“Jamie—”
“Or that you don’t think it’s right to develop a personal relationship with your students. God knows, if this thing goes any further, I could bring charges of sexual harassment against you. Although I promise I won’t if you give me an A.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Jamie—”
“Because I could drop out of Daddy School if that would make things easier for you. We could do private tutorials. No one would have to find out.”
If he didn’t have that deliciously wicked grin, if his pleas were truly serious, she would have jerked free from his embrace and stalked off in a huff. She didn’t like pushiness in a man, especially when the pushiness was about sex.
But she knew Jamie was only kidding, disguising his disappointment behind a few jokes. Graceful in defeat, he didn’t deserve to be castigated. “Let’s back up a bit, okay? No, I don’t usually kiss guys on first dates.”
“But this first date is an exception, right? Or should I say it’s exceptional? Now there’s a term that works for me.”
“I hardly know you,” she said tactfully. “And what I do know isn’t all good.”
He seemed to take her words less as a criticism than a dare. “You only kiss men who qualify as all good?” he asked. “Gee. You must not kiss very often.”
“Maybe I don’t,” she said bluntly.
Her comment seemed to take him aback, but it didn’t scare him off. He loosened his hold on her, sliding his hands up to her shoulders and then down her arms until his hands were clasping hers. “All right. I’m taking things too fast for you. No problem. I can downshift.” He wove his fingers loosely through hers. “Tell me what’s so bad about me. Besides the fact that I came late to class and I’m so irresistible that despite my baby’s unruly behavior at the restaurant, you tossed your principles out the window and kissed me on our first date.”
She sighed. If she told him the truth, she would come across as sounding like a judgmental prig. But lying seemed pointless. “It’s not your baby’s behavior. It’s just your baby, period. You’re an out-of-wedlock father. You had a child with a woman you don’t even know.”
“Oh. Right.” His smile faded. “I guess that would make me irredeemably evil.”
“I didn’t say you were evil. I just think maybe…well, you were a little thoughtless. I mean, in this day and age—”
“You’re absolutely right,” he agreed a bit too briskly. “Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. It was my own fault for not realizing I was using a defective condom. Forgive me, for I have sinned.”
“I didn’t say—”
“No need to get defensive, Allison. You’re right I was a bad boy and I deserve to be punished. Castration might be good for starters.” His hands dropped from her and. he took a step backward, forcing her to realize why she hadn’t moved back herself. She didn’t like losing the warmth of his arms around her. She didn’t like losing the warmth of his smile.
“Jamie, I never said—”
“No, you’re right. We’re in complete agreement, sweetheart. I’m about ten notches below scum of the earth. I did a very naughty thing.”
“You shouldn’t kid about it, Jamie. I didn’t say it was a naughty thing, but—”
“But it isn’t good.”
She sighed. She had come across as a judgmental prig, and Jamie was obviously infuriated. His eyes had lost their lovely radiance; his playful grin had transformed into a harsh frown.
Yet she wasn’t entirely wrong. Judgmental, yes, but the truth was, Jamie had made a serious mistake nine months ago, and she wasn’t sure he recognized it. Still, as severely as she was judging Jamie, she had to do something to rescue the moment. “What happened happened,” she allowed. “And maybe what happened wasn’t good. But it resulted in Samantha, so maybe it wasn’t all bad, either.”
“Meaning what? Samantha is cute, so maybe I’m only five notches below the scum of the earth?”
Allison had done her best to sprinkle water on the burning tinder, but Jamie seemed determined to fan it into a bonfire with his sarcasm. It was her turn to frown, her turn to purse her lips with impatience.
Maybe he hadn’t come to terms with what he’d done. Maybe Samantha wasn’t quite real to him. She was a collection of body fluids and whimpers, an assortment of tiny outfits and enormous needs. Maybe Jamie was already planning to give her up for adoption. Maybe he believed the police were going to locate the mysterious mother and return the baby to her.
