“Well, I’m not going anywhere without my daughter. So move to the side, Lindsay, before I pick you up and move you myself.”
She held strong. “What about the Dutton curse?”
“Nice try,” he said. “I may not live much past forty, but I plan to spend the time I do have getting to know my daughter.”
“Well good. I’m glad.” Her angry scowl changed to admiration. One minute she looked ready to claw his eyes out and in the next she looked like she might hug him.
“Is Molly ready to go?” he asked impatiently.
She stood there smiling for a moment longer before she said, “Let me check.” Turning about, she went back inside, letting the door shut on his face.
“Molly, your dad is here to pick you up,” he heard Lindsay call.
Dad. A knot formed in his throat. He inhaled and got a whiff of jasmine and something else he didn’t recognize. The front yard resembled a nursery with all the flowers and plants.
It wasn’t long before the door opened again, but this time it was Kari and Molly who came outside.
Molly was dressed in a skirt and a frilly top. She looked ready for church instead of a few nights at his house. She didn’t look anything like the little girl he’d met on Sunday or at the bowling alley the week before that. But this was their first outing, and he wasn’t about to comment on her clothes and screw it all up. “Ready to go?”
Molly nodded. Her small round face appeared pale and drawn. She looked as nervous as he felt.
“Molly,” Kari said. “Why don’t you go on ahead to the car, so I can have a few words with Max.”
Molly headed toward the car without protest.
Kari’s eyes were red, Max noticed, as if she’d been crying for three days. Once again he found himself feeling sorry for her. And that irked him. “What is it?” he asked. “I was already drilled by your bodyguard and I’m running a little late.”
“I just thought you should know that Molly sleeps with a nightlight.” She lowered her voice so Molly wouldn’t overhear. “She likes to leave the bedroom door open just a tiny bit, just enough so she doesn’t feel all alone.”
“Okay,” Max said. “I appreciate it. Thanks.” Kari’s eyes, he noticed, were all round and glossy. He didn’t like the way he felt when she looked at him like that, as if he was deliberately hurting her.
“Although she’d never admit it to anyone,” Kari added as she followed him down the walkway, “she likes to be tucked in at night. She also likes chocolate but if she eats any before bed she almost always gets a stomach ache. And—”
Max stopped at the end of the walkway and turned to face her.
Kari smacked into him. “Sorry.”
“And?” he asked, his patience worn thin.
Kari’s green-eyed gaze held onto his for a long moment. “And she’s not as tough as she likes to think.”
“Sounds like her mother to me.”
The corners of Kari’s soft mouth curved upward just the tiniest bit.
“I’ll take good care of her,” he said before he left her standing alone on the walkway. Max walked around the front of his car and climbed in behind the wheel. He started the engine. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kari still standing there, looking lost. “I think your mom wants to say goodbye.”
Molly glanced that way, let out a long ponderous sigh, then gave Kari one of those princess waves, fast and efficient, but without much feeling.
Max waved, too, and figured he better not prolong Kari’s suffering for much longer. A part of him wanted to get out, open the back door, and tell Kari to get the hell in the car. Any moron could see that the woman was worried sick about her only daughter. It tugged at his heart to see her standing there looking so forlorn. “Hold on,” he said to Molly. He put the car in park, climbed out, and walked back to where Kari stood.
Kari, looking way too interested in whatever it was he had to say, headed closer his way and leaned over the picket fence so she wouldn’t miss one little word he had to say.
He got a whiff of the flowery scent of her perfume and a glimpse of her creamy white neck, but not enough cleavage to make him do or say anything too stupid. Yeah, he was angry with her alright, but he was beginning to wonder how long he’d be able to stay mad. “Listen,” he said, shoving his fingers through his hair before glancing toward his car to make sure Molly couldn’t hear. “I’ll make sure she has a light on tonight. I’ll tuck her in and leave the door halfway open, too. Okay?”
Her eyes brightened. She nodded.
He started to leave, but then he turned back. “I will also make sure she brushes her teeth for a minimum of three minutes straight and I’ll make sure she calls you before she goes to bed.”
Kari looked as if she might cry, and since that wouldn’t suit him at all if she did, he figured he’d better stop while he was ahead. “Okay,” he said. “I guess that’s it. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay.”
When Max got as far as the hood of his car, she called out his name. He turned and waited.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded and watched her turn around and head up the walkway. Dream Girl. She still did things to him...things he just couldn’t explain.
#
By the time Max merged onto Santa Monica Boulevard, neither he nor Molly had said more than a few casual words about the weather.
She was nervous.
He was nervous.
But he was the adult, which meant it was his job to make his daughter feel comfortable. How the hell was he supposed to do that? Suddenly he had no frickin’ idea of what to say to a thirteen-year old. When he came to a stop, he glanced at Molly. Her hands were clasped in her lap, her eyes looking off to the hills. His gaze settled back on the road ahead of him. “So,” he said after clearing his throat, “you can curl your tongue, huh?”
She nodded, exhaled, looked to her feet.
Good job, buddy. Keep it up and you’ll have her rambling on in no time. He rolled his eyes at his wayward thinking and told himself he could do this. He was just getting warmed up. “So...tell me about this Grant kid.”
