The Daddy Audition

by Cindi Myers

  Her eyes widened. “That’s your idea of a casual date?” The French restaurant was a high-end favorite at Crested Butte Mountain Resort.

  “I felt like celebrating.” His smile was almost smug and definitely disconcerting. She buckled her seat belt and waited for him to reveal more. When he didn’t, she finally asked, “Are you going to tell me what you’re celebrating or do I have to guess?”

  “I just landed a really big contract for a new condo development.”

  “Oh. Congratulations.” She tried to sound enthusiastic, but her heart sank. More condos changing the town was the last thing she wanted. She accepted that they were part of the landscape now, but she didn’t like that Jack had such a hand in putting them there. Yes, if he didn’t build them someone else would, but she wished he shared her dismay over their arrival instead of so gleefully profiting from all the changes. She wanted to believe he still cared about the same things she did—that they still had that much in common.

  Le Bosquet was much as she remembered it—lace curtains and dark wood furniture, soft music and lighting and the charm of an intimate French bistro. The menu featured escargot and pommes frites. She was sorely tempted by the cheese fondue, but the idea of trying to eat such a dish without making a mess of the pristine white tablecloth—not to mention all those extra cheesy calories—convinced her to choose the seared sea scallops as her appetizer.

  Jack ordered an expensive bottle of wine and told her more about the new contract. She listened with a polite expression, letting his words glide over and around her while she studied his expressions and mannerisms. He was obviously trying to impress her, but she didn’t want to be impressed. She didn’t need to be impressed. Not by him. He was the one man she’d thought she could be comfortable with. The one she’d counted on to be open and honest with her, letting her see him as he was, foibles and all, and allowing her to let her own flaws show through.

  “Do you eat here often?” she asked after their entrées were served—steak frites for her, lamb medallions for him.

  “A few times,” he said. “Generally when I eat out I’m grabbing something on my way home from work or after a game. What about you?”

  She shook her head and cut into her steak, which was perfectly done and juicy. “I haven’t gone out much since I came back to town.”

  “That surprises me,” he said. “Considering single men outnumber single women here by two to one.”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t been interested in dating anyone.” Even though she knew divorcing Stuart had been the right thing to do, the failure of her marriage still hurt. She didn’t trust her judgment when it came to men.

  That included Jack. Growing up together, she thought she’d known him as well as a woman could know any man. He was simply Jack, a Crested Butte native who liked hiking and skiing. A man content to remain in the small town in which he’d been born, who would follow his father into the family business. He’d keep the same friends and enjoy the same scenery and live the same kind of lifestyle forever—a prospect that had seemed stifling to her at eighteen, but that now seemed to offer the stability and security that had eluded her in California.

  Except that this adult version of Jack wasn’t like that at all. Instead of being content with the town the way it was, he’d been instrumental in changing it. He’d transformed his business and himself, and she wasn’t sure she liked all the changes.

  “Your idea of fun has certainly changed since we were kids,” she said.

  He paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “Neither of us is fourteen anymore.”

  “No.” She looked around the restaurant, which was filled now with other couples and small groups enjoying the romantic ambience. “This is nice. Really.”

  But she couldn’t completely hide her disappointment. This was the kind of place Stuart would have chosen, not because he thought she’d enjoy the meal, but because he wanted to show off.

  He tried to impress everyone, but when they’d met she’d still been young enough to believe in the glitz and glamour. She’d mistaken a show of money for a romantic gesture. Was this just the way dating was these days—women showed off their good taste and looks and men laid out their financial portfolios?

  “Tell me more about L.A.,” Jack said.

  She shrugged. “What’s to tell?”

  “You were there ten years. There must be something.”

  She searched for something positive, something from the early years before disillusionment had colored her view of the place she’d fantasized about for so long. “When I first arrived there, I was blown away by how warm it was. And how colorful. There were flowers everywhere. My first day there I made my way down to the beach and walked for hours along the shore, amazed that I was actually standing in the ocean.”

  “People from there come here and feel that way about snow and the mountains.”

  She nodded. “I guess it’s a matter of being drawn to what you don’t have, but those first few months the whole town seemed magical to me.”

  “It must have been so different from everything you were used to,” he said. “Weren’t you homesick?”

  “I was too excited to be homesick. I had so many plans and there were so many things I wanted to do.”

  “It’s pretty impressive that you were able to go out there, not knowing anyone, and make a go of it.”

  “I was too naive to know the odds were against me, and young enough to see hardships as adventure.” She smiled. “The first year I shared a tiny, dumpy apartment with two other girls and worked the late shift at a greasy spoon restaurant. I didn’t have a car, so I walked everywhere or used mass transit. But it was fun. It took a while and a lot of pounding the pavement, but I finally started getting acting work. I thought I was on my way.”

  “I saw some of your commercials.” He held up the saltshaker. “Super Burgers are super good!”

