LEARNING CURVES

by Joanne Rock

  After much debate since the weekend, Cal had decided he'd be better served giving Allison a little more freedom instead of taking some away. She had a point about not being able to go out on the weekends. She worked diligently enough all week that she deserved an outing or two without her big brother breathing down her neck.

  He didn't want to squelch her "social growth opportunities," after all. Maddy had been denied that sort of frivolity as a teenager, and look where it had landed her—with a penchant for leather and a talent for tempting well-meaning men to forsake all their morals.

  Damn. He hadn't meant to get riled about the car wash episode again.

  Today would be Allison's day. No Madeline thoughts to tease, tantalize or aggravate him.

  He turned into the university's main entrance, easily maneuvering around the limited traffic. The quiet, tree-lined drive didn't connect to any major parking lots, existing more for show than utility. Cal appreciated the traditional collegiate look of this side of campus, especially the bronze cast of The Thinker statue.

  Seeing this view of U of L's stately brick buildings made him remember why he'd been so proud to be offered a teaching position here. He'd spent enough time in the grease pits to consider life in the academic world pretty lofty.

  He spied Allison and her flower-child clothes right away. He had already laid on the horn when he realized who his little sister was walking across campus with.

  Madeline Watson. The woman who thought his sexual prowess ought to be chronicled in her dissertation.

  The same woman who'd unwittingly trashed feelings he hadn't even realized he possessed for her. Both Maddy and Allison turned toward the car horn, along with fifteen other people crossing campus. Briefly he thought of continuing right on past them and postponing his lunch with his sister, but that would be selfish.

  He hadn't spent enough time with Allison since the night Madeline had knocked his world clear off its axis. He didn't want his sister to think he was avoiding her.

  Besides, he'd gone to a lot of trouble to secure a nice car for her. He refused to let what had happened between him and Maddy spoil his enjoyment of the moment.

  He would simply focus on Allison, and Madeline would go her own way once she learned Cal had a lunch date with his sister. He could endure five minutes in Maddy's presence without going back on his vow to not touch her again, couldn't he?

  It was only five minutes.

  "Allison!" Cal called out the window and waved his arm. He pulled into a vacant space on the wide curve of the access road.

  His sister spied him and tugged Maddy along behind her.

  Cal's no-touch resolve faltered just a little when he realized she was back to wearing her bulky men's shirts and long skirts. Black leather and heels had its appeal, but Cal had gotten fired up by tweed and button-downs long before lace and stilettos had come along.

  With any luck, maybe it wouldn't take a whole five minutes for Allison to say goodbye to her teacher.

  "Hey, Cal!" Allison reached the car and leaned in the passenger window, her pale blond braids hanging down like puppy dog ears. "Are you stealing loaner cars from the garage again?" she teased.

  "Not a chance, doll." He hopped out of the car and nodded at Madeline as she glided to a halt beside his sister.

  The Lady Scholar straightened the eyeglasses she was wearing once again.

  Cal felt an electric jolt clear to his toes.

  "Don't tell me you got this to replace your Thunderbird," Allison commented, idly running her finger over the hood. "I can't picture you in something so tame."

  "Well, I hope you can picture you in it." He pulled a little red ribbon from his pants pocket and slapped it on the car's shiny white roof. "It's just for you, sis."

  Allison frowned. Her genius mind was slow putting together the meaning of his words, but Madeline seemed to have figured it out right away. Cal couldn't help the rush of pride he experienced when Maddy smiled her approval across the hood.

  "You're kidding," Allison finally managed to say.

  "Gee whiz, girl, show a little more faith in your big brother." He ushered Allison around the car, being careful to not get within raspberry range of Maddy. Opening the driver's side door, he nudged his sister inside. "You think I'm just going to let all the great social growth opportunities in life pass you by while you sit at home with me every weekend?"