She lifted a shoulder. “He’s nice.”
Concentrate. Try and remember what you say to your niece and nephew when they come to visit. But his mind drew a big fat blank. This was definitely not the same Molly he’d met at the bowling alley. One thing was clear, she was Kari’s daughter through and through, and she wasn’t going to make this easy on him. The girl at the bowling alley had been the life of the party, talking a mile a minute and making all her friends laugh. This shy little girl sitting next to him, stiff in her plaid wool skirt and starched blouse, was someone else altogether.
He exhaled. Time is what they both needed...time to adjust and get to know one another. A siren sounded in the distance, filling the silence between them. He needed to get home. Breanne would know what to say to make Molly feel comfortable. She was a female and females always knew what to do in situations like this.
Once they reached the house, relief flooded through him as he parked the car, climbed out, and grabbed Molly’s overnight things from the trunk. He was halfway up the stairs when he realized Molly was still sitting in the car, staring straight ahead. He came back to the car and tapped on the passenger window.
Her gaze remained locked on her feet.
He set her bag on the ground and opened the door. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. At least he thought she shook her head. It was hard to tell.
“Are you feeling alright? You’re not sick or anything, are you? Because if you are I could take you back if you want.”
That got her attention. She looked into his eyes, that same deep, penetrating stare that her mother was so good at.
“Do you want me to go back?” she asked, accusation in her voice and eyes, seemingly daring him to come up with the right answer.
Max picked up her bag again and settled the strap over his shoulder. “No way.” He crooked his neck
, trying to get the kink out. “Breanne is very excited to have this chance to get to know you.”
“What about you?” she asked.
Shit. He needed to keep his mouth shut because every time he opened it, her eyes grew big and round. “What about me?” Asking a question with a question in hopes of skirting around the real issue was something he always did when he was nervous. Because he was pretty sure he knew the answer she was fishing for. He just wasn’t good at that touchy feely stuff and maybe he just wasn’t ready.
“You said Breanne was excited that I was here. Are you excited to have me here?” Molly asked, unwilling to leave it alone and let him off the hook.
The kid had definitely been hanging around Kari Murphy too long. “Of course I’m excited,” he said in a tone that hardly convinced himself, let alone his daughter. What was he going to say, ‘no’? The truth was he was too damn scared to be excited, but hell would have to freeze over before he’d tell her he was scared. She’d been brought up by a couple of females. He was probably the first male figure she’d ever had to look up to. He couldn’t give her the impression that her father scared easily. He was a guy, a big tough football player. He didn’t do deep. He liked to keep things on a need-to-know basis. If she started crying, he would definitely have to honk the horn and send for reinforcements. Judging by the look on her face, she wasn’t convinced of his excitement.
But thank God, for small miracles, because she finally climbed out of the car. He had to stop himself from wiping his brow and looking heavenward.
Moments later, Max was never so happy to see anyone as he was to see Breanne when she opened the front door and threw her arms around Molly, taking his daughter through the house and to the backyard where his niece and nephew were swimming in the pool. From the kitchen window, he watched how easily his niece struck up a conversation with Molly. And then it dawned on him that his niece and nephew had left three days ago. What were they doing here?
“How did it go?” his mother asked, giving him a start since he’d thought he was alone in the kitchen. His mother had always been good at that—appearing out of nowhere.
“What are you doing here?” Max asked.
“Sally and Jill thought you could use some help, so I drove back with the kids. We arrived thirty minutes ago.”
He looked out the kitchen window and saw Molly brighten as Brooke and Matthew huddled around her, making her laugh with their ridiculous antics. “Thanks,” he said. “Molly and I just need some time to adjust.”
“How about Kari?”
He turned toward his mother, surprised she would ask about a woman she clearly didn’t like. It wasn’t her style. His mother cared deeply for her family, usually to the point of annoyance, but it took her years to get attached to anyone he or his sisters brought home for her to meet. Poor Jill had to have a baby with Fred before his mother would even acknowledge the poor guy as a member of the Dutton family. Dan hadn’t had it nearly as rough, since he was the sort of guy who didn’t take crap from anyone, including his mother-in-law.
Gazing into cool gray eyes, Max said, “What about Kari?”
“How is she handling having you in Molly’s life?”
“It doesn’t really matter. Kari brought this upon herself.”
His mother looked thoughtful for a moment. “I had the impression, before you discovered Molly was your daughter, that you and Kari had something going. Am I wrong?”
“Wrong again. Kari Murphy is a professional first and a nutritionist second. It was strictly business between the two of us,” he lied.
“But you would have liked there to have been something more?”
He arched a brow. “Still nosy after all these years?”
“I’m too old to change now, don’t you think?”
He smiled. Sixty-four-years old and yet she looked years younger. “I suppose,” he said, figuring he was sparing himself a lecture if he just answered her question straight up. “I’ll admit, that even in the short amount of time I spent with her, something about Kari made me yearn for a long healthy life.”
“But you no longer have those feelings?”
