again, so hard he uttered a cry that sounded very much like “no-o-o!”

“Sisters,” her mother said dryly, “often get tired of each other.” Grace was very conscious of Claire’s father, silent and stiff.

“Not us. We never will.” Linnet set poor Lemieux down and twirled into the kitchen. The cat shot a look at David and bolted. “Can I call her?” Linnet begged.

“No. Dinner is almost ready. And Mr. Whitcomb and I haven’t made a decision. He and Claire need to talk. This is between them.”

“Oh.” She halted her pirouette and showed the whites of her eyes as she rolled them toward her friend’s father. “I didn’t mean…that is…I mean…”

“I think he knows what you mean.” Grace held out two plates with silverware piled atop. “In the meantime, please set the table while I show him out.”

“No need.” His face and voice were wooden. “I’m sure we’ll be talking.”

She’d hardly had time to set one foot in front of another when she heard the soft sound of the front door opening and closing behind him. She was left with the horrifying realization that she’d gotten herself into something she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to do.

It should have been Claire she was thinking about. Unsettled, Grace had to admit, if only to herself, that she was far more worried about dealing with the grim father than with the sulky teenage girl.

DAVID HEAVED CLAIRE’S SUITCASE out of the trunk of his Mercedes and found his daughter was already hurrying up the brick steps to the front door of the condo. Her step was light; he could feel her joy as she raced toward liberation from her father. The door was swinging open even before she reached it, the two girls squealing, vanishing inside with their arms around each other’s waists.

He was left with a lump of heavy, rough concrete where his heart should have been and with the certain knowledge that, once again, he had taken the low road.

He was her father, damn it. He’d walked away once, and here he was essentially doing it again. He wasn’t tough enough to see his own child through a bad patch. Despising himself, David thought, Hell, no, hand her over to someone else. Let them deal with her.

He wondered how sternly Claire’s foster mom would hold him to his part of the bargain. Would Claire meld gradually, naturally, into Grace Blanchet’s family? Or did she really expect him to somehow become the father Claire needed?

Grunting at the thought, David picked up the suitcase and started after his daughter. The woman was a legal secretary, for Pete’s sake! How the hell could he think she would do for him—and Claire—what licensed psychologists couldn’t?

But did it matter? his mocking inner voice asked. So what if he failed, again? At least Claire was out of his hair. He didn’t have to come home from work every day to the deep, obscene beat of rap music, to a kid who’d rather sneer “I’m not hungry” and starve than sit down to dinner with him.

Grace was waiting for him in the open doorway. This being a Saturday, she had her hair in a ponytail and she wore jeans and a blue flannel shirt tucked into them. Casual, but her loafers gleamed like her warm brown hair. A classy lady who invariably left him feeling unsettled for reasons he didn’t understand.

And wasn’t in any hurry to identify.

“Why don’t you take that right up?” she suggested. “The girls wanted to share a bedroom, but for now I’m giving Claire our spare.” She lowered her voice. “I’m guessing that they will eventually want their privacy, even if they don’t believe me.”

Now, how did she know that? The way those two had hugged and squealed had him guessing the opposite. But then, his insight into a thirteen-year-old girl’s mind had been skewed from the get-go. Grace Blanchet had the advantage, at least, of having been a thirteen-year-old girl once upon a time.

“Sure,” he said, and started up the stairs behind her.

Even burdened with his daughter’s possessions and his own foul mood, he found his gaze lingering on Grace’s tiny waist and gently curved rear end. In her usual conservative suits, she looked skinnier than he found appealing in a woman. Snug jeans and the soft flannel of her shirt made plain that she was more womanly than he’d guessed. Half memory, half imagination stirred, and his palms briefly tingled with the knowledge of how her bottom would feel gripped in his hands.

He was grateful to reach the top of the stairs and be distracted by her gesture as she stood aside.

“Second door on the left.”

