Athena's Daughter (18 page)

“Hey,” she called out. “Would you mind
bringing my hairbrush in here? It’s in my carry on.”

“Just a sec.”

She pulled the hair tie from her ponytail,
letting her hair down over her shoulders. It was past time for a
trim, but she didn’t want to trust the job to some random
beautician found in the phone book. It would have to wait until she
got home, and she knew by then her hair would be almost
unmanageable. She ran her fingers through it, and cast an eye at
the reflection of the door in the mirror.

“Derek? Hairbrush?”

“I can’t find it. Are you sure it’s in
here?”

“I thought it was.” She returned to the
bedroom, a slight frown of confusion creasing her brow. “I may have
put it in my purse.” She crossed behind Derek who was still
rummaging in her carry-on bag, and picked up her purse from the
chair where she’d slung it after they checked in. Opening the
zipper, she peered in and saw the brush resting on top of the
contents. “Here it is,” she sighed. “I guess I dropped it in here
and forgot.”

“All right,” Derek replied. “What’s
this?”

When Athena saw the red cover of Elizabeth’s
photo book in his hands, her heart plummeted straight to her feet.
Almost immediately it shot back up where it lodged in her throat,
pounding with a furious tempo. Here it was, then; the moment she’d
both anticipated and dreaded for weeks.

“It’s…” She stopped and cleared her throat in
an effort to push her heart back down to her chest where it
belonged. “It’s Elizabeth’s. She wanted me to bring it with
me.”

Derek sat on the edge of the bed and raised a
questioning brow. “May I look at it?”

She couldn’t move. It was like an invisible
force field molded itself to her body, pinning her in place. “Sure.
Go ahead.”

He flipped open the cover and encountered the
school picture Athena replaced after showing it around. A grin lit
his face, and he laughed under his breath.

“Ah, the famous missing tooth photo.” He
turned the page, looked at the photograph, and frowned. “Who’s
this?” He held up the book, the photo facing Athena.

“That’s Steve and me when we got married,”
she said quietly.

“Oh.” Derek turned the photo back toward him,
and shook his head a little bit. “Doesn’t look at all like I’d
imagined.”

Athena raised her hands and laced her fingers
together behind her neck as she waited for him to turn the page and
see the next picture. Her fingers felt like ice against the frantic
heat of her neck, and even clasped together they trembled so badly
her arms shook with the force of it. Derek turned to the next
photo.

“And this must be Christma…..” The word broke
off like it was turned off with a switch as he gazed down.

Athena tried to moderate her breathing to
stop the whirling in her head. There was no way she could faint.
She couldn’t! She waited for him to speak, but he just kept staring
at the picture, his eyes wide and shocked.

One hand rose, and he threaded his fingers
through his hair. His breath seemed to catch in his throat, and his
chest hitched. Soundless words formed on his lips for a moment
before he pressed them tightly together.

When Athena saw his fingers clench in his
hair, she braced herself for an explosion. But when he spoke, his
words were soft and measured.

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Yes,” she croaked. “After the tour was
over.”

“Does she know?” he asked, still directing
his words at the photo he couldn’t seem to stop looking at.

“Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.” Her
hands were growing numb, but she couldn’t bring herself to move
again. As she watched, hectic patches of color bloomed in Derek’s
cheeks, and panic swept her when he very gently placed the little
book on the bed. Eyes burning with blue fire met hers, and her
breath came to a complete stop.

“You kept my daughter from me for seven
years?” With each word his voice increased in volume. “You kept me
from my child?” He rose from the bed, fists clenched so tight that
every muscle in his arms became as clear cut as if they’d been
carved.

“Derek, I…”

“Don’t you dare,” he interrupted in a low
growl. “Don’t you dare tell me you’re sorry.” He took a deep,
trembling breath, and an expression of deepest pain joined the heat
in his gaze. “Jesus Christ, Athena. She…I…” He glanced down at the
photo again, his jaw growing taut with what she knew was rage. “You
let my daughter grow up thinking her father abandoned her.” That
hot, tortured gaze met hers again, and she gasped.

