Carly's Gift (24 page)

“You could have a house here like Hawthorne. It wouldn't take much longer to fly over here than it does for you to drive up there.”

He didn't answer her. Instead, he pulled the car off the road and onto the driveway. “We're here.”

Andrea's heart did a funny little skipping beat when she looked at her house.

This wasn't one of the dreams she had used to put herself to sleep at night. She was really home.

“It looks the same,” she said.

“What did you expect?” David asked gently.

She sat very still, not reaching for the door handle or making any move to get out. “I don't know. Maybe it's because I've changed so much, I expected everything else had changed, too.”

“I think once you get settled, you're going to find you like the sameness. There's something to be said for familiarity.” He opened his door. “Come on—we didn't come all this way to sit in the car.”

Still she didn't move. “I'm scared,” she finally said.

“Of what?”

“I don't know.”

He twisted around to face her. “Ethan isn't here.”

She shot him a questioning look. “How do you know?”

“I called Carly from the airport when you went to pick up the candy for Eric. She said Ethan had to go to Columbus on business today.”

The butterflies left her stomach and she offered David a grateful smile. “You're always doing things like that for me.”

“Like what?”

“Making my life easier. I know how hard you looked to find a school that I would like and that you didn't go to Hawthorne to write your book so that you could be in London with me.”

David had his mouth open to tell her that the pleasure had been his, but then realized she would never buy into his pretense that it was a simple thank-you. “I just wanted your mother to know what time we'd be arriving so she didn't start looking for us too soon.”

After several more seconds and a deep, calming breath, she got out of the car and came around to the driver's side where David was waiting for her. “How do I look?”

“Like a million dollars.”

“Only dollars?” she said with a show of indignation. “Why not pounds?”

He grinned. “You're a cheeky little bundle.”

She put her arm through his and made a move toward the house. “I can hardly wait to show Shawn the model ship you got him.”

David held back. “This is your show,” he said. “I'll be up with the luggage in a couple of minutes.”

“But I want you—” She stopped at the sound of the front door opening. They both turned to look as Carly stepped out on the porch.

She was wearing a green sweater and slacks and had her hair plaited into a long braid that hung across her shoulder. A sharp pain cut through David's chest, stealing his breath. For a heartbeat he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like if he were the one Carly was waiting to welcome, how he would put his arms around her and, between the long, lingering kisses he would give her, tell her how lonely he'd been.

His heart beat again and he shoved the image into the corner of his mind he reserved for plot ideas and other impossible fantasies.

“Hi, Mom,” Andrea said.

“Hi, yourself.” Carly came down the walkway, her arms outstretched. She caught Andrea to her in a joyous hug. After several seconds, she leaned back to see her daughter better. “You look wonderful,” she said, tears of happiness making her eyes glisten in the crisp afternoon sunlight.

David fought a stab of jealousy when he saw how tightly Andrea had returned Carly's embrace. The last spark of hope that she would return to England with him died a quick, painful death.

“Where's Shawn?” Andrea asked.

“Inside waiting for you.” Carly brought her close again and held her as if she never intended to let her go. “God, I've missed you.”

“I've missed you, too, Mom,” Andrea said, finally letting go of her, but not moving away.

The smile that spread across Carly's face rivaled the sun. “I'm not the only one. As soon as the word got out you were coming home, the phone started ringing and it hasn't stopped since.”

Andrea looked embarrassed but immensely pleased. “Who's been calling?”

“Susan and Janice and Patty and Brian—I could go on all morning. The list is endless.” She took Andrea's hand and started walking toward the house.

“Brian called?” Andrea asked, obviously pleased.

“Twice,” Carly said.

David watched them until they got to the porch, then went back to the car and took Andrea's suitcases out of the trunk. He was fuming. Carly must have been rehearsing what to say all morning. The phone calls had been a particularly brilliant touch, tailor-made to delight Andrea and make her feel wanted.

He slammed the trunk lid harder than necessary, seeking physical release for his frustration. Reminding himself he had no right to be feeling the way he did, didn't ease the knot in his stomach. He jammed his hands on his hips, tilted his head back to look up at the cloudless sky and took several deep breaths.

“Aren't you coming in?” Carly asked.

At the sound of her voice, David turned so quickly he upset the bag of last-minute souvenirs Andrea had picked up in Harrods duty-free shop at the airport. “I thought you might like some time alone.”

“Shawn has taken over. They're so wrapped up in each other, they didn't see me leave.” Carly hugged herself against the cool air. “She looks fantastic, David.”

A flash of irrational anger shot through him. “What did you expect—black leather and punk hair?”

“Why are you mad at me?”

He bent to pick up the Harrods bag. “I'm not.”

“Then what's wrong?”

“What did you expect, Carly? How the hell am I supposed to act? You turned Andrea over to me to take care of and then return, as if she were a car on loan. Now you expect me to disappear from her life—and yours—and pretend none of this ever happened.”

“Nothing has changed, David. I never promised you—”

“That's right. You never promised me a damn thing. But then you never warned me about what it would feel like when Andrea left, either.”

“She was only supposed to be with you for two weeks.” She picked up Andrea's carry-on bag and fit the strap over her shoulder. “How long will you be staying?”

