Numb, Dillon was almost afraid of jumping to a conclusion that might lead to disappointment. “Where’s here?” he asked uncertainly.
“My house,” Hailey answered. “Julie’s here at my house.”
Stunned, Dillon could only ask, “When?”
“Just now,” she answered happily. “Why don’t you—” the call suddenly went dead “—come over?” Hailey concluded, even though she knew Dillon couldn’t hear her anymore.
Putting her cell phone away, she looked at Julie.
“He’s on his way,” she told the girl, then felt that in all likelihood, a warning was in order. “Your dad might be kind of angry and he might yell when he gets here, but you need to keep in mind that he really doesn’t mean it. You gave him quite a scare by running off like that. Remember, your dad really loves you.”
Julie looked at her uncertainly, clearly torn again. “He said that?”
This wasn’t the time to qualify her statement by saying that Dillon hadn’t said those exact words, but that was what he meant. If she said that, Julie would discount anything she would have to say after that. No, now was the time for reassurances, Hailey silently told herself.
With that, she told the girl, “Yes. Yes, he did.”
For her trouble, she saw an incredibly wide smile bloom on the girl’s face.
“Really?” Julie asked again, her eyes shining as she waited to get the same answer.
“Really,” Hailey repeated.
Julie paused for a moment, as if she was digesting everything very slowly and with relish. And then she looked at Hailey, curious.
“How did you meet my father?” she wanted to know.
That one was easy to field. “He renovated the spa that I manage.”
“When did he—”
Whatever the girl was about to ask was going to have to wait because just then the doorbell rang. Julie’s head practically spun as she looked toward her front door.
“That’s probably your father now,” Hailey told her as she headed for the door.
Julie was right behind her, her eyes never leaving the entrance.
A sudden surge of nerves had her looking toward Hailey for guidance.
“What do I say?” Julie asked, fighting back a wave of panic.
“Hi, Dad would be a good start,” Hailey said as she opened the door.
Any other exchanges or warnings were all put on hold because Dillon suddenly hurried inside. The second he saw her, he swept his daughter into his arms, hugging her to him as relief overwhelmed him. It was also the very first time he had ever been able to hug her and he wasn’t about to let go, not for a while.
He spun her around and then, finally, before he was completely overcome with emotion, he set her back down again.
“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.
“I’m okay,” Julie cried, her own young voice filled with emotion.
Dillon took a deep breath, attempting to distance himself from all the emotions that were swirling through him right now. “What were you thinking, running away like that?”
“I was thinking that I wanted to see you and Mom wouldn’t let me. She wouldn’t even let me talk to her about it,” Julie cried.
Her eyes were shining with tears and it was obvious that she expected him to understand.
He struggled to be the father she needed and made another attempt to try to discipline her. “But—”
This was a very fragile situation, Hailey thought. One misstep on his part and things could really go badly for him while he was trying to establish this shaky relationship. She knew she should keep out of this, but she couldn’t.
“That doesn’t matter right now,” she told Dillon. “What matters is that she’s your daughter and she’s here and you both love each other. You can work out the rest of that later,” Hailey told both father and daughter. “Right now all you really need to do is get acquainted.”
“No,” Dillon answered, “We can do that on the plane when we take Julie back. Right now,” he told his daughter, “I need to call your mother and keep her from having a nervous breakdown.”
Julie looked completely unmoved when he mentioned her mother. She waved her hand dismissively. “She doesn’t care.”
“Oh, yes, she does,” Dillon insisted. “Whatever is going down between your mother and me, make no mistake about that. She loves you very much and she deserves to know that nothing happened to you,” he told his daughter. He began to dial Maura’s number. “How did you wind up here, anyway?” he wanted to know. She had obviously flown here from Florida and airplane tickets weren’t exactly going for a song.
“I paid for it,” she proudly informed him as he heard the cell phone begin to ring.
“How?” he pressed, still dubious about what she was telling him.
“I’ve been saving my allowance for something important for a long time now,” Julie announced.
This being-a-dad thing was going to take some getting used to, he thought.
Meanwhile, Hailey was smiling at him. “Looks like she takes after you,” she said, nodding at Julie. Then, as he looked at her quizzically, she explained, “Patient.”
Just then, Dillon held his hand up as the call was being answered.
“Maura?” he asked.
The first words out of the other woman’s mouth were, “Did you find her?”
“Yes, Julie’s here.” He put his arm around Julie’s slender shoulders and hugged her to him as he continued to talk to Maura. “She turned up on—my doorstep,” he said, changing what he was about to say at the last minute. There was no point adding fuel to the fire and saying that the girl had appeared on Hailey’s doorstep, he thought.
“Is she all right?” Maura asked, her voice catching.
He could tell Julie’s mother was crying. He didn’t ever remember hearing Maura cry. “She’s fine, Maura,” he assured the woman kindly. “None the worse for her experience.”
“Well, I am,” Maura snapped, her voice practically choking because of the tears in her throat she was trying to suppress.
