Cross My Heart: A Contemporary Romance Novel

by Abigail Strom

  “And that really is the most important thing to you, isn’t it? Being completely free.”

  She looked up quickly, but there wasn’t any judgment in his voice or on his face. It seemed like he was genuinely curious, genuinely trying to understand her.

  “I don’t know if it’s the most important thing. But, yes, I do treasure my freedom.”

  “And seeing this asshole—”

  “Derek,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. She’d just told him how important freedom was to her, and yet the protective tone of his voice sent a warm feeling coursing through her.

  “Derek. Seeing him will help you feel more free?”

  She shrugged. “It might. And, from a more practical standpoint, we really do need a bass player. And Derek is one of the best.”

  “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind,” Michael said after a moment.

  “I guess so,” she said with a sigh, pulling out her cell phone. “I may as well tell Molly the good news.”

  Michael rose to his feet. “I’ll give you some privacy to make your call.”

  “Michael.”

  He paused. “Yeah?”

  “I just wanted to thank you. For breakfast.”

  She hoped he understood what she was really thanking him for. For making things okay between them again. For accepting that last night was just a one-time thing.

  For being her friend.

  “You’re welcome,” was all he said. But he smiled at her, and she could tell from his expression that he did understand.

  Which was just one more thing to love about this man.

  Like. One more thing to like about this man.

  Michael walked back into the kitchen, and she caught herself staring at him before she forced herself back to reality. Which, in this instance, meant calling Molly and giving her the go ahead on letting Derek back into her life.

  Chapter Nine

  “So...this rehearsal you’re going to.”

  It was Tuesday, and Claire had five different outfits arranged on her bed. “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking...if you don’t mind, I’d like to come, too.”

  Claire stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  “Dad. You know I’m a total proponent of you and Jenna spending time together. It was my idea to help her fix up the house, remember? Thanks to me, we were over there yesterday stripping wallpaper. You totally failed to take advantage of the situation, but you can’t say I’m not doing my best to jump start your pathetic love life.”

  She took a quick breath. “But not today. Today is about me achieving a coolness factor I’ve previously only dreamed of. Because of me, Ellie and her friends are getting to see the Red Mollies rehearse together for the first time in five years. If you’re there, it will completely mitigate the coolness of that. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  He didn’t, but he understood this was important to Claire. “Yeah, okay. So I guess I’ll just drop you off and leave?”

  “No, you don’t have to take us. Jenna said we could go with her in Molly’s van. Ellie and the other kids are going to be here any minute, so if you don’t mind, I need to figure out what to wear and get changed. Okay?”

  He sighed. “Sure.”

  He knew it was stupid, this urge to make sure Jenna was all right when she saw Derek again. The asshole who’d actually had Jenna in his life, willing to marry him—and had screwed it up so badly he’d lost her.

  It was a particularly stupid urge given the fact that he and Jenna were actually moving towards a real friendship. Yesterday at her house had been relaxed and fun, and they’d played music for hours. They’d moved on from the blues to Elvis and Johnny Cash and Sam Cooke, and then onto the Beatles. He’d recognized a lot of that music but it was different listening to it with Jenna and Claire, the two of them bopping around and singing along at the top of their lungs. They’d gone past the Beach Boys and Jimi Hendrix and into early punk by the time they’d finished stripping the wallpaper and eating dinner—pizza, Jenna’s treat.

  Every hour he spent with her was like a gift. She’d brought him and Claire closer, helped them have fun together. She made him think about the world differently, see himself differently. She made ordinary things seem extraordinary.

  And she’d brought music into his life. When he’d realized he was singing California Girls in the shower that morning, he started to grin and couldn’t stop, thinking of Jenna and how he wanted to tell her.

  He wanted to keep her in his life any way he could. He wanted them to stay friends after she left town.

  So why was he fixating on Derek? Obsessing over past lovers wasn’t something a friend did.

  Jenna was a big girl, she could take care of herself. She didn’t need him worrying about her and she sure as hell wouldn’t want him to. Whatever happened with Derek was none of his business.

  He told himself that at least a hundred more times while the hours crawled by and he waited for Claire to come back.

  “Dad!”

  He’d managed to sink himself in professional reading as a distraction, so successfully that he didn’t hear Claire come in. Now he looked up to see her standing in the doorway of his study with her friend beside her.

  “Can Ellie sleep over tonight?”

  “Sure. If it’s all right with your parents, Ellie.”

  “They’re still on vacation, but it’s okay with my grandmother.”

  “Well, then, it’s fine with me. How was the rehearsal?”

  “Awesome!” “Unbelievable!”

  The two girls spoke at the same time, then looked at each other and giggled.

  “Jenna’s incredible, Dad. You wouldn’t even believe what an amazing musician she is.”

  “Sure I would. I’ve heard her play.”

  Claire shook her head. “Not like this. Not her own music, plugged in, with the whole band there.”

  He pounced on that. “The whole band, huh? Tell me about them.”

