Carly's Gift (9 page)

“Must you save all your clever words for your books?” she chided gently.

“I'm sorry,” he told her. “It's been a long day.”

“Rather a long month, I should say.”

He was drawn to the warmth in her voice. “Coming back here has been a lot harder than I'd imagined it would be.” There was a deep need in him to talk about what he was feeling, if only on the superficial level they used with each other.

“Well, it will all be over soon,” she said with a crisp finality.

With consummate skill, she'd firmly closed the door on any further intimate revelations. Emotions were messy and unproductive, certainly not something anyone of good breeding brought up readily.

“Yes,” David said, “just two more days and then I've got to get back to work.”

“Oh, darling, please don't tell me you're going to insist upon coming home straightaway,” she said.

The rigid structure of the world Victoria lived in was one of the things that had drawn David to her. Knowing that, as an outsider, he would never truly be accepted, had given him an implicit permission not to go beyond the superficial in his relationships. He could exist in his own sphere while the lives of others swirled around him. Thanks to Victoria's position, there wasn't a party worth being invited to that he didn't attend, or a door that didn't open when he knocked. With the exception of rare, isolated moments when a sense of something missing would steal over him, his life was exactly as he wanted it.

“I don't really have any other choice, Victoria. I'm a month behind on the book already.”

“Another week or two shouldn't matter. You'll catch up. You always do.”

He could fight her and he'd win, but he wasn't sure it was worth the effort or the guilt he'd feel. Besides, going home wasn't the answer. This time his retreat from reality would not be so easy. “A week then,” he said, meeting her halfway. “I can't afford any more.”

“I should hardly be recovered from the trip by then.”

Weary of their trivial exchange, he wanted to shout,
Then stay where you are,
but that bit of self-indulgence would only prolong their conversation. “I didn't say you had to accompany me home.”

“That's thoughtful of you, but I expect once you've seen what I have in mind for us, you'll be staying, too.”

He pulled the cap off the Mont Blanc pen his agent had sent along with the first million-dollar contract she'd negotiated for him to sign. “Why don't you give me—”

There was a quick, soft knocking on the door.

David turned toward the sound. “Hold on a minute,” he said into the phone. “I've got—” He stopped. Did he really want to explain a late-night caller to Victoria?

“David?”

“I'm here,” he said quickly. “I've, uh, I've got a cramp in my leg. Give me your flight number and we'll finish this conversation when you get here.”

He wrote the information down, said a hasty good-bye, and headed for the door. As he put his hand on the knob, the thought crossed his mind that it made more sense for Ethan to be standing outside than Carly.

But it was neither.

“Andrea—what in God's name are you doing here?”

She took a small step backward as if she might turn and leave without saying anything. Several seconds passed before she swallowed convulsively and said, “I need to talk to you.”

David looked past her, down the walkway, and out into the parking lot.

“I'm alone.”

Cold air swirled around him, making his sweats cling like a frigid second skin. “Does your mother know you're here?”

She shook her head. “Please, can I come in?”

“I don't think that's such a good idea, Andrea. It's late and . . .” He left the thought dangling. Was it her reputation he was worried about or his own discomfort over seeing his supposed “daughter” actually standing in front of him? She was plainly upset about something and in need of someone to talk to. “Of course you can come in,” he said at last. “Could I get you a Coke? There's a machine by the office.”

“No, thank you.”

Where the room had seemed small before, Andrea's presence made it feel like a closet. He motioned to the sole chair. “Do you want to sit down?”

Instead of taking the chair, she perched on the corner of the bed, her spine rigid, her feet planted squarely on the floor. She had an abandoned, out-of-place look about her, like a flamingo sitting in a snowdrift.

“What can I do for you?” David asked, forcing his tone to sound receptive, encouraging.

Andrea lifted her gaze from her folded hands and looked at him, as if taking his measure and finding him wanting. “I'm not sure.”

“Well, why did you come here tonight?”

“To talk to you.”

“About?” he prompted.

“I wanted to find out what kind of person you are.”

David frowned—
that
hadn't even been in the running. “For any reason in particular?”

“I know about you,” she said, a flush coloring her cheeks.

David tensed. “You know what about me?” he asked evenly.

Her gaze bore into him. “I was awake last night when you came to the house.”

It was stupid to continue to dance around the truth but easier than confronting it. “How much did you hear?”

“Everything.” She used the word like a weapon.

“Could you be more specific?”

“I know you're my real father.” Glaring at him, she added, “Is that specific enough?”

He went to the chair and sat down heavily. It took a major effort to appear calm when every time his heart beat it felt as if it were about to leap from his chest.

“Have you talked to your mother about this?”

She shook her head.

Jesus, how could the three of them have been so blind as not to have planned for this possibility? What was he supposed to do now? “Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

Again, she shook her head.

Stalling for time, he got up and started to pace the narrow aisle between the chair and the door. “I really think your mother should be here. She should be the one answering your questions.”

“Why? So she can tell me more lies? I've already had fifteen years' worth. I don't need any more.”

“She can explain things to you.”

