Dr. Dad (23 page)

“Then you were smart to break up with him,” Toby said, a trace of a smile teasing his lips.

That mere flicker of a smile gave her courage. She pushed away from his desk and walked toward him, not too close but closer than they'd been. “I'm sorry about Saturday night. I should have told you then. Instead, I acted like a jerk.”

“It would have been nice to know what was wrong,” he admitted, although his careless shrug im
plied that he considered the matter closed. “If you're still working things out with him—”

“I'm not,” she insisted. “There's nothing to work out.”

“Well, so you need some time to recover. That makes sense.”

“I'm all recovered,” she argued. “I just don't want to let anyone have that kind of control over me again. I don't want to get swallowed up by another intense relationship. I don't want to be thinking about someone else all the time.” A pointless wish, since she seemed to be spending an awful lot of time thinking about Toby.

Another sly smile flickered across his face. “So we'll skip the intense relationship. Any chance you'd be open to a totally meaningless, no-strings-attached fling?”

She laughed. His joke made her desire him even more. She would love a fling with him—but she was the one who would attach strings to it. She wasn't cut out for casual affairs, and even if she was, she couldn't have one with Toby. She already liked him too much.

“I'm open to a lot of things,” she conceded. “I just want to take it slow. I know it sounds silly for a thirty-two-year-old woman to be trying to find herself, but that's where I am right now.”

He extended his hand to capture hers and tugged her across the few feet of space that still separated them. Tenderly, he brushed his lips over hers. “We can take it as slow as you want,” he murmured.

The promise of a real kiss from him was almost enough to make her want to take it fast. The warmth of his body so close to hers, the whisper of his breath against her cheek, the possessive clasp of his hand
around hers made her want to lose herself, not find herself.

But that was a mistake she wouldn't let herself make. So she resisted the urge to throw her arms around him, pull his mouth back to hers and press her body to his. She would take it slow because she had to—and she would thank her lucky stars that she'd met a man like Toby, generous enough to let her do what she had to do.

“H
I
, S
USANNAH
?”
Lindsey cupped the phone to her ear. She was in the kitchen, Amanda and Meredith hovering next to her as if they were dying to snatch the phone away from her so they could hear Susannah's voice themselves.

Well, they'd hear it soon enough. Lindsey had promised them she'd figure out a way for them to see Susannah, and she'd come up with a great plan. Assuming Susannah fell for it, which was a big assumption. But Lindsey believed it would work.

“Yes?” Susannah's voice sounded exactly the same on the phone as it did on TV.

“It's Lindsey.”

“Hi, Lindsey.”

Lindsey tried to measure Susannah's mood by her tone. She didn't sound annoyed, as though Lindsey was the last person she wanted to hear from. So she took a deep breath, turned away from her friends' eager faces and said, “I was wondering if I could, like, borrow MacKenzie.”

“Borrow him?” Susannah sounded surprised and amused.

“Yeah. See, like, I've got this friend, and her cousin is really into cats, and she wanted to send a photo of her and a cat to her cousin, only she doesn't have a cat. And I was like telling her about how wonderful
MacKenzie is, and we just sort of thought maybe we could take a picture of her with MacKenzie to send her cousin.”

“Sure,” Susannah said so automatically Lindsey wasn't certain she'd heard right.

“Sure?”

“Sure. When does your friend want to borrow him?”

Lindsey grinned at Meredith and Amanda. “Well, she's here now.”

“At your house?”

“Yeah. It's okay with my dad. He lets me have friends over when he's not home.”

“Well…okay. Why don't I bring MacKenzie over and your friend can have her picture taken.”

Lindsey gave Meredith and Amanda a thumbs-up. They squealed and gave each other a high five. “Okay,” Lindsey remembered to answer Susannah. “That'd be great.”

“I'll be right over,” Susannah said. “'Bye.”

Lindsey hung up the phone and announced, “She'll be right over.”

Amanda and Meredith squealed some more and hugged her, which was a bit much although Lindsey relished having them so in love with her. After about ten seconds of being hugged, she wriggled out of their arms. “Come on, guys. We've got to get organized. Meredith, is your camera ready?”

“Yeah.” Meredith had gotten a camera for her eleventh birthday. It wasn't too fancy—it focused all by itself and had a built-in flash, and Meredith had already taught Lindsey how to use it. Lindsey had phoned her last night and told her to bring the camera to school with her so they could try this scheme out at their
weekly Susannah Dawson Admiration Society meeting.

