A Mother's Homecoming

by Tanya Michaels

  She flashed Richie an apologetic smile. “Do you mind? Very few people have this number, and it could be an emergency.”

  “Not at all.” He waved, then caught up with his dinner companions.

  She hit the answer button. “Hello?”

  “Pamela Jo,” Nick growled, “what in the hell did you do to my daughter?”

  Chapter Ten

  Pam rocked back on her heels. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s bad enough that I find out the two of you are meeting behind my back—didn’t you respect me enough to discuss it with me? If you don’t recognize my authority as a single parent, you shouldn’t have left her with me in the first place.”

  She was stunned, not only by the out-of-the-blue phone call but also by the depth of emotion in his words. How many years had he been waiting to lash out about that? On the other end of the phone, Nick fell quiet. Was he regretting his outburst or just biding his time until the next attack?

  Making her way to her car, she gave him a moment to calm down. She slid into the driver’s seat and locked her doors. “Nick, the only time I’ve seen Faith since that day you dropped her off was at the salon, where she just showed up for a haircut. I had no idea she was coming. She didn’t even have an appointment.”

  More silence. Pam grew uneasy. He’d seemed upset about more than a single visit to the beauty shop.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was softer, but tight, barely restrained. “She looks so much like you, now more than ever. She never wanted her hair short before.”

  Pam ran a hand self-consciously over her own short, spiky hair. “I didn’t suggest she get it cut like that.”

  “You didn’t have to. Don’t you see that she—” He edited himself, changing tack. “But what about guitar lessons with that slimeball nineteen-year-old? She said that was your idea! That guy is bad news, and I don’t want Faith within three miles of him, much less alone with him and paying to be there! You can’t just waltz into her life—”

  Pam’s burble of laughter stopped him dead. Oh, hell. Where had that come from? There was nothing humorous about this call. Could she convince him it had simply been a nervous giggle and that she hadn’t meant anything by it?

  “My daughter’s well-being is amusing to you?” he asked coldly.

  “No, of course not. I … care about Faith, too. And I let her know when she came to the salon that I was worried about how she got there and how she was getting home. Even in a place as relatively predictable as Mimosa, she’s too young to be gallivanting around alone and unsupervised.” Too late, Pam realized that might sound like criticism of his parental skills, so she barreled onward. She’d rather he be angry with her for inappropriate laughter than argue with him about Faith.

  “Okay, maybe one teensy thing struck me funny,” she admitted. “Nick Shepard, protective father? Vigilant against teenage guys with lustful thoughts! You’re right to look out for her absolutely, but in my mind, I can still see you as that teenage guy with lustful thoughts.”

  “God, if any kid ever did to Faith what I did to you, I’d …”

  Pam blinked. Was that self-recrimination she heard in his voice? “It’s not like you had to seduce me, Nick.” She’d wanted him so much.

  All through their first date, she’d wanted him to kiss her. It had escalated every time she was around him, staring into those blue eyes and breathing in that familiar cologne. Just the feeling of him coming up behind her in the library had sent tingles through her body. He hadn’t even needed to touch her. Whenever he’d been close, she’d grown preoccupied with what it would be like when they touched later, when they were away from the school or when his parents weren’t in view.

  But she doubted telling him that, reminding him how hot they’d been for each other, was going to make him feel any calmer about raising a teenager daughter.

  Nick cleared his throat. “You’ve really only seen her the once that I didn’t know about, at the salon?”

  “Of course.”

  “She made it sound like more. I wish I knew why. We’ve always been close, so why would she lie to me? Especially about something likely to make me angry. I thought kids lied when they were trying to cover their butts, not to get themselves into trouble.”

  Pam didn’t have a simple answer for him, but she resented being used as a pawn in Faith’s adolescent struggles with her father.