And maybe Allison’s imagination was running wild, just as minutes ago her passion had been running wild. Jamie had the ability to throw her mind and her heart out of kilter with his kisses and his screwed-up logic.
“I don’t think you’re taking me seriously,” she said, wishing she could come up with a better argument. Jamie was the one blessed with wit and a flair with words. Allison was just a nurse who cared too much about babies.
“Of course I’m taking you seriously,” Jamie retorted, pushing his hair back from his brow with a restless hand. “You seriously think I’m an evil man for having slept with a woman in Eleuthera. You seriously think it was all my fault. My fault that the woman from Eleuthera decided she wanted nothing to do with me. My fault she’s hidden herself so successfully neither the police nor I have any idea who she is, let alone where to find her. You know how it is with guys. We’re goofs. We’re irresponsible turkeys. The instant you leave, I’m going to stick Sam back in that baby seat of hers, leave her on the deck where I found her and hope some kinder, nobler person will come along and take her away.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You thought it.”
How had the mood become so hostile? Was Jamie assailing her with his anger simply because she wasn’t ready to tumble into his bed? What had happened to the funny, wonderfully sexy man she’d been kissing?
He’d become defensive, and apparently he believed that the best defense was a good offense. If getting Allison into bed wasn’t in the cards for him, he might as well lash out at her.
Well, maybe she wasn’t as clever as he was. But she wasn’t going to stand quietly by while he assailed her with his scathing words. Whether or not Samantha’s conception was his fault, it certainly wasn’t hers, and she wasn’t going to let him take his frustrations out on her.
“Are you done?” she muttered. “Because I’d like to put on my dress and leave.”
“I’ll get your dress,” he snapped none too graciously. Before she could stop him, he stalked into the house, abandoning her on the porch.
In his absence, she felt the stillness close around her, cold and hollow. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, willing away her own seething anger. When she opened her eyes once more, her vision took in the leavings of their delightful dinner: the wineglasses, the plastic containers, the plates, the silly place mats.
Tears stung her eyes. She had never before given any consideration, pro or con, to Road Runner place mats. But now she couldn’t imagine a finer way to decorate a table.
Or maybe she just loved the place mats because of Jamie’s company.
All right. So her hot date had gone down the drain. At least she’d learned something valuable about Jamie and about the slim-to-none possibility that she and he could ever have a relationship. He was Samantha’s father, and he hadn’t the foggiest idea what that meant. As useful as Allison’s Daddy School class might be to him, she couldn’t teach Jamie that vital lesson. The only way a man could learn what it meant to be a father was to find the truth for himself.
Until Jamie McCoy did that, Allison couldn’t allow herself to be a part of his life.
“YOU BLEW IT, AL,” Molly summarized.
Twelve hours had passed since she’d left Jamie’s house wearing her newly laundered dress and sitting silently, stiffly next to him as he drove her home. She’d spent just about every waking minute of those twelve hours analyzing the time she’d spent with him, and she’d come to the same conclusion as Molly: she’d blown it.
She was in the kitchen of Molly’s condominium, a cozy, bright first-floor unit in a town house complex. Molly’s older sister, Gail, was there, as well. Gail had dropped by to discuss how much money to spend on the flowers they planned to wire their parents for their anniversary. When she’d discovered Allison and Molly hunched over steaming mugs of freshly brewed chocolate-raspberry coffee, she’d decided to stay awhile.
For ten minutes, Molly fretted over how much money she could contribute to the flowers. Gail generally had more money than Molly, since Gail was a lawyer in a world where lawyers were considered more valuable, in dollars and cents, than children and the people who cared for them. But since Gail was the kind of lawyer who specialized in lost causes, she wasn’t exactly rich, either.
Clad in faded denim overalls a size too big for her, she looked like a lost cause. She tended to favor large, body-disguising clothing when she wasn’t at work. Although Allison could see a definite resemblance between the two sisters—both had heart-shaped faces, angled eyes and petite builds—she knew them both well enough to be conscious of their differences, which extended past their coloring. Gail had inherited their mother’s fair hair, while Molly took after their dark-haired father, Molly was naturally more bubbly, Gail more reserved.
