Dr. Dad (28 page)

Susannah recalled the first time she'd been in this house, when Lindsey had invited her to have dinner with the Coles. She'd been so taken by Toby's attentiveness to his daughter then, the tight, solid warmth of their tiny family. She'd envied them their coziness, wishing she'd had such a close relationship with her parents.

Now that closeness stood between her and Toby. “I'll leave,” she said.

“Not yet,” he whispered, sliding his hands to her head and tilting her face up so he could kiss her again.

His kiss was deep, sending heat down her throat and through her body. She took his tongue, took his passion and let the sensations wash over her, warming her blood, melting her flesh. Life would have been simpler if she'd fallen in love with a man who wasn't a father, but before she'd met Toby she hadn't known that, and now that she'd met him it was too late.

To kill time before going up to bed, they sat in the den, watching a bad movie on TV, holding hands and snickering over the inane plot. But both of them knew what they were waiting for. They knew what would
happen once the movie was over and Lindsey was safely asleep.

At ten they tiptoed up the stairs. Music was no longer seeping from her room, and there was no strip of light under the door. Toby signaled Susannah to wait for him in the hall while he eased Lindsey's door open, moved silently across the room and smoothed the blanket over her. Susannah peeked through the door into the darkened bedroom. She could see only Lindsey's silhouette in the dark, peaceful and still.

Toby moved silently back to the doorway. He gave Susannah a shy smile, as if almost abashed that she'd seen his paternal doting. She smiled back, a proud smile, one she hoped would convince him she thought his tenderness was lovely.

He closed the door, then ushered her down the hall to his bedroom. Once they were inside, she let Lindsey slide from her thoughts. In this comfortable room, with its sturdy oak furniture, its king-size bed and leather easy chair and Persian rugs, he was no longer a devoted father. He was a man. Her lover.

In the privacy of his room, they wouldn't worry about a temperamental little girl. Only Toby and Susannah existed, two adults who yearned for each other. As Toby removed her clothing and his own, as he led her to his bed, as he kissed and caressed and aroused her, awakening her body to its own secret pleasures, awakening her mind to its capacity for love, nothing else mattered.

He took his time. In fact, he took more time than Susannah would have liked. He seemed to think it was necessary to trace the creases and curves of her earlobe, to kiss a path from her shoulder to her palm, to roll her onto her stomach and nibble the length of her
spine. Finally she turned around, her body hurting from wanting him so much. But he wouldn't rush, wouldn't give her what she ached for. First he would massage her insteps and tease her toes. He would kiss the skin behind her knees. He would urge her legs apart and press his mouth to her there, making her dizzy with longing, making her fear she'd come too soon the way she had the last time.

Her desperate moans must have gotten through to him, because he raised his head and gazed at her, his breath ragged, his eyes burning with passion. “Susannah,” he whispered, rising onto her. She took him in her hands and he was already so hard. When she stroked him he shuddered, and she smiled inwardly. She wanted him to be as desperate as she was. She wanted him to feel for her what she felt for him. She wanted him to love her as much as she loved him.

When at last their bodies joined, she could almost believe it. She could almost believe that even though she was nowhere near as deserving as he was—she'd never raised a daughter, healed a sick child, contributed to the world in the important ways Toby had—he could still love her. She could almost believe, as his body claimed hers, as her name tumbled from his lips again and again, as his fierce thrusts pushed her over the edge of sensation—she could believe she belonged in his world.

“Stay,” he murmured as their bodies slowly cooled. He lay beside her, his arm slung around her so she could rest her head on his shoulder. “Don't go.”

“What about Lindsey?”

“She'll cope.” He let out a long breath. “I've spent the past five years putting Lindsey's needs first. And now…” He tilted his head and planted a kiss on the
crown of her head. “It's time for my needs. I need you in my bed.”

His tone was light, but it held a serious undertone. She accepted the compliment in his words, but misgivings nagged at her. “What about tomorrow morning?” she asked. “What happens when Lindsey wakes up and finds me here?”

“We tell her you stayed the night.”

“Toby.” It wasn't so simple. Surely he knew that.

“All right. She'll be in a worse funk than she already is.” He sighed. “I don't get it. She really likes you.”

