A Father's Gift

by Andrea Edwards

  “Holy cow!” the man said. “What the hell is that?”

  Cassie rubbed Ollie’s fuzzy head. “He’s an Airedale.” And her best friend.

  “Dogs don’t get that big, not even Airedales.”

  She just slipped her arm around Ollie’s shoulders, needing his closeness to counteract her strange reaction to this guy. But it didn’t seem to work. Her heart was reaching out to the man, the way a drowning man reached out frantically for a life preserver.

  “Why don’t I just fix your faucet for you?” she found herself saying.

  The man frowned at her.

  “For Aunt Hattie’s sake,” she explained. “It’ll only take me a few minutes.”

  The man came a few steps closer and extended his hand to let Ollie sniff him. The dog wagged his tail like the guy was a long-lost buddy.

  “I know you two, don’t I?” the man asked slowly, coming even closer so that he could scratch the top of Ollie’s head, although his gaze was on Cassie. His eyes were dark with thought and a touch of suspicion. “You live next door to me. My twins are dying to meet you and your dog.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She sounded almost cool, almost collected.

  His gaze softened just a bit. “I’ve been wanting to meet you myself.”

  “Oh, yeah?” A little tremor washed over her. Fear or excitement? It had better be just another row of bricks being added to the wall protecting her.

  “I want to get those trees trimmed along the property line,” he said. “There’s a lot of dead branches that need to be pruned before a storm brings them down, but I’m not sure who owns the trees.”

  Her heart relaxed. There was nothing to fear here. “I’m not sure, either. Maybe we could split the cost.” He looked surprised and perversely she was annoyed. “Did you expect you were going to have to take me to court? You lawyers are suithappy.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I specialize in hereditary law. A lot of what I do is finding lost heirs or ancestors, not taking people to court.”

  It was her turn to be surprised. “Really? That sounds like a good thing,” she admitted, conscious that her mind was losing reasons to dislike him. And her heart was not making it an offhanded victory. “I take back all my lawyer remarks.”

  His smile seemed genuine this time. “It’s rare to find someone who’ll admit they were wrong.”

  “You can do your admitting when you see how easily I fix your faucet.”

  But then his frown came back. “I can’t let you fix it.”

  Damn, but he was rigid. Well, so was she. And she wasn’t going to let this man with the sad, shadowy eyes beat her. “I can’t let you hire somebody and pay weekend rates when it’s such a simple job.”

  “Then let me pay you.”

  “No way. This is just a good-neighbor thing.”

  “Then I’ll feed you.”

  She felt a sudden, deeper-than-for-food hunger but refused to examine it, knew somehow that it would be fatal to her peace of mind to do so. “Whatever.”

  The man stuck his hand out. “Jack Merrill.”

  She took a deep breath as her hand touched his, not allowing any reaction to well up inside her. And almost succeeded. “Cassie. Cassie Scott,” she said. “Just let me finish up my order and fax it in. Then I’ll close up here and drop Ollie off at home.”

  He gave her a quick nod and Cassie went back to the storeroom to settle her nerves in private. Her agitation meant nothing. Just stress after a busy week. Just a touch of spring fever— a little late, she granted, coming in mid-May instead of midApril—but she’d always marched to her own drummer.

  And fixing the faucet was the neighborly thing to do. No need to worry that she was breaking the latest of her vows—not to get involved.

  “Daddy, why are you staring at Cassie’s feet?”

  Startled, Jack came near to swinging on the fluorescent lights on his kitchen ceiling. He took a deep breath and tried to look sternly at his twin daughters, standing side by side in the kitchen doorway, but he wasn’t able to hold on to the frown.

  “Miss Scott is being nice, fixing that leaky pipe as well as the faucet. I just want to make sure that nothing happens to her. You never know what kind of monsters there might be under the sink.”

  “Oh, sure,” Mary Louise said.

  “Really,” Mary Alice added.

  He cleared his throat, painfully feeling the loss of his yesterdays. Last year, when the girls were five, that monster story had worked just fine. Now it had no more impact on them than the news that Caesar had conquered all of Gaul.

  “Why don’t you guys go see what Aunt Hattie is doing?”

  “We’re not guys,” Mary Alice said.

  “Thank you,” Jack said. “I forgot.”

  “You’re welcome,” the girls replied.

  His eyes wandered back down toward Cassie as laughter floated up from under the sink. He’d been telling the truth when he’d said he wasn’t staring—he’d actually been thinking how easy it had been to talk to her. He’d been in her presence for only a few minutes and he’d told her about high school and his vow. In the three years he’d been with Daphne, he didn’t think he’d ever told her that story. And in the five years since she’d left, he knew he hadn’t told a soul. Hadn’t even come close to telling anyone.

  What magical powers did Cassie Scott have? And how could he keep them from affecting him again?

  He turned to the girls before they accused him of staring again. “When Miss Scott is done, we’re going out for dinner.”

  They looked at each other and then down at their denim jumpers. “We hafta change our clothes.”

  “Then you’d better get started. I think the restaurant closes at midnight.”

