Dr. Dad (20 page)

“She is
so
pretty,” Meredith murmured.

“He's
so
cute,” Amanda added, coming around Lindsey to read over her other shoulder. “They look perfect together, don't they?”

“Well, they looked perfect together on
Mercy Hospital,
” Meredith pointed out. “I don't know what Lucien Roche is going to do now that Dr. Davis is gone.”

“They'll find someone else for him,” Lindsey predicted. “They'll hire a new actress.”

“She won't be as perfect for him as Susannah was,” Meredith complained. “See how perfect they are?”

Lindsey studied the picture. She had to admit Stephen Yates looked a lot more right with Susannah than
her father did. Her dad was so just plain normal. If he ever wore a tuxedo, it would be the usual kind, with a pleated white shirt, a satin sash and one of those dippy little bow ties. Dressed to kill, Stephen and Susannah were like high-style royalty.

“Read the article,” Amanda urged her. “You'll see how perfect they really are for each other.”

“Read it out loud,” Meredith requested, crawling around Lindsey to sit facing her, her legs extended across the pink carpet and her back resting against Amanda's pink bed.

Lindsey lifted the magazine and read:

Lindsey dropped the magazine to her knees and scowled.
The mother of his child?
“This whole thing's a crock,” she declared. “Susannah doesn't have a child.”

“How do you know that?” Amanda asked. “Maybe she had the child and left it back in California with Stephen.”

“Oh, come on! I've been watching
Mercy Hospital
every week. The shows that are on now would have been taped when she was pregnant. She doesn't look pregnant on them.”

“They have ways of hiding pregnancies,” Amanda claimed. “It's showbiz. They can do special effects. They can design her costume to hide a pregnancy. In any case, this magazine is from last June, which means she would have had the baby in December or January. The shows we're watching now could have been taped after she had the baby, couldn't they?”

“If she had a baby, she would have it here in Arlington with her. You think she left it with Stephen Yates? No way. She wouldn't do that,” Lindsey argued.

“How do you know? It says right here—” Amanda jabbed her index finger at the magazine “—that she's expecting.”

“Maybe it meant she was expecting him to marry her.” Lindsey simply couldn't believe Susannah had a baby. She turned to Meredith, searching for support.

Meredith shook her head. “Expecting is expecting, Lindsey. And it says she's the mother of Stephen's child.”

“She doesn't look pregnant.” Lindsey scrutinized the photo. “She looks skinny in that dress.”

“She was probably just a little pregnant when the picture was taken,” Amanda explained. “Or maybe it's a file photo taken earlier and printed because they wanted a picture of her and Stephen to go along with the article about how she was expecting.”

“I still don't believe it.” Lindsey tossed the magazine aside. “You know these tabloids are always full of lies.”

“I don't think it's a lie,” Amanda declared.

Lindsey turned once more to Meredith, who suggested, “Maybe you could ask Susannah.”

“Oh, sure. Like, I can just go up to her and say, ‘So, is it true you've got a baby? And if so, where might the little one be? Did you just, like, leave him behind when you moved to Arlington?”'

“Well, you could be more subtle,” Meredith advised.

“Or get her someplace where we can meet her, and I'll ask her,” Amanda said, almost boasting. “She doesn't scare me.”

“That would be so rude.” Lindsey stared at the magazine with a combination of disgust and dread.

“She's a very nice lady. She wants her privacy. I can't ask her such a personal question. I mean, we're an admiration society. We admire her. We have to show some respect.”

“Especially if she's dating your dad,” Meredith added.

“She's not. They just had dinner, that's all.” If Susannah had a baby, there was no way Lindsey was going to let her date Dr. Dad. He might be a pain in the butt, but he was her father and she loved him. She couldn't let him get tangled up with some woman who had heartlessly abandoned her own baby.

Besides which, if Susannah and Stephen Yates were destined for marriage, she was probably going to go back to California to be with him sooner or later. Lindsey wasn't going to let her father get involved with a woman who was going to be leaving town. If Susannah
hurt him, it would be awful—not just for him but for Lindsey. When Dr. Dad was miserable, he wasn't fun to be with.

“We need to investigate this more,” she resolved.

“As a society, we need to know the truth. I can't ask her flat-out, but maybe I can get her talking or something. And we'll find out about this baby, one way or the other.”

“Okay.” Amanda nodded her approval, then pulled out a cookie from the bag and bit into it. A real bite, not just one of her little crumbly nibbles.

Lindsey had sort of lost her appetite, but she took a cookie anyway. She bit off a crescent and let it dissolve on her tongue while she tried to sort her thoughts.

Magazines lied. Tacky tabloids in particular lied.

Yet Susannah and Stephen Yates did look perfect together. And what Amanda said about how actresses could disguise their pregnancies with carefully designed outfits and special effects was true. And if this story about the pregnancy wasn't factual, wouldn't Susannah have sued the magazine for printing falsehoods about her?

Lindsey didn't want to believe any of it, but she had to admit Susannah was awfully private. She hated talking about her life back in Los Angeles. She might just be hiding something.

Lindsey was appalled by the idea, but she couldn't deny its plausibility. And maybe there was something exciting about it—maybe Susannah had had to abandon her baby for a reason. Maybe she was planning to return to Stephen and their child as soon as whatever it was that had driven her away was resolved. Maybe there was a deep, dark mystery behind the whole circumstance.

