To Be a Family (Harlequin Superromance)

by Kilby, Joan

  Katie glanced sideways at John, one hand draped over the steering wheel, a slight frown creasing his brow as he gazed at the road ahead. So what if she did snub him? He’d left her to die and gone surfing.

  It didn’t get much worse than that. And yet…

  Seven years on she was still punishing him. She didn’t like what that said about her. And it wasn’t the way a woman who didn’t care behaved.

  “It’s Tuti’s birthday in a couple of weeks,” John said. “Would you like to come? My parents are hosting it at their place. They’ve got the space for all the cousins to run around.”

  “When is it exactly?” she stalled. Once upon a time she’d felt part of his family, even though the noisy boisterous Forsters were so different from the more reserved Hennings. Acting friendly was one thing but going to a party with him was quite another. Her introverted nature aside, if she went to the party would everyone think she and John were getting back together? That wasn’t going to happen. The pressure, the sincere good wishes, might be uncomfortable.

  “Not this Saturday but next.”

  “I’ll have to see. I have these insane deadlines now.”

  “It’s going to be Tuti’s first time being around the whole family. It would be great if she had a few people there that she knew well.”

  “Oh, right.” Her cheeks burned and she turned away to look out the window. He was asking her for Tuti, not him. Of course. How could she have thought anything else?

  “Tuti and my mother haven’t hit it off,” John went on. “You know how Mum is, so over-the-top. She’s trying too hard. Tuti runs and hides every time she comes around.”

  Katie could relate. She’d been overwhelmed by Alison at first, too, and she’d been a teenager when she’d first met John’s mother. Gradually she’d come to appreciate Alison’s exuberance, and then to love her as a second mother. “You want me to be an intermediary. Isn’t that your job?”

  “I’ve tried. So far it’s not working.”

  “I don’t know. The tutoring is within reason. But getting involved in family stuff…” She shook her head.

  “Okay. I’m not going to pressure you. Just thought you might like to come for your own sake.” He paused. “My sisters ask after you.”

  Suddenly her chest felt tight. She’d lost a whole family when she and John had split up. His sisters and his mother had rallied around her when she was ill and in the hospital. It wasn’t until John had returned to Australia and she refused to make up with him that Alison had turned cool toward her. She understood that Alison would be loyal to John and side with him, but she’d come to rely on Alison’s love and support. When she’d withdrawn it, she’d hurt Katie.

  She also missed John’s sisters, Sonya and Leah. They’d been the older sisters she’d never had. She’d lost touch with them, too. She’d been glad in a way—seeing them had been a painful reminder of John—but it had been another loss. She’d liked his dad, Marty, a fire captain, too. He was easygoing and jovial, a far cry from her bottled-up ex-military father.

  Now, through Tuti, John was back in her life and she would have to deal with all those feelings she’d buried for years. In most areas of her life she was confident, happy, cheerful. Yet she’d allowed herself to stay stuck in the role of being the injured party with John. She was weary of it. This behavior made her seem cowardly and, since her recovery, she’d vowed to be bold, adventurous and brave.

  She missed being friends with him. Missed their quiet conversations, the laughter, the sense of knowing someone so well they didn’t need to speak. For seven years she’d kept John Forster off her radar. Taking on Tuti meant reentering his sphere. It would be uncomfortable at times but she would be lying if she told herself she was doing it only for Tuti’s sake. She needed to do this for herself. It was time to learn to see John as just another guy. It was time to move on.

  From now on she would go out of her way not to avoid him. It was the only mature way to behave. She would be pleasant and polite. She would have the occasional coffee with him. And she would go to his daughter’s birthday party. In return he would simply treat her as a friend. It sounded like a fair deal.

  They were approaching the end of the highway and the intersection leading to Frankston. “What day did you say the party is?”

  “Saturday, two weeks from now.” He shot her a glance. “Two till six.”

  This was her opportunity to show the Forsters what Katie Henning was made of. So she didn’t have a husband or children. That wasn’t the be-all and end-all. She’d survived, not just the cancer but the heartbreak, the loss of her second family. She’d gone on to have a great life on her own, a full life, achieving her goals and making a success of herself in not one but two careers.

  “I guess I could probably make it.”

  “Great!” John reached over to squeeze her hand.

  Oh, dear. The sudden kick of her heart at his brief touch wasn’t the stuff of friendship. She tugged her hand away and folded it inside her own. No matter what, she was not going to fall for him again.

  * * *

  “HOLD STILL, TUTI.” John scraped her slippery hair back with the brush and awkwardly fumbled the elastic around the pigtail. Despite his mother’s gifts of sparkly barrettes and pretty hair bands Tuti only wanted her chin-length hair in pigtails. It was damn fiddly and he was sweating beneath his uniform shirt. But so much in Tuti’s life had changed, he figured if she wanted to hang on to this one thing, he would give her pigtails if it killed him.