  “There’s Molly Smith, of course. She’s the lead singer.”

  “Jenna’s lead guitar, and she does vocals on some songs.”

  “Thao Li plays rhythm guitar.”

  “Honey DeLuca is on drums.”

  “Their regular bass player is away so Derek Masterson is filling in. His band was even bigger than the Mollies until they broke up a couple years ago. We got his autograph. We got all their autographs. They were so cool to us, Dad.”

  Ellie nodded solemnly.

  Michael slid his hands into his pockets. “Derek Masterson. That’s his name?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Cool, like I said. Focused on the music. They were all pretty focused, because it was the first time they’ve all practiced together in a long time.”

  He took a deep breath. “How was Jenna with him?”

  Claire looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  There was no way he could ask what he really wanted to ask. “Well, this guy Derek wasn’t one of the original band members. I was just wondering if Jenna was...okay with him.”

  “Oh. I think so. I mean, you could tell they had real chemistry going.”

  He froze. “Chemistry?”

  “Sure. Everyone sounded amazing, and they were really clicking, you know? You could tell they were really happy with the music.”

  “Oh. I guess that’s good, then.”

  Claire and Ellie went upstairs, where the sound of giggling would no doubt continue long into the night.

  He went into the living room to look through the window facing Jenna’s house. He could see a group of people sitting on her back patio, talking and laughing.

  Jenna and the band. Including, of course, Derek. He stood there for a long time, just watching.

  “Dad?”

  He turned his head and saw Claire coming out of the kitchen with a box of cookies in her hand. “Hey, sweetie.”

  “Hey.” Clai
re paused in the middle of the room. “You look like Mr. Rochester. Is everything okay?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Rochester?”

  “Well, yeah. The lights are off and you’re standing by the window, staring out into the night. You know, all dark and brooding.”

  He smiled in spite of himself, wondering how he’d ever be able to stand his house without Claire in it.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to brood.”

  “Is it because of Jenna?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not important. Nothing for you to worry about.”

  “We’ll be over there again Thursday, to paint the dining room.”

  “I know. Are you and Ellie hungry?”

  Claire held up the cookies. “No, we’re good. We had pizza with the band, so this is just dessert. Have a good night, Dad.”

  “You, too.”

  He turned back to the window. His eyes were on Jenna and the happy, carefree group on her patio, but his thoughts were looking inward.

  Dark and brooding.

  For some reason, he found himself thinking about the kid he’d been in high school. Not dark and brooding, maybe, but aloof. Solitary. Part of that had been about survival, but some of it had been the sense of separateness he’d always felt around other people.

  Keeping his distance from his parents had been a deliberate choice. Everything they were was diametrically opposed to what he wanted for himself. But why had he kept his distance from everyone else? His friends, Angela, Denise—even Claire.

  Jenna had a knack for bridging gaps between people. He thought about the effortless way she’d made him and Claire feel comfortable, that very first night. She might have a restless soul, but she also had a way with people.

  He didn’t have a way with people, but that didn’t mean he had to stand here in the dark, looking out at Jenna and her friends like the lonely kid he’d once been.

  Like the lonely adult he was now.

  The word echoed in his mind, echoed in the dark room behind him.

  It went against the grain to admit he was lonely. It felt like a weakness.

  But if he didn’t admit it, how could he change it?

  When he was with Jenna, he didn’t feel lonely. He felt connected. To her, to his daughter—even total strangers, like that night at the Albert Cray concert.

  But he couldn’t rely on her to do that for him. She’d be out of the picture soon. After she was gone, he didn’t want to go back to the ways things had always been. He wanted the changes she’d brought to his life to stick.

  He might not be a natural the way Jenna was, but he was capable of reaching out to people. He could choose community over solitude.

  And he could choose to stop obsessing over Jenna’s ex-boyfriend, who, because of Jenna’s generous spirit, had been readmitted to her life when he didn’t deserve it.

  He took a deep breath and headed for the stairs.

  “Hey,” he said a minute later, standing in Claire’s doorway. The two girls were sitting in front of the computer, giggling at whatever they were looking at.

  They turned at the sound of his voice. “Hey, Dad,” Claire said. “What’s up?”

  He was surprised at how awkward he felt. Downstairs this had seemed like a great idea, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  “I was wondering if the two of you felt like doing something.”

  Both girls stared at him blankly. “Do something?” Claire asked. “You mean, with you? Like what?”

  “Well...” He hadn’t even thought this through. He racked his brain. “It’s only seven o’clock. The mall will be open till ten, right? We could go shopping. Or...we could go to a movie. Or...” He tried to think of another option.

  “Bowling!” Ellie said suddenly. “Claire, you said you wanted to learn to bowl.”

  “Ooh, good idea! Dad, do you want to take us bowling?”

  He’d never bowled in his life. “Well...you’d have two students on your hands,” he said, looking at Ellie.

  “No problem! It’ll be easy to teach you.”

  Be careful what you wish for, because you might end up wearing rented shoes. “Okay, then. Bowling it is.”

