Читать книгу A Father, Again - Mary Forbes J. - Страница 11

Phone to his ear, Jon propped a hip on the counter in his spacious kitchen and stared absently at his reflection in the dark glass shielding the wet night. Three rings.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Pick up.”

Five rings. “Hi,” said a familiar, breathless voice.

“Hey, Colleen.”

A pause. “It’s you.”

Who were you expecting? “It’s me,” he acknowledged. “Brittany around?”

“She’s busy watching TV.”

He tamped down a flash of ire. “Could you get her please? I’d like to talk to my daughter.”

Muffled tones told him his ex-wife had covered the mouthpiece. Then, “Brittany would rather not tonight. She’s not feeling well.”

To hell with it. “Just get her, Colleen. If she doesn’t wanna talk she can tell me herself. Or should I drive up this minute and see what the problem really is?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Again silence, again the muffled conversation. “Fine, I’ll get her.”

He winced as the receiver slammed the light-green counter he knew so well. In the background, he heard a male voice comment, “Don’t let him hassle you, Col.” Jon pinched the bridge of his nose and counted to two hundred by fives. Finally footsteps, running ones, came closer. The phone scraped off the counter.

“Daddy?”

“Hey, peanut. How ya doing?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Not feeling so hot, huh?”

“No.”

“Got a cold or a tummy-ache?”

“Uh-uh.”

Pause.

“You can tell me, sweetheart.”

“Mom said I shouldn’t talk to you.”

Anger leapt, a fresh flame. He curbed the urge to bellow through the phone for his ex-wife. “Why not, Brit?”

“I dunno.” He imagined her tracing patterns along the countertop. “Mom said it gets me mixed up. Especially now that she’s gonna marry Allan.”

With effort Jon pulled in a calming breath. He didn’t give a flying fig who his ex married, but to play on Brittany’s feelings made his blood pump. He forced his fingers loose on the receiver. “Do you want me to stop phoning, honey?”

He felt her hesitate. His heart disintegrated.

“When I’m with you—” her voice was tiny “—I don’t want to come home. But I don’t want Mom to be alone either.”

“Aw, peanut…”

He heard her sniff. God, he wished he had Harry Potter’s broom to zip himself there. But what good would that do? Right or wrong, good or bad, he and Colleen were divorced. End of story.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, love.”

“I don’t like Allan,” she whispered.

Jon’s inner antennae shot up. “Why, Brit?”

“I dunno. Just that he pretends he’s you, and I don’t like that.”

He emitted a relieved sigh. If that was all—

“And Allan says things about Nicky.”

A chill spiked Jon’s skin. His son. His beautiful, dark-haired, blue-eyed son. Who at fifteen had attracted girls, gloried in the attention, but still found time to read his sister a bedtime story. Who would have grown into a fine, upstanding young man had his father been there to guide him.

He swallowed the burl in his throat. “What things, Brit?”

“Mean stuff. Like, if we’d had him for a father Nicky would still be alive. Stuff like that.”

Jon squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips together. The SOB was right. If they’d had anyone but Jon as a father, his son might very well still be kicking a football or slam-dunking baskets with his high school buddies. But then, if they’d had anyone else, Nick wouldn’t have been his son, and Brittany—with her little freckled nose and long, pale hair—wouldn’t be his daughter. The proverbial catch-22.

One totally unfair to play on his baby girl.

He opened his eyes and pushed a rough-padded finger above his right eyebrow where a headache festered. That Brittany wasn’t in some psychiatrist’s office with the mumbo crap being fed her by Colleen and the esteemed twit, Allan, was a wonder. “Sweetheart, I want you to listen real careful, okay?”

“Okay.”

“When Allan, and even Mom,” he added with a wince, “start saying things about Nicky that you don’t like, I want you to get up and walk out of the room.”

“But what if we’re in the car going somewhere?”

Ah, hell. “Ask them to not discuss Nick in front of you and if they continue, sing to yourself. Try to block it out as best you can. All right?”

“I’ll try.”

“You know I love you with all my heart.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’ll see you soon, all right?”

“When?”

“Summer…in a couple of months, like we talked about.”

“Allan says I should stay here for the summer.”

Jon bounced a fist on the counter. How he kept his voice from shaking, his emotions from screaming, was a miracle. “Peanut, that’s not going to happen. Now, I’m going to say good-night because I still need to talk to Mom before I hang up.”

