“And did you see how attached Daphne already is? Did you?”
“Daphne attaches herself to everybody she meets, she’s always been that way—”
“And what happens when Lili leaves?”
“She’ll get over it.”
“And will Claire?”
“What are you talkin’ about? Claire’s barely warming up to the woman—”
“And when she does,” Susan said, genuine worry in her eyes, “she’s going to fall hard. Harder than she’s ready to deal with this soon after losing her mother. Tony…” She laid a hand on his arm. “I know how horribly lonely you must be. But for the children’s sake, for your sake, please don’t do anything you’ll regret later—”
“Not about to. After everything I’ve been through these past months…” His throat working overtime, Tony looked away from the still-fresh pain in his mother-in-law’s eyes. “Lili’s a friend,” he said at last. Which was true, his increasingly frequent more-than-friendly thoughts about her notwithstanding. “And if she can help Claire act and sound like a little girl again, instead of a crotchety old woman, I’m not gonna stop her.”
“We can help her do that!”
“No, you can’t. Because every time she looks at you, she sees her mother. Worse, she sees how much pain you’re still in. And that’s not to put down how much you and Lou have helped us, or how much you love the girls or they love you. Not at all. But I saw something in Claire’s face today that I haven’t seen in a long, long time, something good, and it just seems stupid not to run with that, you know?”
“It’s just…” Susan’s mouth thinned. “We don’t want you to get hurt again, either,” she said, then popped on her sunglasses, took a deep breath, and headed toward the Caddy, her tennis shoes barely making a sound on Tony’s shady, root-cracked walk.
Lili scooted away from the window, crouching in front of Josie—who’d dragged her toy basket from the living room into the vestibule—just as Tony came back in. The door shut behind him, he leaned against it, one hand still on the knob. “So how much of that did you hear?”
She flushed. “What makes you think—?”
“Lili. Please.”
“I got the important bits,” she said on a rush of air, wrestling a stuffed cat out of Ed’s mouth and handing it back to Josie, who sternly wagged her finger at the dog and said, “No, no, Ed—mine!” Lili smiled. “That she’s worried about the girls becoming too attached to me.” Her eyes met his. “That you’re definitely not looking for…entanglements right now. Which we’d already established.”
Tony pushed off the door, shoving his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans as he watched the baby. “Looking, not looking…either one takes more energy than I’ve got.” Then he dropped back onto the bench, tightly gripping the edge on either side of his thighs. “But I had to say something to get Susan off my case. Off yours, too—”
“Yuck,” Josie said, making a face before conking poor Ed on the head with the toy. “Kitty all wet. Bad Ed. Bad doggie.”
At Ed’s What did I do? look, Lili chuckled. Josie handed the soggy kitty to her; pensively wiping it on her skirt, Lili said, “You’re giving me far too much credit about Claire, though.”
“She giggled, Lil. Do you have any idea…?” He cleared his throat, then sagged against the bench’s wooden back, pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eyes before saying, “Did the guy say he’d come back today?”
“He didn’t say much of anything, really. Do you…do you want me to stay?”
“No, you go on,” he said, smiling for Josie when she pranced back to him and crawled into his lap. “Wouldn’t be anything you could do if he shows up again, anyway—”
“My daddy,” Josie said, patting Tony’s muscled forearm before threading her silky little arms around his neck. “Kiss kiss?”
“You got it, cutie,” Tony said, bouncing a kiss off her puckered lips, looking at Lili over the baby’s shoulder when she hugged her daddy again.
And the love and fear and longing in those deep brown eyes nearly did her in.
The early morning sun beating down on him at the end of the driveway, Tony checked his watch for what must’ve been the tenth time in as many minutes. Over in the yard, Daph and Josie and the Ed—who was going, too, Rudy had said their own dog, Simon, would get a kick out of it—were running around in circles and making enough noise to set off car alarms in Alaska.
“Maybe she changed her mind,” Claire said, leaning over the open tailgate to shove in her backpack and not trying all that hard to hide her disappointment. Tony inwardly swore, thinking Susan was right, it was dumb, letting the girl get close to somebody who wasn’t hanging around.