Although she’d said it was for guests, this bedroom had as much personality as the downstairs. A puffy denim comforter covered the antique bed. The maple bedside stand with spooled legs matched the bed. On the wall above the bed hung a small quilt, beautifully hand-stitched even to his uneducated eye, and old, he thought. A lacy valance matched a doily on the carved oak bureau.

The girls had flung open the closet doors and pounced on the suitcase the moment he walked in. Ignoring him, Claire unzipped it while he headed back downstairs for another load.

He was carrying her CD player in when he heard Linnet say, “You can do whatever you want to this room. You can put posters everywhere and—”

“I don’t think so,” David said. “Claire, you’re a guest. You can’t punch holes in the walls.”

She gave him a spiteful look.

Behind him, Grace intervened, her voice easy. “Of course, you can put up posters, Claire. Just use the sticky stuff that peels off, if you don’t mind. Do you want me to take down the quilt?”

Claire held the blistering look for one more moment, then turned her back. “I don’t mind it, Mrs. Blanchet.”

Grace laughed. “Somehow it doesn’t look right for a teenage girl. You need a poster of…who, Freddie Prinze, Jr. there?”

He doubted very much that his daughter would choose anyone so innocuous to emblazon on the walls. She preferred men with multiple body parts pierced, lank greasy hair and foul mouths.

“Dad had me bring my posters,” she said. Her tone suggested he’d ripped them off the wall and shoved them down her throat. Where, in fact, she was the one to strip her bedroom bare, as if she never intended to come back.

He turned to fetch them. That was, apparently, his only acceptable role in this handoff. He couldn’t imagine coming back tomorrow or the next day and knocking on this bedroom door, going in for a chat. How, he wondered, would Grace deal with it when Claire refused to sit down at the dinner table if he was there?

“You’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?” Grace asked, when he came back with the roll of posters.

He sensed Claire’s sharp movement without looking at her. “Thanks, but I have to go into the office. Another time.”

“Then dinner tomorrow,” she said with an air of satisfaction. “Claire, what’s your favorite dinner? I cook a lot of pastas. Do you both like Italian?”

He had no idea what Claire ate besides the microwave meals she’d pop in when he wasn’t around. “I do,” he said. “But maybe I should let Claire settle in before I start hanging around.”

The stubborn woman didn’t know when to let up. “No, the sooner the better,” she said. “We’ll expect you tomorrow. About six?”

His daughter’s eyes narrowed.

“Fine.” He made himself look at her. “Claire…”

It was hard not to flinch at the hatred blazing in her eyes.

Without expression, he said, “I hope you’ll be happy here,” and walked away.

His specialty.

SHE WAS SO HAPPY when he left without bothering with some fakey goodbye scene. She didn’t even know why she’d been worried about that. Look how glad he was to get rid of her.

Well, he wasn’t any gladder than she was to be gone! Claire told herself for the fiftieth time today that anything had to be better than his house.

Mrs. Blanchet had made him promise he’d come over all the time and play daddy. Yeah. Right. They’d see how long that lasted, she thought bitterly. He might come a couple of times, but then he’d cancel at the last minute and say he had to work, and finally weeks would go by without anything but a check from him. He’d pay whatever he promised. Why not? Like he wasn’t loaded. And if he didn’t pay, Claire might be dumped back in his lap. Which he wouldn’t want.

What she figured was, once he’d forgotten all about her existence, she’d get Mrs. Blanchet talking to her mom. That way, once they got tired of her here, she could just quietly go home again.

Daddy might never even notice.

She wished, Claire thought viciously, hating the sadness that squeezed her chest like the asthma she’d had as a little kid. So what if he didn’t love her? She had her mother. Mom was all she needed.

“What CDs do you have?” Linnet was digging in her bag. “You have hardly any!”

“I left most of mine at Mom’s house. I just brought a few.” She didn’t have that many there, either, because Mom didn’t make much money. If she’d asked him for money, he probably would have given it to her, but she wasn’t going to.

