Daddy 101 (American Romance) (7 page)

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Authors: Jo Leigh

BOOK: Daddy 101 (American Romance)
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As she watched, three pairs of lips smiled. Three hands shot up to adjust three hairstyles. Three pairs of cheeks got pink and rosy.
Alex cleared his throat.
Then Filbert decided he was bored.
Iguanas can move pretty fast when they want to. So can cats.
Filbert darted across the table, heading right for Keelyn, jerking the leash out of Terry’s hand. Mimi screamed first, which caused the cat to leap off Keelyn’s lap and run straight toward Dani. Dani tried to head him off, and he veered left, then doubled back as Keelyn screeched. The cat went between Maureen’s legs, causing her to jump to her feet and drop the fishbowl on the floor. The crash was loud enough to scare the hell out of Filbert who used Keelyn’s back as a path to the ground.
Mimi continued screaming, as did Keelyn and Maureen. The cat found the drapes and scaled them, only to find that there was no immediate escape.
The fish flopped on the floor, and just as Dani was going to attempt that rescue, Alex moved. He scooped up the goldfish and headed for the kitchen. Dani only got a brief glance at him, but she could see his body shake. Wondering why he was so afraid of goldfish, she darted around the table trying to locate the ever popular Filbert.
Mimi ran from the room, straight down the hall and out the front door. Dani found Filbert eyeing the cat who was still hanging by his claws from the drapes. Just then Chloe wandered in, a look of abject fear on her face.
Dani abandoned the iguana to take care of Chloe. But Chloe was too busy staring at Keelyn, who continued to screech like a badly tuned violin.
“Keelyn!” Dani shouted. “It’s all right. The fish will be fine.”
Keelyn stopped her caterwauling and stared at her. “Who cares about the fish. The damn lizard went to the bathroom on my back!”
Dani froze. She looked at Chloe, who looked so confused she just might start crying. Then she heard the laughter come rolling in from the kitchen, and she lost it herself.
She laughed so hard she started crying, and when she tried to get the cat from the drapes, she couldn’t do it. The cat hissed, Dani snorted in a most unladylike fashion, and then she turned to see Alex standing in the doorway, tears running down his contorted face, trying to hold a water glass with a goldfish in it.
She couldn’t stand it. The laughter hurt her stomach and her sides, and she just kind of sat down on the floor. She definitely couldn’t look at Alex. Chloe came up to her, still confused and scared, and Dani held out her arms.
Chloe blinked, then sat down, too. At least the screaming had stopped, although now Keelyn was trying to get the cat down by stomping her feet and shouting, “Come! Heel!”
Maureen walked over to Alex, her back quite straight and stiff, and snatched the water glass from him. She sniffed once, turned and walked out of the dining room to the door and out.
Terry was trying to corner Filbert. The cat growled from the drapes. Keelyn looked at Dani as if this was all somehow her fault.
Dani took a couple of deep breaths and wiped her eyes. “Whose cat is it, Keelyn?”
“My nephew’s.”
“Is something wrong with it?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“Why did you bring it here?”
Keelyn stopped. She turned to look at Alex who was just starting to breathe normally again. He, too, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Think about it, Dani.”
“Yeah,” she said, climbing to her feet. “I suppose it’s the same thing with you, Terry, right?”
“Just help me get this monster back in my car, okay?” Terry said in a stage whisper that Alex was sure to hear. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s okay with me.” She held out her hand to Chloe, who took it and stood. “You, young lady, need to go back to bed.”
“I’m too awake now.”
“I think you ladies were looking for this?”
Dani turned. Alex had Filbert in his hands, which were stuck out quite far in front of him. The iguana didn’t seem to mind. He just blinked one eye, then the other.
Terry blushed and hurried to fetch Filbert. She managed to grab him without once making eye contact with Alex. Then she practically ran out of the house, her high heels clicking noisily on the tile.
Only one more to go. Keelyn. With her very damp dress and her embarrassed frown. Dani walked over to the woman and put her hand on her arm. Quietly, trying to preserve some dignity for the poor thing, she said, “Don’t worry about the cat. You can tell your nephew to fetch him tomorrow at the clinic.”