  They moved quickly enough but their giggles hung in the air like the expensive perfume their mother used to wear. He frowned. Maybe still wore, for all he knew.

  “Having a little problem with control, there?”

  Cassie had slid out from the cabinet and was now sitting on the kitchen floor, her arms loosely wrapped around her knees. Her grin almost mirrored the same mocking attitude he’d seen in his daughter’s faces. Did all women have this need to squash down the men who wandered into their lives?

  No, that wasn’t true. Daphne had never mocked him; he’d been a star she could hook her wagon to. Of course, he hadn’t known that until he’d blown his knee out in the preseason and had called it quits. Then she had left, furious because he’d refused the tryout with the Raiders that she’d claimed he “owed” her, and hitched herself up with an actor. Her refusal to be tied down by marriage suddenly made sense.

  She’d never looked back, called, or anything. Maybe she’d thought he would come chasing after her, but he would have been damned first. Jack Merrill didn’t crawl, beg or plead. And he paid his own way.

  Something Cassie needed to understand.

  “Everything shipshape under there?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You were down there awhile.”

  “It didn’t take me more than a minute or two to tighten things up. I was just waiting for you to get things under control out here.”

  His eyes took in her athletic build, sparkling eyes and short curly hair that made a dusty brown halo around her head. Beauty and high spirits—a combination that could make a man swim the rapids. Well, he’d given up swimming. He walked over to where she sat.

  Cassie started to gather her tools from under the sink, then stopped when she saw his extended hand. “I’m not helpless, you know,” she said. “I can get myself up.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Jack replied, still holding out his hand. “I’m just trying to be a gentleman.”

  “That’s just a nice-sounding word for ‘control freak.’” She made a face and pushed herself upright.

  “Now what?” he snapped.

  “I know how that scam works. It starts with a hand to help you out of a car or opening the door for you. Pretty quick it moves into giving you all kinds of rule
s that you have to follow in order to be a proper lady.”

  Independent, as well as ornery. And with enough fire in her blood to keep the world in chili pepper until the Second Coming. It teased at him, tempting him to look closer. But he could fight it. He had no interest in love and the way it chipped away at your pride until you had nothing left. He would pay Cassie back for her trouble and that would be that.

  “And you don’t need to take me out to dinner,” she said. “This wasn’t enough trouble to be called work.”

  “No way. I pay my debts. And I owe double since you fixed the drain, too.”

  She frowned at him. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “My daddy didn’t raise no welchers.”

  “I never said he did.”

  “He taught me not to be beholden.”

  “Beholden?” she repeated.

  “You can take a boy out of the hills, but you can’t the hills out of the boy,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter how I say it, I don’t like owing.”

  “What is this?” she mocked. “Some guy honor thing?”

  “What’s wrong with paying your debts?” He knew he was getting hyper about it, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t need or want her charity. Then another thought struck him and his annoyance fled. “Unless you have other plans.”

  “Not really,” she admitted slowly. “But your family might not want to have some stranger butting in…”

  He suddenly saw the light—she didn’t like kids. Who cared how intriguing she seemed at first blush? “Well, fine,” he snapped and grabbed his checkbook from his suit-coat pocket. He would pay his debts one way or another. “I’ll have you know they’re very well-behaved and a joy to be with, but if you don’t—”

  Cassie pulled his checkbook away from him and threw it on the table. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t insulting your kids. I just assumed that you might want to spend the evening alone with them.”

  “Oh.” His anger deflated. This woman had a strange power, a knack for knocking the underpinnings out from under him. Another reason to stay away. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Look, I’m sorry for blowing up. The finer points of social interaction sometimes elude me.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, her voice soft.

  She was smiling at him and he didn’t feel so much like a fool as a junior-high kid—tongue-tied and spellbound. There was such a strength about her, such a beauty that shone through those eyes and her smile. He wanted to say something clever and witty, but all he could do was gape. Where was all his great determination? His ability to block out distractions and focus on his goal?

  The girls came to his rescue as they clattered down the stairs.

  “Girls, girls.” Aunt Hattie’s words fruitlessly chased after them. “Ladies do not run.”

  The girls rushed into the kitchen. “We’re ready, Daddy.”

  “Yeah, and we’re really, really hungry.” The kids had shed their jumpers for matching striped overall shorts and ruffled blouses.

  “You put shorts on?” he asked. “I thought you were getting dressed up.”

  “Aren’t we going to Pizza Playland?” Mary Louise asked.

  “Remember?” Mary Alice asked. “You promised us this morning we’d go there for dinner.”

  Aunt Hattie had followed the girls into the kitchen, radiating disapproval as if she’d been storing it up for the past fiftysix years. “You’re thanking this young lady for fixing our faucet by taking her to the Pizza Playland? That’s like paying your debts with play money.”

  “We’re going to Pete’s Patio,” he told them. He’d dined there while looking for the house and had found it to be a comfortable combination of casual dress and gourmet food.

  “Pizza Playland is better,” Cassie said, then smiled down at the girls. “That’s where the girls and I want to go, right?”

  “Right!” they agreed loudly.