That the plan seemed to have worked and her friends adored her gave Lindsey a huge boost. She'd had another really awful day at school. Ms. Hathaway had chewed her out in front of the whole class because her math homework was wrinkled. “This looks like something you might have pulled out of a trash can,” she'd said. “And what a shame, because you probably got all the answers right. But when you have no regard for your work, why should I have any regard for it?”

Lindsey had had to sit at her desk, saying nothing, staring at her hands, as Ms. Hathaway lectured her in front of everybody on having no regard. She had only a few weeks more school and then she'd be done with Ms. Hathaway forever. The question was, could she survive those few weeks without going nuts?

At the moment, with Meredith double-checking her camera and Amanda standing by the window, watching for Susannah, Lindsey believed she might survive after all. It was a clear, summery afternoon, finally hot enough for sandals. More important than the warm weather was the fact that Lindsey's father seemed to be in better spirits than he'd been on Sunday after his date with Susannah, and when he was in good spirits, Lindsey's life was a lot easier. She figured he had cheered up because he'd abandoned the idea of actually dating Susannah, which was a good thing, given Susannah's secret baby back in California.

And now Susannah was coming over with MacKenzie. Except for school, Lindsey's life was definitely looking up.

“Here she comes!” Amanda shrieked from the window. “Oh, my God!”

“Listen, you guys—be cool, okay? Don't make a fuss over her or she'll leave. Okay?”

“Okay,” Meredith promised.

“I'm just screaming now. I'll stop when she comes in,” Amanda assured Lindsey. “She's going around to the front door.”

The doorbell rang, as if to prove Amanda's report had been accurate.

“Remember—be cool,” Lindsey warned them one final time before hurrying down the hall to answer the door.

Susannah looked anything but glamorous in her jeans and a clean white T-shirt. Her hair was held back with a tortoiseshell headband, and she had no makeup or anything on. Even so, she was gorgeous. Lindsey wished she could be half as gorgeous.

“Hi,” she said, beckoning Susannah inside. MacKenzie sat in the crook of Susannah's arm and eyed Lindsey suspiciously. “Hey, MacKenzie, remember me?”

He seemed as if he might.

Susannah stared past Lindsey, and she turned to see Amanda and Meredith lurking in the hall behind her, gawking at Susannah. “These are my friends, Meredith and Amanda. Meredith's the one with the cousin,” she said.

“Your dad knows you have
two
friends over?” Susannah asked.

“Yeah. It's okay with him.”

“Well,” Susannah said. “This is MacKenzie.” She extended the cat toward Meredith, who flinched back to life and reached to take him. “He's kind of heavy, but he's very sweet.”

“He's a great cat,” Lindsey said, leading the group
back down the hall to the kitchen, where the lighting was better for shooting photographs.

“He's beautiful,” Meredith agreed, standing in the sunlit corner of the room and stroking MacKenzie.

“He's so soft.”

“Okay, move a little to the left so the light hits your face,” Lindsey ordered, lifting the camera. Then the picture taking began. First Meredith and MacKenzie. Then Meredith, Amanda and MacKenzie. Then all three girls and MacKenzie, with Susannah taking the picture. Then—with very little goading—a picture of Amanda, Meredith and MacKenzie with Susannah.

She was so relaxed, as if she didn't even care that Lindsey's friends knew she was a famous actress. When Amanda said, “I watch your show all the time,” Susannah only laughed and said, “It's not my show anymore.” When Meredith asked if acting was fun, Susannah actually admitted that there were definitely some fun aspects to it, even though it was also a lot of hard work. When Amanda asked why Susannah had moved to Arlington, of all places, Susannah said, “Maybe because I wanted to have a next-door neighbor like Lindsey.”

It was all Lindsey could do not to kiss her for saying such a nice thing. Whatever might have gone wrong with Lindsey's father Saturday night, Susannah still liked her. Dr. Dad hadn't spoiled things for his daughter.

They used up all twelve exposures on the roll of film. If Lindsey didn't come up with an idea fast, Susannah would leave—but they were all getting along so well, and Amanda and Meredith were really enjoying being with Susannah, and Lindsey knew they'd be
her slaves forever if she could figure out a way to get Susannah to stick around a little longer.

“Why don't we bake cookies,” she suggested. “Susannah thinks she isn't a good cook, but she really is. Would you stay and help us, Susannah?”

Susannah hesitated for a minute and then said, “Okay. You girls shouldn't be using an oven without an adult around, anyway. But don't listen to Lindsey—I
am
a lousy cook. I'll just watch while you bake.”

