“Damn, but you’re stubborn.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Her gaze clashed with his, daring him to back down. Since there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening, he merely sighed.
“Excuse me. I think I’ll go deal with the budget for Peggy’s show. At least numbers make sense.”
She let him get as far as the door before she called out. “How much is one plus one?”
He regarded her with a narrowed gaze. “Two.”
“That’s the simple answer,” she agreed. “Add up you and me and somehow we wound up with three. Keep that in mind while you’re crunching those numbers of yours.”
This time his sigh was deeper and more heartfelt. It wasn’t as if he could forget about Angel. In fact, she was at the root of all his problems. That little girl’s image was always with him—laughing, happy and, most of all, safe. But how long would it stay that way?
“The man is tormented about something,” Heather told Flo later that night when her friend called to report her own frustration over her inability to get Joe into bed. “How am I ever going to get Todd to tell me what’s really bothering him?”
“Have you tried asking him?” Flo asked.
“Of course I have. I’ve all but gotten down on my knees and pleaded with him to tell me why he’s doing this to us. He just says it’s for the best.”
“What about Megan? Think she knows?”
“I doubt it. Todd’s the kind of man who believes his personal life has no business in the workplace.”
“But he and Megan are friends, too. I’ve seen them together. I’ll bet she knows things about him that no one else does.”
“Even so, he would hate it if I asked her.”
“Then I will,” Flo offered. “I talk to her all the time when we’re conspiring to get Jake out of her hair and back into his office. I can just casually bring it up and see what she says. I owe you for getting Joe and me together.” She sighed. “Well, almost together, anyway. The man has the willpower of a saint.”
“Think of it as respect and you’ll feel better,” Heather advised.
“Maybe mentally,” Flo agreed, sounding thoroughly dispirited. “But my body doesn’t seem to give two hoots about respect. It wants action.”
“Look at this another way. Joe’s a very virile man. Don’t you think he’s frustrated, too?”
“I suppose,” she said, but she obviously took no comfort in it. “Enough about that. Let’s talk some more about Megan. I really think she could help out.”
“No,” Heather said. “I think we’d better leave her out of this. Let me try going straight to the source one more time. I’d rather hear whatever it is directly from Todd, instead of a third party. That’s the honest, straightforward way to get answers.
“Besides,” she added candidly, “I think it would bug me no end to discover that he’s confided something to Megan that he refuses to tell me, especially when he claims to love me.”
“Suit yourself,” Flo said. “Keep me posted. I think I’ll take another cold shower and head to bed.”
“Do cold showers really work?” Heather asked.
“Not really, but it’s so hot these days that it’s worth taking one, anyway.”
Chuckling, Heather hung up, but the light mood faded quickly. She needed to get this situation with Todd resolved once and for all. The only way to do that was to try to force the issue. It was past time for subtlety and polite questions. In fact, there was no time like the present.
Even though it was already after eleven, she knew the kind of hours he kept when he was trying to avoid a problem. She suspected he’d been up past midnight a lot lately. Before she could reconsider, she picked up the phone again and dialed.
“Yes,” he barked.
“That’s a friendly greeting. Hoping to scare off the telemarketers?”
“Why are you calling so late?” he asked at once, his tone instantly more worried than irritated. “Is everything okay? Angel’s not sick, is she?”
She couldn’t help being vaguely surprised by his immediate concern for Angel. As far as she’d been able to tell, he tried not to give the child a second thought.
“Angel’s fine. But I was wondering if you could come over.”
“Now?”
“Is that a problem? Were you already asleep?”
“No, but—”
“It’s important or I wouldn’t ask.”
“Have you been reconsidering Peter’s offer?”
“Something like that,” she said vaguely.
“I’ll be right there.”
She hung up feeling thoroughly disgruntled. Even though she knew she should be pleased he was heading over, she still felt irritated that it was only because he thought she’d finally been convinced to leave town.
When he finally walked through the door, she pushed her annoyance aside, offered him coffee, then gestured toward the sofa.
“Relax. This could take a while.” She deliberately sat down very close to him. She let her hand “accidentally” come to rest on his thigh, then bit back a chuckle when he regarded her with alarm.
“What are you up to?” he asked.
“I am not
up to
anything.”
He carefully removed her hand, then sat back and waited. So did she, as she searched for the right way to get into this.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Why am I here? What’s the big emergency?”
“No emergency. You’re here to talk,” she said.
His gaze narrowed. “About?”
She shifted, snuggling close. “Us.”
He drew in a sharp breath, then tried to ease away. The end of the sofa kept him right where he was. “Heather,” he protested, “this is not a good idea.”
