A Father At Last

by Julie Mac

  “No!” The word was a ragged whisper, but she felt as if she’d shouted it. “I won’t. I can’t. You can’t make me.” She pushed back her chair clumsily and started to rise, but he moved faster. In a flash he was on his feet, on her side of the table, still holding her hand.

  “You can do this, sweetness. Don’t run away now.” He leaned in and kissed her A Father at Last

  cheek, then gathered her into his arms. “I’ll be with you, by your side. We can do it together.

  It will be all right, you’ll see.”

  Raising her eyes to his, she let herself hope, for just a fleeting few seconds. In the safety of his arms, basking in the warmth and confidence of his eyes, it was tempting to believe him, to believe it would, somehow, be all right.

  But life was not a fairy tale. Her heart thudded in her chest and her mouth felt dry.

  She wriggled in his arms, but he held tight.

  “Let me go.” She said it quietly, because she didn’t want to make a scene, and she was glad there were no other diners at the veranda tables, and that the crowd inside were noisy.

  “Why? So you can disappear on me again? So you can avoid facing your father after all these years?”

  He’d pulled her in even closer, and now he looked down at her, his dark brows creasing. She could see the steady rise and fall of his chest, as he breathed, in, out, deep and strong. Her breathing had sped up ridiculously.

  “If I want to leave, I will.” She was pleased she sounded reasonably in control. “If I want to leave and not see you again, I will.” She saw the quick flash of pain in his eyes, and then she thought she must have imagined it because when she blinked and looked again, his gold‐green eyes were steady and cool.

  “And do you? Want to leave?”

  “Yes.” It hurt to say the word, more than she would ever have thought possible. But it had to be this way.

  He released his arms. In the garden, closer now, the lone morepork called again.

  “Go then, Kelly. But see your father—for his sake, if not for your own. And for Dylan’s.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket, and produced a business card.

  “Here are your father’s contact details.”

  He laid the business card on the table, and she stared at it. There was her father’s name, engraved in bold black type on a crisp white business card—not on a gravestone as she’d pretended to anyone nosy enough to ask. Gerry Atkinson. My father. Daddy. Director, Auckland New Start Society.

  Tears welled in her eyes. Before, she could pretend he didn’t exist. But seeing his name written, in black and white on that little business card, somehow made him real.

  Ben’s hand ran down the length of her arm and squeezed her fingers. Then his hand came up to cup her chin.

  “I’m with you on this, darling. Say the word and I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  She nodded slowly and sniffed hard. “I’ll just go…to the bathroom.”

  Julie Mac

  She picked up her handbag, pulled out a tissue and her lipstick, and placed the bag back on her chair. She wouldn’t disappear again on Ben. Not right now, anyway. She had no desire to hurt him—anymore than she already had—and besides, he was trying to help her.

  If she left her bag here, he’d know she wasn’t going to leave him sitting here alone.

  She looked around, saw the bathroom sign at the end of the veranda, and made her way towards it, hoping it was unoccupied.

  She desperately needed a few moments alone. Thankfully, the ladies’ room had only one cubicle, and it was empty. She turned the lock on the outside door, and leaned back against it, her eyes closed. She breathed deep, several times, then she turned to the mirror.

  Carefully she mopped the moisture on her lashes, and wondered what on earth was happening to her.

  Crying wasn’t part of her repertoire. Crying was for babies. Crying was for people who couldn’t cope with life, and she could cope. Of course she could. She’d coped all these years on her own, hadn’t she?

  And then Ben Carter turned up, and the waterworks started. She managed a wry smile at her reflection. She refreshed her lipstick and wished she’d brought her handbag in with her. Her eye makeup could do with a quick repair job—for the second time this evening.

  She reached up her hand and patted her hair. It was starting to revert to wild curls again, despite the best efforts of her straightening irons. Must be the humidity.

  Her dad had liked her curls. He used to call her ‘tatty head’. She stared at the mirror and her eyes misted again, and a strange thing happened.