  “How’s that?” He looked into the bathroom mirror with her, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. The pigtails looked too high on her head, a bit like an alien’s antennae. “I’m not much of a hairdresser.”

  Tuti gazed silently at her reflection, her eyes worried.

  “Sorry, sweetheart, they’ll have to do.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Let’s go or you’ll be late for school.”

  He walked Tuti inside to her classroom then drove on to the police station, parking in the back in his reserved spot. Every day he had to face that damn empty lot next door where the station extension should be. Shading his eyes against the sun, he visualized bricks and mortar housing a CSI unit and facilities for half a dozen more uniformed cops. Not going to happen thanks to cuts to the state budget.

  He wasn’t an empire builder. He just wanted the resources he needed to protect his community. Okay, maybe it was more than that. Lately his job, although rewarding in many ways, had seemed…not enough. The bigger cases kept going to Frankston and growing Summerside station was the only answer he could think of.

  Seeing Katie achieve big things with her writing was wonderful but, though he hated to admit it, it had made him more discontent with his own lot. He’d had simple dreams once—to marry Katie, have a bunch of kids and be a professional surfer. His relationship with Katie had gone bust and his surfing dream faded with maturity. He’d turned to law enforcement hoping for a life of action and excitement. But with each rung on the police career he’d had less action and more paperwork. Now he’d risen as far as he could go at Summerside Police Station and he was stagnating, careerwise. He never told anyone that, of course. From the outside his life no doubt appeared perfect—a solid job, nice home, family and friends, great community. To want more would look like he was complaining.

  Funny, though, how now that he was ready for change, his life was changing around him. He had custody of Tuti and was reconnecting with Katie. Maybe it was time he did something about his career,
as well. He had a family to think about. Okay, she was only one small girl, but being responsible for Tuti made him look at life differently. And if things progressed with Katie—but no, he wasn’t going to get ahead of himself. For now he was just glad they were back on friendly terms.

  He went inside to collect his mail in the main office. Patty, the young Irish woman in Dispatch, was working the switchboard. “Hey, Patty. Hot day.”

  “To be sure.” Patty adjusted her headset, pushing back red curls damp with perspiration. “The air-conditioning never makes it into this little sweatbox. When are we going to get approval on the extension and upgrade?”

  He knew he shouldn’t have made his request for funds public, but Patty did double duty as a secretary and had typed the application. Once Patty knew something, the entire station was informed within a day or two. He hated having to explain himself to people. He’d had enough of that following the breakup with Katie and the death of his surfing dream. Nowadays he was more pragmatic, less of a dreamer. Until lately. Was he crazy, starting to want more professionally just when he was tied down with a child? Except he didn’t see it that way. Tuti was a new adventure, a breath of fresh air, reminding him that he’d once wanted more out of life.

  “Don’t hold your breath.” John tugged at his collar. “I think there’s a floor fan in the storeroom.”

  “A floor fan.” Patty shook her head dolefully.

  John fished his mail out of his pigeonhole and walked down the corridor to his office. Before he got there Paula waylaid him in the bull pen. Behind her, Riley was at a desk, furiously typing into a computer.

  “A word, boss?” Paula, tall, athletic and blonde, came forward to meet him. “It’s about the Moresco case.”

  Paula had come to Summerside with a cloud over her head from a past liaison with Nick Moresco, a drug dealer under her investigation who’d fathered her son, Jamie. When crystal methamphetamine appeared on the street in Summerside she’d vowed to put Moresco back behind bars. She and Riley had been working hard on the case, but so far they hadn’t managed to gather enough evidence to make an arrest.

  “What’s the latest?” John said. “Any breakthroughs?”

  “Riley and I tailed him to a holiday house in Rye,” Paula said. “We believe he’s using the premises to cook crystal meth.” She glanced at Riley, checking his progress. “We’re applying for a search warrant.”

  “You going out there today?”

  “No, I need to organize the Force Response Unit from Melbourne. That’ll take a couple of days.”

  “What evidence do you have that he’s cooking?” John asked. “If you’re wrong, you’ll send him underground.”

  “Nick’s a city penthouse kind of guy,” Paula explained. “This holiday house is tiny and rustic, tucked in the bushes, far from the beach.”

  “No nosy neighbors to wonder about odd smells,” Riley said over the sound of typing. “Nor any great loss if the kitchen explodes and the place burns down.”

  John envied their excitement at closing in on their lead. Sure he was in charge of the station, but he’d gone into the police force because he was a doer, not a paper pusher. These days his job mostly involved administration and a mountain of paperwork. And keeping a level head. “Sure he wasn’t just visiting someone?”

  “The property is registered in his grandmother’s name. She lives in Palermo, Italy,” Paula added pointedly. “We’ve got him this time, I’m positive.”

  “Sounds promising. Judge Horton in Frankston is available during office hours to sign your warrant.” John clapped Paula on the shoulder and nodded to Riley. “Good work, you two. If you need me to be part of the team…” He tried to keep the wistful note out of his voice.