He raked his fingers through his hair, turning back to the window to watch his daughter. Molly laughed at something Breanne said to her and twin dimples appeared. There was the Molly he’d met at the bowling alley, the Molly who lit up the room with a mere smile, the Molly who had come into this world thirteen years ago, and he hadn’t a damn clue.
“No longer,” he said in answer to his mother’s question. “Molly is a leftie and she can curl her tongue, but that’s all I know. I missed seeing her first steps. I have no idea if she cried on her first day of kindergarten.” He arched a brow as he turned to his mother and asked, “Has she ever had stitches? What was she for Halloween last year, or the year before that? Who taught her to swim? Sure, I’ll probably see pictures eventually and hopefully she’ll learn to talk to me and I’ll learn to talk to her, but there are so many things I’ll never know about my daughter because Kari decided one day that enough was enough, and she couldn’t bother herself any longer with trying to contact me. No, Mom. No longer.”
CHAPTER 15
Kari followed Richard Bauer, her real estate agent, through the two-story house.
“So, we’re still on for dinner Sunday night?” he asked, leading her into the master bedroom.
Kari wasn’t in the mood to go out with anyone tonight or any other night. It was Saturday and Molly was still at Max’s house. Molly had called after her first night, excited and happy, asking if she could stay through the weekend since his niece and nephew had returned with Max’s mother. The only time Kari had been away from Molly for more than a few days, was when Molly had gone away to sixth grade camp for a week.
Kari’s emotions were running high, her nerves were shot. But other than meeting Breanne at the therapist today, she didn’t have anything going on today or tomorrow. “Let me think about it,” Kari said, deciding dinner with Richard might help keep her mind off of Molly and Max.
A closet door creaked shut. “I don’t like this house,” Lindsay said from the other room. “It’s too boxy.”
Kari gave Richard a pat on the arm. “Just ignore her.”
“I heard that,” Lindsay said before she opened and closed another set of closets doors.
“You haven’t liked one house we’ve been shown,” Kari said. “I think this house has definite potential.”
“It’s hot and stuffy. The doors creak. Does this place have air conditioning?”
“It was built three years ago,” Richard assured her.
“So does it have air conditioning?” Lindsay asked again as she joined them in the master suite.
“Yes,” Richard said, his patience with Lindsay wearing thin. “The house has air conditioning. And heat, too.”
Kari laughed at the pout on Lindsay’s face when she joined them in the master bedroom. “Molly and I can’t live with you forever,” Kari reminded her.
Lindsay looked from Kari to Richard to the bed. “I don’t see why not. Molly is going to be spending a lot of time with her father now.”
Kari knew what Lindsay was up to. She was trying to sabotage any chance of her and Richard getting together. Lindsay had high hopes of seeing Max and Kari and Molly as one happy family, and therefore, she saw Richard as a threat to her plan.
A bewildered look crossed Richard’s face. “I thought you said Molly’s father was out of the picture?”
Kari narrowed her eyes at Lindsay. “He was...until recently.”
“Are you two seeing one another?”
“No,” Kari said, dismissing the question with a wave of her hand. “I was hired by the NFL to oversee Max Dutton’s eating habits and make sure he was fit enough to play next season.”
“He plays pro football for the Los Angeles Condors,” Lindsay volunteered.
“He knows,” Kari said. “They met a few days ago.”
“I was just reading about Cole Fletcher in the new
spaper this morning,” Richard said, obviously mistaking Cole as the father of her child. “I didn’t see anything about him having kids, although I did read that he was recently spotted with Alyse Vanderkempt, the actress from that new hit reality show Desperate Times.” He chuckled.
Lindsay’s face paled, but she kept her composure. “Cole Fletcher is a jerk. Max Dutton is Molly’s father.”
Kari sighed. “If you two don’t mind. I’m not in the mood to discuss Max Dutton. I’m here to look at houses and I think this house is lovely,” she told Richard. “In fact, I think I’d like to put a bid on it right away. Why don’t you pick me up at seven tomorrow and we can discuss the terms at dinner.”
#
A two-story vermilion sculpture stood before the entrance of the building where Kari met Breanne later that same day.
“Sorry I’m late,” Kari said as she stepped up onto the curb in front of a towering office building on Wilshire Boulevard.
“No problem. We still have a few minutes,” Breanne said as she led Kari through the revolving doors. “I can’t thank you enough for coming...especially under the circumstance.”
Kari followed Breanne across the lobby, their heels clicking against sleek marble floors. They stopped in front of the elevator doors and Breanne pushed the elevator button.
“When are you and Max going to finish your nutritional training?”
“I’m not sure. We haven’t talked about it. How’s Molly doing?” Kari asked, changing the subject.
“She’s having a good time with her cousins, Brooke and Matthew. She’s even managed to bond with Mom and that’s no easy feat. From what I’ve observed so far, Molly and Max haven’t talked much though. I think they’re both struggling to figure out where they stand with one another.”
Kari ached for her daughter, wishing there was something she could do to make the situation easier on her. She missed Molly beyond reason. The elevator doors opened and Kari followed Breanne inside. Breanne pushed the button to the fifth floor.
Taming Mad Max Page 17
