Father Of The Brat (6 page)

He rubbed a hand over his dark, rough jaw. “I’m going to need a little time. I have to call the magazine and tell them I need some time off. And I haven’t showered or shaved yet.”

Maddy was about to suggest that he go to the meeting as he was, seeing as how he looked just fine to her—all sleeprumpled and bedroom-eyed, with that warm, well-toned flesh just begging her to reach out and…

She squeezed her eyes shut and squelched the notion altogether. Carver Venner may be a decent guy, but that didn’t mean it was okay for her to have indecent thoughts about him. He wasn’t her type, he wasn’t the forever-after kind, he wasn’t for her. Period.

“I can call the school and tell them we’ll be a little late,” she offered.

He smiled, and she was certain then that she’d never seen another man anywhere near as handsome as Carver. “Great,” he said as he backed out of the room. “I just need fifteen minutes.”

Maddy could think of a few things that would only take fifteen minutes, and was surprised to discover that getting ready for an appointment at a high school never played into the picture at all. When she passed by the bathroom on her way to the living room, she heard the shower kick on, and she fought the urge to linger in the hallway until Carver reemerged dripping wet and steamy.

Rachel, she reminded herself. She was Rachel’s advocate, not Carver’s love. It would be best if she didn’t forget that.

She blew an errant strand of hair out of her eyes and continued down the hallway. Rachel still lay sprawled on the sofa watching television, but she’d turned down the volume and stubbed out the cigarette. It was a good sign,
Maddy decided. She wanted to see Carver and his daughter get off on the right foot, and not just for the obvious reasons.

Because as soon as the two of them were getting along well enough to be left alone, the sooner Maddy could do just that—leave them alone. And although Rachel was her top priority in this case, she couldn’t ignore Carver. Which, of course, was the main problem. One thing about her hadn’t changed in twenty years, she realized. Carver Venner still agitated her to no end.

And now that she was a grown-up, she understood why. It wasn’t because he had always teased her in high school until she felt like a fool. It was because she’d been profoundly attracted to him until she felt like a fool. When she was seventeen, she hadn’t much understood her own sexuality and naturally hadn’t acted on it. At thirty-seven, she understood it all too well. Unfortunately, Carver was no more interested in her sexually now than he had been then. And the last thing Maddy needed was to feel foolish again after all these years.

Nope, it would be best if she could just wind things up with the Stillman case as soon as possible. Then maybe she could get on with her life.

She just had to remember not to think about how lonely and tiresome that life had lately become.

Carver watched Rachel leave the principal’s office with a mixture of worry, pride and nausea. It was his daughter’s first day of school, as far as he was concerned. And the realization did funny things to his insides. Rachel had been around for twelve years—
twelve years,
he marveled—doing whatever it was girls do while they’re growing up, and Carver had been there to witness none of it. Yet from here on out, he was going to be responsible for whatever happened to her every single day.

Rachel Stillman was the most frightening, infuriating, confounding person he had ever met. She was a product of his own genetic makeup, yet a virtual stranger. Although he
prided himself on being the kind of man who knew women well—he had two sisters, after all—he hadn’t a clue what to do with a girl. Because of Rachel, he would have to play a role for the rest of his
life—the rest of his life,
he reminded himself—that he’d neither wanted nor planned to undertake: the role of father. All in all, he felt pretty overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. And suddenly, all he wanted was someone to talk to.

“You free for breakfast?” he asked Maddy, who had been sitting beside him in the principal’s office.

When he didn’t receive a reply, Carver turned in his chair to discover the reason for that was because Maddy was no longer there. He stood and looked around, as uncomfortable in this principal’s office today as he had been more than twenty years ago in a different principal’s office, where he’d been sitting for considerably different reasons. Not wanting to linger any longer than he had to, Carver hurried out of the room. He caught sight of Maddy as she was rushing through the school lobby toward the front doors, her trench coat flapping about her calves as she fled. Without hesitating, he rushed after her.

