When had the redhead from across the yard changed him? Because the Adam Tyler of a couple of weeks ago would have said “sure thing” and had his bag packed before Lasser could hang up. Instead, he stalled.
“What about the school?”
“What school? Oh, Deerhorn. They can wait.”
“The school year starts in two months.”
“They’re getting it for free so they can just—”
“Not free. At cost.”
“Same thing.”
The old Adam would never have cared about the difference, but now he did. Every resident of Deerhorn was going to see a jump in their property taxes. They’d willingly pay, happily even, but they were paying.
“It’s not the same thing at all, J.P.”
Long pause.
“Adam, what the hell’s gotten into you? Are you coming out to Vegas or not?”
Adam hesitated, looking at his daughter. He had never, ever given anything up for her. And yet, what was a father to do?
“Adam, this is the big leagues,” J.P. said. A funny and highly irregular desperation had crept into his tone. “Vegas is a huge project, the kind you’ve always wanted. I don’t see why you’re suddenly developing an attack of conscience about the people of Deerhorn. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll send somebody else up there to build the school.”
“It’s not just the people of Deerhorn,” Adam said. Karen bobbed her head up and looked at him. “It’s me. I can’t go. I’m not going to Vegas.”
Karen smiled. A dad liked to see his daughter smile.
“Adam, baby, I love you like a son. I hired you off the street when you were a college kid supporting your mom when your father ran off with a younger dame.”
Adam winced, remembering things he’d best like to forget.
“Adam, I flew you back from that job in Panama in my own jet to bury your mother three years later.”
“You charged me the landing fee for the jet.”
“At cost, Adam, at cost. And I gave you three days off to get over it—pretty generous in my book. I’ve given you jobs in every part of the globe, never keeping you any place more than six months—just the way you like it. Come on, Adam, I’m telling you—Vegas is important. And if you look deep in your heart, it’s what you’ve always wanted. Big project. Big city. Blondes with big—”
“I’m not going.”
J.P. whistled low. “Is this a woman thing?”
“Kind of. It’s a daughter thing, too,” Adam said, and Karen wrapped her arms around him. She smelled like bubble gum.
“I forgot you had a daughter.”
“I forgot too, sometimes. And that’s going to change.”
“And you’re definitely not going?”
“No.”
“Then, son, I’m sorry. But you’re fired.”
Adam listened to the dial tone and slowly put the phone down.
“Daddy, what happened?”
“Daddy’s got some growing up to do,” he said.
Get to know Karen. Really get to know Karen.
Learn to make pancakes.
Ask out beautiful neighbor. Start with date. Move slowly.
Figure out what to do with rest of life.
THE NEXT MORNING, the fire chief was quite decent about it. He said that his own wife had had a similar experience with a roast when they were first married.
“Don’t remember if we had to call in reinforcements,” the chief said. “But I ’member having to use the extinguisher.”
He said that Karen was a hero for calling right away and that the Burger Joint had pancakes so good it wasn’t worth anyone making them at home. But, of course, you couldn’t tell Pappa that you wanted pancakes—you had to wait until he decided to give them to you. And he was mighty picky about who he gave pancakes to.
“But I’ll put in a good word for you,” the chief promised. He hoisted his heavy frame into the truck. “Go on over there. You don’t want to face cleaning the kitchen quite yet. Enough to ’moralize a man.”
No argument from Adam on that one, after a look around the kitchen at the sticky white extinguisher foam, the pancake batter, the charred ash in a thin layer over every surface.
“Let’s go to Burger Joint,” Adam suggested.
They walked down the tree-lined main drag to the one-room shack. When they came in, Betty Carbol was seated at the counter, sipping her morning coffee and reading a woman’s magazine with a nearly naked starlet smiling on the cover. She slid her cat’s-eye reading glasses off her nose when she saw Adam and Karen.
