Build Me Up (13 page)

The music stopped abruptly, and a second later, someone was hurdling down the stairs. The burglar knew he had been discovered and now he was going to kill them both!

“Dad! Turn the music back on!” a female voice sounded and Kristen’s mind put the two oversized puzzle pieces together. Ford’s daughter had come home early.

TWELVE

Kristen glanced at the door and pondered her undetected escape, but where would she go? It had, like Ford predicted, started to rain and it was freezing outside. She didn’t expect old lady Breezer to welcome her with open arms. She took a deep breath and walked into the living room. And froze in the doorway.

“Kristen?” the teenager turned her attention to her and Kristen felt incredibly stupid for not making the connection earlier – Elle at the Food Shopper, whose mother lived in California, versus Ford’s daughter Annabelle, who lived with her mother and only came to see him once or twice a year.

“Hi! Um…”

“What are you doing here?” Annabelle asked before Kristen could try to figure out what to say for herself.

“I…”

“Kristen’s been renting your room, Annabelle,” Ford stepped in. “She ran into some trouble with her previous landlord, and so I offered her to stay here until you came back.”

“O…kay. That’s cool… I guess.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to come back today. Why didn’t you call me? I would have picked you up,” Ford said, getting into parental mode.

“I just couldn’t stand living with Mom and Burt another minute!” Annabelle exclaimed, full of dramatics in her gestures as she turned all her focus on Ford. “They-“

“Hey. What do you say we talk about this over pizza, okay?” Ford cut her off, glancing over at Kristen. He didn’t want her to be around for his heart-to-heart with his daughter. Understandable, but it still hurt.

“Fine. I’m starving.”

“Kristen?”

“Uh… sure. Thanks.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” Ford excused himself and walked out of the living room, leaving Kristen alone with Annabelle. She observed the teenager for a moment before taking a seat on the couch, smiling politely, if awkwardly.

“So…”

“Did you do this?” Annabelle asked, gesturing to the room.

“Um… I made a few suggestions…” Kristen said cautiously.

“You’re like a designer, aren’t you?” Annabelle said, walking over to sit cross-legged on the other end of the couch, facing Kristen.

Kristen turned slightly toward Annabelle, relieved the teenager seemed friendly. “Sort of. I design houses, sometimes apartments.”

“Cool.”

“How’d you guess that?” Kristen asked, curious what had given her away.

“Well, for one, the house looks much better than it did this summer. And I saw some clothes in the closet in my room…”

“Yeah… sorry about that…” Kristen cringed. “I guess it’d be kind of weird to find someone else’s stuff in your closet.”

“Why? It’s not like it’s really my room anymore,” Annabelle shrugged. “My stuff is all back in California.”

“I know that feeling,” Kristen nodded.

“Hey, how come you’re still in Greenport? Tourist season has been over for months.”

“I’m working. I’m an architect, and I was hired to design a house here. My contract states I need to spend a full year here to oversee the construction.”

“Sucky contract. You should have gotten a lawyer. So you work with my dad, then? You’re like his boss?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Kristen chuckled. “We’re both independent consultants, so we’re more like co-workers.”

“You argue a lot?”

“Uh… not much,” Kristen fibbed. Well, it was partly true, anyway. They always made up.

“Really?” Annabelle’s eyebrows shot up at that. Kristen noticed they were perfectly sculpted. L.A. salon style. Oh, how she missed her spa appointments…

“Does that surprise you?” Kristen fished.

“Well, whenever I see Dad, he’s always grumpy and telling me what to do, so…” she shrugged. “I guess he’s different when I’m not around.” There was a trace of hurt in her voice and Kristen’s heart constricted.

“Oh, no, he’s barking at people left and right. I’ve seen him smile once or twice, and whenever that happens I feel compelled to ask him what’s wrong.”

“Yeah?” Annabelle’s eyes lit just a little bit at Kristen’s description.

“Totally. I’m just used to being around grumpy guys. By L.A. standards, your Dad is pretty tame. But don’t tell
him
that,” Kristen added in a conspiratorial, hushed voice.

“I won’t,” Annabelle swore.

“You won’t what?” Ford’s voice broke through their hushed conversation, and Kristen turned her head to look at him. He’d been listening, no doubt about it.

“Annabelle just promised me she won’t tell anyone that I… had a crush on Bruce Willis as a kid,” Kristen blurted. It was true, after all.

“Who?” Ford frowned.

“Oh, please, Dad, even
I
know who Bruce Willis is,” Annabelle rolled her eyes.

“I think my secret is safe,” Kristen chuckled.

“I ordered the pizzas, they should be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Great. Just enough time for me to grab a shower,” Kristen said. “If you’re cool with me staying here tonight?” she asked Annabelle. If Ford’s daughter wanted her out of the house, Kristen would have to call a cab and hope there were hotel rooms available in the next town.

“Sure. You have a rental agreement, don’t you?”

“Well… no…”

“Seriously? You so need to get a lawyer.”

Kristen laughed. “My best friend is a lawyer, actually. I probably should call her up.”

“Yeah. Don’t let Dad screw you over.”

“Annabelle Hamm!” Ford barked so loud even Kristen flinched.

“What?”

“Watch your language.”

“You’re worse than Mom!” Annabelle threw up her hands and ran up the stairs.

Ford made a move to follow her, but Kristen stopped him. “Hey. I’m the first to admit I know next to nothing about teenagers, much less parenting them, but if my dad had yelled at me and then followed me to yell some more, I’d slam my door in his face and climb out the window. Then I’d get really drunk and crash on the quarterback’s couch after pigging out on potato chips.”

“That’s very specific for a hypothetical scenario,” Ford mused.

“I wasn’t always perfect,” Kristen shrugged, coaxing a smile out of him.