  She put her hand over her mouth, trying but failing to contain her laughter. “Oh, that was so bad! I was so bad.”

  “No, you weren’t. You were cute.”

  “Well, thanks. I couldn’t afford to be picky. And things got better as I got more work.”

  “And you got the job on Penrose Valley.”

  “Don’t tell me you watched that, too!” The soap opera had been a hit for several years, but it wasn’t the type of show she would have thought would appeal to Jack.

  “Are you kidding? You were front-page news here in CB.”

  “I had no idea.” To tell the truth, she’d seldom thought about her hometown in those heady days when the stardom she’d craved was just within her reach.

  “Everybody was really proud of you,” he said. “You’d gone off and made your dream come true.”

  “Acting in a soap opera was not exactly my dream come true,” she said. “I wanted to be a movie star. But the reality of achieving that goal was a lot different from what I’d imagined.”

  “How so?”

  She made a face. “I was spoiled here in Crested Butte, where the community theater and high school plays were so cooperative and welcoming of almost everybody. Hollywood is a lot more cutthroat.”

  “Is that why you stopped acting after the show was canceled?”

  A cloud shadowed her happiness at the mention of that dark period. “I didn’t think of it as stopping. I thought I’d take some time off to take care of Annie. And Stuart didn’t like me working.” She toyed with her fork, trying to find the words to explain all that had been wrong with that plan and with her relationship. “It’s hard in a Hollywood marriage when one partner is more successful than the other.”

  “So you were more successful than Stuart.”

  “Not really. The main problem was he wasn’t as successful as he wanted to be. He looked around for someone to blame, and I was the closest person.”

  “Is that why your marriage ended?”

  “It was one of the reasons.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “There�
�s nothing to talk about really.” She shrugged. “I was young and naive when we met. Sometimes I think our whole relationship was based on a fantasy, like an acting role. When we both woke up to reality, neither one of us was happy.”

  “Yeah, I guess sometimes it’s easy to mistake how we want things to be for true love.”

  What did Jack know about the subject? Had he loved a woman while she’d been away and lost her? The idea made her uncomfortable. But he had to have been doing something besides working for the past ten years. Surely he wasn’t talking about her. Yes, they’d had very special feelings for each other, but they’d been so young….

  She was mustering the nerve to ask him about his romantic past when the waitress arrived to clear their plates. “Would you like dessert?” Jack asked.

  She shook her head. No. She was suddenly tired. She wanted to go home and crawl into her pajamas and try not to think about how out of line her own expectations seemed to be with reality. Most women would be thrilled by a fancy dinner with a successful, good-looking man. So what was wrong with her that she’d looked forward to something different—something a little less cliché, even—from Jack? He’d been good at surprising her when they were younger. Had he lost that kind of spontaneity as his income climbed?

  “You’re being very quiet,” he said, as they made their way through Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s central square on their way to the parking lot. This time of year the lifts were silent, and only a few people congregated around the condos, hotels and restaurants that flanked the heart of the resort. “I apologize if the restaurant was a disappointment.”

  “No!” she protested. “The food was very good.”

  “Then it must be the company you find lacking.”

  Only when she looked at him did she realize he was teasing. She assumed an equally mocking expression. “I’m just trying to match my mood to yours, Mr. Suit-and-Tie.”

  He tugged at the knot of the blue-and-gray striped necktie. “I can’t even remember the last time I wore one of these.”

  “From what I’ve seen, there isn’t much call for them here in Crested Butte,” she said. “Even the bankers don’t wear them.”

  He loosened the knot and pulled off the offending strip of silk, then removed the jacket, unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them up. “Is this better?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  He looked up and she tilted her head back, too. The sky was a swath of dark blue silk, and the first pinpricks of stars were beginning to show. “It’s early yet,” he said. “What should we do now?”

  “Something fun,” she said. “Something I’d never be able to do in L.A.”

  He pondered the question for a moment, then nodded. “I know the perfect thing.”

  “What is it?”

  He grinned. “Oh, I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  JACK HADN’T DRIVEN the road up to the old ghost town of Gothic lately, but he remembered the way well enough to guide his truck up and around the steep curves even in the dark.

  “Where are we going?” Tanya asked. She steadied herself with one hand on the dash as the truck bounced over the rutted road.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “It’s the road to Gothic, but what’s up here that you could possibly want to see in the dark?”

  “Afraid I’m spiriting you away to take advantage of you?” He flashed an exaggerated leer.

  She laughed but still kept one hand tightly on the dash.

  Gothic Mountain itself rose in front of them, a jagged mastodon tooth of a peak, stark against the starlit sky. Four miles up the bumpy track, he turned into a wide dirt lot. A dusty Jeep or two and a couple of four-wheel-drive sedans occupied one corner of the space. “Where are we?” Tanya asked.