“Long enough to see that she's settled, and then I've got to get back to the airport.”

“But I thought—”

His mouth curled into an acerbic smile. “Don't tell me you went to all the trouble of fixing up the extra room for me?”

“I made reservations for you at the motel.”

“How thoughtful. But to what point? So that I would be available to tell Andrea what a good thing she's got going for her here should she begin to have second thoughts about coming back?” He moved closer, purposely invading her personal space. “I'm through playing your games, Carly. If Andrea decides she wants to come back to England to live with me, I'm not going to do anything to dissuade her.”

She took a small step backward. “You have no right to—”

“Think about it, Carly. Thanks to you, I have every right where Andrea's concerned, and the papers to prove it.”

Carly searched his face as if looking for something to guide her, a direction to go in dealing with him. “But she isn't your daughter,” she said, her voice a frightened whisper, plainly confused by his outburst.

“Are you going to tell her that?” he asked evenly.

“You know I'm not.” Alarm replaced the confusion in her eyes. “Why this sudden paternal interest in a child you only met six months ago?”

He shrugged expressively. “I just figured that as long as I had the name, I might as well play the game.”

She slowly lowered the carry-on she was holding. The fear had disappeared, leaving indignation. “Let me get this straight—you're actually considering pressing your supposed rights as Andrea's father over my very real rights as her mother?”

“All I'm saying is that she has a home with me if that's what she wants.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

“Not a goddamned thing.”

“When you agreed to help me, you said you understood that she was mine, David. Nothing's changed.”

“The hell it hasn't. Thanks to you, there are hundreds of people on two continents who believe I'm Andrea's father. Your manipulations have put me in a position where I either act like a parent or get tagged an uncaring bastard.”

“So that's it,” she said, the words dripping with venom. “You don't really care about Andrea. You're just afraid of what everyone might think. Or could it be that you've decided it might be nice to add a father-of-the-year award to all your other trophies?”

“Believe what you want.” David stopped himself from saying more when he heard the sound of the front door opening. He looked up to see Andrea holding an overjoyed Muffin in one arm and waving at them with the other.

“What's keeping you two?” she called out. “Shawn wants you to sign his casts, David, and I want to show Mom what I bought for her in that shop in Soho.”

“We'll finish this later,” Carly said under her breath.

“As far as I'm concerned,” David told her, “I've said everything I wanted to say. Unless, of course, you change your mind and decide to tell Andrea I'm not her father after all.”

He went back to the car and gathered the remaining bags. When he looked up again, he carefully kept his expression neutral. “Now why don't we do as
our
daughter has suggested and go inside?”

“You're not going to win this one, David,” Carly said, closely following him.

In his gut he knew she was right. What were his four months compared to the almost sixteen years she'd had with Andrea? And where in the hell had this sudden compulsion to keep Andrea with him come from? And then he understood. He was reacting to the reality of losing her. Until then he had been able to cling to the small hope that Andrea would not stay. Even caught up in his own confusion and self-doubt, he couldn't keep from taunting her. “Want to bet?”

“Don't put up anything you can't afford to lose,” she snapped back at him.

A spark of hope ignited in David. There had been a distinct note of anxiety in Carly's bravado. Could it be she didn't know she'd already won? Or was there something else going on he knew nothing about that could throw the balance his way? “The only thing I have that I can't afford to lose is Andrea,” he told her, knowing the statement was as good as issuing a challenge, but unable to stop himself.

Somewhere, sometime, in the past twelve hours, the game plan had changed. Now, all he had to do was figure out what he was going to do about it.

Twenty-one

Carly entered Andrea's
room, trying not to wake her if somehow she had managed to fall asleep after the day's excitement. Having Andrea home again was every bit as satisfying as Carly had anticipated. The empty feeling was gone, replaced with a deep contentment. Not even David's peculiar behavior had put a damper on the celebration.

Andrea rolled over and Muffin let out a soft grumble of protest at being disturbed. “Mom?”

“Go back to sleep. I was just checking on you.”

“I'm awake.” She doubled her pillow to prop herself up.

“Is something wrong?”

“It's just jet lag.”

The words sounded strange—too grown up and sophisticated to be coming from her daughter. Carly had never experienced jet lag and probably never would. “How long does it take to get over something like that?”

“I was in England a whole week before I slept eight hours straight.”

Carly nudged Muffin over and sat down on the edge of the bed. “My guess is that there were one or two things besides the time difference that were contributing to your sleeplessness.”

Andrea pulled herself up to a sitting position and leaned against the headboard. “I understand about David now,” she said when she was settled.

The hair on the back of Carly's neck stood on end. “What do you understand about David?”

“Why you loved him enough to do what you did.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“What was he like when he was my age?”

Carly didn't want to remember and she sure as hell didn't want to share those years with Andrea. “I think David should be the one to tell you about himself.”

Instead of pushing, Andrea came at her desire to talk about her father from another direction. “David likes me.”

Carly put her hand over Andrea's. “That's not surprising. You're a pretty special person.”

“No, I mean he really likes me. He never said anything, but I don't think he wanted me to come back here, not even for a visit. And I know that's the reason he decided to go to New York rather than stay in Baxter. He's afraid I'm not going to go back with him.”