Athena's Daughter (4 page)

The reporter’s lips firmed with annoyance for
a moment before he heaved a defeated sigh. “No, I can find my own
way out.”

“Cool.” Athena turned him toward the door.
“Looking forward to your write up.”

Thus dismissed, the reporter headed for the
entrance. Athena beckoned to Hal, the store’s only other full-time
employee besides herself, and pulled him to one side.

“Okay, here’s the fun part,” she told him.
“You get to go outside and tell everyone who didn’t make it in that
the event’s over and the band’s leaving.”

“I can’t wait,” he deadpanned.

Athena grinned. “You have the easy part. I
have to disappoint all these people in here. On your way out, grab
Buckshot and have him stand by the door to make sure no records
that haven’t been paid for get smuggled out, and I’ll have Wally,
Jeremy and Casey keep an eye out in here.”

Hal sighed and squared his shoulders. “We who
are about to die salute you,” he said and headed for the door.

It took only a few minutes to get her troops
into place, and as soon as everything was ready Athena stepped
between the last person who had reached Ian and the next person in
line.

“Excuse me! Can I have your attention,
please?” She waved her arms for maximum effect and cringed at the
way her dress rode up her thighs. “Thank you all for coming out
today, but unfortunately we’ve reached the end of our time and Wolf
has to be leaving.”

A sea of protest erupted and Athena gave it a
few moments to run its course. Before it became too heated, she
raised her voice again. “I know, and I’m sorry not everyone got to
meet the band. But they do have other obligations and have to get
on the road.” She heard the sounds of folding chairs behind her
pushed back and was relieved the band was backing up her statements
by preparing to leave. “Feel free to stick around and shop or just
hang out, and thanks again for coming.”

With a last meaningful look at her employees,
Athena turned to usher the band out so she could return to the
store and help ride herd. Rondall waylaid her near the cash
register.

“You go on up with them and I’ll take care of
things out here.”

Panic made her heart beat faster. “No, that’s
okay, I…”

“I’d rather,” he interrupted. “They kind of
make me nervous. Besides, it’ll give you a little time to catch up
with them before they leave.” He tilted his head to one side. “Why
didn’t you tell me you know them when I booked this?”

She squirmed under his curious regard. “It
was a long time ago, and only just for a summer. I didn’t think
they’d even remember me.”

“Well, they do.” He patted her on the
shoulder in dismissal. “Go on up and reminisce and I’ll watch the
store.”

Feet dragging, she followed the band into the
back room and up the narrow stairs that led to the offices. Only
one of the five rooms was in use as Athena’s office; the other
four, though still crowded with furniture from the bank that
formerly owned the building, were covered in dust and crammed with
junk that had accumulated over the years.

“You can wait in my office,” she told them.
“It’s cluttered, but at least it’s clean.”

She opened the door and they filed in,
collapsing on the sagging plaid sofa against one wall. Paul grinned
up at her and stretched his legs out in front of him.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any beers, would
you?”

Athena gave him a wide-eyed stare of
amusement. “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have my underage
employees drinking on the job. I can get you a Coke, though.”

“Coke’s good,” he laughed.

“Excellent. Anyone else?”

Of course, they all wanted Cokes, and Derek
added a request as she was leaving the room. “Can you bring an
ashtray, too?”

“No problem,” she said, avoiding his
eyes.

By using the key to the vending machine, she
procured the requested beverages and took them upstairs. She handed
a bottle to each of them and then steeled herself to face
Derek.

“Come with me and I’ll show you where you can
smoke.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Why can’t I stay in
here?”

By taking a deep breath she was able to
subdue the cutting comment that bubbled to her lips at Derek’s
confrontational tone. “Rondall’s allergic to cigarette smoke,” she
explained in a tone she might use to teach the alphabet to
toddlers. “And there’s no window in here. When he comes to the
store he uses this office, too, and I don’t think it’s a good idea
to make him sick in his own place of business.”

He pinned her with an annoyed blue gaze.
“Right.” Derek handed his beverage to Paul and heaved himself off
the sofa. “Lead on.”