She began fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, then drifted lower to the waistband of his pants. “I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time. It kind of cuts right through everything else.”
“No. It only complicates it.”
“Are you saying you don’t want me?” she asked, her hand already seeking the evidence that would blatantly contradict any lie.
Todd groaned. “Dammit, Heather. This is a mistake.”
“No, it’s not,” she said confidently. “Not with you and me. It could never be a mistake.”
“A bad idea, then.”
She deliberately caressed him through the fabric of his pants. “
This
is a bad idea?”
“No,” he admitted. He visibly fought for control, then said, “Yes. A very bad idea.”
“You want me to stop?”
“Yes,” he insisted, then sighed. “No.”
“Which is it?”
“I’m trying to think here. I’m trying to do the right thing. You are making that all but impossible.”
“Want me to cut it out?”
He looked torn, but he nodded. “Yes.”
She kept her hand right where it was but looked directly into his eyes. “Then tell me the truth. Tell me why you want Angel and me gone when it’s obvious to everyone—and you even admit it—that you love me.”
He sat back as if she’d touched him with a branding iron. “Dammit, Heather, you don’t want much, do you?”
“Just the truth,” she said again. “The complete, unvarnished truth. I think if you’re going to give up on something this good, you owe me that much.”
“And you’ll leave if I tell you?”
She sketched a cross over her heart. “Promise,” she said, while keeping the fingers of her other hand crossed behind her back.
Todd stood up and began to pace. He looked so thoroughly unhappy that for an instant she almost regretted backing him into a corner. Then she reminded herself of the stakes. This had to be done. Whatever had been weighing on him had to come out in the open so they could deal with it.
He moved to the window and stared into the darkness. He was silent for so long she began to wonder if he was going to tell her even now.
“It happened when I was seventeen,” he finally began, his voice so low she could barely hear him. “The year before, after years of trying, my parents finally had another baby, a little girl.”
The tormented expression on his face told her that whatever else he was likely to say was going to be heartbreaking. Her pulse pounded slowly as she waited for the rest with a growing sense of dread.
“At first I was embarrassed,” he said ruefully. “After all, I was a teenager. To me my parents were old. They had no business having sex, right? But when the baby came, she was so beautiful. I think I was as enchanted with her as my mom and dad. Her name was Alicia.”
Todd had never mentioned a sister. In truth, he rarely talked about his family at all. She knew he was estranged from them, or at least from his father, but that was all she knew. She gathered from his expression now that something awful must have happened to rip the family apart. Even though she was no longer certain she wanted to know what that was, if she was ever to understand, she needed to hear this. Even more important, probably, she sensed that he needed to get it out, to share this agonizing secret with someone who cared.
“What happened to her, Todd?” she prodded him gently.
“She died,” he said, his expression as stark as his words. “She was with me and she died.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered, getting up to stand beside him, reaching for him.
He seemed surprised by her touch, as if he’d expected her to be repulsed, but all she could think about was a young boy—and that’s what he’d been, a boy—blaming himself for his baby sister’s death, a boy who had grown into a man who feared that the same thing would happen again with any child left in his care. Even without the details, she understood it all now. His fear. His refusal to be left alone with Angel. His need to keep a safe distance between himself and the two of them. It all made a terrible kind of sense.
“How did she die?” Heather asked.
“It was an accident. I’d had my driver’s license for a year. I was a good driver. One day I was baby-sitting my sister and a friend called and wanted me to meet him at the mall. I figured what the heck, so I put Alicia in her car seat and off we went. It should have been okay. The mall was only a mile away and I’d never even had a close call before, but it was raining. This guy was driving too fast and the light changed. He tried to hit his brakes, but he skidded right into me, on the passenger side.”
He shuddered and fell silent. When he finally spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Alicia…Alicia died right there in my arms.”
“Oh, Todd,” Heather whispered, tears gathering, stinging her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
He regarded her with a bleak expression. “It shouldn’t have happened. If I’d stayed home like I was supposed to, if I’d been more vigilant, it wouldn’t have happened. I was reckless and irresponsible.”
“You were seventeen years old,” Heather said fiercely. “And unless there was something you didn’t say, the accident wasn’t your fault.”
“She was in that car because of me.”
“Were you cited by the police?”
“No, but—”
“Did your parents blame you?”
“Not my mother, no,” he conceded.
Heather thought she was beginning to see the real problem. “But your father did?”
Todd nodded. “He was right, too. I should never have left the house that day.”
“It was a mistake in judgment, not a crime,” she said.
“And it cost Alicia her life. My father never forgave me. He and my mother split up after that. That was my fault, too.”