“Oh.” Linnet gave up looking and flopped on the bed. “You can just borrow any of mine you want.”

Like she’d want to listen to Britney Spears or ’N Sync. Music was one thing she and Linnet did not agree about.

“This is going to be so cool,” Linnet said dreamily. “We can talk whenever we want. And do our homework together, and borrow each other’s clothes, and…” She rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand. “Hey! Would you like to take dance with me?”

“Me?” Claire scrunched up her face. “I am so-o clumsy. I’d fall on my face.”

“Yeah, but see, dance makes you less clumsy,” Linnet said earnestly.

“And I’d be in a beginner class. Not with you.”

“Well…” Linnet frowned. “Yeah, but there’s one at the same time as my jazz dance. I think it’s ballet, but that’s okay, because you should get training in ballet first.”

Claire pictured herself in a pink leotard, standing with heels together and toes pointing out in that dorky position, slowly bending her knees and straightening all to the tinkle of a piano. No, thank you.

“Dance isn’t my thing.”

“What is your thing?”

Claire jumped to her feet and yanked open a drawer. She wasn’t going to hang those posters, she wouldn’t be here that long, but she might as well put her clothes in the drawers.

“What do you mean, what’s my thing? I like music and hanging out. It’s not like everybody has to dance.” She knew she sounded disagreeable and was mad at herself. She didn’t have to take her bad mood out on Linnet, who had rescued her from purgatory.

“I’m sorry.” Her friend flushed. “I mean, I just thought you’d want…”

“To be like you.” She still sounded weird. Abrupt. “I can’t be.”

“I’m nothing so great! I just think dancing is fun.” Linnet was starting to look ticked. “Is that so bad?”

Collapsing onto the floor cross-legged, Claire wrinkled her nose in apology. “I’m really sorry! I’m just jealous because I know you’re really good at dance, and I don’t want to be the only beginner over eight years old. Besides, your mom shouldn’t have to pay for stuff like that.”

“No, but I’ll bet your father would.”

“I don’t want to take his money!”

Her friend rolled onto her stomach and hung her arms off the bed, her chin resting on the edge. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to owe him anything!” she said fiercely.

“Who says you owe him?” Linnet asked logically. “I mean, parents don’t expect to be paid back. He’s already giving Mom money for your food, right? Mom says he is. So why not lessons? Isn’t there something you’ve always wanted to do? Skiing? Windsurfing?”

“Horseback riding.” Where had that come from? It just popped out, a little kid dream. She had those plastic horse statues, now sitting on a shelf in her bedroom at home. She used to play with them for hours. Sometimes, with her eyes closed, she’d imagine herself on horseback, galloping like the wind.

“See?” Linnet crowed. “I knew there was something! That’s it! Ask to take horseback riding lessons.”

Part of her balked at the idea. But another part started thinking, why not? The temptation nibbled at her resolve. She could spend his money. Lots of his money. Maybe she could ride English. Learn to show-jump.

Uh-huh. Sure. Let him think he’d done something for her. Tell everyone he was a good daddy because he’d paid for horseback riding lessons.

“No!” She shoved the roll of posters in the closet, in her haste denting it. “No. I don’t want his money. I don’t want anything from him.”

“Wow.” Linnet sounded awed. “You must really hate your dad.”

“I told you I did.” And she didn’t want to think about him, not anymore. One of the Blanchets’ two cats gave her an excuse, poking his head into the bedroom. “Hey, Lemieux,” Claire coaxed, holding out her hand. “Here kitty-kitty. Maybe he’ll sleep with me.” She trailed her fingers down the big Siamese’s taupe back. “Listen,” she said to Linnet, “why don’t you set up my stereo while I put away my clothes? Okay?”

Linnet slid nose first off the bed, like a seal going into the water. As she hit the floor, the cat erupted under Claire’s hand and fled, thundering down the hall.

Both girls laughed, and Claire’s mood improved for the first time. This wasn’t home, but it would be okay.

For now.