Outside, the crisp, mid-October wind assailed him, at once sweet and bitter with the fragrance of trees that were bursting with red and gold. The lingering traces of smoke from a distant chimney filled his nostrils and stung his eyes, and the rustle of hundreds of adolescent feet shuffling through dry brown leaves sounded louder than it should somehow. Carver shoved his arms through the sleeves of his leather bomber jacket, tugged the zipper halfway up over his oatmeal-colored sweater and ran after Maddy. He couldn’t help thinking that this whole episode couldn’t be happening during a more symbolic season than autumn.

“Maddy!” he called after her as she approached her car, parked at the curb.

Either she didn’t hear him or pretended not to—more likely the latter, Carver thought—because she had turned
her key in the driver’s side lock and was about to slip inside when he finally caught up with her.

“Hey,” he said as he cupped his hand over her shoulder. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”

Maybe Maddy hadn’t heard him calling out to her, after all, Carver thought when she jerked around to look at him with wide eyes. What other reason could there be for her to start under his touch that way?

“Carver,” she said, his name emerging from her lips on a foggy sigh.

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“No, I-”

She hesitated, two bright spots of color staining her cheeks, and he knew she had indeed heard him shouting her name but had deliberately chosen to ignore him. Maddy had always been a lousy liar, he recalled. Evidently that, at least, hadn’t changed.

Instead of calling her on it, though, Carver only took a step away from her and said, “Now that Rachel is occupied elsewhere for a few hours, I was wondering if you were free for breakfast.”

Maddy glanced down at her watch pointedly before telling him, “Gee, Carver, I can’t. I’m sorry. I have about a dozen cases I need to visit today.”

He’d been around long enough to recognize a brush-off when he heard one, and usually, hearing one didn’t bother him much. Maddy’s, however, struck him somewhere deep in his gut, wrenching a staggering disappointment from him like none he’d ever felt before. Normally, if a woman wasn’t interested, Carver took the hint and went his merry way. Somehow, with Maddy, though, he couldn’t quite let things drop that easily. Maybe because, with Maddy, he didn’t want them to drop.

“But aren’t I one of your cases, too?” he asked.

She bit her lip. “Well, technically,
Rachel
is my case, not you.”

“Please, Maddy.” Suddenly feeling restless, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and sighed. “This is all so new
to me. Everything feels so weird. I need to talk to someone.”

He could tell she wanted to object again, and that she was relenting against her better judgement when she said, “All right. I guess I can break for about half an hour. But just half an hour.”

He smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

In spite of his recognized need to talk, Carver suddenly had no idea what to say. All he could do was look at Maddy, and marvel again at the changes twenty years had wrought. Had he not been forced into prolonged, face-to-face contact with her, he never would have been able to recognize her. Yet the physical changes of age weren’t what he noticed the most about her, nor were they what caused him distress. On the contrary, Maddy had aged considerably well. The tiny lines around her eyes and the streaks of silver in her hair suited her somehow. She was even more attractive as a woman than she had been as a girl.

No, it was the weariness in Maddy’s eyes, her slumped posture, the general aura of hopelessness that surrounded her—those were the things Carver noted most. And those were the things that troubled him. He couldn’t help but wonder if twenty years had wreaked the same kind of changes in himself.

“So, what did you have in mind?” she asked when he continued to study her in silence.

He had forgotten what he’d asked her and replied with a puzzled, “What?”

“Breakfast,” she clarified. “Where do you want to go?”

He gestured over his shoulder. “There’s a great bakery right around the corner. What say I spring for coffee and bagels?”

She smiled, the first real smile Carver had seen from Maddy since their encounter two days before. He was amazed by the way the simple gesture warmed her features. “I think I’d rather have a raspberry jelly-filled doughnut,” she told him.

He smiled back. “Never could resist sweets, could you?”