“You let her believe her own father thought
so little of her that he never cared enough to be with her, when I
would have…” His hands rose to his head again. “Oh, God, I’d have
been there for her. I could have…She would have known how much I…”
He looked at her again and shook his head, his face a hard mask of
anger. “No, Athena. You will not cry. You don’t have the right to
cry.”

She blinked away the tears that filled her
eyes, her mind performing a desperate search for words that might
make this better. But none came. She could only stand there like a
useless, reprehensible statue, watching the man she loved fall
apart in front of her.

“Nothing you’ve done before even begins to
compare to this. She’s my child! I would have been there if I’d
known, but you…you…” He turned away from her, breathing hard. With
a move so sudden she didn’t see it coming, he grabbed the telephone
from the bedside table, ripped it from the wall and hurled it
across the room with such force it left a gaping hole in the far
wall.

“Goddamn it!” His voice was raw with pain.
“She doesn’t even know I’m her father. She doesn’t…” He whirled
back to face Athena, eyes blazing. “You’re going to tell her.”

Her head moved in a frantic nod. “Yes, I
will. As soon as…”

“No,” he interrupted. “You’re going to tell
her now.”

“But…” She caught her breath in what would
have been a sob, but he’d told her not to cry. “I can’t tell her
something like that over the phone. “ An annoying little voice
spoke up in her head to inform her she couldn’t do that anyway
since Derek had just ripped the phone from the wall.

“That’s right, you can’t. You’re going to go
home and tell my daughter that I’m her father.” He advanced on her,
pointing an accusatory finger at her chest. “You’re going to tell
her how much I wish I could have been there for her all these
years, and you’re going to tell her the reason I wasn’t is because
her mother is a manipulative, cruel, lying bitch.” He stopped in
front of her, reached out as if to touch her, but drew his hands
back in fists. “You are going to take all the responsibility for
this fucking horrible mess, and you will do it now.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “I…”

“You’d better fucking believe ‘okay,’” he
snarled. “You have one week to do it, because the minute my last
show ends I’ll be on a flight to Memphis to see my daughter. And if
I find out you’ve told her some pretty lies to make yourself look
better, I’ll find out, and I’ll set the record straight. Do you
understand?”

“Yes,” she murmured. There was nothing more
to say.

“Good. Now get your shit and get out of my
sight.”

When the knock sounded on the suite’s outer
door, Derek ignored it. God only knew how many people witnessed
Athena’s rushed exit from the room, and he had no desire to talk
about it with anyone. In fact, he was in no condition to talk about
anything.

It was a toss-up which was worse, his pain or
his anger. At that moment, Anger appeared to be winning, but Pain
was coming up fast, gaining with a speed he was powerless to stop.
Curiosity about what Elizabeth might be like had just left the
starting gate and was lagging behind. He couldn’t even begin to
think about his daughter – Jesus, Christ, he had a
daughter
!
– while he was still so shattered by what her mother had done.

Athena. A deep groan was wrenched out of him
as Pain put on a burst of speed, overtook Anger, and moved into the
lead. Fate was one cruel son of a bitch to let him find her again
only to lose her. He’d been happier the past few weeks than he’d
ever been, even during the summer when he and Athena first met.
Being with her again was better than the roars of adulation from
the concert crowds, better than hearing his music on the radio,
even better than his first gold record. But that was all over, and
the way it ended…

Anger rounded the curve and blew past Pain as
Derek thought of the way Athena concealed the fact that he was
Elizabeth’s father. He didn’t want to be sorry he’d lost a woman
who would keep a man from his child and that child from her father.
Thank God he’d decided to wait until the tour was over to ask her
again to marry him. He dodged a bullet there.

Another knock on the door sent Anger flying
across the finish line, and Derek raised his head, seething.

“Go! Away!”

Not only did his unseen intruder ignore his
shouted demand, whoever it was entered the room. Muffled footsteps
sounded on the carpet headed for the bedroom, and Derek rose to his
feet, determined to rid himself of unwanted company.

“Hey.” Paul stuck his head in the bedroom
door. “Where’s Athena? I need her for a bit.”