  In the mirror, through her teary haze, she saw a little girl looking back at her, with red frizzy curls and unbearably sad blue eyes. And then she heard a voice, so real, she jerked her head to look over her shoulder.

  But of course, no one was there. She’d heard her mother’s voice before, often on the breeze as she walked on the beach, or in the few magic moments between wakefulness and sleeping, as real as life itself and just as ephemeral. Usually, Mum’s voice was happy; this time, it was stern and sharp.

  Kelly! Go and see your father.

  She blinked hard. The little girl’s face disappeared from the mirror, and the room was silent.

  In the distance, in the building beyond the walls, came the happy sounds of the big group of diners in the restaurant: the family group, complete with a pair of elderly grandparents, a middle‐aged couple she’d decided were the parents and a bunch of young people in their twenties—the couple’s children and their partners, she guessed.

  And out on the veranda, Ben was sitting, alone, waiting for her to return.

  Ben and she would never be a middle‐aged couple sitting at a restaurant table, A Father at Last

  celebrating someone’s birthday with a grown‐up Dylan and his girlfriend. But maybe Dylan could enjoy just such an occasion with his grandfather.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror and made a decision.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll see him.”

  Ben was there when she emerged from the ladies room, leaning on the veranda rail, looking into the darkness of the garden, his black hair burnished bronze under the soft light of the deck lamp, his heartbreakingly handsome face in profile.

  He turned to smile, and she felt a warm rush starting deep in her stomach and working its way up.

  Now she stood close to him, and couldn’t resist the impulse to reach forward and kiss him fleetingly on the lips. “Thanks,” she whispered.

  “I’m glad,” he said simply, before returning the kiss—over almost before it started, but not before she’d tasted his passion, and for an instant, she wished they were on their own, in the dark of the garden perhaps, or in a quiet room where…

  Where what?

  Quickly, she turned and slipped into her seat at the table, and he followed suit. She saw that someone had cleared their mains plates while she’d been gone, and topped up her wine. Ben had obviously ordered dessert for them both; two plates had arrived, containing dark, rich‐looking chocolate brownie topped with big dollops of cream.

  “I’ll never eat all that,” she protested.

  He just smiled and said, “Give it a go. I’m sure I’ll be able to help if you’re not up to the task.”

  “I’ve been watching what I eat lately, and this…” she waved a hand towards the dessert, “…all this chocolate and cream…it’s practically all calories. It’s pure sin.”

  “Mm‐m. As I recall, pure sin is something you do rather well, darlin’.” His eyes lingered on hers as he savoured a mouthful of pudding.

  She felt her cheeks warming. Pure sin. Nearly seven years had passed, but the pictures were there, clear in her mind: she was lying on Ben’s bed, naked, pure, while he did things to her that made her desperate—absolutely, painfully, pathetically desperate—to experience sin.

  And she had—in all its colourful, mind‐blowing, fireworks‐inducing glory. The vision was still planted in her brain of him then, young, tender and just as d
esperate as she, his golden‐bronze limbs slicked with sweat on the hot late summer night. At the beach the other night, she’d discovered his body, matured now into full manhood, felt just as good—

  or even better than it had six years and nine months ago, and she knew that if she thought about it now, about the hard ridge of muscle down his back, the tight, strong stomach, and goodness knows what else, she wouldn’t be able to concentrate enough to eat.

  Julie Mac

  She picked up her spoon and took a small mouthful of the dessert, savouring the smoothness of the cream and the sweetness of the brownie, punctuated with its hard little chips of chocolate.

  He smiled across the table, and she smiled back. Thank God he can’t read my thoughts.

  She put down her spoon, picked up her serviette and dabbed delicately at her lips, mainly to hide the blush she was sure was creeping up her neck and over her cheeks. “I think I’ve had enough. I can’t eat any more.”