Meredith and Amanda seemed excited about baking. They clearly saw Lindsey as their leader, which pleased her enormously. Meredith was more of a leader type than Lindsey, and Amanda was the one who'd supplied the information about Stephen Yates and the baby, so she might have stepped into a leadership role, too. But they both seemed willing to let Lindsey be the star. Well, Susannah was the
real
star, but Lindsey was the star of the fifth-graders.

Rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, she found enough ingredients to make chocolate-chip cookies if they skipped the walnuts, which everyone agreed would be acceptable. MacKenzie curled up in a pool of sunlight on the floor and licked himself, ignoring the rest of them as they banged around the kitchen, smashing butter into a soft mush with a fork, measuring white and brown sugar, spilling flour on the counter. Susannah helped by wiping the spills, breaking eggs and making sure they were using the right measuring spoons.

She also amazed Lindsey by keeping the conversation going. Lindsey and her friends couldn't talk much beyond “How much baking soda am I supposed to use?” or “Do we have to grease the cookie sheets?” But Susannah kept talking about other stuff. “Are you
all in the same class?” she asked. “I bet you can't wait till summer vacation. What are you going to do this summer?”

Meredith was going to a sleep-away camp in New Hampshire. “We do boating and tennis,” she said. “My mother went there when she was a girl.”

Amanda's mother had signed her up for an art program at the Arlington Museum. “It's kind of boring, but it's okay,” she said. “It's just mornings. Hey, Lindsey, maybe your dad could sign you up for it, too. Then we could do it together.”

Lindsey perked up. She was so bored by school in general and Ms. Hathaway in particular that she hadn't gotten around to worrying about whether she'd be bored all summer, too. Last summer she'd had Cathy to hang out with, and they'd had a great time, biking to the community pool, swimming and buying soft-serve ice cream at the snack bar there, or planning picnics in their backyards. They'd played soccer and they'd slept over at each other's houses a lot. But Cathy wasn't going to be around this summer, and Lindsey hadn't given much thought to how she was going to fill that void.

Amanda wasn't Cathy, but Lindsey could hang out with her. Maybe she could get her to eat a little more. “Here, have some chocolate chips,” she said, tearing open the bag and shaking a few chips into Amanda's hand.

Meredith stirred the rest of the chips into the batter while Lindsey and Amanda smeared butter over the cookie sheets. “What are you going to do this summer?” she asked Susannah.

“Write. Fix up the house a little more. And I'd like
to drive around the area, do some exploring. I haven't seen much of New England.”

“You should go to Tanglewood,” Meredith said.

“You just drive straight north across the Massachusetts border. My parents go every summer while I'm at camp. The Boston Symphony Orchestra plays there.”

“That sounds like fun. Maybe I'll do that.” Susannah smiled at Lindsey. “Maybe you could come with me.”

Lindsey took a deep breath to conceal her amazement. Classical music didn't do much for her, but to spend a day in the Berkshires with Susannah was worth sitting through all of Beethoven's symphonies at once. “Are you really going to spend the whole summer in New England?” she asked, putting aside her excitement about Susannah's invitation and remembering that there were certain things she needed to know about Susannah. “I mean, don't you want to go back to Hollywood?”

Susannah laughed. “No.”

What about her baby, though? Didn't she want to see her child? “Haven't you got family there?” Lindsey asked carefully.

Amanda and Meredith fell silent, spooning the batter onto the cookie sheets and waiting for Susannah to answer.

“I do have family there,” Susannah told them. “But I'm not sure I'll be visiting them over the summer.”

“Why not?” Lindsey was pushing, but she needed to know. Not just for the sake of the club but for her father's sake, as well, just in case he had any lingering dreams of asking Susannah out for dinner again. If she had a baby, Dr. Dad ought to know about it before he got any complicated ideas.

Susannah didn't seem disturbed by the question. “I think I need a break from my family,” she said. “I'm sure I'll visit eventually, but I only just moved here a few weeks ago. I'm not ready to go back yet.”

Not ready. Not ready to be a mother to her child? Or not ready to work out whatever had gone wrong between her and Stephen Yates? Something must have gone wrong, or Susannah wouldn't have left.

Lindsey wasn't going to let her father be the guy Susannah passed the time with until she decided she was ready to go home. As dazzled as she was by Susannah, her father was the one she lived with, the one she was going to be stuck dealing with if Susannah led him on and then dumped him. Lindsey didn't want to believe Susannah would do such a thing, but she
was
a Hollywood star, after all, in the habit of being doted on and worshiped like a goddess. And there was the baby, too. It couldn't be denied. Susannah was a fantastic neighbor, but as Dr. Dad's girlfriend she'd be bad news.