  “I guess,” he concluded, “she thought she could justify her actions by making them sound like her long-lost mother’s idea, so she exaggerated the amount of time you’ve spent together. I’ve caught that friend of hers in situations like this. Since Morgan’s parents are divorced, she feels like she can play them off each other with no one the wiser. It’s hard for them to verify stories if they don’t even speak to each other.”

  “Maybe,” Pam said slowly, “we can nip this in the bud if we show Faith we are willing to talk to each other.”

  “Or willing to call each other screaming and hurling unfounded accusations?” he asked ruefully. “I don’t normally yell like that.”

  “I’ll cut you a break this once,” she said, her tone light. While he’d definitely overreacted, these were extenuating circumstances. He was a single father staring down the barrel of the teenage years—that alone could periodically send a sane parent over the edge, much less a dad contending with his ex popping back into their lives after more than a decade. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

  She’d learned to be a more forgiving person, but she wasn’t a doormat. He didn’t get a free pass to bite her head off whenever Faith frustrated him.

  “You’re one hundred percent right,” he agreed. “This can’t happen again, and I don’t just mean my temper tantrum. We should show her, together, that she can’t pull this crap. What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?”

  PAM DROVE DOWN Meadowberry, grinning as she passed Trudy’s house. I should stop by later and say hi. The old woman would no doubt bluster as if Pam were interrupting something, but it was an act. Probably. Trudy had come into the salon two separate times since Pam started working there. The first to get her curls set, then a few days later for a manicure. And while Trudy had been as crusty as ever, not saying anything that could be considered warm directly to her erstwhile tenant, she was quick to cut Nancy off at the knees whenever the former cheerleader started in on Pam.

  It was like having a knight to ride to her rescue. A misanthropic, senior-citizen knight who wore floral muumuus in place of armor.

  Pam was still smiling over the image when she pulled into Nick’s driveway. She’d agreed to meet him at his house for a late lunch. Then the two of them would confront Faith as soon as she got home from school. It’ll be an ambush, Nick had predicted gleefully. At the relish in his voice, Pam had almost felt a twinge of pity for their duplicitous daughter.

  She climbed out of her car, processing more of her surroundings. Her stomach fluttered with nerves. Everything was just so domestic—Shepard stenciled on the mailbox, Faith’s bike chained up on the covered porch, a pair of muddy male boots by the front door. The house itself looked comfortable, nice without being pretentious or intimidating. A great place to raise a family and unlike any place she had ever lived.

  Aunt Julia and Uncle Ed’s home was a worthy attempt, she supposed, but smaller and cramped with fussy antiques that didn’t encourage a person to kick back and relax.

  Pam rang the doorbell, then forced herself to stand stock-still. She called on old drama discipline, the knowledge that she was visible on stage and couldn’t fidget. But it took effort, hearing Nick’s approaching footsteps on the other side of the door, not to fuss with her hair or smooth her navy skirt or pull at the loose thread she’d just noticed on the hem of her bronze top. Her clothes were rather lackluster today, but she’d felt the occasion called for something stern.

  The door swung open, and Nick smiled at her. “Hey.” And with that voice, those eyes, he could have been seventeen.

  And she was seventeen again, too,
her entire being lighting up at the sight of him. “Hi.” But then she blinked, and the faint lines that hadn’t been around his eyes came into focus. He wore a black polo shirt that bore his company’s logo, not a heather gray T-shirt that said Mimosa High Athletics.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said, ushering her inside. “It’s decent of you to help me out, considering that Faith’s sudden delinquent tendencies aren’t your problem.”

  She tried not to be stung by the reminder that she wasn’t a real part of Faith’s life. Hadn’t Pam told herself all along that was for the best?

  “And considering the way I yelled at you over the phone,” Nick added, his expression twisting in momentary self-disgust. “It won’t happen again. Faith’s a bright kid. If we want her to take us seriously as a united front, we can’t be at each other’s throats behind the scenes. Truce—for her sake?”

  Pam nodded, knowing full well all the reasons he had to be angry with her and grateful that he was taking the high road. Unfortunately, declaring a cease-fire didn’t automatically dispel the tension. She cast about for safe conservation.

