Kitabı oku: «The Baby Magnet», sayfa 2

Chapter Two

Instead of sliding into the passenger side, Jason came around to the driver’s side. Marie sighed. She should have known.

“Scoot over, Marie. I’ll drive now.”

Only over her dead body. “Sorry, Jason, but I’m driving. One accident per day is about all I can handle.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. You can’t be serious.”

But Marie stood firm. She’d reached her quota of adolescent-style thrills and chills for the moment. It was either stand firm or flip out. Marie knew which one she preferred. “No. I’m afraid there’s no negotiating this one.” Ha, there was a misnomer if ever there was one. More like gross intimidation wouldn’t get the adolescent his way this time. Unfortunately for Jason she was too numb to be properly cowed by the prospect of one of his scenes. “I’m driving,” she assured him firmly. “Jump in and let’s go before Luke comes out to see what’s wrong.”

That threat worked. Luke was twice his size and not happy with the accident. Jason knew he’d gotten off easily. He still had all his appendages, was still breathing, wasn’t he? He moved. Not particularly graciously, but he moved.

He also scowled. He stomped around the front of the car, slapping the hood with his fist as he circled in front of it. He slammed the door when he got in and immediately began complaining. “Man, one little mistake and everybody’s all over you. Like I already told you, this wasn’t my fault. If Dad would just buy me a decent car none of this would have happened. He can keep this boat for all I care, but you could talk him into getting me something cool. I know you could.”

Marie rolled her eyes in resignation. Jason was on a roll. She was in for a good half-hour sermon on why Jason needed a new car, preferably a sports model with a trunk big enough for a mega stereo system complete with something called a subwoofer. Marie had asked around. It seemed that this subwoofer thing was for the hormonally impaired. It magnified bass sounds. It was what made your car shake when you were stuck at a red light next to some testosterone-challenged adolescent whose entire vehicle shuddered on oversize tires while emitting low boom boom de boom sounds. Allowing that thing into her house or car would be tantamount to dying and going to hell. She’d be permanently stuck at a red light that would never turn green, at least not for her.

No way. Not a chance.

Marie had never had an inclination to indulge in alcohol before but she was seriously thinking about taking up drinking. If she was declared unfit wouldn’t somebody else have to take over the job of seeing Jason through until her grandfather was back on his feet? Didn’t the Red Cross deal with disasters? Surely Jason qualified. There had to be somebody. Anybody.

When Jason showed no signs of letting up, Marie decided to break into his diatribe. “Even though the accident was clearly Luke’s fault for having the poor judgment to be behind you when you decided to back up, it’s your insurance premiums that will go up,” she informed him grimly as she gently eased the car into traffic. “You’re going to have to study a bit harder next semester. A 3.0 gpa will get you a good student rate and help counteract what just happened.”

Jason only shrugged. “The light’s changing. Better slow down.”

The attitude and running commentary on her driving put her back up. She’d rather deal with Luke Deforest—Why did her thoughts keep coming back to Luke? He wasn’t as blatantly handsome as Wade had been. No, his attraction was more insidious. It sneaked up and got you on a subconscious level. Rotten male. Marie tapped the brakes. “I know what color the light is and I’m serious here. For your information, teenage boys and girls in their early twenties have the highest rates. You can’t afford to make it any worse by messing around with your grades.”

“No skin off my nose,” Jason informed her. “Dad’s going to have to pay whatever it costs anyway. I sure don’t have the dough. That pittance of an allowance you talked him into doling out doesn’t cover more than a pack of chewing gum. You really fell down on the job there, Marie.”

Marie snorted as the light she’d stopped for changed and she again accelerated. “You buy mighty expensive chewing gum is all I can say. Like twenty dollars a pack. And maybe I could have talked him into more but I didn’t and I won’t. Twenty dollars is plenty for somebody your age.” She almost had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from telling him about how little she’d gotten when she’d been his age. It would make her sound too old. Too much like the parents who lectured their ungrateful kid about how they’d walked four miles each way barefoot through the snow to get to school, uphill both directions and furthermore, they’d liked it. Marie refused to permit herself to fall onto the wrong side of that generation line. She’d much rather be on the eye-rolling side even though the temptation was severe and she faithfully checked her hair every morning ever since her grandfather had shattered his hip to make sure none of the strands had grayed overnight.