Keelyn nodded. She started to say something, then she stopped. Dani took that second to glance over at Alex. He was smiling broadly, watching her. His hair was mussed, his jacket off. He leaned against the doorjamb as if he’d been there a hundred nights. His look at her was deeply amused, and very intense. She thought of his kiss, and his invitation, and she wanted him all over again.
“How do you do that?” Keelyn whispered.
Dani had forgotten she was still there. “What?”
“Get these gorgeous men to lust after you like that?”
“What?”
“He looks so much like Randy it’s scary. And man, does he ever have the hots for you.”
Dani straightened immediately. Keelyn’s words were like a cold slap in the face. “You’re way off base.”
Keelyn shook her head. “Nope. It’s high school all over again. And you’ve got the captain of the football team in your living room. I just don’t get it...” She gasped a little and stepped closer. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I mean, you’re so cute and smart and all, of course any man would like you. It’s just that—”
“The clinic opens at nine,” she said. “Good night, Keelyn.”
The woman backed up some more, clearly anxious to get out after her faux pas. “I mean it, Dani. You’re just darling. Honest.”
“Good night, Keelyn.”
Dani watched her old high school acquaintance leave. Boy, some things never changed. How the girls in class used to wonder, aloud, in front of her, how she, plain little Dani Jacobson, could possibly have attracted Randy, of all people. It was a mystery gone unsolved until the day Randy had walked out of her life. That was a move everyone seemed to understand. Herself included.
Chapter Seven
A
lex tried to remember the last time he’d laughed so hard he cried. He couldn’t. He continued to smile, even as Dani left to put Chloe back to bed. The cat was still on the loose, but other than that, the house was quiet once more, and Alex debated going up to his room. Dani may not come out again, but he hoped she would. He wanted to talk to her. To see her laugh.
An odd feeling of déjà vu swept over him, and he remembered a girl he’d known as a child. Denise Gillard. She’d been his first best friend. They’d played in the woods behind his house every day all summer long. She’d been chubby, and pretty, and she’d laughed like no one he’d met since. Well, until Dani. It was infectious laughter, the kind that grew and grew until they’d had to simply lay down on the grass because their legs wouldn’t hold them anymore.
Dani had laughed that way tonight. He’d seen her on the floor, unselfconscious, abandoned. He tried to picture her doing that in the dining room of his house. No, she wouldn’t have. His place was too formal for sitting-on-the-floor kind of laughter. When had that happened? At what juncture of his life had he opted for formality over comfort? Polished over casual?
He hadn’t been like that in college. His fraternity room had been a typical hodgepodge of beer bottles, empty pizza boxes and babe posters. Then he’d moved to the Green Hill apartment. His father had sent that decorator. Alex hadn’t objected. Hell, he’d been thrilled. The apartment was a young man’s dream. Good leather couches, framed artwork on the walls. Matching towels. He’d been comfortable there, pleased that he could have such a nice place right after graduation. The girls had loved coming over.
But even then, he’d given something up. Some little piece of himself. The babe posters had gone, the beer bottles relegated to the wet bar, and the maid had disposed of any pizza boxes before they had a chance to hit the floor. College may have been over, but his education had just begun. He was the prince regent, the next in line to inherit his father’s millions, and that meant doing things the Bradley way.
Alex went to the fridge and studied the contents. He got out the carton of milk and found himself a glass. He poured, grabbed a package of Oreos, then went back out to sit at the dining-room table.
He remembered sitting at the table in his brand-new apartment all those years ago. His father had taken the seat across from him. Alexander, Senior, had told him then that while it was fine to have fun with all kinds of women, it was not fine to get serious about just anyone. He’d laid out the rules, clearly, definitively.
Alex’s own mother had fit the criteria for a Bradley wife to a T. She’d been beautiful, extraordinarily so. A sterling hostess, and an attentive—if somewhat distant—mother. She never interfered in business, never seemed to mind that her husband had a constant stream of other women on the side. She shopped a great deal, did her charity work and made the circuit of parties from Beverly Hills to Monaco to Switzerland.
Felicity Bradley had died five years ago in a car accident. She’d been in Park City, Utah, on a skiing trip. When Alex had flown out to get her body, he’d discovered she’d had her own lover: a ski instructor a year younger than him.
It hadn’t shocked him. On the contrary. He’d felt happy for her. At least she’d gotten some joy of her own.