  “Parking for the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.”

  “I remember now,” she said. She followed him out of the truck.

  He pointed to lights up ahead. “That’s the main research laboratory and some of the staff housing. I heard there are something like sixty scientists and researchers spending the summer here.”

  “Not a bad way to spend the summer,” she said. “Hiking every day, collecting data on plants and animals in paradise.”

  “It’s probably more tedious than that,” he said. “And you probably have to be better at science than I was.”

  “Don’t look at me. If it wasn’t related to theater, I didn’t care.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re such a good actor,” he said. “You were always so single-minded about it.”

  “I’m not really that good,” she said. “At least not any better than half the waiters and waitresses in California.”

  “You’re better than probably anybody else in this county, so that ought to count for something.”

  “It got me the job with the Mountain Theatre, so I’m not complaining.” She looked toward the lights of the research lab once more. “Are we here to spy on the scientists, or what?”

  Jack leaned against the front of the truck and tilted his head back to look up. “You said you wanted to do something you couldn’t do in California. Well, you couldn’t see stars like these there, at least not in L.A.” Right on cue, a streak of silver arced across the sky.

  Tanya gasped, a quick intake of breath that made his heart speed up. “A shooting star?” she asked.

  “Pleides meteor shower,” he said. “It happens every August about this time. Because of the dark skies and the thin air at high altitude, this is one of the best places in the country to see it.”

  They fell silent, watching stars arc across the sky like phosphorus trails from giant sparklers. Jack congratulated himself for deciding to come here. He enjoyed the feeling of the two of them together against such vastness. It made him feel closer to her somehow.

  “California has mountains, but they’re a long way from L.A.,” she said after a while. “I’d forgotten how…personal they could seem. Like old friends. I think it’s one of the reasons it disturbs me so much to see them encroached on by so much development.”

  “I don’t think the mountains mind.”

  She glanced at him, her features softened in the dim light. “You think I’m silly,” she said.

  “No.” She was beautiful and stubborn and intriguing, but never silly. “No one should apologize for caring.”

  He thought she smiled, but the expression was fleeting and unclear in the darkness. “You know a lot of what I’ve done for the past ten years,” she said. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “I want to know how you’ve spent the past decade.”

  “You know that. I’ve built those condos you hate.”

  Another star burned a trail across the sky. “You’ve done more than that,” she said when it had passed. “What about your personal life?”

  He shifted, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. If he told the truth—that he’d been too busy working to have much of a personal life, let alone a romantic one—would he seem like a loser?

  “There’s nothing exciting to tell,” he said. “I worked. I built a house. I played softball and sometimes went out with friends.”

  “What about women?”

  He could have protested she was being too nosy, but her interest intrigued him. “I’ve dated a few women. Nothing serious.” While she’d been married and divorced; one more difference between them.

  “You’re the only person I know whose life has turned out exactly the way you always planned,” she said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “When we were in school you always talked about one day being president of Crenshaw Construction,” she said. “And that’s exactly what’s happened, though at the time I had no idea you meant to make it into such a big company.”

  Back then, he hadn’t been aware of those ambitions, either; they’d taken shape after she left.

  “You always said you’d be happy spending the
rest of your life here in Crested Butte and I guess you were right.”

  She made him sound so dull and unadventurous. Is that how she saw him? He supposed, compared to the movie and television stars she’d known in Hollywood, he was dull. Not the kind of man to hold her attention for long.

  “How did you see me in high school?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All that stuff about staying here and working for my father—did you think that was a cop-out? Boring?”

  “No!” she protested. “You were just so much more…more focused than most of the others in our class. So certain of your future.” She looked away, pensive. “I guess I always saw you as someone who could do anything you wanted. You never messed up or failed.”

  He almost laughed at this idea. “Do you remember our sophomore year, when I was goofing around and missed the free throw in the semifinal game?”

  “What semifinal game?”

  “Our last game against Vail Christian. The winner would go on to the finals in the regional basketball play-offs. The score was tied and I had a chance to win the game with a free throw, but I was goofing around and missed the shot.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t? It was all anyone talked about for weeks.” All he’d thought about for months.

  “Oh, I doubt that. It was just a high school basketball game.”

  “It wasn’t just a game. It was the regional semifinals.”

  “I don’t remember the game.”

  “You really don’t?”

  “No. I remember the game your senior year when we won the regional championship.” She folded her arms across her chest and looked up at the sky. “I remember we went out after the game to celebrate and made love under the stars up on Kebler Pass.”

  He remembered that, too. A night very much like this one—a million stars shining over them like glitter, looking close enough to touch, the night air cool on his bare skin, Tanya warm beneath him.

  She hugged her arms across her chest. “I should have brought a jacket,” she said. “I’d forgotten how cold it gets up here after dark, even in August.”

  “I’ve got a fleece pullover in the truck if you want it.”