  It was true. His revelations about her father had shocked her to the core, dampening any desire for more food. And then her thoughts of the last couple of minutes had ignited an appetite that excluded food totally. What was it about Ben Carter that could send her emotions spiralling from one end of the spectrum to the other?

  She picked up her wine glass, watching—and enjoying the view—as he demolished first his own dessert and then hers.

  “Put your wallet away.” He pulled a wad of notes from his own wallet. “I’m paying.”

  “But I always pay for myself.” Kelly held out her credit card to the woman behind the café’s counter, who simply ignored it and took Ben’s proffered notes.

  While she was sorting out his change from the till, he turned to Kelly and said quietly, “It might be the habit of your loser‐buddy website dates to go fifty‐fifty on the bill, but when I ask a lady to dinner with me, I expect—I want— to pay for her. Okay?” His black brows were pulled together in a thunderous frown.

  The almost irresistible and unexpected urge to laugh out loud brought to mind the teenage Ben who’d never let her pay her own way if they went to the movies together.

  Then, she’d taken delight in winding him up by buying the tickets in advance and paying for them herself.

  Now, she was adult enough to simply smile and put her card away. And, she had to admit, it felt good to have an attractive, attentive man taking care of her. When had a man—a date—last treated her to dinner? She couldn’t remember, and really it didn’t matter.

  She could enjoy this special moment, this tiny, unreal snippet of time with Ben, her old friend, taking care of her, because soon—like in the next five minutes—she’d be hopping in her car and heading home to her lonely bed in her empty house, where she knew sleep would elude her.

  She pulled her car keys from her handbag, fumbled, dropped them on the floor, bent to retrieve them and swore under her breath as reality kicked in.

  “I can’t drive home,” she said, straightening up and facing him. “I’ve had two‐and‐a-A Father at Last

  half glasses of wine in quick succession. I’ll have to call a taxi.”

  But even as she said it, she made a quick mental calculation—the gardens and café were a good twenty‐five minutes from her home. On a Friday night, the cabs would be busy and she’d be lucky if the fare came in at less than a hundred dollars. She didn’t have that amount of cash on her, and not all the cabs let you pay with a card. Then another thought occurred to her.

  “Unless…” She saw his pupils dilate. “Unless, you dropped me home, Ben?” It was a simple, practical suggestion—a perfectly innocent suggestion—so why did it send her pulse into overdrive and cause her to practically gabble incoherently? “I can get one of my friends to drop me out here tomorrow to pick up my car—”

  “I can’t do that, Kelly, love.” His voice low, he moved his body slightly so he faced away from the woman at the café counter.

  Kelly understood—it embarrassed him to turn down her request for a lift home. Ben might be a criminal, with people to meet, deals to do on this night, but in a strange twist of irony, he had good old‐fashioned manners. And for a second there, the thought of riding in the car with him, sitting close, breathing the same air he breathed, listening to music maybe—or just sharing simple conversation—had lit up her mind like a full moon emerging from the clouds on a dark night.

  “But there’s another option,” he said, swinging around to the café proprietor. “Are there any rooms vacant in the bed and breakfast?”

  The middle‐aged woman handed him his change, smiling, sending a quick glance across to Kelly and back to Ben, and said, “You’re in luck. The three rooms in the main house are all booked, but the studio suite in the garden is available. It’s rather gorgeous actually.”

  Her smile widened. “We call it the honeymoon suite.”

  Little sparks ignited in the base of Kelly’s stomach. Honeymoon suite! There would never be a honeymoon with Ben. But she could pretend, couldn’t she? Just for one night, she could pretend that the handsome man standing beside her, the complex, romantic man with his endearing sense of humour and strong protective streak, was hers and hers alone.

  She could even pretend he didn’t have a serious character flaw, which set him on the opposite side of the law to her.

  “My friend will take it.”

  His words were a sharp slap. But a timely reminder. She hoped her disappointment didn’t show on her face. She watched Ben write ‘Kelly Atkinson’ on the register, and didn’t even try to protest when he pulled out more notes to pay for the room. She’d make sure she repaid him the money.