Both were mercilessly blunt, however. When they’d run out of things to disagree on concerning the flowers, they returned the conversation to the subject of Allison’s dismal date with Jamie. Gail nodded at Molly’s succinct critique of her performance last night and said, “She’s right, Winslow. You blew it. Royally.”
“It’s not a problem of misunderstandings,” Allison tried to explain. “I think we understood each other just fine. I mean…there’s an attraction. And I do like a lot of things about Jamie. But he resents the fact that I can’t view Samantha as a minor inconvenience.”
“He said that?” Molly exclaimed. “He thinks she’s a minor inconvenience?”
“He didn’t say it. But the way he acts sometimes…” Allison shrugged. “He’s got an attitude.”
“He’s a man,” Gail summed up, her tone leaving no doubt that men and their attitudes ranked mighty low on her list. “I’ve read McCoy’s newspaper column. You know what it is? A celebration of testosterone with a few jokes tacked on.”
“You’re being a little harsh,” Molly argued. “I think his column is hilarious.”
“Of course you do. You spend the better part of every day talking to three-year-olds. A journalistic essay written on a six-year-old level must represent the height of sophistication for you.”
“Now, now,” Allison mediated. Not that Gail and Molly Saunders really needed her to run interference. They bickered with that special fervor reserved for sisters who passionately adored each other. She realized that Gail’s jibe was directed more at Jamie than at Molly. “I don’t think his column is that bad, Gail,” she argued, venturing politely into the fray. It wasn’t that she wanted to leap to Jamie’s defense, but she honestly didn’t think his column was written with a six-year-old mentality. If his observations sometimes seemed juvenile, his point was that men were juvenile, not that his readers were.
Gail shrugged. “Well, whatever. The man is earning a fortune writing his column, so who am I to say whether his stuff is valid or not? The key issue is, if you never see him again, will you slit your wrists?”
“Of course not.” It wasn’t as if Allison were in love with him. “But I will see him again. I have to. I have a Daddy School class tomorrow. He’ll be there.”
“How do you know?” Gail asked as if she were cross-examining a witness. “Maybe he’ll drop out.”
“Oh, he’ll be there,” Molly declared with unjustifiable certainty. “I’ll bet that deep down he loves his baby and wants to do everything he can for her. He just hasn’t figured out how to deal with this unexpected, unfamiliar emotion. Besides, he’s rich and he’s cute. What more could you ask for?”
“You could ask for someone whose brain is bigger than his gonads.”
“Okay,” Allison interjected, although the Saunders sisters’ argument amused her. “I haven’t measured Jamie’s gonads. For that matter, I haven’t measured his brain. His anatomy isn’t the problem. It’s the circumstances surrounding his becoming a father.”
“Knocking up a total stranger sure doesn’t win a guy too many points in my book,” Gail remarked.
“It takes two to cause a pregnancy,” Molly remarked. “Jamie didn’t do it by himself.”
“He could have chosen a more compatible woman. I’d say he has lousy taste in women, except that he took Allison out for dinner. What do you think?” Gail asked her. “Are you better off now that you had dinner with him or would you have been better off if you hadn’t?”
“I don’t know.” Allison sighed. “He’s so much fun to be with, even when things are going wrong. I could really like him—if I could only get past the baby thing. Which I can’t.”
“You know what your problem is?” Gail said. “You’re horny. You need a good, sizzling affair. Maybe Jamie’s the one to have it with and maybe he isn’t. But he sure as heck isn’t Mr. Right. Did you read that column he wrote about why guys like professional wrestling? Sheesh. It was stupid.”
“I thought it was funny,” Molly argued, shooting her sister an impish smile.
“Gee, I thought I was going to find some tender loving care here,” Allison complained, although she was smiling, too. “I could have gotten more useful advice if I’d stayed home with Grammy.”
