Father and Child Reunion
Page 11
“So what are you going to do?” he asked, before she could question the direction of her concern. “Are you going to listen to Hal and stay away from me?”
She wasn’t fooled by the mild tone of the question.
“We have an agreement. And we have Molly to consider. What anyone else thinks I should do doesn’t matter.”
“I’m hungry,” the child under discussion announced, rolling into the driveway. “When can we have dinner?”
Pulling her glance from Rio’s, far too aware of the tension in his body, Eve managed a smile for her daughter. “You can help me start it right after you put your bike in the garage.”
Rio watched Molly slide off the seat of her bike and pushed his hands into his pockets. He smiled at her, too, something he couldn’t seem to avoid, since the child was grinning at him. But Eve couldn’t help notice that the smile was gone long before he glanced back at her.
“Look, Eve, I don’t want to interrupt your routine. I just wanted to see her.” And to let her get to know me, he could have added, but she might point out that it would take more than a ten-minute visit to accomplish that and he already felt guilty about being late. “Let me help her put her bike away, and I’ll leave.”
“You don’t need to do that.” She paused. “Leave, I mean.”
Her self-protective instincts must have been at an all-time low. When she saw the question slip into his eyes, she hesitated only long enough to tell herself that she was doing this for her daughter. “We’re not having much. I promised Molly hamburgers. If there’s enough gas for the grill,” she had to add, since she hadn’t yet checked it. “But you’re welcome to stay.”
* * *
There wasn’t enough propane. Eve shrugged the detail off and said a frying pan would work just as well, but Rio, being practical, pointed out that she still needed the tank filled if she planned to use it later. Unless she wanted to wrestle with it herself and haul it to the truck stop on the highway, since that was the nearest place that sold propane, they might as well do it now. If they all went together, they could grab hamburgers while they were out.
Molly thought that was a fine idea. Especially if they could go to the Burger Palace, because they gave prizes with their kiddie meals. So that was where they wound up after the tank had been filled. Eve wasn’t quite so sure how Rio and Molly talked her into feeding the ducks at the park, though. But she didn’t worry about it. All she let herself consider as late afternoon faded into evening was that Molly was having a wonderful time.
The child was clearly drawn to Rio, if for no other reason than the patient way he answered her endless questions. Molly wanted to know why so many trees around the pond had fallen over, so, as they walked, Rio explained that the wind from the storm had done it. When Molly couldn’t understand how wind, something she couldn’t see, could move anything, Rio stuck a fir twig in the dirt and had her blow it over. Two minutes later, having found a duck’s nest in the rocks and low rushes, she wanted to know why ducks didn’t build nests high up like robins did.
When Rio began explaining that it was because ducks weren’t built like robins, Eve caught her best glimpse of the man she’d once known. Rio seemed so indomitable to her now, and as impenetrable as any person she’d ever encountered. Yet, with Molly, his guard and reserve were scarcely evident at all. He seemed so much more accessible, so open, and as he and Molly talked, Eve couldn’t help but notice how intently he watched the child. Quietly, unobtrusively, he simply took in what others probably wouldn’t notice at all. Little things, such as how Molly was more drawn to pink flowers than to red ones. How she tipped her head when she listened. How her mouth hitched to one side when she was thinking.
Yet, as interested as he clearly was in his daughter, Eve couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t ask any questions about his little girl. He didn’t want to know what Molly had been like when she was younger. Nor did he seek out the milestones he’d missed. He seemed to be getting to know her his own way, and in his own time.
The fact that he wasn’t pushing to accelerate the process actually allowed Eve to relax a little—until she began to suspect that the reason he wasn’t asking her about Molly was because he figured she’d just get all defensive on him. Every single time he’d been around, her insecurities about his presence in Molly’s life had surfaced in one way or another.
By the time they got back to the house, the stars had come out, Molly had fallen asleep in the back seat and Eve was struggling between protectiveness and practicality. There was no doubt that Rio intended to have a real relationship with his daughter. And even though Eve worried about how that would affect Molly if Molly became attached to him, since they would ultimately be leaving Grand Springs, she knew the situation was going to take more than token cooperation on her part to make it work. At the very least, she needed to let Rio know he was free to ask anything he needed to know about his little girl. As soon as she got Molly into bed, she planned to tell him that.
It was with that thought in mind that Eve unlocked the front door by the glow of the porch light, while Rio, carrying Molly, stood behind her with their child’s head resting on his shoulder. Anyone driving by would think they looked very much like a family coming home for the evening. For reasons Eve didn’t trust herself to consider, she refused to carry the fleeting thought any further than that. She would cooperate with Rio, and she would hope she was doing the right thing for Molly, but she would not tease herself with dead dreams.
Entering the dark foyer, she switched on the entry table lamp and turned to ask Rio if he’d mind taking Molly upstairs. The request wasn’t necessary. He was already heading there, looking very much as if he’d carried his little girl to bed a hundred times before.