“I hear you had a terrible day yesterday,” she said coolly. “The mayor’s still at home with his hand in a bowl of ice.”
“Sorry about that.”
“It was your jaw, but it was his hand. He ought not to have done that. On the other hand, the Pincham’s living room couch is awfully uncomfortable. Isn’t Bob Pincham baby-sitting you, young lady?”
“My Daddy got fired last night,” Karen said. “We don’t need a baby-sitter anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Betty said, eyeing Adam carefully. He asked Pappa for a cup of coffee and was told he’d get espresso. Adam hunched his shoulders up over the counter and waited.
“Don’t be sorry,” Karen said. “It means he gets to stay at home with me. We’re going to the beach today.”
“I see.”
Adam fixed a look on Betty like he was going to speak, reconsidered, and then did another about face.
“Betty, how does a guy get a woman around here?”
Betty touched a hand to her clavicle as if to still her shock.
“Adam, honey, you know what to do. You’ve already figured that out once.”
He gave Karen a handful of quarters from his pocket and told her to try the Indy 500 race car video game in the corner.
“That’s the whole point, Betty,” he said, as soon as Karen was out of earshot. “I’ve figured everything out once. I’ve done a lot of things once, been to a lot of places once, made love to a lot of women once. But she’s taught me the possibility of twice.”
“And you have a child.”
“I have a child I haven’t tried hard enough for,” he said, bobbing his head thanks as Pappa put an espresso in front of him and a glass of chocolate milk at Karen’s place. “What if I wanted to ask Stacy out? On a date. Not because she’s a babysitter. Not because she’s made—”
“Let’s just leave it at not because she’s a babysitter,” Betty said.
“Think I’ve got a chance?”
Pappa and Betty exchanged a glance.
“What are your intentions?” Pappa asked sternly.
“For the first time in my life, they’re the very best kind.”
“Let’s be a little more precise,” Betty said. “Bed or no bed?”
“Scout’s honor. No bed.”
“Clothes or no clothes?”
“Clothes. Definitely. Wasn’t even thinking…well, maybe a little, I was thinking.”
“Kiss?”
“Please.”
“Okay,” Betty conceded.
“Do I have a limit?”
“One,” Betty said. “Just one kiss. Don’t look at me like that. It’s a first date. And you’re doing it the Deerhorn way. Not like a big-city rogue.”
“I’ll make one kiss last me.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“Want me to make you pancakes?” Pappa asked gruffly.
“Sure.”
“Give me a few hours,” Betty said, slipping her magazine and glasses into her bag. She patted him on the cheek as if he were one of her grandchildren, but when her heels hit the pavement she didn’t look a day over forty.
The florist, who was doing a wedding in nearby Geneva, left a bouquet of white tulips and purple irises at Adam’s door. Tanglewood’s maitre d’ left a message on Adam’s machine to say that booth five—by the window!—would be reserved for seven o’clock. The gas station up near the highway called to find out if Adam wanted
a free car wash this afternoon—just so the Beamer would look special. Zengeler Dry Cleaners hung his suit on the door knocker—and the shirt—normally all shirts were sent out to a Milwaukee plant—was hand-pressed by Mrs. Zengeler herself. A set of children’s videos was delivered to Betty Carbol’s office and she left the office early to invite Karen over for the evening.
“Ask now,” she advised Adam after she buckled Karen into the front passenger seat next to Pam Pincham. She rubbed a finger across his chin. “But shave first. And don’t come home too early, but don’t you dare try anything on a first date. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She got in the driver’s-side door, told Karen to wave to her dad and carefully backed out into the street.
FROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN in the living room, she saw Adam stroll across the yard. He wore his gray suit, with a smartly pressed shirt and tie. He carried an abundant bouquet, and he whistled a confident tune.
She wiped away tears and shook her head.
Impossible.
Utterly impossible.
She should run upstairs, close the door to her bedroom and pretend not to be at home when he knocked. But instead, she stared. He was coming for her, and if she had to live a lifetime of the memory of watching him come for her, she would.