But Jason wasn’t done yet. “You just don’t get it. I mean, were you ever young? It’s like totally demeaning to have to ask my niece for money, you know. None of the other guys have to do anything so lame. Their parents don’t give them stupid curfews of eleven o’clock on the weekend. They can stay out as late as they want and they all get however much money they want.”

“Yeah, right. Sure they do.” Marie turned a corner. She felt oddly bereft as she lost sight of the street Luke lived on. “Give it up,” she advised. “It’s not going to happen. The plan is, I’m going to discuss this with Grandpa and I’ll advise him to pay the equivalent of the cheapest insurance rates. I think he’ll listen, too. That means you’ll have to fork over the difference between that and whatever the actual charge is.”

“I don’t have any money,” Jason repeated slowly as though Marie were mentally slow and couldn’t grasp simple concepts. “No moola, get it? Zero dinero. Zip.”

Marie turned off onto another side street. They were almost home. Thank God. Maybe she could escape up to her room for an hour or two. “Guess you’ll have to get a job, huh, Jase?”

“I’m not sixteen yet,” Jason informed her smugly. “No one will hire me.”

Marie patted his arm bracingly. “Sure they will, kid. Ever hear of a work permit? If twenty dollars a week really isn’t enough to keep you in the style you’re accustomed to or you need extra cash ’cause you don’t qualify for the good student discount, why, I’ll be happy to get Grandpa to sign for one. No problem.”

“Think you’re so smart,” Jason muttered under his breath and braced himself. “Watch the kid on the bike.”

“I see him, I see him.”

“The speed limit’s twenty-five. You’re doing almost thirty. How come your hands are on ten and two? My driving instructor says they should be on nine and three so the airbag doesn’t break them if it goes off. Of course he’s only a total loser. His airbag probably goes off every day of the week and twice on Sundays.”

“Jason, I’ve been driving for eight years now. I think I can handle it.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me,” her uncle said under his breath. “There’s a car coming. Watch him.”

“I’m watching him, Jason, I’m watching.” Marie wondered how parents ever put up with getting their kids through to their licenses. Especially if they had more than one. If Jason corrected her driving one more time, she’d be forced to murder him. There wasn’t a judge in the country that would convict her, either. Not if they’d had any kids with learner’s permits of their own.

Marie knew better than to get drawn in. She absolutely did. She should just ignore him. That would be best. Ignoring Jason, however, was a bit like trying to ignore a nest of disturbed wasps. It was damned hard not to notice all the little pricks and harder still to keep from swatting back.

“Stop sign at the end of the block.”

Marie’s knuckles were white against the steering wheel when she blew. “Shut up, Jase,” she directed. “Just…shut the heck up.”

The car safely garaged once more, Marie called her insurance company, then retreated upstairs. She pulled the shades down and hid in her bedroom for an hour. Teaching Jason how to drive was going to make an old woman out of her in next to no time. She had to fight the urge to get up and go check her hair in the mirror.

Luke Deforest probably found gray hair a turn off.

What? How stupid. She didn’t—shouldn’t—care what Luke Deforest thought about her hair or any other of her body parts. Yes, she did. Well, she’d get over it. She’d see to it.

Marie took a deep breath and held it, then slowly exhaled. This was all Jason’s fault. He was making her lose her mind. After all, what did she know about dealing with an adolescent? Heck, she’d been one herself not that long ago. Finding herself so quickly and abruptly on the receiving end of all that adolescent garbage was throwing her psyche into shock, that was all.