“Okay. She’s in the foyer saying goodbye to Allan.” There was a shuffle on the line. “Gross. They’re kissing and I can see Allan’s tongue. Yuck!”

Damn you, Colleen. Not in front of my daughter. “Brit, honey, tell her I need to talk to her, pronto.”

“Right. Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, peanut.”

The phone met Formica a second before he heard her yell for Colleen. It took almost six minutes of long-distance time for his ex to pick up. She got right to the point.

“Just so you know, I don’t like being yanked away from an important matter.”

“The next time you want to do the tongue tango with your lover, do it without my daughter around.”

“How dare you. Al and I were discussing our wedding.”

“I won’t beat around the bush, Colleen. Brittany is staying with me when school’s out whether your boyfriend likes it or not. It’s what we decided on paper, and no one’s going to keep my daughter from being with her daddy. Understand?”

“Perfectly. Why should I expect anything different?” she said bitterly. “It’s always been you, hasn’t it? Whatever’s good for you. The kids and I were always last on your list.”

Pain lanced through him. “I can’t help what happened in the past. But I sure as hell can help what’s happening right now. If Brittany wants to be with me for two months, then she can. Neither you nor that jackass you’re marrying has a right to take that away from her. And—” his voice turned dark “—if you do, we’ll revisit this in court. Oh, and another thing. Brittany doesn’t like Allan playing dad around her. Tell him to lay off.”

“He does not play anything around her. He just wants to be a good father figure. Which is a lot more than her real daddy’s been over the last ten years.”

That stung. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, but dredging up the past is useless. We can’t change it.”

“Tell that to your daughter when she cries at night for her brother.” The phone clicked off.

Jon had no idea how long he stood there with the receiver humming before he finally set it back in the cradle.

Blindly, he looked at the oak cupboards housing his few cracked dishes. He should go upstairs, take a long, hot shower. His clothes were sticky and cold on his skin from the rain, his hair knotted and damp. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be down with a bug and where would that get his plans to finish this house?

In a daze he looked around the room. Like you really need a place this size, Jon.

Where had his mind been when he’d bought it? Brittany was ten years old, a sprite with his blue eyes and her mom’s fair hair. A sprite who’d visit three times a year. Who required one bedroom, not five.

And when she went back to Seattle?

Here he’d be.

Lone wolf prowling inside four dozen tall walls.

Evenings, he’d sit out back. Sip a cool one as the sun dwindled. Day after day, year after year. He’d watch the grass grow, the trees spread wider, the hedge reach another ten feet toward the sky. All for what? Brittany?

In three, four years Seattle would be prime pickings for a teenager doing all the things young girls do at that age.

Misty River, Oregon, with its conservatism, offered piddly.

He didn’t fool himself into thinking she’d want to spend even a weekend with him when that time came.

Then why not let Allan-the-Great take over? Be the father figure she needs? A man home every evening, staying till morning. A family man. A man who could give Colleen another baby.

Another brother for Brittany.

Jon spun around and cursed. Stalking to the door, he yanked it open and stepped onto the back deck. The rain had quit and the moist night air struck like a frigid fist. Let him come down with SARS. Everything that mattered was lost already.

Job.

Marriage.

Family.

Nick.

The floorboards thundered under his socked heels as he paced from one side to the other.

Stopping abruptly, he gripped the new wood railing he had hammered into place two days ago. The rain slackened into a fine mist. He let it bathe his face, easing the pain. When he could think again, he hauled in a long breath and found himself staring across the dripping hedge. From behind frilly curtains, amber light glowed in the windows of the small house next door. A woman’s shape hovered in the closest window, then was gone.

Rianne.

Getting ready for bed? He checked the big, luminous digital on his wrist. Nine-forty-three. He fancied her changing into some cotton affair, cool for the upcoming warmer nights, but unadorned, unsexy, wholly feminine, wholly her.

He pictured himself there…her skin warm, soft like the down of the bed’s duvet…

He turned and strode into his barren house.

“Yo, Joe! Hang on a sec, man,” Sam called as his best bud passed him in the corridor of milling students and clanging lockers. They had five minutes before Friday’s last afternoon class started and Joey Fraser, Sam knew, was on his way to the upper level.

Slamming shut his locker, he turned and pushed through the crowd to where Joey waited near the outside doors. “What up, man? Aren’t you going to math?”

“Me’n a couple guys’re skipping,” Joey said.

“Skipping?”

Joey sniffed. “No big deal. I can catch up. Wanna come?”

