Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance) (21 page)

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Authors: Carolyn McSparren

BOOK: Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance)
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“Hell, yes, it’s my concern. She’s
my
lawyer. Shoot, Dad, did you kill Waneath just to get your old girlfriend back?”
David’s stern voice cut him off. “Not girlfriend, sport. Wife. To have and to hold from this day forth until death do us part. That’s the way it should have been, and the way it would have been if I hadn’t been a damn fool.”
“David,” Kate started.
He raised a hand to stop her.
Jason’s breath rasped in his chest. “And if I hadn’t beet born, right?”
“Your conception was the only good thing to come ou of this mess, and nobody—not me, not your grandfather not your mother—ever thought of you as anything but a blessing. You didn’t screw up by getting born. Your mother and I did some stupid things and made some bad choices but we did the best we could at the time. So did Kate. don’t regret one moment of knowing you and loving you and having you for my son. If your mother were still alive Kate wouldn’t be here, but your mother has been dead for three years, son.”
“She’s still my mother!”
“Yes, she is, and she wanted us to be happy—all of us even me. Nobody knows what happens in a marriage, Jason except the two people involved, and sometimes even they don’t have a clue. But your mother and I both grew up a lot those last years. I know you think that Kate’s being here is disloyal to her memory...”
“Not think, Dad,
know!
” Jason dropped his head. The room went silent.
After a moment he raised his eyes and looked straight a Kate. “You back in love with my dad?”
Kate caught her breath and looked at David. “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.’ She knew that her discomfort was making her glib.
Then, when she heard Jason’s exasperated snort, she raised her hands. “You deserve a decent answer. I’m sorry The real answer is that there is no ‘back’ to it. I’ve never stopped loving your father. But whether that means we have a future together, I don’t know. Last night may simply have brought us to some kind of closure we didn’t have twenty years ago. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Nah.” He sighed. “I hate the
idea
of you, but my dad says I’d probably hate any woman who tried to take my mom’s place.”
“I would never try that.”
“Good. ’Cause you couldn’t. See, I know my mom had major big-time problems, but she was my mom and I loved her a lot. I miss her.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“So, look, I don’t want to think about you and my dad...you know.”
“I can certainly understand that.”
“If we can just act like maybe we don’t know...?”
“Son,” David said, “I’m not going to treat Kate as though she were simply your lawyer.”
“Yeah, I know, but could you maybe be...oh, shoot...
discreet
or something?” He stared at his father, who frowned back at him. Then he shrugged and grinned. “Yeah, I know. Not exactly what I’ve been the last couple of years, right?”
“Not really, no.”
“Well, I think that’s an excellent way to handle it,” Kate said, crossing to him. “I don’t know how successful we’ll be in a town the size of Athena, but I’m willing to give it a shot. Deal?” She stuck out her hand.
He stared at it a moment, then enveloped it in his large one. “Deal.”
“Now,” David said, “get Coral Anne back in here and let’s eat those cinnamon rolls while they’re still at least warm.”
“WON’T YOUR DAD have a conniption when he finds you gone?” David asked Coral Anne. She had already eater two cinnamon rolls to Jason’s three. That left five of the dozen David had baked, and from the avid looks on both youngsters’ faces, it seemed fairly certain the others would disappear.
As if in answer, Coral Anne reached for her third roll “It’s Saturday. Daddy’s already down at the dealership. He watched him drive off.” She turned to Kate. “He’s really sorry about last night, I know he is. He forgets sometimes how scary he can be, big as he is and all. He really takes stuff a lot harder than my momma.” Coral Anne turned away quickly, but not before Kate saw tears in her eyes.
“It’s all right, really,” she said, touching Coral Anne’s arm. “He scared me, but not that badly. I’ll get over it Please don’t cry.”
“It’s not that!” Coral Anne said, and sniffed. She looked over at Jason, who stared at her with that slightly horror struck look most men got on their faces when a female started to cry. “Every time Momma looks at me, I can see what she’s thinking!”
“What is she thinking?” Kate asked quietly.
“Same as him!” Coral Anne pointed the remains of her cinnamon roll at Jason. “Momma and Daddy and every body in town looks at me and thinks, ‘How come she wasn’t the one who died? Why’d it have to be Waneath?”
Kate’s heart sank. She opened her mouth to say some thing, anything, but Jason forestalled her.
“Man, that’s crazy!” he said. “Nobody’s thinking that!’
Kate could have kissed him.
“They are! They are!” Coral Anne wailed.
Kate gathered the girl into her arms. “You’re here, and you’re alive, and thank God for it,” she said. “You see that you stay that way, you hear me?”
Coral Anne snuffled. “Yes’m.” She raised her head. “I wasn’t gonna do anything stupid like kill myself.”
“I was thinking more about trying to turn yourself into the perfect daughter to make up for Waneath,” Kate said, although she had indeed been thinking that Coral Anne might do “something stupid.”
“Fat chance. Look at me.”
“I am looking at you. You know what I see? I see what Arnold calls ‘a mensch.”’
“What’s that?”
“A real person. Someone worth knowing.”
“Yeah,” Jason said.
“I echo that,” David said. “Took guts to do what you did this morning—bringing Jason over here, trying to head off trouble for your dad.”
“Took guts to come see me yesterday afternoon too,” Kate said. “Give your parents time. I have never had a child to lose, but I’ve been told it’s the worst possible pain any parent can endure.”
“I’ve lost a sister!” Coral Anne said. “They don’t seem to even notice that.”
“Remind them.”
“Anyway,” Coral Anne said with a deep sigh, “thanks for not doing anything to my daddy. I think he’d probably like to apologize, but he doesn’t know how.”