Marie took another deep breath, slowly exhaled and dug out an old Paul Simon CD, curled up in her favorite reading chair over in the corner and vegged out while Paul crooned softly in the background. Of course she was damn lucky to hear him at all over the boom de booms emanating from just down the hall. Still, it was soothing. When Marie finally emerged, she went down to the kitchen confident she was once more in complete control. For sure she wasn’t going to give Luke Deforest another thought. Maybe she should bake some cookies and take them with her to their meeting tomorrow. See if she couldn’t soothe the savage beast. She could always say they were for Carolyn so he wouldn’t suspect anything.

Marie produced a small meat loaf for dinner which precipitated a lot of gagging sounds and threats to hurl up the meal, but honest to God, you couldn’t serve pizza every night, could you? Pepperoni was not exactly the best example of the protein group you could find. The salad was put away untouched except for the small portion Marie herself had taken.

Marie was pathetically grateful when, after downing half a container of double fudge brownie ice cream, Jason cleared out of the kitchen without offering to help or doing so much as clearing a dish. Frankly, she’d rather do it herself than have to put up with her uncle for ten more seconds. The sound of his bedroom door shutting—loudly—came as a blessed relief. And then the house began to shake. Boom boom de boom.

No way was she getting that subwoofer thing for him. Absolutely not. Why would any sane person pay money to make a bad situation degenerate to worse? She turned an oldies station on the radio all the way up to camouflage Jason’s exaggerated bass and sang along with Aretha Franklin, shaking her hips while she finished cleaning the kitchen. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Oh yeah, her and Aretha, they were both craving it, needing it.

Lord, she was obviously overtired. She was going to bed.

Shortly before noon the next day, Marie rang Luke’s doorbell. She’d spent time choosing her outfit, applying her makeup and had actually plugged in the curling iron and worked on her hair. She waited for Luke to answer, pleased that she could still pull herself together into a decent package. It had been months since she’d bothered to try. She’d settled for clean ever since assuming responsibility for Jason. Who was there to impress? One of his acne-riddled, fifteen-year-old buddies? No, thank you.

Luke, on the other hand, was fair game. He’d intimidated her the day before, looking better than any man had a right to, almost like some kind of male model for crying out loud. Except there’d been absolutely no sign of mousse in his hair nor had he stunk to high heaven of any kind of men’s cologne. No, Luke just naturally exuded everything that was masculine.

And all that was feminine in her cried out in response, which was really stupid. Did she have no self-protective instincts at all? Had she learned nothing from her marriage?

While she waited she thought about Carolyn. As far as she knew, Luke was a bachelor. Wade had never spoken about his brother having been married or having any kind of previous entanglement of the female kind—which Luke obviously had had since Carolyn existed—but then again, Wade hadn’t been one to speak much. Flex his biceps, yes. Talk, no. There’d been a time in her life when a guy’s pecs were recommendation enough to pursue a relationship. She’d naively assumed a well-built body wouldn’t embarrass itself by anything less than a sterling interior. Thank God she’d grown past all that.

Luke opened the door just as Marie was beginning to wonder if he’d remembered their appointment.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Marie responded as she studied him curiously. He’d been impeccably dressed yesterday when Jason had whacked him. Now here it was, Sunday, almost noon and the man looked, well, disheveled, to be kind.

It was annoying that her heart rhythm picked up anyway. For the life of her, she couldn’t come up with an adequate reason why. His jeans were old, frayed, with his knees showing through the few remaining horizontal threads still there. He wore a collared white broadcloth shirt, but it was unbuttoned, untucked and wrinkled. The shirt was short-sleeved and his arms emerged from them thick, heavily muscled and furred. Dark hair curled out from the top of his undershirt, letting Marie know his chest was also furred. If she hadn’t seen his hair yesterday, she’d think he hadn’t combed it in a month of Sundays, so unkempt did it appear now. And Luke’s feet were bare. Bare. Marie shook her head. It was discouraging and ridiculous in equal parts that her heart still lurched at the sight of him. The vision of him now just didn’t fit with yesterday’s image. Nothing about him did.

Would the real Luke Deforest please stand up?

“Come in,” he invited, rather formally Marie thought, considering his attire.