“Hi, I’m your neighbor,” he said when she opened the door. “Name’s Adam Tyler.”
She reluctantly took his outstretched hand.
“Nice to meet you.” Playing along:
“I’m thirty-six. Unemployed. Live in that house over there. Have a daughter who’s five. And I’d like to take you to dinner. Tonight. I brought you some flowers.”
“I can’t.”
They both looked down at the white-and-purple bouquet as if it were somehow at fault.
“Are you busy?”
“No, it’s just—”
“Just what? Why can’t you come to dinner?”
“I can’t.”
“Is it because I’m unemployed?”
“When did you lose your job?”
“I refused to go to Vegas last night. So I was fired. I guess someone else is going to build the school.”
“Get your job back. I can’t start anything with you. And Deerhorn needs that school.”
“We already started something. And, as a matter of fact, I think we did it all backwards. I’m just trying to get us turned around. Come to dinner. All of Deerhorn knows I’m here. Asking you like a fool. A fool in love.”
“Well, I can’t go,” she said, and tears that were just a river became a flood. She would have dissolved into a puddle of water had it not been for the curious screeching sound that distracted both of them.
A dark blue van, advertising on its side the quality, reliability and the phone number of Brandweis Plumbing, tore up the driveway, its tires decapitating a row of hostas and Stella d’Oro lilies.
Marion Brandweis, in curlers and a housedress, jumped out of the driver’s seat. Her face was stern and commanding. She marched up the steps and, with her unbandaged hand, produced a tissue for her sister from one of her pockets.
“She’d be delighted to go,” Marion said. “Lordy, Stacy, you’re acting mighty impolite to your gentleman caller. Don’t make him stand out here on the porch like some kind of magazine subscription salesman. And I think you should change right out of those jeans into something pretty—Betty Carbol says you’re going to Tanglewood and Nancy Tigerman says you haven’t done a thing with your hair. And Jim says that I’ve got to learn to let go of you and learn to depend on him. That’s what a marriage is all about, he says.”
She hustled Adam into the front hall.
“Marion, why are you—?”
“Stacy, you might be two years older than me, but you’re not grown up,” Marion said. She wagged a finger at her sister. “You give up too much, or maybe it’s me, that I’m always asking you to give up your time and your ambitions, but both of us have got to stop. Daddy’s gone now. You’ve done everything for him. You’ve helped me and Jim so much. But now, Stacy, you’ve got to have something for yourself.”
She put her arms around her sister and the two women hugged. Deep and long and satisfying.
Marion pulled away first. She had used up every bit of herself in the long speech. She yanked the flowers out of Adam’s hands and announced that she would put them in water. Then she ducked into the kitchen. In two seconds she was back, with the flowers shoved into a half-full vase of water.
“Here,” she said, slapping the vase down on the console table. “Don’t you dare not go out with this man. Don’t you dare not take a chance on having a relationship with him. And don’t you dare not take a chance on loving him. ’Specially if he’s going to stay. You are going to stay, aren’t you?”
“I guess I have to,” he said. “I don’t have anyplace else to go.”
“Stacy, that oughta be enough for you.”
Marion stamped her foot to emphasize her point and then swept by Adam.
He and Stacy stared long after the van lurched out of the drive.
“I guess this means I have your family’s permission,” Adam said. “So can we go to dinner?”
“It’s just dinner,” she said, a mixture of cool defeat and poignant resolve.
Adam knew enough to not say that “it’s just dinner” was something he used to hear all the time. And he used to change women’s minds. He didn’t plan on doing it here. Not in Deerhorn.
Chapter Seventeen
“Adam, you have to get your job back,” Stacy said as her foot hit the bottom step. She had changed into a yellow silk shirt-dress that fell around her calves in soft, buttery folds. “Can’t you call Lasser and apologize?”
