“Todd—”
“Go,” he repeated.
“When will you be ready to talk?” she asked, determined not to let the anger simmer until they couldn’t get beyond it. “Tomorrow? The next day?”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“Make it soon, because I promised Henrietta we’d help her pull off a wedding a week from Saturday.”
He regarded her with a mixture of surprise and delight. “She agreed to marry the judge?”
Heather nodded. “They were planning a quiet ceremony at the courthouse, but I convinced her she deserved more. I told her you’d help whip the details into shape. That this would be our present to her.” She regarded him with uncertainty. “Is that okay? Will you do it?”
“Of course I will,” he said without hesitation.
She should have taken some solace in the knowledge that they would have to spend time together over the next week or so, that perhaps that could bridge the terrible chasm between them as talking might not, but she knew better. Todd would view the wedding as an obligation, maybe even a joy, since it was for two people he cared about. He would behave professionally toward her for as long as it took. After that, there was no telling if he would shut her right back out of his life as he had tried to do moments ago.
“We’ll start making plans tomorrow, then,” she said quietly.
She turned to go, but Angel raised her head. “Daddy coming, too?”
The words galvanized Todd’s attention as nothing else had. For an instant the vulnerability in his eyes tore at Heather, but then his expression closed down again.
“Not tonight,” he said quietly. “You’re going home with Mama.”
“No,” Angel protested, struggling in Heather’s arms. “Want Daddy.” She turned a tear-filled gaze on Todd. “Please.”
He looked as if he might relent and reach for her, but then he shook his head. “No, sweetie, not tonight. I’ll see you first thing in the morning, though.”
Not quite pacified, Angel sniffed and asked, “Where?”
“At the diner, okay? We’ll have breakfast and I’ll bring you your toys.”
“’Kay,” she said, finally satisfied. “You make sure my dolls go night-night?”
“I promise,” he said, then cast a defiant look at Heather as if he expected her to remark on his willingness to do Angel’s bidding.
She said nothing, but she had to admit she was dying to know just exactly what Angel had cajoled him into doing the past few days. She sensed that putting her dolls to bed was only the tip of the iceberg.
Worn out by the busy day she’d had and her brief tantrum, Angel was asleep in her car seat before Heather pulled out of the parking lot. Heather paused before turning onto the highway back into town, gazing at those tear-streaked cheeks.
“Oh, baby, what have I done?” she whispered. Todd was furious. Angel was upset. It seemed to her right then as if everything was far worse than before she’d left. Only Henrietta’s news gave her hope that happy endings were still possible. She just wasn’t sure she could wait years for hers.
Todd would have preferred a close encounter with a spitting mad bull to the prospect of seeing Heather in the morning, but he had no choice. Not only had he promised Angel, but there were Henrietta’s wedding plans to consider.
As exhausted as he’d been by Angel’s visit, he had expected to sleep soundly with her gone, but instead, he seemed to keep one ear attuned all night long for sounds from the guest room. The silence wasn’t nearly the relief he’d expected it to be. The lack of sleep only added to his generally black mood as he approached the diner.
His foul humor improved slightly when Angel caught sight of him and shouted “Daddy!” as if she hadn’t seen him in a month.
“You bring my toys?” she asked at once.
“They’re in the car.”
“Wanna see,” she said, as if she feared he might have left one behind.
“Okay, let’s get them,” he said, using it as an excuse to avoid Heather for another few minutes.
He hadn’t realized just how many they had taken from Heather’s place until he’d started packing them up for the return trip. The books, stuffed animals and dolls filled two large trash bags in the bed of the pickup. Angel waited impatiently until he’d retrieved the bags, then eagerly began tossing everything out of the first one.
“Sweetie, let’s leave them in the bags,” he said. “They’ll be easier to take inside.”
“Have to find my bunny story,” she told him. She poked her little head deeper into the bag, then emerged, triumphant. “Here’s the bunny. You read it to me.”
“Not right this second. We’ll read it later.”
“I didn’t get no story last night,” she said sadly.
“Then I’m sure Mommy will read you two tonight.”
“Want you to read this one now.”
“No, baby,” he said firmly. He was about to reach for her when she jerked away and started howling at the top of her lungs.
“Now! Now! Now!” she chanted between sobs.
“Problems?” Heather inquired lightly, her expression amused.
“Where did you come from?”
“She’s been temperamental all morning. I thought you might need backup.” Seemingly unfazed, she gestured toward their still-screaming daughter. “So, what’s up?”
“I refused to read her a story right this second. She didn’t take it well.”
“Your daughter is into instant gratification,” Heather advised him.
He regarded the still-wailing child warily. “What do I do? She didn’t pull this while she was staying with me.”
“She saves it for special occasions. If you give in, it will only encourage her.”
“Then we just let her scream?” he asked, horrified. Surely all this yelling indicated she was being traumatized for life. Aside from which, people were beginning to stare.
“That’s my advice,” Heather said. “Of course, you are her father. If you have a better solution, go for it.”