Molly sprang to her feet and patted Allison on the shoulder. “You want TLC? You got it,” she promised, topping off Allison’s half-full mug with hot coffee, then pulling a package of chocolate-glazed butter cookies from a cabinet and setting it on the table. “What did Grammy say about your date?”
“Well, I didn’t go into all the details,” Allison admitted. “But she said she thought he was damned good looking and it was too bad he had the morals of a tick.”
“A tick?” Gail asked, her eyebrows arching.
Allison grinned. “She was impressed that he managed to wash my dress without destroying it. She was horrified that I could fit into his gym clothes. She figures I either need to lose a few pounds or else I was really lying around the house naked.”
“No!” Molly and Gail chorused, reminding Allison of why she adored the Saunders sisters.
“Anyway,” she continued with a shrug, “none of it matters. I did wear his gym clothes, and nothing happened that would have required me to lounge around naked, and now I’ll have to get through the next few weeks of Daddy School and send him off to cope with his baby.”
“What if he signs up for another Daddy School class when this one is done?” Gail asked.
Allison pulled a face. “There won’t be another Daddy School class. I’m losing my funding.”
“What?” Gail’s eyes grew round, her expression indignant.
“The hospital won’t fund me after I finish this class. It was an experiment, they said, and now the experiment is going to end.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Gail drummed her polished nails on the table impatiently. “That’s so myopic of them. The program is worthwhile. Molly, weren’t you going to branch off into a class for fathers of toddlers?”
“That was the plan,” Molly confirmed with a scowl.
“Ridiculous.” Allison could almost hear the gears whirring in Gail’s head as she assessed this information. “Have you investigated alternate sources of funding?”
“I don’t even know how to begin,” Allison lamented. “I’m a nurse first, a teacher second. Fundraising is beyond me.”
“I’m no expert,” Gail said, her pale eyes glinting as if to announce that she was about to set herself up as an expert. “But it seems to me that if you want to raise money, you need to go where the money is. Foundations. Government agencies. Rich people.”
“Like Jamie McCoy,” Molly suggested helpfully. “He’s rich.”
“Oh, great!�
� Allison rolled her eyes heavenward. “I’m supposed to go to him, tell him I don’t want anything to do with him, mention in passing that my grandmother thinks he has the morals of a tick, and oh, by the way, would he mind writing me a check for fifty thousand dollars?”
“Why not?” Molly asked, then laughed.
“You’re the one who wants to open a second Daddy School class,” Allison muttered. “Why don’t you go hit Jamie McCoy up for money?”
“Because—” Molly’s grin grew sly “—you’re the one who got into his pants.”
“They were shorts,” Allison corrected her. “And anyway, I can’t possibly go. to Jamie for anything. I thought we agreed unanimously that I blew things with him. Royally,” she added, glaring at Gail.
“Do you want money for your Daddy School or don’t you?” Gail asked.
“If I were that desperate for money, I’d stand on the corner of Althorpe Lane in a pair of leather hot pants and a bustier.”
“Gee,” Gail said, peering past Allison at Molly. “She really must have the hots for the tick man if she can compare asking him for a donation to becoming a streetwalker.”
Allison groaned. Of course asking for money to keep the Daddy School alive wasn’t the same as prostituting herself. She knew that every day, men and women badgered friends, relatives and total strangers for contributions to various causes. Allison had once sent a donation to a museum in Hartford, and that donation had led to her name being added to dozens of mailing lists. Over the next year, she’d received innumerable solicitations to help this or that organization. Zoos, research centers, dance troupes in Seattle, societies for the protection of endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico—all of them hoped she could send a small contribution.
Given that she was supporting both her grandmother and herself, as well as paying off some educational loans, she couldn’t afford to endow research centers and art collections on a regular basis. But Jamie…If he could afford dinner for two at Reynaud, he could surely afford a donation to the Daddy School.
Father Found Page 12