Maybe even dumber than letting himself get close to somebody who wasn’t hanging around.
“Nah,” he said, shooting Claire a smile before staring down the street, like he could will Lili to materialize. “I’m sure something must’ve just held her up.”
“Did you call her?”
“Several times. Yes, both her cell and Magda’s landline. Nobody answered…wait. Is that her? That’s her, right? See, what did I tell you, that she’d be here, right?”
Claire frowned. Okay, that might’ve been overkill.
A minute later, his Uncle Benny pulled his verging-on-vintage Pontiac up behind the Volvo, leaning out of the window to yell, “Sorry we’re late, this one—” he aimed a thumb in Lili’s direction, a blur of arms and bags as she scrambled out of the passenger seat “—had to make a last-minute stop at the Rite Aid, and I got a flat, can you believe it? Haven’t had one of those in probably twenty years—”
“And I forgot to charge my cell,” Lili said, hot-footing it to the tailgate with a purse large enough to stash Ed in hanging from her shoulder as she dragged a small rolling case behind her. “And of course nobody was home to tell you what was going on…” Tony came up beside her to heft the case into the car, and she was very close and very warm, her scent rising up off her in brain-melting waves, and when he looked down into those oh-God-I’m-so-sorry eyes behind her glasses…
Uh, boy.
“S’ okay,” he said, one brand of anxiety sloughing off only to be replaced by something far scarier the instant she smiled. Fortunately, one of them had the presence of mind to break the eye contact—not Tony, however—after which they both thanked Benny for bringing her. Waving, his uncle backed out of the driveway and drove off.
The next five minutes was spent making sure the car was packed and the girls were emptied, that somebody had remembered to bring the dog’s food and dish and diapers for the baby, whose potty skills were sketchy at best, and suddenly Tony heard Daphne say, “Isn’t that the man who was here yesterday?” and he snapped his head around so hard his neck cracked.
Then he glanced at Lili, who nodded. And frowned. “Should we go inside?”
“Not necessary,” Tony said mildly, offering a clearly troubled Claire a quick smile before he walked out to the street and down the half block to where the silver Jag was parked. At his approach, the man removed his sunglasses and got out, not looking a whole lot better than Tony felt. Wasn’t until he got right up to the guy, however, that his stomach sank to his knees.
“Holy crap. Cole Jamison?”
The dude shot a quick look around, like Tony shouldn’t’ve said his name out loud. Then his gaze veered to Tony’s driveway. To Josie, safe in Lili’s arms.
“You first,” Tony said in a low voice.
“You’re leaving?”
“For a couple of days. Don’t worry, I’m not skippin’ town. Well?”
Cole almost didn’t seem to hear him, staring instead past Tony’s shoulder, while Tony tried to absorb the irony. Two high school jocks, one from a blue-collar Italian family, the other from the same country-club set as Rissa’s maternal grandparents, both with a thing for the same girl. How smug Tony’d felt, when he’d “won.”
Cole’s hand trembled when he rubbed his mouth. “She looks like me.”
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“She looks like Marissa,” Tony said calmly, taking a sick, perverse pleasure in Cole’s poleaxed expression.
“My family and I were away. In Europe. We got home day before yesterday, and there was this, this letter…”
“Yeah. I got one, too.”
Finally, olive-green eyes met Tony’s. “She never told you?”
“Nope. Up until a couple weeks ago, I had no clue.” Tony shoved his hands in his back pockets. “Your wife know?”
Cole blew out a soft, humorless laugh. “No. It was—”
“Save it. I really don’t give a damn.”
“It was a fling, that’s all,” the guy said anyway, more than a little desperation edging his words. “Lasted less than a month. For what it’s worth, Rissa called it off.”
“That supposed to make me feel better? Or you?”
Cole’s eyes widened, then shifted back to Josie. “Do you know…?”
“If she’s mine? Not yet. In the works, though.”
“When will you—?”