To keep the smoke as far away from her office
as possible, Athena led him to an unused room at the other end of
the hall. It was unnerving to have him behind her; she could almost
feel his eyes on her and her spine stiffened in response. She swept
into the dusty office with feigned nonchalance and strode to the
window. To her knowledge, none of the upstairs windows had been
opened since before she started working there, and this one was
stuck fast. After checking to make sure it wasn’t painted shut, she
tried tugging on it again.

“When exactly did you get the stick up your
arse?”

Damn it. She knew he’d been watching her walk
down the hall. The suppressed amusement in his voice waved a red
cape in front of her strained temper. “Screw you,” she muttered as
she side-stepped to the next window to try her luck with it. A gray
cloud of dust was stirred by her movements, and she pressed a
finger under her nose to halt the resultant sneeze.

“You weren’t so uptight the last time I saw
you.” No amusement in his voice now. Now he sounded pissed.
“Perhaps it’s just one of the by-products of your marriage.”

Athena pressed her lips together, but
couldn’t stop the sarcastic comment that refused to be contained.
“Not that you’d know about that, right?”

“Touchy.” Derek lit a cigarette and smoke
swirled around her to join the dust cloud. “So touchy you’re not
even making sense.”

Transferring her anger to the recalcitrant
window, she gave it a mighty heave. With a shriek of wood on wood,
it deigned to go up a couple of inches and she called it good.

“When’d you get married?” No amusement, no
anger, just a bored indifference this time.

“Who says I’m married?” She dusted off her
hands and wiped a bead of perspiration off her forehead. A wary
glance in his direction found him regarding her with narrowed
eyes.

“You told the reporter your name is Athena
Chandler. The girl I knew was called Athena Hill.”

“I used to be married,” she said with
clenched jaw, the strength of her reluctance to divulge her
personal business rivaling that of the stuck window. “Now I’m
divorced. Any more questions? And blow that smoke out the window,
please.”

With a sigh, he moved to the window and she
was quick to back out of his way.

His eyes narrowed further. “I’m not going to
bite, you know.” He studied the dirty windowsill with a grimace,
and then set the small ashtray on one side. With quick swipes of
his hand, he brushed dust from the other side before leaning
against it. “And yes, I do have more questions, except you haven’t
answered my first one yet. When did you get married?”

“Why is it important?” she snapped. As far as
she was concerned, he’d lost any right to know about her personal
life the minute he got engaged to someone else.

“It just bloody is, okay?” It was clear his
temper joined hers in straining its leash. It appeared he had
changed in the years since she’d last seen him. The Derek she knew
had the ability to remain unruffled in almost all situations when
everyone else was falling apart, and rarely lost his temper.
“When?”

“November.” She squirmed under that blue
gaze, sudden guilt twisting in her belly. From the moment she’d
seen her daughter in the hospital, she’d known the little girl
would look just like Derek. Seeing him again in the flesh made it
more apparent how much Elizabeth resembled him. Despite her anger
at him, it hit her how wrong she was to keep it from him that he
had a child. If he kept pressing her for information he was bound
to figure things out, but she didn’t want him to find out like
that. Just how she wanted to impart such news she wasn’t sure, but
she knew it shouldn’t be when they were both angry.

“This past November? And you’re already
divorced?” He must have picked up pointers from the news reporter
downstairs, or maybe he had experience in being interrogated by law
enforcement. Whatever it was, he was putting some tenacious
questioning techniques to use. “Let me guess. You stopped talking
to him, refused to communicate in any way until he buggered off.
Right?”

Rage flashed through her, hot and scalding.
He was talking about those letters she never answered. How dare he
try to turn everything back on her? “We got married in 1967 and got
divorced in 1968 when he just took off one day. Happy now?” So much
for keeping her personal business under wraps.

“You got married two months after you left
England?” His hip bumped the bottom of the window as he
straightened with a jerk, and it slammed shut, knocking the ashtray
to the floor. Venom colored his voice acid green. “You didn’t waste
any time, did you?”

Wound up and ticking, she answered with venom
of her own. “I waited longer than you did, baby.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’ve
never been married.” Ignoring the ashtray, he dropped his
half-smoked cigarette to the peeling linoleum floor and crushed it
out with his heel.