Dillon really didn’t know what to say to that. Deciding that there was nothing he could say, he just moved on and told her, “We’ll be taking the next available flight back to Fort Lauderdale to bring her home.”
“We?” Maura questioned.
He knew what she could be like and he wasn’t about to get into this with Maura right now.
“I’ve got to go now, Maura,” he told her, promising, “I’ll text you the details when I have them.”
And with that, Dillon terminated the call before Julie’s mother had a chance to tell him what she thought about this whole thing.
Chapter Eighteen
The second that Dillon ended the call to her mother, Julie immediately spoke up. “She’s a real pain, isn’t she?”
“Don’t talk about your mother that way,” Dillon told his daughter. A part of him shared some of Julie’s frustration, but he wanted to bring about a reconciliation—not escalate the feud that was in progress.
She looked surprised and somewhat betrayed by his admonishment. “Why not?” she cried. “It’s true! She won’t listen to anyone, not even her husband and he’s kind of a nice guy.”
“Be that as it may,” Dillon told her, “she is still your mother and deserves your respect.”
He was really struggling to take the high moral ground, and it was hard. Because all of his arguments with Maura had only managed to get him excluded from Julie’s life. It was hardly fair. And yet, he was her father—and he knew this was the right thing to do. For both mother and daughter.
Julie fisted her hands at her waist belligerently. “Why?” she wanted to know. “My mother certainly doesn’t give me any respect—or you for that matter,” the girl pointed out angrily. She was obviously trying her best to get him to side with her
against her mother.
This wasn’t going well, Hailey thought. Feeling Dillon could use some help, she decided to step in. Not all that long ago, she could remember feeling exactly the same way that Julie was feeling right now, so she could easily commiserate with the preteen.
“That’s one of those things that makes absolutely no sense now, but eventually, it will. I promise,” she told Julie. “Trust me on that,” Hailey added kindly.
Julie scowled at the two adults who were looking at her. “Well, I think you’re wrong,” she told them, obviously angry that things weren’t turning out the way she had hoped.
“And you are entitled to think that way,” Hailey told her, surprising both Julie and Dillon with her answer. “But not long ago I was exactly where you are right now. I was positive that everyone was against me—but they really weren’t. As a matter of fact, one of those people gave me some very good advice. They said that sometimes a little bit of diplomacy goes a long way.”
Hailey slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulders. Julie stiffened, but Hailey left her arm where it was and after a moment, the girl began to relent.
“What you have before you is the long-term plan, not just something for the short haul. You need to try to get along with your mother and then maybe, eventually, she’ll come around to your way of thinking. But she definitely won’t come around if you insist on defying her and behaving like you can’t stand her.” She looked into the girl’s eyes, searching for a glimmer to indicate that she had gotten through to Julie. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Hailey asked her gently.
Julie sighed dramatically. “Yeah. I’m going back home,” she answered, unhappy with this turn of events, but resigned.
“Yes, you are,” Hailey agreed, glancing at Dillon. “And in exchange, your dad’s going to try to convince your mom to allow him to visit you.”
“And I won’t stop until I convince her,” Dillon promised.
Julie looked really skeptical, but Dillon thought that he could see a trace of hope taking root. “You think so?” the girl asked, looking from Dillon to Hailey.
“Absolutely,” he told Julie. And then he looked around the immediate area. Julie hadn’t arrived much before he had, so he reasoned she couldn’t have put her suitcase away yet. “Where’s your stuff?” he asked her.
Julie shrugged. “I didn’t bring anything,” she confessed.
Dillon thought he’d misunderstood. “You didn’t bring a suitcase with you?”
“No,” she answered. “I didn’t want to attract any attention.”
Amazed, Hailey turned her head away from Dillon and whispered, “You have one very sharp little girl on your hands. Most twelve-year-olds wouldn’t have thought things through to this extent.”
“I’m going to make reservations for the three of us,” he told them, starting to take his credit card out of his wallet.
“The three of us?” Julie asked.
Dillon didn’t miss the fact that his daughter sounded decidedly a great deal more hopeful. Even if she hadn’t, he had no intentions of losing an ally at this crucial juncture. He knew he was going to need all the help he could get with Julie. Not just to get her home but also to find a way to entrench himself on the girl’s good side and stay there.
And then, of course, there was the matter of being able to handle Maura once he got to Fort Lauderdale. This was going to be a challenge all around and he was going to need backup.
“You heard me,” Dillon said. “The three of us.” And then he finally turned away to make that call to whatever airline had the first available flight from here to Fort Lauderdale.
“Looks like you’re going to get to meet my mother,” Julie said, looking at Hailey. The girl didn’t exactly sound as if she was happy about the prospect of seeing her mother again. “Now you get to see what I’ve had to put up with all these years,” she predicted, followed by another deep sigh.
“Funny thing,” Hailey told the girl, “your mother would probably say the same thing if anyone asked her how she felt about living with you.”