What was he, Athena’s social secretary? Derek
pinned Paul with a heated glare. “She isn’t here, nor will she be.
Now go away.”

An irritated frown creased Paul’s forehead.
“What do you mean she isn’t here?” He started into the room, but
stumbled over the telephone cord at his feet. Irritation changed to
bemusement as he studied the mangled instrument, covered with a
sprinkling of drywall dust. His eyes traveled up to the hole in the
wall before returning to Derek who stood in the middle of the room,
fists clenched and jaw tight. Sudden understanding dawned on Paul’s
face.

“She told you,” he said quietly.

Betrayal bloomed scalding in Derek’s chest.
“You knew?” he roared. “You knew and you didn’t fucking tell
me?”

Paul held up his hands in front of him. “I’ve
only known a little over a week, and I found out quite by accident.
And it wasn’t my place to say anything, mate.”

Refusing to be mollified, Derek turned to the
bed and grabbed a pillow. He had to crush something, and a pillow
was better than Paul’s face. “Who else knows? Was everyone else
privy to the fact that I’m a father but me?”

“As far as I know, no one.”

With an inarticulate growl of rage, Derek
hurled the pillow at the window. The soft thump it made as it made
contact without inflicting any damage only caused his anger to
increase.

“She should have told me sooner. The instant
she found out she was pregnant, she should have let me know.”

Paul cleared his throat. “I believe she
tried, you know. She rang, but…”

“Yeah, yeah. The whole Tina thing.” With no
warning, his rage drained away, leaving him weak and feeling ill.
“Paul, I have a daughter.” Moving like an old man, he sat down on
the bed and put his face in his hands, an unsuccessful effort to
shut out the world.

“I know.” Paul crossed the room, and the bed
dipped as he sat beside Derek. “She wanted to tell you, but…”

“Do not defend her.” Though he tried to
summon his earlier fury, all he felt was a wave of defeat. “What
she did was unforgivable.”

“I’m not defending her,” Paul protested. “I
agree; not telling you was wrong, so wrong I can’t even find words
for it. I’m just saying I can kind of see what she was going
through.”

Trying to see Athena’s side of anything
wasn’t on the agenda, and Derek clenched his jaw. “I don’t give a
flying fuck, all right? Get out.”

“Listen to me.” Paul’s voice was low and
intent. “Haven’t you ever put off doing something difficult?
Something so overwhelming that you couldn’t even think of how to
start?”

Derek shook his head in mute negation. He
didn’t want to hear it, and tried to ignore what Paul was saying.
But his friend continued, his words drilling themselves into
Derek’s head.

“So you wait, hoping to find the best way to
do it. But the longer you wait, the harder it gets. The world rocks
right along, and if you finally go ahead and do it – or say it –
it’s going to hurt worse than if you’d done it when you should
have. Lives are going to be disrupted; people are going to get
hurt. By waiting, you’ve made a bigger mess of things than if you’d
just gone ahead and gotten it over with.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Derek muttered into his
hands. “I’m Elizabeth’s father, and I should have known. I can
never forgive Athena for keeping that from me.”

“So you sent her away?”

“Fucking right I did.” A little spark of
anger fired up again, and he grabbed hold of it, happy to have the
despair pushed back. “I sent her lying, scheming little arse back
to Memphis to tell Elizabeth I’m her father. And when I get there
next week…”

“Stop right there,” Paul interrupted. “Look,
mate; it’s fine to hate what Athena did, but you can’t hate her for
doing it.”

He jerked his head up and glared at Paul.
“Oh, really? Watch me.”

Paul’s lips firmed into a tight line.
“Whatever she did, Derek, she’s still your daughter’s mother. And
that little girl loves her mum with all her heart. If you go
stomping into her life full of righteous anger, treating her mother
like shit, all you’ll do is cause her to pull away from you. She’ll
end up hating you for making her mum miserable. Is that what you
want?”

This was not what he wanted to hear. “Well,
I’m sorry I can’t just waltz in and act like everything is sunshine
and fucking roses!”

“I didn’t say you had to. But you are going
to have to get it together enough to treat Athena with the respect
she’s due for being Elizabeth’s mother.”