Which is why I could never resist you,
Maddy thought. Funny, though, how she hadn’t had an appetite for much of anything, sweet or otherwise, until that moment. But looking at Carver, with the backdrop of burnished autumn trees behind him, his cheeks stained red by the crisp air, his hair ruffled affectionately by the fingers of a brisk wind, she suddenly felt ravenous. Unfortunately, she was beginning to realize that her hunger at the moment was for something a lot more substantial than food. And it was a hunger she simply could not afford to feed.

Nevertheless, she echoed, “No, I never could resist sweets.”

Carver crooked his elbow at his side, silently encouraging Maddy to take it, and without a thought otherwise, she looped her arm through his. It was the first real physical contact she’d had with him in twenty years, and the moment she wrapped her fingers around his solid upper arm, she felt a familiar tingle of delight she’d nearly forgotten. She had to fight the impulse to lean into him and settle her head against his shoulder. Where the erratic desire to perform such a gesture came from, she couldn’t possibly understand. It was something people only did when they cared for each other.

Then she forced herself to be honest. Two decades had changed nearly everything about her, she thought. But there was one thing, she supposed, that would always remain the same. Amid all the frustration and aggravation he caused her, she would always have affectionate feelings for Carver Venner. The realization should have alarmed her. But somehow, she felt comforted by it instead. And then she pushed the thought away, thinking it might be best if she just left such ideas in the past where they belonged.

True to his word, Carver footed the bill for coffee and doughnuts, and the two of them sat outside the bakery to enjoy the cool morning and watch the people hurrying by. Maddy circled her bare hands around the foam cup and held her coffee close to her lips, inhaling the warm, damp fragrance of the strong brew before tasting it. When she looked
up, Carver was watching her, as if he’d been completely focused on her since they had sat down. A coil of something hot and heavy wound to nearly bursting in her midsection, and she assured herself the reaction was simply a result of the heat of the coffee chasing away the chill of the morning. Nothing more than that.

In an effort to dispel her wildly errant thoughts, Maddy reminded herself that Carver was the one who was supposed to be confused here, not her. She sipped her coffee again, then asked him, “So the prospect of becoming a father so late in life has you running scared, has it?”

He didn’t answer her right away. He simply stared down into his own coffee cup and shrugged. “It’s just a shock, you know?” he finally replied. “It’s as if the last twelve years of my life have been a complete sham. Things should have been different. They
could
have been different. If Abby had told me she was pregnant, that I was the father…” He let his voice trail off without completing the thought.

“What if she had?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t help thinking that things would be a whole lot different than they are.”

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then decided to play devil’s advocate. “Different for whom? You? Rachel? Abby? In what way?”

Again, Carver shrugged and stared silently into his coffee.

So Maddy continued with her interrogation, hoping it might make him realize that there were some things that were simply beyond a person’s control.

“Would you have married Rachel’s mother?” she asked softly. “And if you had, under those circumstances, do you honestly think the two of you would still be married? Would Rachel really be any different as a child of divorce than she is now? Especially if she realized that the only reason her parents had come together in the first place was not because they loved each other, but because of a social stigma attached to her birth?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “But maybe if I’d known about Rachel—even if I didn’t marry Abby—at least I could have been a part of my daughter’s life in some way.”

“How?” Maddy persisted. “You would have lived on the other side of the country. You still would have been traveling extensively for your job. Even with the best of intentions, Carver, Rachel would have wound up a neglected kid. And with her mother being the kind of person that she was, Abby still would have wound up dead. At least this way, you and Rachel have a chance for a new beginning with a clean slate. She can’t resent you for not being there when you didn’t know about her in the first place.”

Carver met her gaze levelly with a smile that was in no way happy. “Oh, can’t she?”

Maddy relented. “Okay, she can resent you a lot. But deep down, eventually, she’s going to have to face the fact that the reason for your absence from her life wasn’t because you didn’t care about her. It was because you didn’t know about her. And when she finally comes to terms with everything, that will make all the difference in the world.”