“In a couple of days. Hey—wanna go halfsies on the lab fee?”
Angry, scared eyes shot to his. “Not funny.”
“No, it’s not. But then, neither is finding out the kid you had every reason to believe was yours might not be.”
“It wasn’t—”
“Supposed to happen? Yeah, I got that.”
Now panic flooded the jerk’s face. “Sarah—my wife—she can’t find out about this. It would kill her—”
“Dad?” Claire yelled from the car. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah, baby, be right there.” Tony turned back to Cole. “One question—do you want to know?” A long moment passed before the man finally nodded. “Then you got a card or something?” Tony said over the sensation of riding out a hurricane in a rowboat. “So I can get in touch with you,” he added irritably when the guy gave him deer-in-headlights.
“Uh, yeah.” He fumbled for his wallet, pulling out an embossed business card which he handed over. “Call my cell, nobody answers that except me.”
Tony stared at the card for a second, then blew out a breath that barely dented the nausea. “Look, your wife’s not gonna hear about any of this from me. No skin off my nose. But if the baby does turn out to be yours…?”
“I don’t know,” Cole said softly. “I don’t…” After sparing Tony a final, helpless look, he ducked back into his fancy little car and sped off.
“Dad?” Claire asked, worried, when Tony and Josie reached the Volvo again. “Who was that?”
He caught the concern in Lili’s eyes before he smiled at his daughter. “Somebody I went to school with,” he said, swinging the baby into her car seat. “Guess he decided we should catch up with each other. Okay…” Josie strapped in, he clapped his hands. “Let’s get this show on the road!”
As kids and dogs piled in, Lili looked at him over the car’s roof and mouthed, “You okay?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘okay’,” Tony muttered, sliding behind the wheel, taking a moment to steady his breathing. Soft, strong fingers briefly squeezed his knee, but he knew better than to look over. Knew in any case she wouldn’t be looking at him, either. Instead, he yanked the shift into Reverse and backed out of his driveway.
“You know,” he said quietly a few minutes later, when the kids were making such a racket they couldn’t’ve heard fighter jets go over, “if you’d gotten here on time—”
“He would have missed you. I know.”
Desperate to change the subject, Tony glanced over. “What was that sudden trip to the drugstore all about, anyway?”
“Just, um, needed some personal things,” she said, giving him an embarrassed please-don’t-make-me-spell-it-out look.
“Oh. Sorry,” Tony muttered, wondering if a denser human being ever walked the planet.
Chapter Nine
Chasing a giggling, barefoot Josie around his room at the inn, taking things away as fast as she could grab them, Tony barely heard the soft knock. “Yeah, it’s open—”
“Mine?” Josie said, clutching the faded, antique-looking doll, eyes wide.
“No, baby, it belongs to the people who live here—”
“Lili!” Still holding the doll hostage, she ran over on her chunky little legs and thrust the doll in Lili’s face. “Pretty dolly!”
“Oooh, very pretty.” Lili glanced at the crib set up on the other side of the spacious room, where Tony had already dumped Josie’s favorite “friends.” “But…” She crossed to the crib, snatching one of them out of it. “What about…?” She looked to Tony, holding up the goofy, long-legged bird.
“Harvey.”
“Haavey,” she said, imitating his accent so perfectly Tony had to smile. “Harvey thinks you forgot him,” she said, pulling a comically sad face, then hugging the bird to her. “He’s sad, he wants his JoJo.”
Josie looked skeptical for a moment, then dumped the doll on the floor and reached for her toy, roughly stroking him. “It’s okay, Harvey,” she said, her pronunciation the same as Tony’s. “Don’t be scared, I’m here.” She yawned. And screwed her palm into one eye. “I won’t leave you.”
Tony’s breath caught, before he dared to meet Lili’s eyes. Eyes filled with caring so deep, so genuine, he had to look away.
“Your room okay?” he said, hauling his sleepy girl up into his arms.
“It’s lovely, yes. The whole inn’s beautiful. And it’s so peaceful up here. Now I’m really glad I came. Where are the other girls?”