Today’s Luke Deforest was living proof of the old adage that clothes did not make the man. Messed and mussed, this was still one fine-looking specimen of the male variety. Marie became determined not to show any signs of her discomfiture. “Thank you,” she replied, nodding acceptance of his invitation and stepping regally, she hoped, into Luke’s foyer. She had to thread her way around several shopping bags from stores whose names were familiar to her from her own trips to the mall. She recognized some of the bags from yesterday.

Calypso music drifted in from the back of the house.

Her eyes adjusted to the dimmer interior lighting.

The exterior of the house had been impressive. A warm-colored brick, the large two-story house sat on a wide, deep lot. The landscaping was minimal, a sign of both the newness of the home and its current owner’s disinterest in gardening, Marie suspected.

The inside appeared spacious and expensively if unimaginatively finished, with lots of moldings and wide, thick, intricate woodwork throughout. From what Marie could see, all of it seemed to be painted a basic, unimaginative white.

Luke led her through a very masculine-looking living room with white walls and tan carpeting accented by a supple black leather L-shaped sectional. The pink satin-bound blanket from yesterday and a stuffed green bunny about a foot and a half tall lay obtrusively on the couch and Dr. Seuss books lay on the brass-and-glass coffee table before it. Matching brass-and-glass end tables supported black lamps with black shades. They passed through the room, which had little by way of actual decoration, into—she wouldn’t have thought it was possible—an even more masculine study.

“Hang on a second,” Luke muttered and Marie stood, waiting until he came back with a kitchen chair for her to sit on. He placed the chair behind the massive glass-topped black desk, next to his brass-nail-studded black leather and far more professional chair.

He sank, rather gratefully Marie thought, into his chair and waved her into the other. “Sit,” he said and ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up all the more. “If I remember right from last night, we’ve got maybe ten or fifteen minutes before the movie ends. When I went to get your chair Ariel had already given up her voice to become human and the king of the mer-people was being turned into a newt or something equally repulsive by this evil overweight octopus. I’ve got to admit the octopus is pretty awesome, but I’m telling you, it’s wearing thin. The whole thing is wearing very thin. Hell, I’ve had the kid for less than twenty-four hours and I’ve already got the damn movie practically memorized.”

Marie was confused. Why was he so unfamiliar with his daughter and how come she’d never heard about Carolyn before? A long-ago divorce? How long ago could it have been with Carolyn being so young? How often did Luke get to see her? There had to be a mom somewhere, but where and how did she fit into the picture? After all, it took two to tango and Carolyn was living proof Luke knew how to dance.

“Are you divorced?” she asked. “Do you just get Carolyn certain weekends a month or something like that?”

Luke scrubbed his face with his hands. “I wish. No, it’s nothing easy like that. Carolyn’s mother died a little while ago. It’d been a while since I’d last seen her. Took them a while to track me down, I guess. Carolyn’s here to stay and neither one of us is at all sure how we feel about that.”

See? She was right. Men were jerks. Except for her grandfather who’d always been there for her, but he was a lot older. Maybe they improved with age. Sort of like cheese. Then again, didn’t some varieties just get stinkier the older they got?

“You’re the child’s father and you haven’t bothered to have any contact with her before now?” she questioned incredulously, forgetting in her ire how very large he was. “They had to track you down to inform you of her mother’s death? What kind of a man are you?”

“A tired one,” Luke informed her grimly. “A very tired one. Carolyn refused to stay in her own bed last night. She kept climbing in with me. And let me tell you, that child has the boniest elbows and knees you’ll ever run into. I know. I ran into them consistently and constantly all night long. Most restless sleeper in town, no, on the continent. No joke. She got me once in the throat. I couldn’t breathe. Thought I was going to die.”

“You evidently survived the ordeal,” Marie said without a great deal of sympathy. She was amazed by the man’s total lack of sensitivity. “I’m sure she’s just feeling insecure. For heaven’s sake, Luke, her mother just died and she’s been shuffled off to a father she doesn’t even know.”