Shocked, she stared at him. “You can’t believe that.”
“Because of my stupidity, my parents’ whole world fell apart.”
“And you’ve spent every minute of your life since heaping more guilt on yourself, trying to control every little detail so that nothing like this can ever happen again,” she said.
“Exactly. That day Angel ran into the street, it was like déja` vu. I almost cost our daughter her life, just the way I killed Alicia.” His gaze met hers. “Don’t you see?” he said with quiet desperation. “I can’t risk that happening again. Not ever.”
“The blame belongs to that other driver or to fate, not you,” she said, but it was evident he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—hear her.
He had lived with this for years. Believing it, hating himself, was as ingrained as breathing. Todd would go to his grave convinced that he was responsible for his sister’s death, that no child would ever be safe with him. How could she possibly prove to him otherwise, especially when he steadfastly refused to listen to reason?
Even now, knowing about that awful, long-ago tragedy, she would trust him with her life. More important, she would trust him with Angel’s.
Over the next few days, with Todd avoiding her as if he couldn’t bear to see her now that she knew about his past, she realized that drastic measures were called for. Maybe she had to find a way to see to it that he spent time with Angel.
But would a day or a week or even a month alone with his child overcome years of soul-wrenching torment? Her heart told her it was the only chance she had of getting through to him.
Unfortunately she knew if she asked him to keep Angel for her, he would refuse. But what if she virtually abandoned her on his doorstep, gave him no choice except to rise to the occasion?
It was a huge risk, not to Angel, but to their future as a family. She understood that he might never forgive her for it.
But without such a drastic action, what sort of future would they have, anyway?
22
H
eather kept her plan a secret from everyone while she worked out the details. She didn’t want Flo or Henrietta caught in the middle when Todd went ballistic. She knew it would take him a while to cool down once he realized what she’d done—that she’d deliberately gone off and left him all alone with his daughter.
She figured that a few days hiding out in Laramie would be just about long enough for her to make her point, but those few days weren’t likely to be pleasant for anyone in Todd’s line of fire.
She also had one other little bit of ammunition left in her arsenal. Up until now she hadn’t revealed to Angel that Todd was her father, but something told her the time had come. A pint-size female had persuasive powers that a grown-up couldn’t even
hope
to imitate.
By Thursday she was ready to put her plan into action. She waited until the last minute to tell Henrietta she needed a couple of days off to attend to a personal matter. Being Henrietta, she didn’t ask a lot of prying questions, just whether there was anything she could do to help.
“No, this is something I need to take care of myself. Will you be okay here? I know this is really last minute, but it just came up. It’s busier than usual with summer tourists in the area. Can you manage?”
“Of course I can. Sissy’s still out of school. She can pitch in.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “And I might just give the judge another trial run. He’s been making noises about wanting to retire from the bench so we can spend our golden years together.”
Heather caught the subtle implication of that and regarded her with delight. “He’s proposed? Why didn’t you say something?”
“Nothing to say. I haven’t said yes.”
“Why on earth not?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Pardon me for saying it, but aren’t your reasons old news by now?” Heather asked bluntly.
Henrietta looked vaguely startled by the criticism. “That’s what he said,” she admitted. “He said thirty years was too blasted long to keep a man dangling. Said he’d more than proved his love by now, and by gosh, it was time for me to stop sitting on the fence.”
“I have to say I’m inclined to agree with him,” Heather told her. “You sure it’s not just a habit you don’t know how to break?”
Henrietta waved off the explanation. “Poppycock! This isn’t about the past. It’s about the future. He has all these big ideas about running off and seeing the world. I’m not ready to give this place up. It’s been my life for a long time. I’d miss it if I went gallivanting all over. People are what counts in life, not the places you’ve seen.”
“Haven’t you ever yearned to see Europe or Hawaii or New York?”
“Can’t say that I have. Of course, if Sissy keeps on about this acting bug you’ve put in her head, I suppose the time will come when I’ll have to go see her star on Broadway. That’ll be soon enough.”
“Have you explained to him how you feel?”
“The man doesn’t listen to a word I say. He says we’ll start with a fancy honeymoon to some island in Hawaii. Can you imagine? All that water around.” She shuddered. “I want nice, solid land under my feet.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Well, of course I did. When have I ever been shy about stating my opinion to anybody?”
“And?”
“He says if I give in on this one point, I might discover I like it.” She uttered an indignant huff. “Giving in is not in my nature.”
“So what do you want?” Heather asked, wondering how on earth these two stubborn people could have known each other for so long—loved each other for so long—and not been able to work out their differences. If
they
couldn’t, how on earth could she possibly expect to get through to Todd?