  “Don’t worry,” Riley said. “We’ve got it covered.”

  Of course, they did. But all of a sudden he was desperate to be doing something. “Let me know when the raid is going down. I want to be there.”

  Leaving them staring after him, he carried on to his office. He shut the door with a slam and flung himself in his chair. Files were stacked a foot high on both sides of his desk. Ignoring them, he leafed through the mail. Memos about bushfire safety, notices of upcoming detective courses, the national police newsletter… He flipped through the newsletter to the ads for vacant positions. Not that he was going anywhere. He’d just brought Tuti home to Summerside. She needed to settle in.

  He tossed the newsletter aside. Nope, nothing of interest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KATIE IGNORED THE tittering going on in her class to answer the door and let in the sixth-grade girl collecting lunch orders. Normally her students were well behaved, but today the moment her back turned whispers and stifled giggles started. She’d hoped the children would get bored of teasing Tuti, at least until recess when Katie could fix the girl’s hair.

  Tuti’s pigtails did look funny, she had to admit. Done correctly, they adorably jutted out either side of her dimpled smile. She didn’t know what John had done today but it wasn’t pretty. Not even cute. Tufts of hair erupted from the top of the girl’s head at an angle, leaving clumps hanging down that weren’t long enough to be held by the elastic. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the right pigtail sat an inch forward of the left pigtail. Plus, the left pigtail had a ribbon and the right didn’t, adding to the comic effect.

  Except that Tuti wasn’t laughing. At first she’d smiled in response to the other children’s grins and reached out the only way she knew how, by offering them cookies from her lunch, and the use of her precious colored pencils. Gradually she’d realized they were laughing at her, not with her. Her sweet smile had faded, replaced by an anxious frown.

  Katie glanced over her shoulder. Her heart sank.

  Tuti’s head was bowed low, her forehead almost touching the top of the table she shared with Belinda. As Katie watched, a tear dropped. Belinda, bless her, rubbed Tuti’s shoulder and glared at the class but even she couldn’t stop them from teasing. Katie bit her lip. She didn’t want to make things worse for Tuti by chastising the class in front of her.

  She turned back to the grade-sixer. Miranda was one of the popular girls. Her long shiny blond hair was beautifully but simply styled with a blue hair band that matched her dress.

  “Miranda, could you do me a favor?” she said in a low voice. “Leave the order with me for now and take Tuti to the girl’s room and fix her hair.”

  “Yes, Miss.” Miranda handed over the plastic container in which she carried the paper bags and money.

  Katie called Tuti over and gave her a little hug. “Go with Miranda.”

  “Come on, Tuti.” Miranda smiled and held out her hand. “I’ll make you so pretty.”

  Sniffing, Tuti trustingly placed her hand in Miranda’s.

  Katie closed the door and turned back to the class. From the shamefaced expressions on most of the children they knew they’d done wrong. Reminding herself that the word discipline meant to teach not to punish, she told them a story with a message on treating others as we would like to be treated.

  She thought of that lesson and how to approach John about the incident as she drove Tuti home from her English tutoring that afternoon. Naturally she couldn’t and wouldn’t punish John for making Tuti the laughingstock of the class. But she could teach him how not to.

  He opened the door of his town house to her knock, still in his uniform, a beer in his hand. He looked tired, the lines around his eyes more deeply etched than usual. His broad shoulders fi
lled out his blue uniform shirt as nicely as ever but today they didn’t seem quite as straight.

  “Hey, Tuti,” he said. “How did you get braids in your hair?”

  Tuti beamed at him then slipped past, kicking off her shoes and tugging at her socks even before she dropped her school bag. She ran down the hall, presumably to her bedroom.

  “I got a girl from grade six to help,” Katie explained. Miranda had done a fabulous job on Tuti. Two thin braids were caught up in perfect pigtails tied with a rich blue satin that contrasted beautifully with Tuti’s glossy black hair. After lunch, several other grade-one girls had returned from the playground with the same hairstyle, although not executed with the same panache.

  Katie handed John the reader they’d worked from that he was supposed to go over again with Tuti tonight. “May I come in? There’s something important we need to talk about.”

  John set the reader on the hall table and lined up Tuti’s carelessly discarded shoes neatly next to his spit-polished black leather shoes. “I’ll just go turn down the stove. Come through to the kitchen.”

  Katie had never been inside John’s town house but she recognized his collection of boomerangs and Aboriginal throwing sticks mounted on one wall of the small foyer. The collection had grown since she’d last seen it in the house he’d shared with Riley in their early twenties. She’d practically lived there herself, coming and going as if it were her second home. She missed those days with a sudden pang—the carefree lifestyle, their still-sunny-looking future, the love and the laughter. Now she was a formal visitor, a service provider, the atmosphere constrained.