“I didn't come here for explanations,” Andrea said, a catch in her voice. “I want to know what my father is like. That's not such a big thing, is it?”

At that moment, he would have drained the ocean with a teacup if she'd asked. He sat back down in the chair. Tomorrow was soon enough to deal with the Pandora's box that had been opened. Tonight, he would do what he could to ease the questioning soul of an innocent young girl whose world had just slipped off its axis. “What would you like to know about me?”

She hesitated, as if caught off-guard by his capitulation and unsure where to begin. “When is your birthday?” she finally asked.

No other question could have told him more completely how convinced she was that what she'd overheard last night was the truth. In her place, he'd have asked for dates and details, some kind of proof that he was her father. “Three days before Christmas.”

She thought about that for a minute. “My girlfriend, Faith, was born on Christmas Eve. I always thought it was kind of a bum deal to have a birthday in December.”

Their conversation had taken on a surreal quality. Where were the accusations, the bitterness, the hostility that should have been aimed toward him? “If I could pick another day,” he told her, “and it had to be a holiday, I'd pick the Fourth of July.”

A small smile appeared and was gone. “Me too. I love fireworks.” She unzipped her jacket but made no move to take it off. “Did you always want to be a writer?” It was as if she were plucking her questions out of a grab bag.

“Not always. Until the sixth grade, I wanted to be a fireman.”

“My mom used to paint,” she said, leapfrogging in yet another direction. “But she must not have been very good at it. All of her stuff is hidden away in closets around the house.”

So that was how Andrea was dealing with her pain. She'd found a target in Carly, the one person she was confident would not strike back. He was an unknown quantity, someone she had to court favor with in order to get him to like her. Ethan was the outsider, a father but not her father anymore, or so she believed. “I remember,” he said.

“I guess it's not so strange that I want to be an actor after all—what with you a writer and Mom a wannabe artist.”

“I'm sure it's your mother you take after. Her talent is innate. The little I have comes from struggle and tenacity.”

She gave him a long, hard look. “Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Put yourself down. Whenever anyone says anything nice about your writing or one of your books, you act like they don't know what they're talking about.”

Could she really have seen that in him or was it something she'd overheard? “I guess it's more comfortable for me to deal with criticism than praise,” he said, something he'd never admitted to anyone.

“It's the way you say thank you, like you're not really listening to what someone is saying.”

“That's quite an observation.”

As if afraid she'd gone too far, she added, “It's not like you're being rude or anything. I don't think most people would even notice.”

Since he could give her so little else, he gave her this. “I'll try harder from now on,” he said.

Several long, agonizing seconds passed before she spoke again. “I looked London up online today—it's as big as New York. I can't imagine living someplace where there's seven million other people living right next to you.”

“You get used to it. After my time in New York, London was easy. If you're open to it, the kind of intensity you find living in a big city is almost addictive. But I don't stay in London all the time. I have a house in the country, too.”

“A lot of my friends' parents have cabins, but I've never known anyone with more than one real house before. I suppose the one in the country is really big?”

“Yes.”

“What about your house in London? Is it big, too?”

“It's comfortable.”

She hesitated. “Did you . . .” She stopped to clear her throat. “Did you love my mother?”

He'd expected her to ask something along that order. Still it hit like a blow to his midsection. “Yes,” he answered simply. To tell Andrea how much he had loved Carly would only add to her confusion.

“Then why—” She caught herself. “Never mind,” she said. “It's not important.”

He was out of his element. He had no idea what to say or do to ease her pain. Telling her that he wasn't her father would destroy any faith and trust she had left in the people she loved. Ethan could not be taken away from her without giving her someone to take his place. She needed to believe the man responsible for her birth was good and loving and kind, despite the fact that he had abandoned her and her mother.

“I'm sorry,” was all he could think to say.

“I've known there was something wrong for a long time now,” she said, abruptly dropping her defenses. “My dad doesn't like me.”

“That's not true,” David said, hoping his words sounded more convincing to her than they did to him. “I happen to know that he loves you very much. We had a long talk about you this afternoon and the reason he seems to hold back at times is he's been afraid that I would come back some day and take you from him.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“What made him think you would do that?”

“Because he knows how a father feels about his children.”

“Is that how you feel about me?”

He'd fallen into a trap of his own making. “I'm sure that's the way I would have felt if I'd known you existed,” he said, reluctant to add to the lies already told. “If you haven't talked to anyone about this, then you probably don't know that I found out about you the same time you found out about me.”

“We look a lot alike,” she said.

In reality, except for the color of her hair and the shade of blue of her eyes, Andrea was the spitting image of her mother. Ethan was so caught up in believing what he wanted to believe, he'd blinded himself to any other possibility. Or maybe it was knowing the truth that kept David from seeing what Ethan saw. “Actually, I think you look more like your mother than—”

“Do you like me?” she rushed on, making no effort to hide her need for his approval.

He could crush her with a word. “I like you very much,” he said.

Her head dipped in an almost imperceptible nod, as if she were privately confirming something she'd already decided. “Then it's okay if I come to live with you?”

Seven