  “Something smells wonderful.”

  “Thanks. Gwendolyn’s soup recipe, in the slow-cook pot. I thought we’d have some salad with it.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She set her purse down next to a decorative umbrella stand that seemed like a female purchase rather than something a man would think to buy. As she followed him toward the kitchen, she noted a half-dozen more ornamental touches that seemed feminine in nature. His mom, his sister? Or were these things left over from his marriage to Jenna? At the sight of a whimsical throw pillow featuring a unicorn at a waterfall, she added Faith to her list of potential decorators.

  The kitchen was fabulous, full of light and open space and built-in shelves stocked with simple but top-of-the-line equipment. She made an involuntary whimpering noise. “No way will the kitchen at Mae’s house ever look like this. I don’t care how long people worked on it. The chefs at Le Cordon Bleu could consult on the kitchen design, and it would still be a nightmare.”

  Nick chuckled. “A nightmare? Guess I won’t ask how the renovations are going.”

  She scowled. “Let’s not speak of it.”

  He lifted the glass lid on the slow-cooker and stirred the soup, wafting the warm, rich smells of cumin and garlic and peppers through the room.

  “Mmm.” She breathed in deeply. “One of these days, I’ve got to take up cooking. It’s a hobby, sort of, but only as a spectator sport. Most of the shows I watch now are food-related.” She loved them, but tried to skip over episodes where they focused on the perfect wine pairings and cocktails to complement each dish.

  “Yeah? Same here,” Nick admitted with a grin. “My favorites are the ones where they travel somewhere exotic and try local cuisine. About the most exotic place I ever made it to was Destin, Florida. Faith and I vacationed at the beach for a few days.”

  That was a shame. Although Nick seemed reasonably content with his life—disastrous choices in wives aside—she remembered all the places they’d talked about seeing together. If she hadn’t been pregnant, curtailing his college football plans, where would he be today?

  Nick shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll take Faith to France. But you … Seen a lot of places?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of the exact same places in a lot of different cities. No matter where I was, it all started to feel alike.” She’d been unhappy and jaded. At fifteen, she would have sworn that merely setting foot in Nashville or Hollywood would make her euphoric. But that had been a kid’s dreams, bearing no resemblance to reality.

  She’d learned the hard way that you couldn’t just go to a new place and find joy there, not if you brought misery and guilt with you.

  Changing the subject, she gestured at the produce laid out on the kitchen island. “What can I do to help?”

  He set her to work washing and tearing romaine leaves at the sink while he chopped vegetables behind her. The steady rhythm was lulling, as was the simple, companionable silence between them. It wasn’t until she noticed the strange limpness in her frame—her body unexpectedly relaxing—that she realized how much tension she’d been carrying lately. With golden afternoon sun streaming through the window and the comforting aroma of homemade soup curling around them, she felt far more mellow than she had since setting foot in Mimosa. This was why many people drank, she mused. That first glass of wine or sip of rich liquor? This warm, calm sensation, as if the soul had just breathed a contented sigh, was what people wanted to duplicate.

  Nick broke into her thoughts. “Not that it’s any of my business, but if the house renovations are so hellish, have you considered not doing them? Not doing them yourself, I mean. It might be worth it to hand the job over to a professional.”

  “You know any who work for free?”

  “Ah, so it’s a financial issue. It’s possible, if Ed and Julia were willing to co-sign, that you might be able to get a small improvement loan against the projected sale price. Although loans aren’t as easy to secure as they used to be in Mimosa.”

  Was this all off the top of his head, or had he given her predicament some thought? No doubt he’d made the logical deduction that the sooner the house was taken care of, the sooner she would get the hell out of Dodge.