“I want that foolish man to face facts. We’re old. We need to stay right here, where we’ve got people who matter all around us. Plus, he needs to know that if he’s not going to be down at the courthouse every day, he’s going to be putting in his fair share of hours right here,” she said emphatically, then allowed herself a grin. “We’ll see how he takes to that notion, and then I’ll decide one way or the other.”
Heather chuckled. “You’re a hard woman, Henrietta.”
“Look who I’m dealing with,” she said. “He’d have walked all over a weaker woman. Wouldn’t have kept his interest for a month.”
“So this refusal to give an inch was all a tactic to keep him interested?”
She nodded without the slightest sign of regret or embarrassment. “That, and a test, I suppose. His leaving all those years ago almost broke my spirit. I couldn’t chance it a second time.”
“Seems to me like he’s proved himself over and over again,” Heather said.
Henrietta’s lips curved into a slow smile. “That he has,” she admitted. “But I’m not quite ready to let him know that just yet. Another week or two ought to do it.”
“Why another week or two?”
“That’ll be the anniversary of the first time he asked me to marry him. I’m wondering if he’ll remember. I have to say I wouldn’t mind discovering a little hint of romance in the man at this stage of my life.”
If he didn’t remember the occasion on his own, Heather vowed, she would see to it that a little birdie got the message to him. It was the least she could do.
Her arrangements for time off complete, Heather got Angel all dressed, then sat down with her daughter in her lap.
“Where we going, Mama?”
“I’m going away for a couple of days.”
Angel’s face clouded over. “Not me?”
“No, you’re going to stay here.”
“With ’Retta?”
Heather shook her head. “With your daddy.”
Angel was silent for a moment as she grappled with that news. “Daddy?” she echoed.
“That’s right, baby. Todd is your daddy and you’re going to stay with him.”
Angel’s expression brightened at once. “Todd is my daddy?”
“That’s right. Think you can remember to call him that?”
Her head bobbed up and down enthusiastically. “I call him daddy,” she agreed. “We go see him now?”
“You bet,” Heather said.
In fact, she could hardly wait. Too bad she wouldn’t be close enough to get the full effect of the expression on his face when he heard Angel utter the word for the first time.
Todd opened his front door on Thursday at midmorning to find Angel standing on the steps, a Little Mermaid suitcase beside her. With her Mickey Mouse baseball cap and her Lion King T-shirt, she looked like a walking advertisement for Disney.
“Hiya, Daddy,” Angel said, as if she arrived alone every day.
Panic crawled up his spine, and not just because she had addressed him as Daddy. He would deal with that little twist later, once he’d strangled her mother.
“Where’s your mama?” he asked, looking up and down the block.
“Gone bye-bye,” she said, pushing past him, suitcase in hand. “I stay with you.”
Dear God in heaven, what was Heather thinking? Where had she gone? To the grocery store would be one thing, but that suitcase suggested something else entirely. A couple of coloring books in a tote bag hinted at a brief visit. That suitcase probably had clothes in it. Enough for how long? he wondered desperately.
He scooped Angel up and gazed into her eyes. “Where did your mama go?” he demanded, trying to keep his voice calm.
Angel shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“How did you get here?”
“Mama.”
Then she couldn’t have gone far. She had to have stayed nearby to coach Angel to ring the doorbell. That had been no more than a minute or two ago. Or was it? He’d been distracted when he first heard it. It had taken a few minutes for the sound to register, another couple of minutes to tear himself away from the budget projections for Peggy’s show. Was that long enough for Heather to have disappeared from the neighborhood? Would she have done that before seeing that he was home and that Angel was safely inside?
Still carrying Angel, he ran outside, circled the apartment building and then the entire block. With every step he took, his panic escalated.
Just as he returned from the fruitless search, the phone started ringing. He snatched it up.
“Heather, if this is your idea of a joke, it’s not amusing.”
“What’s Heather done?” Megan demanded.
At any other time he might have been gratified by her prompt and loyal assumption that Heather had done something to him, rather than the other way around. “She’s left Angel on my doorstep and disappeared,” he announced, trying not to let his stark terror show.
“As in left town?”
“I have no idea, but you have to get over here. You have to take Angel out to the ranch.”
“Why?” Megan asked, clearly perplexed. “Are you going to look for Heather?”
No, he thought, he was not going to look for her. He was going to wait right here, let his temper simmer and then strangle her whenever she returned. His plea was all about protecting his daughter.
“You just have to come, okay? I’m counting on you,” he told Megan.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said. “I’m bringing Jake with me. If Heather’s in some kind of trouble, we may need him.”