  Cal noticed Maddy start backing away, and silently applauded her sensitivity. He didn't need to be distracted by her sexy sensible shoes at a time when he should be reaping mega doses of sisterly love and gratitude.

  "Oh, God, Cal. Thank you!" Allison leaped from the car and almost knocked him over with a bear hug. She turned around to call over her shoulder. "Maddy, do you believe this? Maddy! Come see my new car."

  So much for Madeline's sly getaway. Damn. His palms already itched with the need to span her little waist and pull her curvy body to his.

  Allison let him go to pull Madeline closer. "Can you believe it?" She hugged Maddy too, and then bounded back to her new car like a kid at Christmas. "Can I take it for a ride?" she asked, already toying with the keys.

  Cal barely had time to say yes when she started it up and with exaggerated precision pulled on her seat belt.

  "I'll just go around the block, okay?" She adjusted her mirrors and seat.

  Cal nodded, then realized that would leave him standing here—alone—with the biggest temptation of his life. "Or else you can just drive us to lunch—"

  Allison shook her head, already slipping the car in gear. "I want to eat on campus so we're not late for Maddy's class."

  Oh, no. That didn't mean what he thought it meant, did it?

  Fearing the worst, Cal reached for the passenger door, but Allison was pulling out into the driving lane.

  "Madeline is coming with us!" she called through the open window as she drove away. Leaving Cal and Madeline together. Alone.

  Memories of their awkward drive home Tuesday night drifted back to him. He didn't really want to alienate the woman who had been a good friend to him, but if she insisted on wreaking havoc with his control and then knocking him flat with her scholarly critique of his performance, he didn't have a choice. He had to keep his head on straight to secure Allison's guardianship.

  And maybe even his self-respect.

  Madeline cleared her throat in a deliberate way, like a teacher trying to gain class attention. Cal figured she'd found an excuse to beg off the lunch date.

  "I've been meaning to apologize for the other night." She peered up at him through her glasses, her eyes veiled by the reflected glare of the sun. Her hair twined around itself in a halfhearted coil at the back of her head.

  To all the rest of the world, she might look like a frazzled professor who didn't put much emphasis on her appearance. But Cal saw the temptress. The wild child.

  Even worse, he saw his friend.

  "Maddy, you don't need to—"

  She surprised him by barreling right over his words. "Yes, I do." She straightened her glasses, a gesture that, today, looked less like nervousness and more like gutsy determination.

  She took a deep breath. "I was so … overwhelmed the other night that I might have blurted out some awkward remarks just because I didn't quite know what to say."

  Cal thought he had known exactly what she was saying. She was just more interested in her research than she had ever been in being with him, but he wouldn't confide that point of view to her. Better to forget the whole thing and move on.

  "It's okay—"

  "No it isn't!" she insisted, seizing his arm and his ability to think rationally along with it.

  For a brief moment, when all he could envision was climbing into her sweet embrace again, he wondered if he could forget about her crazy quest for information on mating rituals and take her out on a real date.

  But that was an invitation to trouble. A surefire way to hurt each other and to disrupt the sane home life he planned to create for Allison.

 
"You don't understand, Cal. My life is inseparable from my work—wonderfully so, as far as I'm concerned. But I know other people find it annoying. I can't help but see how the whole world interacts on a sociological basis, even when I'm having the time of my life." She paused, biting her lip. "Well maybe not while I'm having the time of my life, but shortly thereafter."

  He took her by the shoulders, needing to squelch her revelations before he started to really think about what she was saying. It would probably be better for all parties concerned if they distanced themselves a little bit.

  "Honestly, Maddy, it wasn't a big deal."

  She stiffened like vinyl seats in winter. "Excuse me, Cal, but it was a very big deal to me."

  Ouch. In getting his nose out of joint about the whole thing, he had almost forgotten about it being her first time and all.

  "Sorry." He released her shoulders and stepped back, wishing it could be that easy to let her go in his thoughts. "Are you okay?"

