Father Of The Brat (13 page)

She had dropped her head to stare into her lap when he’d reminded her that she was a human being, and she continued to avoid his gaze when he finished with his assessment of her character and her importance in his life. He sighed again, wishing he knew how to reach her.

When she continued to simply sit in silence, Carver threw his hands out to his sides and said, “Now then, those are my rules for you, and I don’t want to hear any objections. There will be no objections. Got it?”

Finally, Rachel looked up, folding her arms over her chest before glaring at him, silently daring him just to try and enforce his edicts. But there was something a little less menacing about her posture than there usually was when she was about to challenge him, he thought. Her mouth wasn’t set quite so tightly, and her eyes didn’t glitter nearly as angrily as they usually did. Carver took it to be a good sign. Maybe she’d loosen up even more when she heard the rest of his spiel.

“In turn,” he continued after a telling pause, “I will stop smoking and swearing and dressing like a bum, and I’ll quit after two cups of coffee in the morning. I’ll restrict my television viewing time to one hour a day, will do my fair share of chores around the apartment, will be in bed by midnight and will read at least one classic novel a month.”

He smiled at Rachel’s expression, now one of utter and irretrievable confusion.

“In short,” he concluded, “I, too, will behave like a human being. No objections.”

Silence greeted his offer for the first several minutes after he announced it. Rachel stood, looked first at him, then past him at Maddy, then down at the floor. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, scratched the back of her head, inhaled a deep breath as if ready to speak at length, then exhaled again without saying a word. Finally, she looked up at Carver.

“You might, uh…You might want to start with
On the Road,
” she told him. “It’s really good.”

Carver grinned at her. “I know. I read it when I was twelve.”

Rachel grinned back, and he was shocked and dismayed to realize it was the first smile he’d seen from the girl since she’d come to live with him. Hesitantly, not certain what kind of a reception he’d receive, he took a few steps forward and opened his arms.

“Don’t panic,” he told her when he saw her eyes widen in alarm. “I won’t do it if you don’t want me to. But I am your father,” he reminded her. “It’s about time I started acting like it. So…What do you say? Will you give your old man a hug?”

Maddy stood behind the pair holding her breath. She wanted to warn Carver not to rush things with Rachel, and hoped he wouldn’t be hurt when his daughter shunned his overture. Then, to her amazement, Rachel took a slow, uncertain step toward him. Then another. Then another. As if neither father nor daughter were exactly sure what encompassed a loving embrace, they stumbled into a quick hug and then sprang apart again.

“Okay,” Carver said when it was over. “That was good. That was a start. We just need to practice a little, but I think we’ll get it down pretty well before long.”

Rachel chuckled a little and ducked her head. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever.” A few more uneasy moments passed before she looked up at Carver and Maddy again. When she did, it was to ask, “Uh, do you mind if I turn in? I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Maddy was about to say something like,
You’re not the only one,
but stopped herself when she realized how easily the statement could be misconstrued. The reason for her and Carver’s sleep loss hadn’t been anywhere nearly as civilized as Rachel’s. Instead of listening to poetry, they’d been creating it, she thought with a fond smile. Then, upon realizing just how hokey that sounded, she knew she should go
home and try to get a little shut-eye, too. Thank goodness it was Saturday.

“Go ahead,” Carver told his daughter with a smile. “Sleep all day if you want. But remember, when you wake up, I have a few things for you to do around here.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said as she passed him. But she, too, smiled as she did so, and Maddy got the distinct impression that Rachel wasn’t nearly as unhappy about her new obligations as she was letting on.

“I have to go, too,” Maddy said after Rachel had closed her bedroom door.

She moved hastily toward the front door and reached for her coat, but Carver’s fingers circling her wrist stayed the action.

“Not so fast,” he said.

She tried to tell herself the racing of her pulse was a simple result of the emotional scene she had just witnessed between Carver and his daughter. Unfortunately, although she could concede that Carver’s actions were responsible, his daughter had nothing to do with Maddy’s tumultuous feelings.

“What?” she asked, hoping her voice revealed none of the wild sensations stampeding through her.

His fingers tightened around her wrist, but Carver never said a word. Instead, he tugged gently until he brought her hand to his lips, then opened her curled fingers until he could place a soft kiss on her palm. His eyelids fluttered downward as he lowered his head to perform the gesture, as if he were bowing to the most reverent of acts. The warmth of his hands, her memory of the way he had touched her the night before, her knowledge of the physical power he possessed, all threatened to overwhelm her. Carver’s hands were the kind that could easily snap her in two, but they belonged to a man who was nothing but gentle.

The realization that he was at once so strong and so tender made Maddy wish she was a girl of seventeen again. Before she had seen what the world was really like. Before she had come to realize what human beings were capable of doing
to each other. Before she had been able to understand how things between a man and a woman could go so utterly awry. Before she had completely lost hope.

Slowly, carefully, she twisted her wrist until she had freed it from Carver’s gentle imprisonment. She circled it with her own fingers, softly rubbing away the sensation of his warm flesh caressing hers.

“I have to go,” she repeated softly.