“Daph’s off playing with Violet’s boys, and I’m pretty sure Claire’s with Stacey. And this little critter,” he said, blowing a kiss into her neck, “needs to take her nap.”
“No,” she said, giggling, trying to wriggle free. “Don’t want nap! Not s’eepy.”
Tony swung her up and over the railing, gently plunking her into the crib. “Then you can have a nice, quiet rest with your friends, how’s that?”
But the baby clung to the crib rail, her large, watery eyes darting around the strange room. A moment later her arms shot up, her face crumpled. “Don’t wanna stay here! Wanna go wif you!”
“Okay, how about…” Tony looked over at Lili, then nodded toward the door between his room and the girls’. Her eyes following his, she nodded back. “Lili and I are gonna be right in here,” he said, walking over and pushing open the door so she could see the other room. “I’ll sit in that chair, okay? So you can see me?”
That got a skeptical look, followed by an even more skeptical, “P’omise?”
“Promise.”
Arms shot up again. “Hug?”
Tony obliged, ignoring the pain, the fear, as the little girl whispered, “Love you,” against his cheek.
“Love you, too, cupcake.” Finally, a very wobbly Josie laid down on her side, Harvey safely tucked against her chest and eagle eyes pinned to where Tony said he’d be. Except even before they left, the eagle eyes were at half-mast.
“She’ll be out in less than a minute,” Tony whispered as he ushered Lili into the other room. Feeling like he was about to suffocate, he raised both windows, then opened the door to the hallway, letting in a welcome breeze. Then, with a weary sigh, he sank into one of the red plaid chairs. Lili lowered herself onto the edge of the nearest Colonial-spreaded twin bed, her gaze intense.
“So what happened?” she asked quietly, since obviously there’d been no opportunity to talk about his face-to-face with Cole before this. “And why are you looking at me like that?”
Because the four hours between the drive and lunch and getting settled in had given Tony lots of time to reconsider the wisdom of constantly unloading on the woman. “I don’t get it. Why you care so much. It’s not like you have a personal stake in any of this or anything.”
Several seconds passed before she said, with some heat, “You know…if you think I’m being nosy, just say so.”
“No, it’s not that—”
“Then I care because I just do. About all
of you. That is the stake I have in this. So deal with it.”
Somehow, that didn’t help. But Tony replayed the conversation, anyway, even as he realized it didn’t sound any better out loud than it had the previous hundred times it had repeated itself in his brain.
“Do you think Cole would even want Josie?” Lili asked when he’d finished.
“I have no idea, to tell you the truth. But he didn’t exactly lie across the driveway so we couldn’t leave, either.” Tony pushed himself out of the too-soft chair to pace the room, idly picking up assorted items from Daphne’s exploded gym bag and setting them on the bed where she’d already set her favorite ball-gowned Barbie against the pillows. The contents of Claire’s bag, on the other hand, were—he opened a bureau drawer and smiled—already neatly installed in their temporary quarters. “I’m guessing he doesn’t know, himself,” he said, shutting the drawer, then turning to Lili. “Although if you want my take on it, what has him scared spitless is his wife finding out.”
“But he does want to know the results?”
“So he said.”
“So what does this mean?”
“I don’t know what it means, okay?” Tony said, finally giving in to the hopeless, helpless fury he’d been holding back all morning. His gaze swung to the baby, now out like a light in the other room, and his heart hurt with loving her. With the sick fear that he might lose her, that the test would say he wasn’t her father and Cole Jamison would get over himself and tell his wife and they’d decide it was okay, they’d work it out, Josie could come live with them—
“It’s like everybody expects me to be in charge,” he said, his voice strained as he leaned one wrist against the doorframe, staring at his little girl, “to know what I’m doing. Only every damn day somebody decides to change the freaking rules.” He swallowed past the golf ball in his throat. “I’ll do anything to protect my babies, Lil. But it’s like every day I know less and less how I’m supposed to do that.”
From Friends to Forever Page 12