  She stamped a foot, sending her long skirt in a fluttery little dance around her ankles. "Of course I'm okay. I just want you to hear my apology."

  "You're still apologizing?"

  "I'm still explaining it."

  "I see."

  He waited for her to continue, seeing no way to escape the conversation until Allison returned. But instead of proceeding with the scientific rationalization for her behavior, Madeline stared beyond him to a point on the horseshoe driveway.

  Hearing a car door slam, Cal turned. He grinned when he spied an older man paying a cabdriver. "Well, that's definitely not Allison."

  Madeline still squinted at the man. "Nope. That's definitely the renowned physics professor, Dr. Watson. Looks like the real scientist has come to town, after all."

  Maddy's father?

  Great. Just what he needed—an irate father ready to dissect his guts for stealing Maddy's innocence against a car wash wall.

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  After leaving Madeline to her own devices in Louisville for five years, her father had to show up now? For a moment she almost considered ducking behind Cal and letting her dad find his way to her office—or wherever he was headed—on his own.

  But she couldn't do that. As frustrating as he could be at times, Dr. Richard Watson had still raised Madeline single-handedly and had never in all that time uttered a bad word about the woman who had deserted them both. He deserved a warm welcome.

  "Daddy!" she called, weaving around Cal to greet her father.

  He looked older than he had at Christmas last year. More gray peppered his fair hair and his clothes hung loosely over his slight frame. His glasses were still twice as thick as hers, however, a badge of honor for the academic crowd.

  Glancing up at Madeline, her father picked up his one garment bag and closed the distance between them. "Surprise, surprise, daughter! Fancy seeing my little scholar out here in the sunlight! I figured I would find you tucked away in some cavernous library, hip-deep in books and plotting your next research article."

  No doubt that's where he thought she belonged. All the same, affection unfurled for the man who'd done his best to bring up his only child.

  She took his bag out of his hands, then hugged and kissed him. "I do try to have a life outside of work, Daddy."

  Recalling the dynamic man who had dominated her life outside of work lately, Madeline turned to Cal.

  He stood with arms crossed, peering out at the street, probably hoping his sister would return before Madeline dragged him into conversation.

  "Cal?" For some reason, she wanted him to meet her father. Even when she and Cal had been just friends, he'd been more important to her than anyone else in town. She only hoped her father behaved. "I'd like you to meet my father, Dr. Richard Watson."

  Cal took a wary step forward and offered his hand. "Cal Turner. Nice to meet you."

  Madeline waited for her father to exercise a small amount of decorum—a hint of the civility he usually reserved for his physics cronies. Instead she watched him go into frost mode and hoped she hadn't just made a big mistake.

  "How do you do?" Her father shook Cal's hand and then motioned to Maddy to come close.

  How embarrassing. She smiled at Cal and dutifully leaned toward her dad.

  He covered his mouth with one hand and stage whispered into her ear. "This isn't the man you were carrying on with last weekend, I hope."

  Madeline recalled their conversation earlier in the week, in which her father had confronted her with the surveillance report of her activities with Cal. She glared at her father, squelching the urge to fling her arms around Cal to defend him. "I thought you'd enjoy meeting him precisely because he is the man I've been carrying on with, Daddy."

  She heard Cal succumb to a sudden coughing fit, but never took her gaze from her father.

  He raised a censorious brow. "I would think your studies would keep you too busy for that sort of thing, Madeline."

  Forcing her lips into what she hoped was a polite smile, Madeline was about to ask her father if he'd like a tour around campus when he suddenly turned to Cal.

  "Are you a 'social' scientist, too, young man?" Her father said it as if he feared the condition could be catching.

  Madeline's mortification drowned along with Cal's reply in the resounding honk of a car horn.

  Allison approached in her new white Chevrolet, waving through the window as she slid into a parking space. She jumped out, blond braids bouncing, oblivious to the undercurrents of the threesome standing curbside.