“Maybe she doesn't like me as your sweetheart. She only likes me as a TV star.”

“Then we'll have to bring her around. If I can't, you can. She admires you. You're the one who can convince her that this is a good thing.”

It
was
a good thing…but those misgivings inside Susannah's brain began clamoring to be heard. Toby wanted her to help him with Lindsey—not just to discuss menstruation with her but to help him repair his rocky relationship with her. He wanted Susannah in his world—and in his bed—and he wanted her to make things better between him and his daughter.

But she'd already spent too much of her life making things better for everyone else. She'd left California to get away from that. She couldn't slide back into the role of the fixer now, supporting everyone else, doing what everyone else needed doing, giving everyone else's needs priority and putting her own needs aside.

She needed Toby. But she needed her freedom at least as much. She needed not to be the one everyone depended on to make things right.

“No,” she said. “I think it would be best if I left.”

 

W
ONDERFUL
,
Toby thought by late Sunday evening. Everyone was miserable: Lindsey, Susannah and he himself.

He'd called Susannah earlier in the day, but she'd been curt on the phone. He couldn't begin to guess why—unless, like him, she was in a touchy mood because they hadn't spent the night together.

Was that really too much to ask? he wondered. Could a thirty-seven-year-old man, a responsible, honorable fellow who paid all his bills on time and donated to charity, be allowed to spend the entire night with the woman he loved?

Evidently, it
was
too much to ask. Susannah had left him, and now she seemed irritated about it. “Last night was wonderful,” she'd assured him over the phone. “But I have a lot of things to do today. Maybe we can get together during the week.”

She was withdrawing from him, and it enraged him. He wanted to tear right through the hedge, across her lawn into her house, and demand that she explain to him just why she was pulling back from him. Last night
had
been wonderful. So what was Susannah running from?

“You're stuck on her,” Lindsey accused him over a tense supper of grilled lamb chops. Judging by her expression, Toby concluded that she wasn't thrilled by the idea.

“I'm not ‘stuck on her,”' he argued. “I like her. Is that a crime?”

“She's a star,” Lindsey said witheringly. “You want her to be just like us, but she isn't. She's on another whole level.”

“You keep saying that, but it isn't true. She's an Arlington homeowner. Self-employed. She buys gro
ceries, takes care of her cat, worries about her garden and drives a car. She's living a normal life like everyone else.”

“She drives a weird car,” Lindsey said. “It's an ugly color.” She picked at her food and shook her head. “You just don't get it, Dr. Dad. The minute you start thinking of someone like Susannah Dawson as being like everyone else is the minute you ruin what she is.”

Toby wanted to retort that he was tired of her negativity, but her statement was too significant to brush aside. Was that what she thought? That Susannah was some kind of goddess, an idol worthy of worship, and that by viewing her as just an ordinary woman Toby was destroying Lindsey's concept of her?

“She's not like everyone else,” he said quietly. “If she was, I wouldn't be stuck on her.”

“You're turning her into just an ordinary lady. You're taking this incredible star and acting like she's just the same as you and me.”

“She is,” he asserted, still quiet, his anger gone. He had to make Lindsey understand. “Susannah is a human being. She eats and sleeps and cares about others, just like any other human being. She's not an incredible star. She's a woman.”

Something that sounded like a sob emerged from Lindsey. “She
was
incredible, until all this happened.”

“All what?” Toby asked, but Lindsey had already pushed away from the table and stomped out of the room.

Slowly, he began to make sense of Lindsey's words. She seemed to be saying that by loving Susannah, Toby had knocked Susannah off her pedestal. Toby happened to believe that by loving him, Susannah had
descended from that pedestal all by herself—and thank God. Who could love a woman on a pedestal?

But Lindsey was blaming him for Susannah's descent from the pedestal. Or blaming them both. Toby had stolen Lindsey's idol and made her human.

His own appetite gone, he stood and crossed to the wall phone. He dialed Susannah's number, aware that she might be as aloof with him as she'd been when he'd called earlier. But he needed to share his insight with her, to see if it made sense, if it was something they could work with to break through to Lindsey.

As soon as Susannah answered, he launched into his explanation. “I think I know what's bothering Lindsey.”