Brown fuzz grew along his friend’s upper lip and on his pointy chin, and Sam had to raise his eyes an extra couple of inches to meet Joey’s. “Can’t, man. Gotta test. Old lady Pearson’ll have my butt if I don’t show.”

“Tell her you’re sick.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, like that’s gonna work. She just saw me two minutes ago in the library.”

“So?”

“So, if I don’t pass this lab, the witch is gonna phone my mom. I’ve already failed the last two.” He hadn’t really, but he might as well have. The marks barely skimmed sixty. Lately, his concentration was the pits. Studying was the pits.

He knew why. It was Joey. His pal. His best bud.

Who looked at Sam as if he had two heads. The way he was right now. What’s the matter, Joe?

His pal turned toward the doors.

“Want to do something after school?” Sam asked. Almost too eagerly, he realized, when Joey shrugged and looked away. Sam pressed on. “I have to baby-sit Emily till four. We can dunk some balls at my house.”

The week they’d moved in, Sam’s mom had bought a basketball stand for the driveway. Last summer, he and Joey had done a lot of one-on-ones and hung out at each other’s houses, watching movies, playing computer games, roller-blading.

Joey never saw Sam’s deformity as untouchable. In fact, the first time they met, Joe had given Sam’s hand its highest praise ever with his cool “suhweet.”

This last month, though, Joey acted squirmy whenever Sam suggested they do stuff together. When he called Joey’s house, Sam often heard other guys in the background. Twice he’d recognized Cody Huller’s voice. Cody with earrings, nose-ring and orange, half-shaved hair. What Joey saw in Cody was beyond Sam.

Joey said, “After school me’n the guys are hanging on Main.”

The guys. Did he mean Huller? Sam hitched a careless shoulder. “Sure, whatever.”

“Gotta go,” Joey said. “Later, okay?”

“Yeah.” Sam watched his friend push through the doors, toward the warm afternoon sunshine. “Later.”

Walking to class, Sam knew something had changed between them. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t describe it. Joey still looked like Joey, still walked like Joey, still talked like Joey. But there was a difference.

Like Sam was a big waste of time to his friend.

The cranky sputter of a lawnmower unwilling to catch grated on Jon. Tossing the crowbar he’d been using to rip apart the front veranda steps this particular Saturday morning, he considered his options. He could walk into Rianne’s yard and see about the problem, or he could jam in a pair of earplugs and pretend she didn’t exist.

Neither option appealed to his good sense.

But then, good sense had taken a hundred-year hike, so what the hell?

Scowling, he yanked off his battered leather gloves, shoved them into his right hip pocket and headed once more into her backyard. Four days and this would be his third visit. Soon, they’d be attached at the hip.

Was that as good as attracted to her hip—among other things? He scowled harder. “You’re depraved, Tucker.”

Adjusting the brim of his Seahawks cap over his brow, he rounded her road-weary car.

She was in pink cutoffs, bent over the machine.

Jon stopped. Shook his head. Blew a weighted breath. Hightailing it back to his house—or the Pacific—loomed like one grand invitation. The farther from this woman the better.

“Dang thing,” she grumbled, oblivious to all but the mean red machine squatting idle at her feet.

“Troubles?”

Her head jerked up. “Jon.” His name, a silken thread on the warm, sunny air.

He walked over, focused on the mower. “Did you prime it?”

“Yes, and probably flooded it.”

Hunkering beside the mower, he checked the carburetor. The Columbia River was in better condition. “Yup, flooded.”

She expelled air. “The thing’s been acting up ever since I started cutting the grass a couple of weeks ago.”

Grunting in response, he inspected the wire to the ignition. While the machine appeared adequate enough to work, it could do with a cleaning. A second scan and he found the problem. “The spark-plug cap is off.”

“It is?” Her shoulder came level with his chin as she peered at the tiny cup between his fingers. If he leaned sideways a little, he could bury his face in her hair.

“When’s the last time this thing had a tune-up?” he grumped.

“Don’t know. I bought it from a friend. It worked fine until…” She turned her head. Their eyes caught. “Now.”

She had brown lashes. Straight and thick as a baby’s toothbrush.

He shoved the cap on to the spark plug then climbed to his feet.

She moved to the opposite side of the mower.

Okay. You want the machine between us? Well, baby, so do I. He said, “It’ll need to sit ten minutes for the primer to drain before you can try it again.”

Checking the plain-banded watch at her wrist, she frowned.