Was he going to have to get his joy from affairs? Would a woman like Dani ever agree to being the other woman? He doubted it.
Funny thing. The rules had been a part of his life since before puberty. He’d accepted them, just as he’d accepted that he would go to Harvard, that he would take over the business. But now, sitting here dunking his cookie, waiting for a small town vet to leave her daughter’s bedside, he was actually thinking that maybe, just maybe, the rules of the father didn’t have to be the rules of the son.
“Where’s
my
glass?”
He turned. Dani stood in the doorway, smiling at him. He had to smile back. “Pull up a seat,” he said as he stood and headed for the kitchen. “One glass, coming right up.”
He heard her sit down and he hurried. In a moment, he was back with her glass and the milk. He poured for her, then sat again, pulling his chair closer.
“Chloe asleep?”
Dani shook her head. “No, but she’s on her way. She got kind of riled up there.”
“Who could blame her.”
Dani took a cookie and dunked. “Can you believe those women?”
“It was pretty surreal, wasn’t it?”
“That’s a good way of putting it. What were they expecting? It reminds me of Cinderella. With all the sisters coming over here to try on the glass slipper.”
“It won’t fit,” he said. He caught her gaze just as she was bringing a soggy cookie to her mouth. “Cinderella is already in the house.”
She put the cookie down. “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to hear that.”
“What? That I think you’re special?”
“We both know you can be smooth. That you know how to use those pretty words. And we also both know that I’m not going there. So you needn’t bother.”
“Ouch,” he said. “Hold on a second while I pull the knife from my heart.”
She shook her head. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. You’ll get over it Trust me.”
“How do you know?”
“Call it a hunch. But I have the feeling you won’t be lacking for prom dates once you hit Manhattan .”
“Who
did
you go to the prom with?” he asked, figuring a different tactic was called for. But also, oddly, curious.
Dani picked up her cookie again and chewed thoughtfully before she answered. Alex didn’t bother with the dunking. He just opened the cookie and ate the good part.
“I went with Randy, the Wonder Jock.”
“The guy what’s-her-name mentioned?”
“The very one.”
“So he’s your memory?”
Dani nodded. “Yep.”
“Want to tell me?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“I’m wounded. I thought we were so close.”
“We’ve known each other one day, Mr. Bradley. One very interesting day, but one, nonetheless.”
“Hmm. Well, it doesn’t make me any less curious .”
“You’ll survive.”
“You sure do have a lot of confidence in me.” He grabbed several more cookies and opened them up. He put the sides without the cream back into the bag. “I’ll get over it. I’ll survive.”
“You won’t survive if you do that again.”
“What?”
She nodded toward the Oreo bag.
“Oh, damn.” He reached over and got his cookie halves. “Sorry. I’m not used to sharing.”
“I’ll let it pass. This time.”
“Oh?” He lifted his brow. “Now what exactly would be the punishment for a crime of this magnitude?”
She grinned. Dammit.
“Laundry duty. Definitely.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“Have you ever done laundry?”
“Yes, of course. Well, no. Kind of.”
“What does that mean?”
“I took my clothes to the fluff-and-fold in college.”
She laughed. He felt himself flush. Why should he care about something like dirty linens? But he did.
“That doesn’t count, Alex. Sheesh. Fluff-and-fold.”
He thought about it for a moment, then he took his empty cookie halves and very deliberately put them back into the bag. “Well?”
“You realize what you’re getting yourself into?”
He nodded. He also remembered what she’d said earlier this evening. About how she had no time. He was only going to be here a few days, and he didn’t want her to come home from the clinic and do chores. He wanted her to spend that time with him. So how hard could laundry be?
“Okay. I’ll show you the laundry room in the morning before I leave. I warn you, though. You’re not going to like it.”
“I’ll survive,” he said. “I might even get over it.”
She looked at him quizzically. “You’re not at all what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
She sighed. “I expected dry clean only. And now I find you’re fluff-and-fold.”
“Who knows. Maybe I’ll turn out to be just plain wash-and-wear.”
“Nah. That doesn’t seem likely.”
“I might surprise you.”
Her grin changed her face once more. Lit it up from the inside out. “Yeah, you just might.”