  Jack just frowned as the three of them walked toward the door. This was supposed to be a dinner to pay Cassie back, and pizza and popcorn didn’t do that. Didn’t she take this debt seriously? Well, Miss Cassie Scott was going to learn that Merrills didn’t take charity.

  After giving Aunt Hattie a nod, he caught up with Cassie outside. The girls were rushing over to his minivan. “I owe you three now,” he told Cassie under his breath. “Three decent paybacks.”

  “Jack—”

  “Us Merrills pay our debts,” he said. “Three paybacks it is.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “Far be it from me to taint the macho Merrill honor.”

  Her voice was like a match striking the flint of his soul. He could have sworn that sparks flew between them. He could almost smell the burning in the air and hear the sizzle as the sparks tried to ignite his heart.

  To no avail, though. His heart could sizzle all it liked. His head ran the show.

  * * *

  “Daddy, would you watch our shoes, please?” one of Jack’s daughters—Cassie couldn’t tell the twins apart—asked him as they put their shoes on the bench.

  “Sure thing, pumpkin,” Jack replied.

  “And don’t tell Aunt Hattie,” the other girl implored her father. “She don’t like us to take our shoes off.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  After getting Jack’s assurances, the girls dashed off to a playroom filled with plastic balls. It was a very popular place, filled with laughing kids—a fact that Cassie appreciated greatly this evening. These were the perfect surroundings to fight off that strange instant attraction she’d felt to Jack at her store. No one could have romantic thoughts while resting their arms in the sticky remains of spilled pop.

  She turned back to Jack, but found a new danger. He was watching his daughters with so much love in his eyes that it hurt her to see it. She had to look away. It made her all too conscious of what her life was lacking.

  And what it would always lack.

  She sipped at her iced tea for a moment, tracing a pattern in the plastic tablecloth with one fingertip, then looked back up at Jack once her pitiful emotions were under wraps. “Sounds like Aunt Hattie is one tough lady,” she said.

  Jack brought his gaze back to hers. His eyes had a faint wariness in them that seemed to dance around with her heart.

  “She grew up in a two-room cabin in the hills and didn’t get her first new pair of shoes until she was twelve years old,” he said, wiping up the crumbs near his place with a paper napkin. “She has trouble with the concept of dressing down.”

  He turned to watch the girls throw themselves into the playroom, so Cassie followed suit. Her thoughts were traveling another route, though. It was funny how things from your youth stayed with you all your life. Her father had lied about where he and their mother had been going just before they’d died, and now Cassie half believed everyone was lying to her.

  Even finding out last month that her father had been ill and probably seeking medical help hadn’t made much of a difference. He could have told them; he should have told them. The twenty years between the lie and the truth couldn’t be erased, and neither could the feelings of inadequacy that that time had built.

  “Next time we’re going to a real restaurant,” Jack said suddenly, pulling her from her thoughts.

  Cassie wanted to say there would be no next time, but he seemed to have this obsession about paying what he perceived as his debts. She wasn’t up to another argument over it and just asked, “What’s wrong with this place?”

  “I said I’d feed you in exchange for your plumbing services. This doesn’t count.”

  Come hell or high water, there would be no next time. Relationships weren’t her strength and she was smart enough now to avoid the things that got her into trouble. Even if they had the most tempting blue eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I like pizza. I come here all the time.”

  “You have kids of your own?” He suddenly looked concerned. “We could have brought them along.”

  “No, I don’t.” For some reaso
n his look made her nervous, like he could somehow see into her soul. Another reason to avoid him. “I’m not married anymore.”

  “I’ve never been married and I’ve got two kids.” A dark cloud filled his face. “I’m sorry. I’m not bragging. I’m just pointing out the obvious.”

  “Which is you don’t have to be married to have kids.”

  He nodded and Cassie turned back to look at the twins. The flip side of that truth was that being married did not ensure that you would have children. She felt the gloom wanting to descend, the storm clouds wanting to expose the misery that lay all too close to the surface.

  “Daphne was—and probably still is—very ambitious.”

  Cassie looked back at Jack, relieved to have the subject changed. He was staring at a point someplace behind her left shoulder. Even without the eye contact, it felt like they were very much alone together. Which was crazy, considering the hordes of laughing kids and weary parents all around them. Which was dangerous, considering the fragile state of her common sense this evening.

  “I used to play pro football,” Jack said. “And she thought being with me would help her get noticed by some Hollywood producer, agent or something.”

  Cassie played with her drink, slowly spinning the glass around. She tried running through the names of pro football players she remembered but his didn’t ring a bell. But he looked like a professional athlete; his body was lean and tight as if the years of training couldn’t be wiped away that fast. If only her heart was that disciplined.

  Jack went on. “I’m sure, from Daphne’s point of view, the girls were an accident, but she never said as much. Then I tore up my knee and lost my spot in the limelight.”

  “And she left?”

  He nodded. “Daphne’s one smart lady. She knew her wagon wouldn’t go anywhere if the horse was lame.” His words were said in an offhand way, but there was no hiding the darkness that filled his eyes. Was he still pining for her? Maybe that was the reason for the shadows she’d sensed around him earlier.