Luke half rose out of his chair and pointed his finger at her. “Listen, lady, you don’t know what—” He stopped in midsentence, paused, shook his head, then sat back down. “No, never mind. It’s nobody’s business but Carolyn’s and mine. Just trust me on this. There are things I’m not free to discuss here. They’re between Carolyn and me and we’re the ones who’ll work them out. I hope.” He’d muttered that last and Marie barely caught it.

Puzzled, she stared at him. Luke Deforest, the man who only yesterday looked like he could take on the world and win suddenly looked like he’d gone a couple of rounds more than he should have. The man looked defeated. Marie felt the tug on her heartstrings and was confused and angered. He pulled on her in so many different ways how was she supposed to stay uninvolved here? Well, she’d done her share of mothering for this month. Maternal instincts, sexual instincts and any other kind of instincts that had her thinking about jumping on the bandwagon here were just going to have to forget it. Marie was currently unavailable. Jason was enough to deal with. She wasn’t going to take on Luke and his defenseless little daughter.

She was getting going while the going was good.

Once again Marie tried to rise. “It certainly sounds like you’ve got your hands full so I’ll just get out of your way. You’re not ready to leave and I’m sure the insurance company can deliver the loaner car to you if you ask. Here, I stopped and picked this up on the way over.” She tried to hand him a copy of the police report she’d filed. “I’ll leave this here for you to look over and I wrote down my phone number and insurance information so you can—”

“Daddy?”

If Marie hadn’t been looking right at him, she wouldn’t have noticed the slight recoil.

“Yes, Carolyn?”

“All done.”

“The movie’s over already?”

In other circumstances, Marie would have laughed at the look of sheer panic Luke wore. She was sure he’d never admit it, but he was so obviously clueless as far as how to entertain the child that it was almost funny. Funny in the abstract, that was. Funny only until you took a good look at the little girl. Yesterday Carolyn’s face had been buried in Marie’s chest. When the child had finally fallen asleep in her car seat, her features had been red, swollen and splotchy from crying.

Today, well my goodness, today Carolyn was a beautiful child not yet a yard tall with crooked wheat-colored pigtails cascading in curls to her shoulders and soft brown eyes framed with embarrassingly long lashes. There was a spattering of freckles running over her cheeks and bridging her nose. As Carolyn’s top teeth bit into her quivering yet pink perfect lower lip, Marie noted those teeth were small, white and charmingly askew. Luke would drop a quick five grand straightening those in a few years, Marie decided.

Oh, God, Carolyn was still virtually a baby and she was so forlorn and lonely-looking as she stood there uncertainly in the doorway. So lost and vulnerable appearing as she looked to Luke for guidance as to what to do next in this foreign house with this foreign dad in this foreign town.

Marie’s heart went out to the little waif. Marie was a goner.

Not liking this situation didn’t change it.

“It’s almost lunchtime,” Luke finally suggested hopefully after staring nonplussed for several seconds. “How about if I open a can of tuna fish and put it on whole wheat bread? Doesn’t that sound good?”

Marie did a double take and stared at him. He was kidding, right?

“Do we got any hot dogs? I like hot dogs,” the child offered hopefully.

“A hot dog.” Luke raked a hand through his hair. He’d never get it to lie flat again, Marie suspected. “Let me look. Maybe there’s a package in the freezer. A hot dog’s protein. Sort of,” he mumbled to himself. “But there ought to be vegetables. Kids need vegetables to grow right.” He snapped his fingers. “A salad. We could have salad.”

Marie shook her head. Luke was lost, no doubt about it. No two-year-old worthy of the name would willingly eat salad. The man was definitely out of his milieu. Of course it would be a month or two before he’d admit it.

“Uh, Luke?”

“Yeah, what?”

“What about grapes or a banana? Don’t you have some fruit you could cut up for Carolyn?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” He frowned as he mentally reviewed his grocery supplies. “Maybe.”