“Leave Jake out of this. The only trouble Heather is in is with me,” Todd said darkly.
The wait for Megan was the longest of his entire life. He watched Angel as if she might shatter right in front of his eyes. She seemed thoroughly unaware of his turmoil. She crawled up next to him on the sofa, then happily handed him book after book to read to her. Fortunately there were few words and not much plot. She seemed content with turning the pages and telling
him
the story.
When she tired of that after a few minutes, she regarded him hopefully. “Wanna see my dolls?”
His gaze fastened on the front window and his ears attuned to the arrival of a car, he nodded distractedly. “Sure.”
“This one’s Leaky,” she told him, waving a familiar plump figure wearing only a diaper in front of his face. “She cries. Hear?”
She tilted the doll forward and back, filling the room with plaintive cries that sent chills down Todd’s spine. He seized the doll, then placed it gently back against Angel’s shoulder. “See?” he said a little desperately. “No more crying.”
Angel tossed the silent baby aside, then grabbed a Barbie dressed in an evening gown. “This is Leaky’s mama. Isn’t she pretty?”
“Very pretty,” Todd agreed, barely sparing the doll a glance. Where the devil was Megan?
He finally heard the slam of a car door just as Angel was showing him her “most favoritest,” a rag doll with yarn hair and a missing eye. “She was Mama’s, a long time ago,” she said reverently. “She’s very, very old.” She shoved her in Todd’s arms. “You hold her.”
He had the doll cradled against his chest as he answered the door.
“New toy?” Megan asked with an amused smile.
“She doesn’t have any trucks,” he muttered. “I’m going straight to the toy store and buying her trucks. Maybe a train.”
Megan patted his hand. “Good for you.” She knelt down in front of Angel. “Hey, sweetheart, how are you doing?”
“I fine. I come to stay with Daddy.”
Megan’s gaze shot to his. “Is that so?”
Todd shrugged. “A new wrinkle.”
Megan studied him intently. “Is everything okay here?”
He regarded her with disbelief. “What do you think? I stay home to finalize the budget and the syndication deal for Peggy’s show—which may or may not happen depending on whether Johnny gets his way—and the next thing I know Angel is on my doorstep all alone. Does that sound as if everything is okay?” He raked a hand through his hair. “I swear I have no idea what Heather was thinking. I thought we’d settled this.”
“Settled what?”
He gestured vaguely toward his daughter. “This.”
“Okay,” Megan said slowly. “But I’m not sure I see the problem. Wherever Heather’s gone, she’ll be back. In the meantime, how big a deal is it for you to keep Angel? It might be inconvenient, but it’s hardly a calamity. Get a baby-sitter if you need to go out, or take her with you. You can manage.”
“I cannot manage,” he said tightly, then drew in a deep, shuddering breath. He had to make other arrangements—now, before it was too late. Once more he told her, “I want you to take Angel out to the ranch with you.”
Unfortunately Angel overheard. “No go,” she said, tears welling up. “Stay with you. Mama said.”
“I think that settles that.” Megan studied him closely. “What’s really going on here? This isn’t about being a little inconvenienced at all, is it?”
He felt as if he were caught up in some bizarre real-life version of truth-or-dare. He had to come clean with Megan or she would never understand his reluctance to keep Angel.
“No,” he admitted finally. “If the circumstances were different, if I were different, this wouldn’t be a problem. I cannot keep her here, Megan. I just can’t.”
“Why?” she asked gently. “What are you so afraid of?”
For the second time in less than a week, Todd explained about his baby sister’s death. Like Heather, Megan clucked sympathetically and tried to assure him that the tragic accident hadn’t been his fault. Sensing her compassion, he found that the words came easier this time. The pain in his chest wasn’t quite as tight.
“That’s it in a nutshell,” he said finally. “Bottom line, I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her.”
Megan took his face in her hands and gazed directly into his eyes. “Nothing is going to happen. You’re an adult, not a teenage boy. She’s a toddler, not a baby. And you’re her father. There’s no getting around that. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith that you can do this scary parenting thing, and just plunge in. Isn’t that what you told me when Tex made me Tess’s guardian?”
“Tess was eight, not a fragile toddler.”
“Believe me, that was no less terrifying. What did I know about being a mother? Absolutely nothing.”
“But you’ve never been responsible for a child’s dying,” he countered.
“Todd, neither have you. It was an accident, and accidents can happen at any age. Tess was thrown from a horse right after I became her guardian.”
“She didn’t die,” he repeated stubbornly.
“No, but she could have.”
“Angel ran in front of a car because of me.”