He shot a nasty look at her, then gazed at Angel, whose sobs had subsided as she stared at him expectantly. Clearly she thought she was on the verge of winning this round. He might not know diddly-squat about kids, but he knew a whole lot about tactical maneuvers and losses that came because one side weakened too soon.
He reached for his daughter and scooped her up. He took the book she clutched and tossed it back. “Okay, kiddo, we’re going back inside. The toys can stay in the truck for now.”
Angel stared at him in apparent shock. “No story?” she asked sorrowfully.
“Not now,” he said firmly.
Angel seemed to consider that for a minute, then nodded. “’Kay.”
Todd grinned at Heather over Angel’s head. “Take charge. Show her who’s boss. That’s the ticket.”
Heather regarded him with apparent skepticism. “If you say so. Winning one tiny battle does not guarantee you’ll win the war. Believe me, I know.”
In the diner, still basking in the glow of his triumph, he settled Angel into a booth, placed an order for cereal for her and pancakes for himself. Angel managed to steal most of the pancakes.
After breakfast, Janie came in and offered to take Angel, Sissy and Will to the park along with her son for an hour so that Henrietta, Flo and Heather could sit down with Todd and talk about the wedding. Henrietta and Flo conspired to see to it that Heather squeezed in next to him. His only solace was that Heather didn’t look one bit happier about it than he was. Proximity for the two of them was not a good thing. Hormones kept getting in the way of reason.
Todd drew a sheet of paper out of his pocket, along with a pen. “I’ve made a list,” he began, only to hear a chuckle from the woman beside him. He scowled at her. “What?”
Heather returned his gaze evenly. “Nothing. I just mentioned to the others that you would surely make a list.”
“Well, how else are we going to be sure we don’t forget something?” he demand
ed.
“Todd, you make lists for everything from groceries and chores to life choices,” she accused, as if it were some sort of crime, or perhaps merely evidence of a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. “You probably have one tucked away somewhere on the options you have where Angel and I are concerned.”
“Oh, boy,” Flo murmured.
“Okay,” Henrietta said, standing up at once. “That’s it for me. I’ve got things to do in the kitchen. The wedding can wait.”
“It’s a week from Saturday,” Todd protested.
“Doesn’t matter,” Henrietta declared. “You two have things to talk about and I have things to do.”
“What things?” he demanded.
“Important things.”
“I’ll help,” Flo said, scooting right out behind her.
Left alone with Heather, Todd swallowed back another surge of the anger that had been brewing inside him for days. “How did we get from planning Henrietta’s wedding to you and me?”
“Just bad luck, I suppose,” she said, regarding him with a defiant lift of her chin. “We might as well get this over with. You’re furious because I went off and left Angel with you. I don’t blame you. It was a drastic thing to do.”
“It was damned irresponsible, is what it was.”
She didn’t even blink at the accusation. “Irresponsible how? You’re an adult. You’re Angel’s father. I left her in the best possible hands.”
“How can you say that after what I told you?”
“What you told me was a very tragic story about something that happened years ago when you were a kid. It wasn’t your fault and it has absolutely nothing to do with the man you are now. I don’t know a more responsible, trustworthy man on the face of the earth. Not only that, Angel adores you and you adore her. I can see it whenever you’re with her. I want that for Angel.” She touched his cheek. “I want it for you.”
“But what if something had happened?” he asked, unable to shut off the reel of possible disasters that ran nonstop through his mind.
“Nothing did, did it?”
“No, but—”
“Todd, what-ifs can immobilize a person. That’s not living. It’s playing it safe.”
“It wasn’t your choice to make. You should have given me a say.”
“You would have said no, correct?”
“Of course.”
“Then you wouldn’t have had six days with your daughter,” she pointed out. “Would you trade those for anything?”
He thought of the discoveries he’d made seeing things through Angel’s eyes. He thought of the way she snuggled against him, of her little-girl smell, of the trusting way she tucked her hand into his. Would he have preferred never experiencing any of that? He couldn’t honestly say that he would have. Those were memories he could cherish for a lifetime. They would last long after she and her mother went back to New York where they belonged.
“No,” he admitted reluctantly. “I wouldn’t trade the time we shared for anything.”
Just as he wouldn’t trade the time he’d spent with Heather all those years ago and again more recently. The time before she’d come into his life, the time in between when they’d been apart had been little more than existing, playing it safe, just as she’d described. He hadn’t been living at all. He wasn’t so blind that he couldn’t see that without her his world was gray and with her it was filled with color.
But he wasn’t so delusional that he thought he could capture that magic again and make it last, either. He definitely wasn’t prepared to take the next step, the leap of faith that what they had once shared could last a lifetime. Even with the example of the judge and Henrietta right in front of him, he wasn’t sure that love could conquer all.
Because of that uncertainty, he tapped his pen on the paper still in front of him.
“We’d better finish this list if Henrietta’s going to have her perfect wedding,” he said. “The logistics aren’t going to be a breeze, not in the little bit of time we have, especially since the flowers are going to have to be ordered and flown in, along with just about everything else.”