Tactfully Marie suggested, “That might be a better choice than salad. Maybe you could convince her to try a little bit of carrot if you cut it up into matchstick size, but you might want to hold off on the salad for a little while.” Like twenty years.

Luke frowned and studied the tot. “I don’t want her to develop bad eating habits.”

“No, no, of course not,” Marie quickly assured. “But it would be all right to work up to salad, wouldn’t it? I mean, you could start with cooked carrots with a little brown sugar on them and go from there, couldn’t you?”

Luke picked up the paper clips from the holder on his desktop and began pouring the clips from hand to hand and back. “I don’t know. I’m still not sure about this hot dog thing, either.”

“It might be easier. Just for today, you know. Until Carolyn’s a little more at home, that is.” Marie gave the guy a month, two tops. She, too, had prepared only nutritious balanced meals and snacks when she’d first taken over responsibility for Jason. There’d been a lot of tension, unhappiness, and sneaking out to the local fast-food burger place with friends until Marie had finally caved. She’d never regretted sinking to PB and J and pizza. The peace alone was worth it. Now she slipped him his grains and oatmeal in cookie format, his milk and calcium in pudding or tapioca. Veggies were still a sore point, but life, if not perfect, had at least been salvaged from the proverbial toilet, which was about all you could hope for with an adolescent on the premises, Marie had decided.

At the time, Marie had had her epiphany. She’d discovered that all of life was a balancing act, a compromise if you will. Luke would eventually discover the same truth, but it needn’t be quite the same rough journey she’d made.

“Then maybe, after lunch, if she doesn’t need to nap, you could take her to a park. There must be one around here somewhere.”

“Kiddie Kingdom’s not too far,” Luke said, thinking out loud. “That’s not a bad idea. Then maybe she could watch another movie while I got some work done. I’ve still got to unpack those few boxes they sent along with her and I bought her some stuff for her room, sheets and things that match, more for a little girl, you know? Barbie. My sisters used to play with her and what’s his name—Kevin, Kent, whatever. Amazing, but she’s still around. It’s all still in bags in the front hall.”

She’d noticed the bags. The front hall was probably right where Jason had dropped them. They’d made no progress since then. Marie rubbed her nose and considered the possibility that the bags’ lack of progress might be partially her fault. If Luke was frazzled, their accidental meeting yesterday might have something—not a lot—but something to do with it. She guessed it wouldn’t kill her to at least come up with a plan of action before she left.

“That’s a good plan,” Marie agreed tactfully. “But instead of another movie, after they deliver your car why don’t you stop at a home improvement place—you know, one of those glorified hardware stores—on the way home from the park and get a sandbox, a slew of sand, a bucket and a shovel? Then she could be playing actively instead of sitting passively while you work.”

Luke’s posture visibly straightened. He was definitely perking up. “That’s another decent idea, Marie. Thank you. I’d have eventually thought of it myself, of course, but this is good. Maybe a swing set, too. Kids like those, don’t they? Maybe I’ll get one of those fancy ones with a fort on one end and the sandbox underneath. There’s a house down at the end of the block with one like that.”

“They take time to assemble,” Marie warned. “It certainly won’t be done any time today. But I bet Carolyn would enjoy helping you open the packages you’ve got in the front hall and arranging her room with you.”

Luke was in a fever. Marie expected him to start taking notes any minute, although he kept his tone cool. “That’s good, Marie, that’s really good. I appreciate your input. Now, what do we do after that?”

What, he expected a minute-by-minute itinerary for the next fifteen years or so until Carolyn went away to college? Good grief. She thought fast. “Well, uh, walk up to the grocery store and get whatever you need for dinner. Walking will eat up some time and it’s good exercise for her. Help wear her out a bit for tonight, you know.” That should make it more appealing to him. “Stop in the school supply aisle and get her some construction paper, um, crayons—” Marie waved her hand expressively “—whatever else you see that looks interesting. She can color or mush that kiddie dough stuff while you get dinner ready. Hands-on experiences are very important for her age,” Marie concluded, hoping she sounded like she knew what she was talking about.