“That's great,” Susannah said, practically cutting him off. “I'm glad.”

“It's about you,” he warned.

“I figured as much.” She sighed. “Toby, it may be about me, but it's between you and her. You're going to have to work it out on your own.”

Dumbfounded, he didn't speak for a minute. He thought they shared something essential, something strong enough to bind them, to help them face their challenges together. Why did she not want to help him face the challenge Lindsey posed, especially since it was all about her?

“I thought you'd want to know,” he said.

“I don't.” Her voice wavered slightly. “I'm sorry, Toby—” her voice wavered again “—but I don't want to be the one you depend on to get you through this.”

If he couldn't depend on her, what kind of relationship was that? “All right,” he said. “I'll get through it myself. I'm good at dealing with things alone.” He
muttered a terse farewell and slammed down the phone.

The kitchen was silent, thick with the aroma of his and Lindsey's barely touched dinners. He was definitely alone, even more alone than he'd been when Jane had died. Then, at least, he'd had Lindsey to keep him going, to receive his love and return it. Now, she was off somewhere, indulging in a snit because he'd reduced her idol to human proportions. And that idol, that special woman, had informed him that she didn't want to help him through a difficult situation.

Maybe Susannah was right to back off, to force him to resolve things with Lindsey by himself. She was his daughter, and no one in the world loved her as much as he did.

Even so…He'd thought he could count on Susannah. But she was done letting others count on her. She'd been there, done that, and she wasn't going to go there or do it again. Not even for Toby.

H
IS PAGER
was beeping. He'd just finished his Monday-morning rounds at Arlington Memorial, and he glanced at the pager to see whether his office was calling him. But he didn't recognize the number.

Frowning, he strode down the corridor to the nurses' station. Allison Winslow greeted him with a grin and waved the clipboard she was holding. “Hi, Toby.”

“Can I borrow the phone?” he asked, still scowling at the unfamiliar number on his pager.

“Sure.” She reached over the desk and brought the phone closer to him.

He punched in the numbers, then hooked his pager back on his belt while the call connected. “Elm Street School,” a woman answered.

Lindsey's school? Was she hurt? His heart kicked hard against his ribs. “This is Dr. Tobias Cole. I got a message that someone was trying to reach me.”

“Dr. Cole. Lindsey Cole's father?”

“That's right.”

“You didn't call us this morning,” the school secretary told him. “The rule is, when your child is going to be absent from school, you're supposed to phone us.”

“Absent?” His heart kicked again, harder. “What are you talking about?”

“We telephoned your home to confirm that Lindsey
was absent, but no one answered. So we contacted you at your office, Dr. Cole. All I need is confirmation that—”

“Lindsey isn't absent,” he said. His throat felt tight with tension, and he had to exert himself to force his voice out. “She got on the bus this morning. I saw her.”

After a pause, the woman said, “She isn't in school.”

“Oh, God.” He closed his eyes and tried to think. He'd definitely seen her get on the bus that morning. She'd eaten a huge bowl of Cheerios for breakfast, and her spirits had seemed upbeat. He'd actually felt optimistic that the cloud hanging over her all weekend was finally lifting. She'd polished off her cereal, dashed upstairs to brush her teeth and grab her backpack and bounded out the door. He'd watched from the window as she jogged to the bus stop on the corner, and then he'd stepped outside in time to see her board the bus. He was always discreet about observing her; she believed she was much too old to have her father watch her head off for school. But he liked to see her safely onto the bus.

He'd seen her safely onto the bus today. “Where is she?” he asked the school secretary, his voice threatening to shatter.

“I don't know. Ms. Hathaway reported her as absent. She never went to class.”

Oh, God.
He was clutching the phone so tightly his fingers ached. He could hear the blood rushing through his brain in a raucous pulse. He had to concentrate on his breathing to keep it steady. “This is bad,” he told the secretary, because short of cursing, it was the most accurate description of the situation he could come up
with. “This is very bad. My daughter is missing.” He breathed in, breathed out. “I'll call you back.” He slammed down the phone and breathed in again.

“Toby.” Allison's voice reached him like a ray of light piercing through the encroaching darkness.