As the founder of the Susannah Dawson Admiration Society, Lindsey acknowledged that it was her responsibility to find out the truth.

 

S
USANNAH ALMOST DIDN'T
call him Sunday. She was embarrassed about the way things had gone Saturday night, embarrassed by the mixed signals she'd sent him. When he kissed her, she seemed unable to do anything but kiss him back. But when he stopped kissing her long enough for her to restart her brain, she had to force herself to bring things to a halt. She couldn't give up what she'd fought so hard to attain—her independence—and she knew that if she kept kissing Toby, if she let him insinuate himself deeper and deeper into her heart, she would lose her independence.

It wasn't his fault. It was hers, and admitting that added a hefty dose of guilt to her embarrassment.

She'd sat at her desk late into the wee hours of Sunday morning, hoping that she might be able to get some writing done, since she couldn't sleep. But after struggling over the script, she'd acknowledged that she was going to have to observe Toby at work. Not just because she wanted to get the technical details right but because the pediatrician character she'd created seemed stagnant to her. She'd concocted a few crises for him in the story arc and developed some nice interaction between him and the series regulars, but she needed to see him at work to nail him down. Which meant she needed to see Toby at work.

Screwing her courage, she dialed his number at around six Sunday evening. His phone rang four times, and then his answering machine came on. She left a message for him to call her back, her voice smooth
and amiable, without a hint of her ambivalence or her anguish. Then she hung up and groaned.

MacKenzie gave her a disgusted look. He knew her too well. He knew she was a wimp, too spineless to trust her emotions around a man she could fall in love with. “Well, I'm trying to develop my spine,” she told him, wondering if she should let him walk on the kitchen table. Even though she sponged the table clean before she ate, having a cat stroll across the tabletop wasn't exactly sanitary.

MacKenzie licked his lips and puckered his little pink nose.

“I can't develop my spine if I start leaning on Toby,” she justified herself to the judgmental beast. “I know he's nothing like Stephen. He's nothing like anyone I ever knew in my life. But I'm really trying to be my own person for a change. Not Daddy's wage earner, not Lee Davis, not Stephen's arm candy. Just me, myself. And your slave, of course,” she added, scooping MacKenzie off the table and giving him a hug, which he coolly tolerated.

She set him down on the floor and he glided silently away. Too restless to remain indoors, she went upstairs to her bedroom and changed into a pair of athletic shorts, a sweatshirt, thick cotton socks and her sneakers. She pulled her hair back into a barrette, donned her eyeglasses, strapped on her wrist weights and headed out for a brisk, aerobic walk. She pumped her hands and pushed her feet, block after block, until a film of sweat coated her face and her wrists and biceps ached. Would there be a message from Toby on her machine when she got home? Or would he ignore her call, dismissing her as a bitch, a tease, someone he couldn't trust?

Lights were on in his house when she concluded her three-mile loop through the neighborhood and returned to their block. The last of the sun had faded, making the glowing gold light spilling through his windows terribly inviting. Did he know how lucky he was to have a daughter who loved him, a house that was a home, a sense of himself and his strength? All the power walks and wrist weights in the world couldn't make Susannah as strong as he was.

Sighing, she accelerated to a jog, passing his house and springing up the porch steps to her own front door. She entered the house and listened for the rhythmic beep that would indicate she had a phone message. She heard nothing.

All right. She couldn't blame him for wanting nothing to do with her, despite his insistence that they could still be friends. She would have to write her scripts without his input. Maybe she'd scrap the pediatrician character altogether. She had several other story arcs she could work with. She'd telephone her editor back in Los Angeles on Monday and describe the new direction she was taking her scripts. He'd been keen on the story line she'd faxed him, but if she couldn't execute it, she couldn't. If he told her he wasn't going to buy her other scripts, she'd deal with that. She could manage her finances comfortably until another opportunity arose. In the meantime, she could get rid of her sexy pediatrician and—

The phone rang.

Plucking off her eyeglasses, she hurried down the hall to the kitchen and answered the phone. “Susannah?” Toby's voice came through the line. “It's Toby.”

“Oh.” All right, she wouldn't get rid of the sexy
pediatrician. She groped for the paper towels, tore off a sheet and mopped the perspiration from her face. “Hi.”

“Are you okay? You sound out of breath.”

“I just got in from an aerobic walk,” she told him, wondering if he'd been watching for her to return home before he called.

“We just got home a few minutes ago ourselves,” he told her, chatting affably as if Saturday night had never happened. “I took Lindsey to Paganini's. It's an ice-cream place.”

She sighed again, fighting off another twinge of envy. Perhaps if she'd kept kissing Toby last night, if she'd let the kissing lead to lovemaking, she could have accompanied him and his daughter to Paganini's tonight. She could have been a part of their loving little family.

Which was exactly why she hadn't let the kissing lead anywhere. She didn't want to be part of a family, not even his.

“The reason I called,” she said, no longer out of breath from her walk, “is that I was wondering if you'd mind my observing you at work. You said it would be okay, but that was before…” She bit her lip, not wanting to revive unpleasant memories of last night for him.

“Before what?” he asked. His tone was benign, but she sensed that he was goading her.

She inhaled and straightened her shoulders, pretending she had more spine than she did. “Before last night,” she said bravely.