  ***

  “Bowling?” Jenna smiled in delight as she pried the lid off a paint can. “You really took him bowling?”

  Claire nodded. “Yeah, and of course he picked it up right away and became, like, instantly awesome. He always has to be good at things. It’s kind of annoying.”

  “I don’t have to be good at things,” Michael said mildly, stirring the paint he’d just opened. “But I do have a certain amount of manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination. I am a surgeon, after all.”

  The manual dexterity she could attest to. She’d never been with a man who could turn her on so much with his hands, who knew exactly when and where and how to touch her.

  She closed her eyes as a visceral memory hit her without warning, a memory of Michael looking down at her with that mixture of passion and possessiveness that turned her inside out.

  Derek had never looked at her like that. When she was with him, what he’d wanted was sex. When she was with Michael, she knew with utter certainty that what he wanted was her.

  Being wanted like that was a heady experience. The kind of thing a woman could get used to.

  Which, she reminded herself, was the reason she couldn’t have him. When it came time to leave, she didn’t want to wrench herself away the way she’d had to wrench herself away from Derek and the Mollies. That had hurt like crazy, and she wasn’t in the market for that kind of pain again.

  “The three of us could go bowling tonight,” Claire was saying now, and Jenna pulled herself out of her thoughts and tried to focus on the conversation.

  “No, this is your last night here. I’m sure your dad wants you all to himself.”

  In fact, Michael had told her that he’d made a reservation for the two of them at a fancy restaurant in the city, as a surprise. She glanced at him now, wondering if he might use the opportunity to ask his daughter to stay in Iowa for good.

  She really, really hoped so.

  Claire had been putting strips of blue tape over the window trim. Now she stopped, turning to look at Jenna. “Then...is this the last time I’m going to see you?”

  “No, of course not,” Jenna said quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow before you go, and after that...well, we have email and Skype. There’s no reason we can’t stay in touch.”

  When she saw the sparkle of tears in the girl’s eyes, she went over and gave her a huge hug. “Don’t be sad, kiddo. I’m in your life for good now. Like it or not.”

  And then, suddenly, Claire was crying so hard Jenna could feel her body shuddering with sobs. Jenna hugged her harder, patting her back and murmuring “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She looked over her shoulder to see Michael looking helpless, and she frowned at him. “Come here,” she mouthed at him.

  After a moment’s hesitation he did, putting his arms around Claire and holding her, a little gingerly at first, and then tighter. Claire was small and her dad was big, so Jenna was enveloped in the hug, too. She was caught off guard at how natural it felt—the three of them in an interlocking knot of care and affection, her arms around Claire and Michael’s arms around them both.

  “Sorry,” Claire said after a minute, after her tears had subsided. Jenna stepped back to give her a little space, and Michael did, too. “You guys must think I’m such a dork. I don’t know why that happened. I mean, I know we’ll be in touch, Jenna. So I don’t know why I broke down.”

  She took a quick breath. “Let’s turn up the music and get started.”

  ***

  Michael tried to concentrate on a medical journal while he waited for Claire to get back from Ellie’s. She’d been gone since mid afternoon, which had given him plenty of time to second guess his decision.

  He was going to ask her to stay.

  Logic was against it. Logic said that uprooting a fourteen year old girl from her support
system of friends and family was insane—especially when all he had to offer her in return was himself. A workaholic single dad without a single successful emotional relationship in his past. And while he could try to scale back at the hospital, the truth was he’d never be able to spend as much time with Claire as she deserved.

  So, no, his decision hadn’t been based on logic. It had been based on instinct, on the fact that he knew in his heart that Claire belonged with him. And that if he didn’t at least try to be a real father to her, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.

  He checked his watch for the tenth time in the last five minutes. He’d told Claire they needed to leave by six, and she was already half an hour late. Maybe he should call the Washingtons to—

  The front door banged open, and Claire shot up the stairs like she was being chased by wolves. A moment later he heard her bedroom door slam shut, the sound reverberating through the house.

  He went to the front door, which she hadn’t bothered to close, and checked to see if there were actual wolves out there. Seeing nothing, he shut the door.

  He looked up the stairs. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  He sighed. If this was fatherhood, he supposed the only thing to do was wade right in.

  He went up the stairs and knocked on her door.

  “Go away!”

  He tried the knob, and found she hadn’t locked it. He poked his head into the room and saw her face down on the bed, crying.

  “Sweetheart, what happened? Are you all right?”

  Claire jerked her head off the pillow and glared at him. “I told you to go away.”

  He shook his head. “Not until you tell me why you’re so upset.”

  She glared at him some more. “Why are you all dressed up?”

  He’d put on a suit and tie for dinner. “I was planning to take you out to a restaurant in the city. But we don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  Her face crumpled up, and he couldn’t stand it anymore. He went over and sat next to her on the bed. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  Maybe she was sad because she was leaving. Maybe she didn’t want to go back to Florida. Maybe when he asked her to stay, it would make everything all right.