He turned to her. She appeared grim, measuring him with her gaze. “I heard what you said. Lindsey's missing?”

He nodded. He didn't think he could speak the words again. Speaking them once had nearly killed him.

“Do you think she might be at home?”

“The school called my house. No one answered.”

“If she was playing hooky, she wouldn't answer the phone.”

“Playing hooky.” That sounded so safe, so innocuous. But Lindsey wouldn't do that. She'd never cut class before.

“Or maybe she went to the mall.”

“How would she get there?”

“With her friends, maybe? There are lots of possibilities, Toby, and most of them aren't so awful.”

“It's my daughter,” he said. His feet shifted, as if they sensed the floor crumbling beneath him, the earth splitting open and threatening to swallow him. “My daughter's missing.”

Allison touched his arm to console him, then reached for the phone. “Molly Saunders-Russo's husband is a police detective. I'll call him, okay?”

Toby nodded, too numb to thank her. A police detective. Christ. His daughter was missing, and Allison was calling a police detective.

“John Russo, please,” she was saying into the phone. A pause, and then: “John? It's Allison. I'm
calling for a colleague of mine, Toby Cole. He's a pediatrician affiliated with the hospital. His daughter is missing.” She listened, then said, “She's about ten, eleven years old?” She sent Toby a questioning look and he mouthed
ten.
“Ten years old,” Allison reported into the phone. “She got on the school bus this morning, but she never showed up in class. Toby is worried.” She listened. “Uh-huh. Okay…” She eyed Toby again. “What school?”

“Elm Street Elementary.”

“Elm Street Elementary,” she told the detective. She listened, then handed the phone to Toby. “Why don't you talk to him yourself.”

He took the phone hesitantly. At the moment, he hated it. He knew it was just a molded plastic object, but it had brought him wretched news. He would associate this particular phone with terror for the rest of his life. “Hello?” he said.

Detective John Russo spoke calmly, sounding focused but less urgent than Toby would have liked. He asked Toby for his phone number and address. “Why don't we meet at your house and start there,” he suggested. “She might just be skipping school. Maybe we'll find something there. Meanwhile, I'll send my partner over to the school to talk to the kids on her bus. What bus does she take?”

“The number four, I think.”

“Okay. We'll find her, Dr. Cole. Don't worry. Meet me at your house in ten minutes.”

Toby nodded and handed the phone back to Allison to hang up. “Do me a favor and call my office. Tell them to cancel my appointments.”

Allison gave his arm another affectionate squeeze. “I'll take care of everything.”

“Okay.”
Keep breathing,
he ordered himself. “I'm going home to meet with Detective Russo.”

“He's the best,” Allison assured him.

Toby didn't know if he was the best, but the tall, placid detective waiting for him at his house when he arrived there after breaking several speed limits appeared competent. He had a pad and pen in his hand, and he began asking questions while Toby was still unlocking the front door. “Who are your daughter's closest friends?”

“Two girls—Amanda and Meredith. I don't know their last names. They're in her grade but not in her class.”

“Okay.” Russo looked at him askance, and he realized he must sound like a neglectful parent because he didn't know his daughter's friends' full names. But they'd become her best friends fairly recently. “She used to be best friends with a girl named Cathy Robinson. But her family moved to Atlanta, and Lindsey's just started making new friends.”

Russo nodded and took notes. “Do you have a recent photograph of her?”

Her school picture. He had one enlargement on his desk at the office, and another on his desk in the study. He strode across the paneled room and lifted the photograph to hand to Russo. Straightening up, he glimpsed Susannah's house through the bay window. He froze for a moment, then turned to the detective.

“Who lives next door?” Russo asked. He must have noticed Toby's reaction to the sight of the house.

“A woman. A woman I've been involved with.” Russo's eyebrows twitched, and he added, “I'm a widower. She's single. She moved in a few weeks ago, and she became friendly with Lindsey. And me.”

“Do you think she might have an idea where your daughter is?”

“No.” But who knew? She might not want to help Toby, but damn it, if she had any idea where Lindsey might have gone…“I'll call her.” He lifted the phone and started to dial.