Julie looked surprised by what Hailey said, then visibly upset. Julie’s eyes closed into laser-like slits. “If she feels that way, then why won’t she just let me go and live with my dad?”
“Because under all that arguing and rule-setting, your mother really loves you,” Hailey told her. Julie’s frown only grew deeper. Hailey had to bite her lip not to laugh. “Don’t worry, this will all make sense to you in another fifty years. Or so.”
“Fifty years?” Julie cried, stunned.
This time Hailey did laugh. “I’m just kidding, honey.”
Julie’s frown instantly intensified, then after a beat, grew a little less so. Tossing her head, she claimed dismissively, “I knew that.”
“Okay, all set,” Dillon announced, returning to the room. “We lucked out. A party of four just canceled their reservations. That’s one more seat than we need.”
“Maybe them canceling is an omen and we shouldn’t go,” Julie said, speaking up.
“Nice try,” Dillon said with a laugh. “Okay, we need to get to the airport right now,” he urged, and then he paused as he looked in Hailey’s direction. “You want to pack anything?” he asked, giving her the opportunity to get a suitcase.
“Just a smile,” she answered, adding, “Something tells me I’m going to need it.”
And that’s when it hit him. He had just assumed she was coming with him. He hadn’t even asked her. “Listen, I just took it for granted that you’d want to come along with Julie and me. But you don’t have to if you’d rather not,” he told her, trying to find a graceful way of telling Hailey she was under no obligation to come with them.
Hailey looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “You’re going to need moral support. There’s no way I’m about to let you go alone,” she told him.
“Dad’s not alone,” Julie protested. She squared her shoulders. “He’s got me.”
“My mistake,” Hailey quickly backtracked. “There’s no way that I’m letting the two of you go alone. Better?” she asked, looking at Julie.
The girl smiled as she nodded her approval. “Better,” she answered.
And then she spared her father a glance as they were about to leave the house. Walking by him, Julie lowered her voice so that only he could hear what she wanted to say to him.
“You know, Dad, I like Hailey. I think she’s really nice.” she whispered with a wink just as she went out the door.
Dillon stood staring after Julie for a long moment. His daughter’s words of approval had left him utterly speechless.
* * *
A petite Maura was standing there, waiting for them in her driveway when Dillon, Hailey and Julie pulled up in the car Dillon had rented at the airport. Hailey found herself feeling sorry for the woman.
Maura looked like a very frightened mother who was doing her best not to break down. She still had circles under her eyes from crying and, in general, she looked as if she hadn’t slept a wink in the two days since her daughter had run away.
Leaning in toward Julie, Dillon whispered, “Why don’t you give her a hug, Julie? She looks like she could really use one. Your mom’s been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours.”
Glancing at the girl, Dillon thought that Julie looked as if she really wanted to. But at the same time, she looked very reluctant to admit that fact to anyone.
And then she shrugged carelessly. “I guess I can if it means so much to you,” Julie said.
“It does,” Dillon agreed, playing his part because he sensed that was what Julie wanted to hear.
This time Julie really did appear to have her doubts. “It does?” she asked, looking incredulously at her father.
“Absolutely,” Dillon guaranteed, trying to coax her to take the first step. He needed to have Maura in a decent frame of mi
nd if they were going to come to some sort of an agreement about Julie.
“Okay,” Julie mumbled. “If it means that much to everybody, I’ll give her a hug.” She grimaced as she said the words.
The next moment, there was no more time left for any debates or waffling. Maura crossed the distance between herself and her daughter, threw her arms around the girl and hugged Julie close to her as she obviously struggled to keep from dissolving into a puddle of tears.
But after the hugging had passed, Maura looked angrily at her daughter.
“I thought something awful had happened to you, that you were dead, or—” Her voice broke and she was unable to continue for a minute.
“Maura, we brought her back the minute that she turned up. Anyone of us would have been worried sick in your place,” Dillon assured Maura. He wanted her to realize that they weren’t enemies in this, but on the same side.
Maura looked like she was resisting believing him, but then she must have reconsidered.
“Thank you,” she said in a small voice. And then she looked at her daughter. “But you shouldn’t have run away like that. Do you know what could have happened to you?” Maura’s voice went up as she contemplated the full implications of what she had just asked.
“The important thing is that it didn’t,” Dillon said, trying to get her to focus on the positive aspect of this reunion.
Maura suddenly became aware that there was someone else at this reunion besides Julie and Dillon. She glared at Hailey, then turned toward Dillon. “I’m sorry, who’s this?” Maura asked coldly.
“This is Hailey Miller, Mom,” Julie said, doing the introductions before her father could say anything. The girl smiled as she continued. “She’s in charge of the wellness spa that Dad built.”
“She’s also the reason that I was able to get Julie to come back to Fort Lauderdale instead of having her run off again,” Dillon told Maura.
Maura’s expression was difficult to read as she looked between Julie and Hailey.
“Really? Julie, is this true?” Maura asked her daughter.
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