“Running late?”

“No. Yes.” Exasperated fingers checked the green bandanna around her ponytail. “I had a number of things I wanted to get done this morning, that’s all.” She looked around her small yard. “This could wait, I suppose.” Her brown eyes found his. “Thank you. Again.”

He shifted, awkward with how the softness in her voice, her look, affected him. “Mower isn’t running yet.”

“It will be.”

Once more their eyes held. He looked away, zeroing in on the apple tree covered in white flowers. “If you need a hand, I’m working on my front steps.”

“Jon,” she said when he turned to go. “About the other night—”

“Past.”

Undaunted by his tough tone, she went on. “Nevertheless, I want to explain. When I said I wasn’t used to having company, I meant male company. Since my husband died, I haven’t been much into developing…friendships.”

“Understood.”

“Especially with men.”

Considering his own choice about women and involvements, he accepted her avowal. “I know the feeling. I’m divorced.”.

“Oh.”

For several long seconds, the morning held its quiet. A yellow butterfly flitted over the mower, bent on reaching the apple tree.

Then, because the thought had bugged him for two days he said, “You recognized me that first day on the porch with the cats.”

She smiled. “Yes. Ninth-grade English, how could I forget?”

“Ahh.” He’d wondered if she recalled sitting on her mother’s back step, him explaining Wordsworth and Whitman.

She went on, “And you used to hang with these guys. Once after school, one of them stopped me. He said things…and started handling my hair. It was very long at the time.” She looked to the hedge between their properties. Sunshine fueled flames into that hair now. “He scared me.” Her eyes were steady. “You told him to leave me alone.”

“Gene Hyde.”

“Yes, Gene Hyde.”

Misty River High’s class-A idiot. The guy had wrapped a strand of her hair around his hand—with lewd innuendoes.

“I remember. It was beside the gym and you were…” Wide-eyed and skittish as an alley cat. “Very young.”

“Barely fourteen.”

She’d been Seth’s age. A kid.

And Jon had wondered after all those trips he’d driven her and his little brother home from school—he wondered what she’d be like one day as a woman.

Now, he knew.

Except, now he no longer cared. Or so he told himself. Of course, his conscience wouldn’t allow him to veto his four-day fantasies. She was female—an alluring female—after all.

He bent, checked the primer. Free of gas. Taking hold of the starter cord, he yanked. The engine roared to life.

Rianne grabbed the handle. Her shoulder brushed his arm; her woman’s smell beguiled his nose. “Thank you,” she mouthed over the buzzing motor. A quick smile and she pushed forward, hips swaying with each determined step of her dusty sneakers, following the cutter’s path toward the edge of the yard.

He still had her image, her scent swirling in his head when he rounded the corner of the house and almost bumped into a tall, gangly kid chasing a runaway basketball. The same kid he’d seen the night he’d carried in her groceries.

In one swoop Jon anchored the ball against his body with an elbow. “You Rianne’s boy?”

The kid gave him a cautious look. “Yeah.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Shouldn’t you be helping your mother instead of playing?”

The teenager had the decency to scan the backyard. “You mean like mow the lawn?”

“That’d be a start.”

“Yeah, well, Mom doesn’t want me operating machines.”

“Why not?”

“She’s scared I might hurt myself.”

“Do you think you’ll hurt yourself?”

The boy looked as if Jon had broken a raw egg on his head. “No way. I can handle a stupid mower.”

Jon released a mild snort. Kid had guts, he’d give him that. “Lesson one. No machine is stupid. If you don’t respect it, it won’t respect you. Got it?”

The boy nodded.

“Good. Lesson two. Mothers tend to think their kids stay babies forever.” Jon lifted his eyebrows. “Up to you to choose.”

“Geez. Like that’s hard.”

“Thought so.” Jon handed him the ball. “Sam, right?”

The boy nodded.

“Think you can handle those two lessons, Sam?”

Something shifted in his dark eyes. “I can handle ’em, sir.”

Jon shook his head. “Not sir. Just Jon. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, go help your mother.”

The last thing she wanted, marching out of her house, was to confront Jon Tucker. Brutally masculine, with those polar eyes icing a person in a heartbeat, she suspected he wasn’t a man who would give one hoot about what she had to say.

But say it, she would.

Just as she had, in the end, to Duane.

No one—not now or ever again—would castigate her children or berate her mothering skills. Duane had discovered it the court-induced way. Jon Tucker would learn it in plain jargon.