Russo plucked the receiver from Toby's hand. “What's her name?” he asked. “I'll talk to her.”

“Susannah Dawson.” He hovered impotently by the window as Russo lifted the receiver to his ear. “Susannah Dawson? This is Detective Russo from the Arlington Police Department. I'm next door at your neighbor Dr. Cole's house. His daughter is missing…”

Toby couldn't listen anymore. He couldn't remain in the room while Russo talked to the woman Toby loved, the woman who'd abandoned him when she decided things were too tricky with Lindsey, the woman who didn't want to stand by his side when he needed her.

He stalked down the hall to the kitchen and searched the room. A couple of Cheerios lay on the table; they must have slopped over from her bowl and he hadn't had time to wipe the table down. Her chair was pushed out. Her soccer cleats were on the floor near the door to the mud room.

Lindsey! Where the hell are you?

He wasn't a praying man, but he prayed now. He prayed that wherever Lindsey was, she was all right. He couldn't survive any other possibility.

He heard footsteps behind him. “I'd like to have a look at her bedroom,” Russo said.

Toby wanted to ask him what Susannah had said. Maybe she'd told him something terrible. Maybe she'd explained to the detective that Toby and Lindsey were
feuding, that he'd pursued a relationship with Susannah even though he'd known Lindsey disapproved. He'd put his own needs ahead of his daughter's and made love with Susannah in his own house, just down the hall from where Lindsey was sleeping. And he'd wanted Susannah to be with him when he woke up, even though he'd known it would upset his daughter. He'd cared more about himself and his own needs than about his child.

She'd run away. It came to him like a stab in the solar plexus, sharp and deadly. “She's run away,” he said aloud.

“You think so?”

“She was angry with me, and…” He cursed.

“Let's check out her room.”

Lindsey's bedroom looked the way it usually did. Her bed was made haphazardly, books and papers were stacked high on her desk and her soccer uniform was crumpled in a heap on the floor, instead of in the laundry hamper where it belonged. Russo crossed the room to her desk, surveyed the clutter and then glanced at her computer. “Does she go on the Internet a lot?”

“No.” Toby's heart clutched at the thought of the creeps vulnerable children met through the Internet. Thank God Lindsey had never been interested in chat rooms.

“What does she use this for, then?”

“Games and e-mail,” he said.

Russo turned the computer on. “What's her e-mail software? Does it have a password?”

“Yes, and I don't know it.” He sighed. “She e-mails her friend Cathy Robinson, though. The friend who moved to Atlanta.”

Russo turned the computer off. “I'll need her phone number,” he said.

They spent a few more minutes searching Lindsey's room. Toby's gaze lingered on the clutter heaped upon her desk for a minute. The pile was higher than usual. “I think some of these notebooks are what she usually takes to school with her,” he said, shuffling through the textbooks and papers. “Here's her assignment book. She always takes that to school.”

“Then she probably didn't intend to go to school today,” Russo concluded.

“She had her backpack with her.”

“Packed with something else, maybe.”

That led Toby and Russo to go through her drawers. Toby honestly couldn't remember how much underwear she usually had in her top drawer, whether she might have stashed some of it in her backpack. He ducked into her bathroom. Her toothbrush was gone.

He cursed again, not in anger but in dread. He'd guessed right: his daughter had run away.

Susannah was standing in his driveway when he and Russo left the house. She was dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt with palm trees silk-screened on it, probably a relic from her California past. Toby should have been immune to her. He was distracted to the point of madness over Lindsey, and he'd learned on Sunday that Susannah didn't want to be his comrade-in-arms when it came to fighting life's battles.

But the sight of her caused a different reaction in his heart—not the crazed thumping from the adrenaline flooding his veins but a deep knot of emotion, tight and constricting. He used to think he needed her for companionship and sex. But he needed her much more
right now for support—the one thing she didn't want to give him.

She charged across the lawn to him. “Toby, what can I do?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and glistening, her face pale.

“This is Detective Russo,” he said stiffly. He didn't want to be so glad to see her. He couldn't lean on her. She wouldn't let him.

“Anything,” she said to the detective. “Anything I can do. Just tell me.”

“Nothing right now,” he responded. “We'll be in touch if we think of something.”