Adam got up from the comfortable chair and whistled.
“Let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about how beautiful you are.”
“Don’t distract me.”
“That dress is very becoming, shows off your legs nicely. Your ankles could be displayed in the Smithsonian Institution as an example of the highest ideals of American beauty. Slender but not skinny.”
“Adam, this is important,” Stacy said. “This is your future.”
He leaned close. “And your perfume is utterly intoxicating. What’s it called?”
“Soap and talcum powder. Adam, you need a job.”
He circled around her.
“What’d you do different with your hair?”
“I put a barrette in it. You like your work. It lets you wander the world. You’re a wanderer.”
“And you’re a wonder. I think I like curly hair,” he said, as if the matter were one of grave philosophic importance. “I like the way when you stand just right here—the sunlight, what’s left of it, bounces off your hair as if it were gold.”
“Adam Tyler, listen to me! You are not a settle-down kind of guy. You need to travel, you need to work—both of those are things you crave. You won’t find them here in Deerhorn.”
“Deerhorn’s a very interesting place.”
“You’ve never liked Deerhorn.”
“Au contraire. I like it very much. Especially right now.”
“Adam, I’ve done some thinking.”
“So have I. And it’s been driving me crazy.”
“What are you going to do with your life?”
He reared back, regarding her as if she were a most exotic creature. “Miss Poplar, you have so little experience in the arena of dating that you’ve forgotten the most important rule.”
“What’s that?”
“Have fun.”
He lifted the hair at the back of her neck and almost kissed the soft, downy flesh at her hairline. Then he remembered his promise to Betty Carbol. He caressed the hair as if it were spun gold, letting it fall through his fingers to cover her shoulders.
“I want you.”
“Adam, stop it!”
He stood, momentarily chastened.
“Adam, I’m sorry, but let’s get this out of the way right now. Yo
u need to be realistic.”
“Like you.”
“Yeah, like me. Realistic. And pragmatic. You need a job. And the boom of the nineties passed Deerhorn by. There aren’t any jobs around here, unless you count farming and cheese-making, neither of which you would have the faintest clue how to do.”
“I don’t need to work,” Adam said, drawing her into his arms. “I called my banker today and because I tend to live below my means—”
“That car of yours is below your means?”
“My one toy. I make a lot of money.”
“Made.”
“True. Anyhow, I have enough put away in stocks, savings, money markets and bonds that I don’t have to work for a year, maybe two.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Stay here.”
“You’d be bored.”
“Not with you to keep me company.”
“I didn’t say I was going to keep—”
“Let’s not argue, baby. This is a date. Let’s have fun.”
FOR THE FIRST time in recent memory, every table and booth at Tanglewood was taken. Every one but booth five, of course, near the window, which had a bowl of zinnias floating in water and a small but boldly lettered “reserved” sign. The maître d’ clapped Adam on the shoulder and said he didn’t give a darn what kind of relationship Adam had with Stacy but if he kept business coming in, Adam was welcome anytime.
As the couple followed the maître d’ to their table, diners pretended not to stare. A smile or a how-do was allowable, full-scale gawking resulted in a sharp kick to the knee from one’s better half.
The maître d’ slid the table out from the booth seat to allow Stacy and Adam into their places. A busboy brought out a bottle of champagne and two Marie Antoinette-style glasses.
“Enjoy,” the maître d’ commanded silkily as he popped the cork and poured for his guests. Then he leaned over to Adam. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on, bud, but I haven’t had this many tables goin’ since 1995—one of the exit signs on the highway fell down and a bunch of weekend tourists ended up here. I waited till after they paid their bill to tell them Geneva was forty miles back the other way. So the bubbly’s on me. God bless ya.”
“Thanks,” Adam said. And when the maître d’ left to take care of another couple, he touched his glass to Stacy’s. “So this is how courting is done in Deerhorn?”
One Sexy Daddy Page 14