He worked on a plank supported by a pair of sawhorses several feet from his front steps, marking out a distance with a thick carpenter’s pencil and tape measure. Clad in the same frayed jeans, blue plaid shirt and cumbersome work boots of an hour ago, he had her heart taking another boisterous tumble.

In the last sixty minutes he had rolled his sleeves to his biceps. Bread-brown muscles strained in the sun.

The wolf tattoo glistened within dark hair.

She chanced a furtive study of the man who had kept her spinning silly girlish dreams as a teenager. The harsh-crafted angles of his face, profiled against the bright day, showed an assertive nose, a bold ridge of brow. He’d switched the cap so its visor hid the five-inch bracket of ponytail. Pale skin peeked above the plastic band across his forehead. A silver ear stud flaunted wickedness.

She pressed down a corner of excitement. And guilt because of her mission.

After all, he’d taken time from his work to fix her beat-up, old mower.

At her approach, his long, powerful body unfolded with calm ease. Slowly she was acclimating to the way he didn’t smile, didn’t speak, simply looked at her with that impenetrable, intelligent expression. Acknowledging the latter, she took heart and stepped close enough to speak in a normal tone. “Can we talk?”

He shot a look toward her house. “The mower again?”

“No. My son.”

Those eyes conveyed nothing. Not curiosity, not amusement, not compassion. Two decades ago, a dozen expressions would have skimmed his rebel teenage features in mere seconds.

Why are you so empty, Jon?

She towed in a nourishing breath. She was here for Sam. “Please don’t persuade my son to do things against my will.”

His black brows sprang. “How’d I do that?”

“By telling him to mow the grass.”

Silence. In the woods a bird trilled a minimusical.

She pressed on. “You probably think he’s old enough, that he should be a man. Well, I’ll decide when the time is right and until then I don’t want my son handling machinery.”

He gave her another long look, picked up a compact saw, flicked a switch and notched one end of the plank. When it was done, he carried the wood to the steps.

It wasn’t so much a dismissal as disinterest.

Jon Tucker simply did not care one way or another.

In all her years with Duane, she couldn’t recollect feeling as detached as Jon looked. Alone, yes. Despondent, yes. But never detached to the point where life constituted meaningless mechanical movement from one day to the next.

She drew closer, watching as he fit the board in place. “Sam’s not like other boys.”

Would he quit working and look at her? Discuss this rationally? Or—the thought nipped her mind—was he like Duane after all, harboring an inner explosive rage while on the outside he appeared calm?

Ludicrous. Jon was nothing like her dead husband. She didn’t know how or why, but she sensed a deep, agonizing pain in the man working on his house.

She started back to her yard, weighing her suspicions.

“Rianne.”

She hesitated. “Yes?”

“What’s the real reason?”

“He has a deformed hand.” Lobster claw. An informal medical label for the fusing of all fingers into one, separate from the thumb. A hideous label. But a label, nonetheless.

Something stirred in his eyes. Interest? “I hadn’t noticed.”

“He usually hides his right hand in his pocket.” When he’s around strangers.

“Do you want him to be like other boys?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I want him to be like other boys.”

“Then let him mow the lawn.”

“That has nothing to do with—”

“It has everything to do with it. Let him be normal. He doesn’t have a disease. He has an individual hand, is all.”

An individual hand. Such an unfeigned term. Her annoyance evaporated.

He came toward her, the hammer in his tool belt softly bumping one strong thigh. Stopping within her space, he reached out and stroked her cheek with a heavy knuckle. The touch shot heat clean to her toes.

She wanted to lean toward it.

Toward him.

His hand dropped and she stood, heart thrumming, unable to move. His lips were masculine, the bottom one more supple. A corner of his mouth hitched—a smile?—then vanished.

“Boy has your eyes.”

“He looks like his father.” Abashed by her outburst, she glanced away. She didn’t want Jon Tucker assuming Duane Kirby meant anything. Anything at all.

“Still has your eyes. Same color.”

“I thought you…” What? Had no interest? Didn’t care?

“Don’t give a damn?”

Her cheeks burned.

He moved closer.

The warm morning and the heat of his body drifted over her. She wanted to scurry under the shrubbery, hide from those intense blue eyes.

“What are you really afraid of, Rianne?”

She stared at him. “Who said I was afraid?”

His eyes darkened. Without a word, he returned, lax-limbed and indifferent, to his tools and wood.