  “I’ll just phone through to my husband and get him to prepare the studio for you,”

  the woman said. “It’ll take fifteen minutes max. Would you like a cup of coffee in the meantime—on the house?”

  Julie Mac

  “So, any thoughts on when we could visit your father?” They’d declined the offer of coffee and opted instead for a stroll down the garden’s Scented Walk while the room was being prepared.

  With a path of fragrant prostrate thyme underfoot, deliciously scented flowers tantalising her nose and Ben at her side, the walk should have been bliss. Why couldn’t life be that simple?

  “I’m scared, Ben.” When they’d set out, he’d taken her hand easily, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do, and now, as she stopped and turned to face him, he took her other hand in his.

  “What are you scared of?” The naked flames of flares lining the path cast strange shadows on his face and she shivered, although the night was warm.

  “That I won’t know him—won’t recognise him…won’t…like him. And…” She looked away from his face, focussing on the creamy perfect flower of a magnolia on the other side of the path.

  “What, Kelly?” He gave her hands the gentlest squeeze of encouragement.

  “I’m scared—really scared—that he won’t like me.” She almost whispered the last words.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  She looked back at him. He’d moved slightly, so the shadows from the flares had shifted and he looked more like the Ben she knew—had known—so well.

  “Why not? I’ve treated him pretty shabbily for these last nine years, haven’t I? I wouldn’t speak to him at Mum’s funeral, and then when he came out of prison, I refused to see him. I’m ashamed, Ben. I know as well as anyone—better than most, I guess—that people can atone for their wrongdoing. They can take their punishment, change their ways, make a fresh start.

  “But I couldn’t forgive him. I was angry as a kid, and somehow the anger stayed with me.”

  “Let it go, darlin’, let it go.” He pulled her in close to his body and wrapped his arms around her.

  She let herself settle into his embrace, let his warmth flow around her in a protective mantle.

  “It wasn’t all bad though, was it?” he murmured in her ear. “There were some advantages to having your father in prison
.”

  His words had her wanting to tear free. And maybe thump him. “Name one!” She placed both hands on his chest and pushed hard, but he wasn’t letting go.

  A Father at Last

  “The teachers at school—they looked out for you and made allowances. In many ways, the other kids envied you for that. The students, especially once we got to high school, respected you for your strength and courage in the face of adversity. And you were always cool and calm and a bit more grownup than the rest of us. Why do you think you got voted in as head girl?”

  She stopped pushing against his chest and stared at him in amazement. “The other kids envied me?”

  “You got it, sister,” he said, a silly grin forming. “And now that we’re agreed that your father isn’t the devil incarnate, can we decide on a day to go and see him? Maybe in your lunch hour or after work. This week’s good with me.”

  Kelly couldn’t help smiling. The other kids envied me! “Monday I’ve got…um, things to do. Then Tuesday I’m going to Wellington all day with one of the partners to see a client and we won’t be back till late, but Wednesday’s okay. Straight after work?”

  “Wednesday it is. I’ll call you and we can meet at his work. Yeah?”

  “Yes.” It was a still evening, but a sudden rogue breeze rustled the trees and bushes beside the path, and sent the shadows from the flares skittering. And amid the rustling of leaves, she fancied she heard a woman’s voice say ‘Good girl.’

  “Yes,” said Kelly again, more loudly. “On Wednesday, I’ll see him.” With Ben by her side, it would be okay.

  Julie Mac

  Chapter 7

  Ben leaned in and kissed her cheek, fighting the demons that told him to forget about the cheek and head straight for her mouth. Then he pulled back before he lost control totally.

  Her beautiful eyes, a luminous silver in the light of the flares, were huge. In them, he saw sadness, hope—and most gut‐wrenching of all—trust. Trust in him. Trust that he was persuading her to do the right thing.