“That’s it?” Heather asked, ignoring the monumental task facing them to seize on his avoidance of a more personal topic. “That’s the end of any conversation about us?”
He lifted his gaze from the paper, met her indignant glare and nodded. “That’s it,” he said quietly. There was no mistaking the hurt and disappointment that darkened her eyes, but she gave him a curt nod.
“Then by all means let’s plan Henrietta’s wedding,” she said briskly, not quite meeting his gaze. “Somebody around here deserves to live happily ever after.”
“Heather—”
“Forget it, Todd. I can’t fight you about this, not now. Right now I intend to concentrate on making a week from Saturday the happiest day in Henrietta’s life.”
Her willingness to let the matter drop bothered him for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. He felt suddenly empty inside, as if he’d lost, rather than won.
Even so, he regarded her evenly and asked, “Shall we start with the flowers?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Any preferences?”
“She hasn’t mentioned any.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“It’s not my wedding.”
“But if it were,” he persisted.
“Tropical blooms,” she said finally, a dreamy expression on her face as if she’d imagined this a thousand times. “The kind from Hawaii that smell so wonderful. Mixed with white roses in the bridal bouquet.”
Todd jotted this down, not entirely certain why, since it was Henrietta’s preferences that mattered. Since the bride continued to make herself scarce, he questioned Heather about every other detail until he knew exactly what her dream wedding would be like, from the design of her dress to the canapés she would want served at the reception.
Only after he’d left the diner and gone to the office, only as he was making the calls to florists, caterers and dress designers, did he realize that he wanted to give this wedding to Heather someday. He wanted her dream to come true.
Then he tried to imagine her walking down the aisle toward some other man, but his imagination balked at the image. His stomach churned as he saw his daughter scattering rose petals along the path that Heather would walk to reach her groom.
The ringing of the phone snapped him back to the present. “Yes?” he said impatiently.
“Todd?”
His heart plummeted. “Yes, Dad.” These rare calls never failed to take him by surprise, never failed to unnerve him.
“I just called…” His father hesitated, sounding uncertain in a way he never had before.
“Dad, what is it? Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing,” his father said with more vigor. “I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”
Now Todd knew something had to be very wrong. One sort of tension slid away to be replaced by another. “Dad, if something’s wrong, you have to tell me.”
“It would matter to you, after the hell I’ve put you through all these years?” his father asked, sounding surprised.
Truthfully, Todd was no less surprised by the reaction. “Yes,” he said firmly, thinking of the man he had once idolized before fate had intervened.
“Then it’s more than I deserve, son. Much more than I deserve.” His voice dissolved into a choking cough.
“Dad, are you ill?”
“Just a bad cold. Nothing to worry about. I have to go, though. Once this cough kicks in, it takes a while to settle it down.”
“Wait, Dad. There’s something I’d like you to know. I…” He sucked in a deep breath before continuing, “I have a three-year-old daughter. She’s beautiful and smart and maybe the best thing I ever did.”
He waited for a sudden shift in mood, waited for the familiar harangue about his recklessness. Instead, his father merely sighed heavily.
“Are you sure…?” his father
began, then coughed. “You’re married, then?”
“No, not yet.”
“But you’re in love with your daughter’s mother?”
“Yes, I am,” Todd said. The admission made him feel as if a weight had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders. “It’s taken a long time, Dad, but I’m finally beginning to realize that what happened with Alicia wasn’t my fault, not entirely, anyway.”
“No,” his father said slowly, “it wasn’t. Not entirely.”
Another fit of coughing cut off the statement that left Todd stunned.
“Dad, what are you saying?”
“It’s not easy for me to admit this, son, but the truth is, I blamed myself for putting you in that position.”
A memory began to emerge, but Todd waited for his father to go on.
“I should never have left you that day just so I could go grab a couple of drinks with my buddies. I took my own guilt out on you. I’ve wanted to tell you how sorry I was for a long time now, but it was easier to keep silent. Your mother knew, though. That’s why we split up, because she couldn’t forgive me for what I’d done that day and what I kept on doing to you.”
Until that moment Todd had completely forgotten about his father being home the afternoon Alicia had died, had blocked the fact that his father had left the house after a call from one of his friends. His father was the one who was supposed to be staying home to care for Alicia. Todd’s plans to go to the mall had already been made. His friend had called only to see why Todd was late, not to entice him out of a baby-sitting commitment he’d made.
All these years he had gotten it wrong. True, he had been behind the wheel, but the accident had been just that, an accident. Maybe he had made a bad judgment call in leaving the house in the first place, but his father had made a worse one and then spent years taking his guilt out on his son.
“Thank you,” he said to his father.
“You’re thanking me? For what?”
“For reminding me of what really happened that day.”
“Too little, too late,” his father said.
“No, Dad, it was just in time. I really hope you’ll come for a visit. I’d like you to meet Heather and Angel.”
Angel Mine Page 29