  She brought him the freshly washed leaves to be tossed with diced cucumbers, avocados and tomatoes. “My sticking with the house instead of dumping the whole mess on someone else isn’t just about the money. It’s also cathartic. I’m never going to get the chance …”

  Her throat closed around a lump of emotion, Mae’s face flashing in her memory. That was the downside of relaxing—you lowered your guard. In this domestic setting, her mother’s death hit her anew. Pam would never share a peaceful moment with Mae as the two of them prepared a meal and simply chatted.

  She swallowed, embarrassed that her vision was suddenly blurred and hoping Nick didn’t notice her glistening eyes. “I’ll never get to repair my relationship with her. Repairing the house is as close as I can get.”

  Nick brushed her cheek with the back of his knuckles. The gentleness of the gesture made her eyes and throat burn all the worse. “She loved you,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if it helps, after everything that happened, to believe that, but she did.”

  Pam bit the inside of her cheek. Despite what filmmakers and greeting card companies would have an audience think, maybe there were some things love couldn’t overcome.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” he asked, his voice still feather-soft. The tenderness was too familiar, bringing to mind so many past conversations and caresses. Her skin heated and she tried not to breathe in how good he smelled.

  “S-sure.” Pam made herself focus on his words rather than his nearness. “But if it’s good advice, I can’t promise I’ll take it. That’s not always been my strong point.”

  His lips quirked in homage to a smile, but his blue eyes were serious. “You sound like you regret the missed opportunities with your mother. And you’re right, it’s too late to do anything about them. So maybe keep your eyes open for future opportunities with other people.”

  Like you? She wanted to ask. Like Faith? She was here now, wasn’t she? She was taking the opportunity—she just wasn’t sure how far to take it. At what fork in the road did courageous wisdom become risky stupidity? Her gaze held his, broadcasting the questions she was afraid to put into words.

  But apparently Nick didn’t have the answers, either.

  Stepping back, he cleared his throat. “We should eat. You can’t properly reprimand a sullen tween on an empty stomach. Eating at the counter okay with you, or should we be fancy and have lunch at the table?”

  “In the last week, I’ve eaten half my meals either in the storage closet at a salon or sitting on an upturned crate in a living room that’s between floor treatments. The counter is plenty fancy for me. Actually, it might be too fancy. I’d feel more at home if we put a plastic drop cloth down
and scattered some sawdust.”

  He laughed, and she grinned back at him, relieved at the lighter mood. As long as they stayed away from combustible topics like Faith and Mae, she was free to concentrate on a tasty lunch and undemanding conversation. They chatted about their favorite reality cooking show and who they thought should win. Eventually they even got brave enough to skirt the past and discuss people they’d gone to school with. Nick filled her in on details of who had ended up where, from those still in Mimosa to one who’d joined the military and was, as far as anyone had last heard, living in Alaska.

  “I think I’d like to live in the north,” Pam mused, “where there’s snow. Sunny L.A. was not for me. I’d rather be somewhere cozy, wearing lots of sweaters and eating lots of soup.”

  Nick grinned at her. “They don’t have soup in California?”

  She rolled her eyes, not dignifying his smart-ass comment with a response.

  “So that’s the plan?” he asked. “To trek to the great white north after you leave Mimosa?”

  “No firm plan.” That was an understatement—she barely had a gelatinous plan. “I’m taking things one day at a time. Occasionally one hour at a time. Speaking of which, shouldn’t Faith be home from school about now?”

  He followed her gaze to the clock above the stove. “Whoa, I didn’t realize it was so late.” He bounced off his seat, grabbing his empty plate and bowl as he went.

  She slid down off her own stool and carried her dishes around the counter to deposit in the sink. “Thanks for lunch. Your culinary skills have improved a lot since you took me on that picnic where you made peanut butter sandwiches.”

  He laughed. “You mean that time when I was in such a hurry to get you alone that I forgot the jelly and the drinks? Not my finest hour.” Peanut butter on plain bread, with nothing to wash it down. “Tell you what, maybe I can make it up to you sometime. Cook you dinner?”