“I’m sorry about the awkwardness. I called Suzy after I ordered the pizza. They had a fight and Annabelle stole her credit card and booked the trip out here.”

“Oh, wow. When I stole my Mom’s credit card I just went to the mall…”

Ford rubbed his face in exasperation. Kristen put her hands on his upper arms to calm him. “It’s going to work out just fine.”

“It hasn’t yet,” Ford sighed.

“Then things can only get better from here on out, right?”

“We’ll see,” Ford shrugged and backed away from her. “I’m going to go talk to Annabelle.”

“Okay,” Kristen nodded. “I’ll go grab that shower.”

“Annabelle?” Ford knocked on the door to his daughter’s bedroom. When there was no response, he carefully inched the door open. “Annie?”

“Go away.”

Well, at least she wasn’t screaming it at him, Ford thought and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. Instead, she was sounding pretty defeated and depressed.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you, Annie,” Ford sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I had a bad day, is all.”

Annabelle didn’t respond.

“I talked to your mother. She’s worried about you.”

“Yeah, right,” Annabelle muttered.

“You may not believe it, but we both worry about you. All the time. It’s part of the job description as parents – not to mention it comes naturally.”

“Sucky job.”

“Best one in the world,” Ford corrected her. “Your mom said you had a fight. Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind. I told your mom you’ll stay here until after the holidays, so we have all the time in the world to talk.” With that, Ford pushed himself off the bed and headed for the door.

“Why are you so mellow all of a sudden?” Annabelle asked out of the blue and Ford turned to see her sitting up against the wall, her knees tucked under her chin.

“Sorry?”

“You always yell and boss me around when I’m here, but now you’re all…” she made a waving gesture as if searching for words, “weird.”

Was he being weird? Had he changed over the past couple of months? No, he’d argued with Kristen just today. He wasn’t going soft.

“Maybe it’s the weather,” Ford shrugged and headed out the door. “Pizza in five.”

As he closed the door on his daughter, Ford let out a deep sigh. He was exhausted. Tamping down his frustration was taking its toll on him, for sure. It didn’t help that he could hear the shower running behind the bathroom door. One would think that knowing what a woman looked like naked would dampen the fantasies about said woman in the shower, but it seemed it was having the opposite effect on him.

He was thrilled that his daughter had come to see him, even if she’d taken a crazy risk in flying out alone and catching a cab from the airport, but a not-so-small part of him was reminding him of the fact that Annabelle’s early arrival meant that Kristen needed to move out before he was ready to see her go. Annabelle didn’t seem averse to having Kristen stay, but they were kidding themselves if they thought they could keep their relationship under wraps while living under the same roof.

With one last look at the bathroom door, Ford headed down the stairs to wait for the pizza delivery guy to show up.

“Pizza’s here!”

The sound of Ford’s voice bellowing from downstairs made Kristen speed up the drying off and dressing. For a few minutes, she’d been able to escape the present and pretend she was in some random hotel having a shower, but now she was back in Ford’s bathroom in Greenport. With his daughter in the house.

Kristen vigorously rubbed her hair with the towel, making her scalp burn. She’d stay on the couch tonight and then pack up her stuff and check into a hotel in a nearby town tomorrow. She couldn’t intrude on their family time, and she certainly couldn’t keep her mind off Ford while knowing he was in the same house but completely off limits.

Meeting – or re-meeting – Annabelle had gone well enough, but Kristen suspected that if the girl found out that Kristen was sleeping with her father, she’d be singing a different tune. Kristen had never been too fond of her own father’s girlfriends slash wives, so why would a girl half her age be any more forgiving?

When Kristen finally gathered the courage to walk downstairs, she found Ford and Annabelle already digging into the pizza, sitting on the couch with a movie playing. She paused on the last step and considered sneaking back upstairs, but Ford looked up and met her eyes.

“Better hurry,” he said casually, “she may not look it, but the kid can eat.”

“Dad!” Annabelle exclaimed, her voice full of indignation.

“Sorry, Annie,” Ford chuckled and messed up her hair. Annabelle swatted at him.

Sitting there on the couch, her long, brown hair falling over her shoulders and her face bare of makeup, Kristen could see the resemblance between Annabelle and Ford – and the vulnerability of the girl who acted too cool for Greenport. The warmth between them was beautiful to watch – and painful. Kristen felt unwanted tears burning in the back of her eyes, and she forced a cheery smile to intercept the waterworks.

“There’s another box in the kitchen,” Ford said and Kristen nodded, grabbing the opportunity to make herself scarce for a minute like a lifesaver thrown into icy water at the last possible second.

Kristen took her time slicing up the pizza in the kitchen and putting it on a proper plate instead of just bringing the whole box out to the living room like Ford and Annabelle had. Like
she
would have done if she’d been relaxed enough. She toyed with the idea of just having her food in the kitchen and letting the Hamms enjoy their dinner in peace. Obviously, her procrastination didn’t go unnoticed, as she suddenly felt Ford’s hands on her hips.

“Hey. You okay?” he asked in a low voice.

Kristen took a step to the side, avoiding any and all physical contact. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“For one thing, you’re slicing an already sliced pizza…”

“Oh. Well, I wanted a smaller slice,” Kristen shrugged.

“I know tonight didn’t turn out the way we thought it would-”

“Your daughter’s here. That’s awesome. You look happy,” she added with a wistful smile.

“Annabelle said the same thing. She thinks something’s wrong because I’m not being my usual grumpy self.”

“Well, I’m sure she’ll get used to the new you in no time,” Kristen smiled, refusing to attempt to analyze why Ford might seem less grumpy to Annabelle. “I’m going to Google hotels in the area tonight. I should be out of your hair by this time tomorrow.”