“Her bed isn’t made,” Eve whispered, preferring to focus on the sheets she’d left in the washer, rather than how natural he looked with a sleeping child in his arms. “Put her in mine. Okay?”
He gave her a nod and continued on before she could tell him where her room was. She didn’t have to do that, either. Molly had pointed it out when he’d been up there the other day, and he headed straight for it, stopping outside the door so Eve could go ahead of him and turn down the blankets.
They moved silently around each other in the dim room, she pulling back the sheets on the daybed and Rio coming up behind her to take the extra pillows. Neither said a word, until she started to take Molly from him.
In the shadows, she saw him shake his head. “I can do it,” he said, his voice low. “Just get her shoes.”
Thinking only to get the task done, Eve reached for a dangling foot. The smell of fresh air clung to Molly. It clung to Rio, too, along with the clean scent of his soap and something indefinably male. Trying to ignore how the tension in her body changed quality when she breathed in that scent, she carefully pulled off little white sneakers and lace-trimmed socks. She slipped off Molly’s dusty shorts, too, and when Rio bent to settle the sleeping child on the bed, Eve bent with him to pull the sheet from under Molly’s legs. But when she felt his arm pressed the length of hers and glanced over to find his mouth inches away, she pulled back to let him finish on his own.
Her heart was beating faster than she liked as she watched Rio pull the sheet to the middle of Molly’s chest, his big hands amazingly gentle. He didn’t kiss the child as Eve thought he might. After the exhausted little girl curled up on her side, then settled down again, all Rio did was touch his fingers to her hair. A moment later, he stepped away, looking as if he wasn’t sure he should have indulged himself even that much.
Or maybe, Eve made herself consider, it was her presence that held him back.
Prodded by the possibility, she tightened her fingers around Molly’s bear. A moment later, she held it out. “She needs Ted.”
His face seemed harder, hungrier, in the dim gray light. The shadows sharpened the angles and planes, and made his dark eyes glitter as he glanced from the stuffed animal and back to her. “Where do I put him?”
It was a moment before he pulled his glance from the encouragement in hers. But when he did, he took the toy for the concession it was and placed the stuffed bear in the crook of Molly’s elbow.
“Like that?” he whispered.
He was actually looking to her for reassurance. More touched than she would have believed possible by his unprotected need to get it right, she gave him a tenuous nod, then bent to kiss her sleeping child’s forehead before he could do anything else to complicate her feelings about him. Her feelings were confused enough as it was.
When she straightened, it was to find him quietly watching her.
Eve had no idea what was going through his mind. But she didn’t think it wise to stand so close to him while she tried to figure it out. Ducking her head, she started for the door, thinking to wait for him there. Rio was right behind her, closing the door halfway as they stepped into the hall.
“I’ll bring the tank around back.”
The propane tank was still in his SUV. She’d forgotten all about it.
“I’ll get the garage door for you.”
“I’ll get it. I only need a few minutes to hook it up.”
Rio was halfway down the steps when she realized that all he wanted just then was to get away from her. She wasn’t sure what she’d said or done, but there was no mistaking his desire for distance when she saw his dark head disappear at the landing and heard the front door open.
So much for trying to cooperate. Desperate for distraction herself, she grabbed an extra set of sheets from the linen closet and headed for Molly’s unmade bed.
Ten minutes later, the bed was made, the sheets from the washer were in the dryer, the blanket on presoak, and she was wondering how to get past Rio’s insulating wall when she found him in the kitchen. He was washing up at the sink.
He must have caught her reflection in the window. Like a wolf on a scent, his head came up as she moved toward him. He was turning off the water when she caught sight of the furrows between his eyebrows.
She held out a towel. “Thank you,” she said, because she really did need to let him know she appreciated all he’d done. “For taking care of the tank. And for the evening. Molly had a great time.”
Seeming distracted, he took the towel from her. “No thanks necessary.”
She would have liked to tell him that she’d had a nice time, too. As caught up as she’d been with the interaction between him and their daughter, she hadn’t given a single thought to the pending estate sale, her brother or the murder investigation. But she doubted he’d be interested in knowing that, so she kept the thought to herself. His interest was in his daughter. And there was something else she had to say to him, anyway.
“I’m sure you have questions, Rio. You can ask me anything you want about her.”
“No need.”
Eve’s eyebrows arched at the laconic response.
“Molly is what she is. An innocent, curious five-year-old. I can see that for myself.” He handed the towel back to her, the reason for his preoccupation coming into focus. “I’d be more interested in hearing about you.”
The smoothly delivered statement caught her as she looped the yellow terry cloth halfway through the handle of the fridge. “Me?” she returned, confused. “Why?”