“Oh, really? What happened? Did you leave
poor Tina at the altar or something?”

Profound bewilderment clouded his face. “Who
the fuck is Tina?”

Athena forced a humorless laugh. “Have there
been so many you can’t remember their names? Tina is the one who
broke the news of your impending nuptials when I spent every last
dime I had to make a transatlantic phone call to you. And that was
in October 1967, so you beat me by at least a month. Geez, Derek;
you must have proposed to her the day I left.”

“You have gone completely daft. The only
person I ever proposed to was you, and I don’t know anyone called
Tina.”

“Oh, right.” Athena rolled her eyes. “So why
is it when I called you that day she answered the phone in your
flat and told me you were her fiancé and that she didn’t care for
strange women communicating with you?” To her disgust, hot tears
stung her eyes and she made haste to blink them away.

“I still have no bleedin’ idea what you’re
talk-“ He broke off as a look of enlightenment widened his eyes.
“…-ing about,” he finished in a hushed voice. “Tina.” His mouth
firmed beneath his moustache. “She was Janie’s friend from school.
They stayed in my flat weekends when I was on the road. I only ever
spoke about five words to her the whole time Janie knew her and I
sure as hell was never her fiancé!”

“What?” Athena took a step back, her hands
crossed in protection over her heart. “You weren’t engaged to
her?”

“Hell, no, I wasn’t engaged to her! She was
just one of my sister’s friends, and I never knew her.”

Confused thoughts swirled like startled bats
in her brain, and her eyes darted around the room as though
searching for truth. “But she told me you were. She said you were
her fiancé, and I …”

“And you believed her,” Derek interrupted
with a sneer. “Just wrote me off because of something some crazy
bitch told you over the telephone. Christ, Athena! Thanks a lot for
thinking I was the kind of person who would be in love with you one
day and get engaged to someone else the next.”

She sat down abruptly on the edge of the
desk, unmindful of the thick coating of dust and what it might do
to Andi’s dress. Her heart galloped in her chest at the realization
that she’d been played for a fool, and because of it she’d made the
most colossal mistake of her life. Sure, she’d been confused and
scared by her unexpected pregnancy, but why was she so quick to
think Derek would do something so callous as to throw her over?

“I didn’t know,” she said in a scratchy
voice. “It was a hard time for me and she was so adamant about it.”
A lump formed in her throat and she squeezed the words past it.
“I’m sorry.”

Derek shook his head. “Too late for sorry,
Athena. You should have rang again or written to me. Damn it, you
should have asked me instead of being so quick to believe the worst
about me! If you hadn’t sent my letters back…”

“I didn’t,” she interrupted. “Steve did.”

“Who is Steve? The concerned husband? No
matter who sent them back, really. The point is that they were all
unopened. If you’d taken a few moments out of your busy life to
just read them, you’d have known there was no one but you. But no;
you couldn’t even be bothered to open the envelopes!”

“We weren’t here,” she tried to explain. “We
were in New Mexico and we didn’t come back to Memphis until after
Elizabeth was born…” She stopped in horror at her slip.

Derek froze for a moment, and then closed his
eyes. “You have a child.” It was more statement than question. “And
when did that happen?”

Here it came. He was going to detonate when
he put two and two together. “She’s six.”

His foot hit the ashtray and it skittered
across the floor as he stomped toward the door. “You really didn’t
waste any time, did you? Well, thanks for immediately thinking the
worst of me, marrying someone else a scant month later and having
his child. Nice catching up with you.”

“Derek…”

Without acknowledging her further, he left
the room.

London; June 19, 1967

Athena looked into the small mirror resting
on her bed as she swirled her blush brush over her cheeks. The part
of her mind not occupied with applying makeup ticked through a
mental list of Things To Do, including packing, finding a train
station, and deciding where to go next. Though she loved the
freedom to make her own decisions and chart her own course, it
would still be a good idea to sit down and make a rough schedule of
her remaining time in the UK. There was so much she wanted to see,
and if she allowed herself to just drift around she was sure to
miss something.