“Don’t worry about it. Now, if I can catch a ride back to the motel, I really need to find Arnold and get some work done.” She looked at David.
Jason said, “We’d take you, but...”
“No. But maybe you should come with us. You don’t need to be seen driving around town with Coral Anne. Her car is very recognizable.”
“And I’ve got to get down to the library so I can tell my momma where I’ve been without lying about it,” Coral Anne said. “She’ll believe that. She doesn’t have the first notion whether the library opens at seven in the morning or noon on Saturday. She’s not much of a reader.”
“Okay that’s settled. We’ll take Jason home if he doesn’t mind squeezing into the truck with Kate,” David said.
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Jason replied. “You go on, Coral Anne. Thanks for coming. Do you think you can manage to come back? I’m really tired of staying in that house by myself.”
The girl gave a good imitation of a pup that has just been patted on the head. “Sure.”
Coral Anne waved out her window as she drove away. Jason looked after her wistfully. Kate wondered whether now that the beautiful Waneath was no longer in the picture, Jason might come to appreciate the intelligence of the younger sister. Probably not. Not when he was surrounded with hard bodies in minuscule bikinis at Pepperdine. Hard on Coral Anne when she so obviously adored him—and not like an older brother. Must have been hard for her to see him mooning around with Waneath.
“It’s about time somebody had a little etiquette session with Big Bill Talley,” David said as he watched Coral Anne’s taillights disappear around the curve in the road.
“Don’t you dare!” Kate said. “That’s all we need. You make him mad, he’ll break you in two.”
“Hey!” David said. “I’ve got ten years on Bill Talley.”
“And he’s got fifty pounds on you,” Jason said. “Drop it, Dad.” He punched his father’s shoulder. “We Canfields are lovers, not fighters.” He realized what he’d said and looked at Kate in horror.
She laughed. “Get in the truck. I’ve got work to do.”
“So do I,” David said. “Unfortunately. A whole day of chores. Not the way I expected to spend the day.” He surreptitiously squeezed Kate’s thigh.
Once they were packed in the front seat, David turned the key. Instead of a purr, a metallic whine like an angry banshee issued from under the hood. “Damn!” David said, and tried again with the same result.
“Sounds like your flywheel finally bit the big one,” Jason said as he climbed out. “Pop the hood, Dad.”
David popped it and joined his son. Kate climbed out and walked over to sit on the bottom step of the porch. She was rewarded with the sight of two nearly identical tight male jeans-covered butts bent under the hood of the truck. She visualized the near one, which belonged to David, as it had looked when he got out of the shower that morning.
She blinked to cut off the libidinous thoughts she was having. He was a man with a nearly grown son and she was old enough to be that son’s mother. But she felt the same as she had the first time she and David made love, when they’d wandered onto the college campus at dawn hand in hand, while the world seemed new, washed with shades of pale gold and lavender. When nothing could tarnish the love she felt.
Enough, already! She had a job to do. Last night was an interlude. Couldn’t be more than that.
She watched Jason and David squabbling amiably about the best way to get the flywheel to work. Amazing how alike they were. At least Melba had been honest about Jason’s parentage.
And she must have had a good deal to do with Jason’s good nature as well. Would Kate have done as well if Jason had been her son? She was finding it more and more difficult to despise Melba. The French said that to understand all was to forgive all. At least in her case they seemed to be right.
Besides, it was considerably easier to forgive Melba dead than it would have been to forgive her if she’d still been holding on to David.
“Try it now,” Jason said.
David walked around to the driver’s side and slid in. She heard the key turn. The engine caught.
“All right!” Jason said. “Come on, Mrs. Mulholland.”
“Why don’t you call me Kate?” Kate said as she climbed back in.
“Yeah, okay. Dad, you better let me take the truck over to Jimmy’s. That flywheel’s got to be replaced. I’ll give him a hand. Get me out of the house. Don’t let the engine die or we’ll be in deep doo-doo.”
“You can take the Navigator,” Kate said.
“Not necessary,” David said. “We’ll drop you at the motel. I’ll drive back to Long Pond, pick up Dub’s Cadillac, and Jason can take my truck over to Jimmy’s.”
“Won’t Dub need his car?” Kate asked.
“Shoot,” Jason said. “Granddaddy’s got a brand-new truck he’d a whole lot rather drive than the car. He saves that land yacht for company and church.”
 
ARNOLD HAD apparently been staring out the window of his motel room, because when David drove up, he opened the door before Jason opened his to let Kate out. David jumped out and left the engine running.
“It’s a conspiracy,” he whispered to Kate as he helped her out. “All I want is to slam your door behind us and take you back to bed.”
“Our chaperons would be shocked,” Kate said.
“Tonight, woman, you are mine.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Oh, go fix your flywheel.”
She stood beside Arnold while father and son drove away, then she held up her index finger. “Not one word, Arnold Selig.”
“Kate...”
“I mean it. I may be crazy, but I feel more alive than I’ve felt in twenty years.”
“Besides, I’m so thrilled your acne’s cleared right up,” Arnold said sarcastically.
“He’s changed, I’ve changed. We can be totally honest with each other now. We don’t have all the pressure on us any longer.”
Arnold looked at her as though she’d grown a second head. “You, my sweet, are living in a bigger fantasy world than Jason. Nobody is ever totally honest with anyone, and certainly lovers are incapable of dealing with each other honestly. We are talking lovers, right?”
Kate felt the blush. “Yes, Arnold. And that is
so
none of your business.”
“Don’t get snippy with me. I spent a productive night coming up with enough case law to change Jason’s venue to the third moon of Jupiter.”

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