She would have to ask, Rio thought, hoping he could explain what he wanted without offending her. Awkward as it seemed at times, and as resistant as she had to feel, Eve was truly trying to let him know his child. And while no one could be more amazed than he was himself, the little imp was definitely getting under his skin. But ever since they’d spoken about the conversation she’d had with her brother, a new concern had nagged at him with the consistency of a toothache. Despite Eve’s reassurance that she wasn’t going to avoid him, should she change her mind, a little more information could come in mighty handy.
“Because you’re her mother, and you were right. We don’t know much about each other. I know where you work, but I know nothing of what you do in Santa Barbara other than that. I don’t know what part of the city you live in. What you do in your spare time. I don’t even know if you have a boyfriend.”
Her expression remained encouraging—until he added that last one.
“Does that matter?”
“The boyfriend?”
She gave him a nod.
“You’re concerned about the influence I can have on her,” he pointed out. “If some guy is part of Molly’s life, then yes, I think it does. Who you associate with affects her, doesn’t it?”
There was no challenge in his tone, no interest beyond whatever influence some nebulous male might have over his daughter. She couldn’t even detect the offense Rio surely must have felt when she’d all but said she knew little now about his character.
Looping the towel the rest of the way through the handle, Eve supposed his questions were every bit as reasonable as he made them sound. As adamant as she had been about needing to know him before telling Molly who he was, she could hardly deny him equal knowledge about the person raising his daughter.
When she turned back, Rio had leaned against the counter. With his arms crossed over his chest and his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, he appeared fully prepared to stay put until he got what he was after.
He wouldn’t have to stay long, she thought, twirling a piece of lint from the towel as she leaned against the opposite counter herself. The story was as short as it was uninspiring.
It took her all of a minute to detail a life that included little other than work, an occasional class toward a necessary design certification, and the demands of a preschooler. She had a friend, a designer, too, who was raising two children by herself, and they would take the kids places together. And a couple of times a month, she and Molly would go to her aunt and uncle’s house for dinner. Before Molly was born, she’d stayed with her mother’s older brother and his wife, her mom’s only relatives. Between preschool and day care, and tumbling class or T-ball on Saturdays, as well as the requisite weekend chores, there was little money, and less time, for anything else.
“As for a boyfriend,” she concluded, thinking how boring her life must sound to him, “I’ve never had one. And while we’re at it,” she continued, thinking now as good a time as any to get off that subject and to satisfy her own curiosity, “what happened to the girl your mother told me about?”
Rio’s eyes were hooded, his expression thoughtful as he scanned her face. She was beginning to feel distinctly disadvantaged whenever he looked at her that way. Mostly because she never knew what he was looking for. She always had the feeling, too, that whatever it was, he found it.
“Fawn was my mother’s idea. She was a nice girl. She still is,” he added easily, wondering if Eve realized what she’d just revealed. “I’m sure she makes my brother an excellent wife. But I wasn’t interested in her, or in marriage. My mother knew that.”
“She married your brother?”
He nodded, unfolding himself. “They have three children. Two girls and a boy.”
“Isn’t that awkward?”
“Having three children?”
She shot him a bland look as he slowly crossed toward her. “Your brother being married to someone who wanted to marry you.”
“I don’t know that she was especially interested in me.” She’d seemed to be, but all Rio had cared about that summer was that Fawn wasn’t Eve, and that Eve had been nowhere to be found. He’d even returned early to college to keep his mother from pushing the poor girl at him—then stayed away for nearly three years for reasons that went far beyond that single incident. “But that has nothing to do with what we were discussing.”
Eve was still leaning against the beige counter, her back to the glass-faced dish cabinets. Rio had stopped in front of her.
They were talking about matters that affected Molly, Eve reminded herse
lf. Not about what had happened between the two of them. Tipping her head to meet his eyes, she supposed she could point out that his mother’s interference was hardly irrelevant to their present circumstances. But that little fact didn’t change what Eve had done in the first place, or what they’d been left to deal with now. That was clearly all that mattered to Rio.
“I don’t know what else to tell you,” she said. “Except that I’ll do whatever I have to do to see that Molly is taken care of. I always have.”
“And you’ve always done that alone?”
Eve wasn’t sure why she didn’t trust the question. Maybe it was the mild way he posed it. Or maybe it was just because Rio was close enough that she could feel the latent tension in his body. The curious way he was watching her made her feel as if he thought there was something she wasn’t telling him. Or that he didn’t believe something she had already said. Whatever it was, it suddenly felt very necessary to make it clear he would never have reason to worry about how she took care of their daughter.
“There’s something you need to understand,” she began, her deliberate calm an indication of how badly she wanted to preserve the ground they’d gained this evening. “When I told Mom I was keeping Molly, she didn’t try to change my mind. But she did make sure I understood what keeping her meant. It meant trading the freedom I would have had to go on with my life for the responsibility of raising her.