  "It drives like a dream, Cal!" she called.

  She flung herself around her brother in a gesture of unadulterated affection that no one had ever bestowed upon Madeline. Much as Madeline loved her dad, she would have gladly traded him in for Allison at the moment.

  Madeline cleared her throat, prepared to slog her way through another introduction, but Allison plowed forward before Madeline had a chance.

  "There was a little whirring sound when I drove it, though, Cal." She turned to hover over the car's hood. "Could you look at it just to be sure it's okay?"

  "Gladly." Cal practically skipped over to the car. He looked ready to dissemble the engine screw by screw to escape the scarcely veiled hostility of Richard Watson.

  Not that Madeline blamed him.

  "My word," her father exclaimed, his eyes widening as Cal propped the hood and dove into the engine up to his elbows. "He fixes cars?"

  Allison beamed. "He's a mechanic," she informed him with pride. "He once took an engine apart and put it back together blindfolded."

  Her father whipped the handkerchief from his pocket and started mopping his forehead. "Well, perhaps we should allow him some space to work." He turned away from Cal and the automobile, ready to ignore Cal and the fact that Madeline had claimed him as her friend.

  No wonder she'd never had any friends growing up. Her father was even more of an academic snob than she'd remembered.

  He inclined his head toward Madeline. "So, daughter, I won't insult you by mincing words."

  A sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach made her want to run. When had her father ever minced words?

  "After I received that phone call notifying me that you were cavorting around campus in a questionable red dress, I heard some rumors that your dissertation has been turned down." He glared at her meaningfully. "So I had to come down here to see for myself what's going on. I've really got to wonder what has gotten into you all of the sudden."

  Cal coughed, loudly, from under the hood.

  Before Madeline could respond, Allison leaned in between them and hooked arms with Dr. Watson. "Madeline and I have each decided to get a life." Allison giggled, her grin a permanent fixture since she'd received her present.

  Her father stared at Allison as if unsure how to react to her natural gregariousness. He probably hadn't exchanged this much non-physics-related conversation in one day since Madeline had left home. He might be a brilliant scientist an
d a member of the academic elite, but he still possessed the social skills of a middle school science nerd.

  Before Madeline could think of a polite way to excuse them, Allison dashed back to her new car to check on Cal's progress.

  Madeline stuffed her father's handkerchief back into his pocket for him, determined not to make a scene. "Why don't you go over to the science building. Daddy, and I can meet you there later? You must be exhausted from your trip."

  He shook off her hand. "Honestly, Madeline, you treat me like I'm two steps from the nursing home. I only want what's best for my little girl." He smiled at her affectionately. "Can I help it if I take some fatherly pride in what you do?"

  Cal slammed down the hood of Allison's car. "We're taking off now," he called while Allison waved. "Nice meeting you, Dr. Watson."

  Relief pounded through Madeline. She just hoped Cal wasn't already seething at her father's rudeness. Now she could have a heart-to-heart with her father and put an end to his illusions of her settling down with a "real" scientist.

  She waved back at Cal and his sister, hoping the awkwardness of her father's visit hadn't alienated Cal even more. "Have a good time," she called, stifling her regret that she wouldn't be spending the next hour with Cal, after all.

  Dr. Watson managed a stiff nod, but Allison and Cal had already hopped in the car. They drove out of sight, leaving Madeline to figure out how to confront her father with the news she hadn't been able to break to him four years ago.

  She didn't want to make the same choices—or mistakes—he had.

  "Daddy, you really don't need to worry about me and Cal. We aren't going to get serious about each other right now, because we both have a lot of other things to accomplish." Such as her doctorate. Such as his guardianship of Allison.

  She refused to think about what would happen after the custody hearing. Cal might defeat Aunt Delia's motion and win Allison, but Madeline knew he wouldn't suddenly decide to strike up a relationship with her. True to his bad boy ways, Cal obviously avoided seriously relationships like the plague.