 
DANI HEARD HIM WALKING. He was. upstairs, in the guest room, and she was downstairs in her bathroom. But she heard his footsteps on the wood floor. She’d thought he’d turned in. It had been quiet for almost ten minutes. He probably just needed a glass of water.
She wondered if he wore pajamas, or if he went to bed in the buff. It was easier and less stressful to imagine him in the pjs. Silk ones. Navy blue. Maybe just the bottoms. Riding low on his hips so she would see that line of hair men had that ran from their belly buttons down. She liked that line. A lot.
She turned on the water in the sink and opened up her jar of cold cream. It was still hard to get over the fact that Alex Bradley was sleeping in her house. She’d seen him on “Entertainment Tonight,” “E!” and even “Oprah.” He knew movie stars, presidents and kings. He ate in restaurants they wouldn’t let her walk near. He shopped in Neiman Marcus and Barneys, while she went to J.C. Penneys.
On the other hand, he ate the cream side of his Oreo and left the rest. If he laughed too hard, his face scrunched up and he cried real tears. He wasn’t above an emergency goldfish rescue.
Why on earth wasn’t she up with him right now? She rubbed the cold cream over her face and wetted her washcloth. Was she nuts? It wasn’t as if she was a virgin. She was a full grown adult, and she understood exactly where sex fit into the scheme of things. Lots of people had sex because they wanted sex. She’d never thought any less of them. What consenting adults did in the privacy of their homes was perfectly all right with her. She had nothing morally against sleeping with a man out of wedlock. She had even recommended that course for a couple of her women friends.
She washed her face for a while, wondering if he was still walking around. Wondering what he was thinking. He’d said some awfully flattering things tonight. Were any of them true?
The problem was, she didn’t trust her own instincts. She’d believed every pretty word Randy had told her, only to find out that he’d lied about everything but the color of the sky. She’d been a fool with him, and it had cost her a great deal. Of course, it had also given her Chloe, which she wouldn’t trade for the world, but emotionally, the penalty had been high.
And then, after Randy, there had been Doug. The opposite of Randy in every way. She’d thought she’d finally found someone she could trust. But then his wife had called her that lovely and unforgettable afternoon, and that relationship had blown up in her face. The terrible thing was, she’d never dreamed Doug had lied to her, either. She’d just taken what he said at face value.
Now, faces had very little value. Words were suspect. Motivations were mysteries and intentions were dubious. It wasn’t just her heart at stake, either. It was her job to protect Chloe, to make sure that she didn’t get hurt.
So how could she trust a man like Alex Bradley who was used to using words as a tool to get what he wanted? The man had negotiation down to a science, and what was negotiation but manipulation?
No, it was much better to be safe than sorry. She’d stick to her guns and keep her distance. Besides, even if every word the man said were true, he was still leaving in a few days. He’d forget about her the moment he got to Albuquerque. She, on the other hand, doubted she’d forget him...ever.
She finished rinsing her face then put on night cream, brushed her teeth and hair and turned off the light in the bathroom. A creak above her made her still, but although she listened for a long time, she didn’t hear anything else. He was probably fast asleep. Dreaming of famous beauties and champagne.
 
ALEX FIGURED HE WOULD never get to sleep. He’d just lie awake all night, thinking of Dani. There were worse things. Although few less frustrating.
What was it about her? He’d already determined it wasn’t her looks. She was pretty, sure, but not devastatingly so. No, this wasn’t physical, or maybe it was. Chemical. He felt zapped.
He thought about an old cartoon series from his childhood. Li‘l Abner. The wonderfully drawn Stupefyin’ Jones had helped him enter puberty in her own comic book fashion. All she’d had to do was look at a man and he was stupefied. That’s what Dani had done to him. He’d been zapped by her magic rays and now he was sunk. Because he didn’t want to get her in bed. Well, of course he did, but not just get her in bed. He wanted much more from her. The more didn’t have anything specific around it. Just more. But he couldn’t have that, could he?
On the other hand, he’d never been one to let no stand in the way. Maybe there was some negotiating room here. He’d gone to the mat with some pretty tough customers, and come out ahead. Something told him Dani would make Donald Trump look like a pussycat, but what the hell. There was nothing to lose. The problem was, he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted from her. Marriage wasn’t a good option.

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