He continued to hold his hand out toward her as if she hadn’t pulled away from him, his expression one of hurt bewilderment. She wished she knew how she could make him understand that what had happened between them last night, although quite wonderful, would never happen again.

When he said nothing in response to her intention to leave, but only gazed at her as if he couldn’t believe what she was doing, Maddy reached for her coat again and shrugged into it.

“I have a full day ahead of me,” she tried lamely to explain.

“It’s Saturday,” he argued. “It’s your day off.”

“I have a backlog of stuff to get through like you couldn’t imagine. This is the perfect day to catch up.”

He glared at her then, and dropped his hands to his hips. It was the same posture he had assumed with Rachel only moments ago, suggesting that he thought Maddy was a recalcitrant child who wouldn’t behave the way she was supposed to. And regardless of the fact that that was precisely what she felt like, she prepared to defend herself heartily.

“You know, Maddy,” he began, his tone of voice not unlike the one he had used with Rachel earlier, either, “a lot of people who had just spent the night making wild jungle love together for the first time might look at the prospect of a free Saturday a little differently. Instead of viewing it as an opportunity to work an extra ten or twelve hours after putting in a sixty-hour week already, they might see it as a time to…oh, say…spend a little time together trying to understand the repercussions of their actions. Getting to
know each other even more intimately. Even,” he added, lowering his voice, “making wild jungle love again.”

The glimmer in his eyes—those pale blue eyes that had haunted her for more than half a lifetime—was nearly Maddy’s undoing. He was looking at her as if she were the fulfillment of a wish uttered long ago, the completion of a promise he’d never thought he would realize. He was looking at her as if he cared deeply for her. And that was something she simply couldn’t let him do.

“About last night,” she began, deliberately turning the event into a cliché.

“What about last night?” Carver asked when she hesitated.

“It…I…” She lowered her gaze as she stammered, “I…I just want to say thanks.”

“Thanks?”

The shocked disbelief in his voice made it impossible for her to look at him, so she continued to stare at the floor as she nodded. “Yeah, thanks. You were there for me last night, Carver, and I appreciate it.”

“And just what’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged, feeling more and more like a confused kid with every breath she took. “Just that, after the kind of day I had yesterday, it was nice to have someone to turn to last night. You made me feel better. You made
me
feel like a human being again, too. You…” Finally, she tilted her head back so that she could meet his gaze levelly again. “You made me feel. Period. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do that again after…after what happened to Kevin Conner yesterday. So, thanks. I owe you.”

He eyed her thoughtfully for a moment before repeating, “You owe me.”

Not certain she could trust her voice to remain level, Maddy nodded silently.

“And all last night was to you was an opportunity to keep yourself from going numb, is that it? It was just something to jump-start your cynicism?”

“Well, if you put it like that…”

“I’m putting it like that.”

Even though she disagreed with him, even though the night before had meant so much more to her than that, Maddy nodded again. “Then yes. That’s all it was.”

“I see.”

She stuck her hand beneath her glasses and rubbed her eyes hard. Without opening them, she told him, “Look, Carver, we’re both adults here. We’ve come a long way since high school. I think we’re both smart enough to understand what last night was all about, so let’s just let it go at that, okay?”

“No.”

Maddy dropped her hand, and her eyes snapped open. “What?”

“I said, no. I’m not willing to let it go at that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not sure I
am
smart enough to understand what last night was all about. Spell it out for me, Maddy. Just what exactly happened between us last night? Aside from the fact that we shared some truly phenomenal exchanges of the physical, emotional, spiritual and carnal variety.”

“Nothing happened,” she snapped, trying to squash the erotic memories exploding in her brain. “We were both overwrought about something. With you, it was Rachel’s disappearance, with me it was the death of a child I should have been responsible for. We turned to each other sexually in an effort to forget about our worries for a little while. That’s all.”

Carver chuckled, a sound devoid of any humor. “Oh, Maddy, come on. You know as well as I do that there was a hell of a lot more to it than that. This is something that’s been building for twenty years, and last night, it blew up in our faces. The fallout alone is going to dog us for the next fifty years, so don’t tell me you can just leave this morning without another thought for me, because I don’t believe it.”

He lifted his bent knuckles and rubbed them softly over her cheek. A spark of something heavy and white-hot exploded
deep inside her, spiraling outward until every nerve in her body was on fire. She felt the heat creep up her throat and into her face, and she was certain Carver would know as well as she what a liar she was.

Sure enough, he whispered, “And you don’t believe it, either.”

She tried to feign nonchalance as she said, “You’re kidding yourself, Carver. As usual, your ego is overshadowing the rest of you. Hey, I admit that last night, the sex was great. Better than I’ve had in a long time,” she threw in for good measure. “But that’s all it was. Sex.”

He shook his head at her, biting his lip as if trying not to laugh at her. “Liar,” he said.

She reached for the doorknob and turned it. “Look, believe whatever you want,” she told him. “But I have to go.”

Carver planted his palm firmly against the swiftly opening door and slammed it shut again. “You’re not going anywhere until we get this settled.”

“There’s nothing to settle.”

“Oh, yes. There is.”

The absolute certainty in his voice made Maddy’s head spin. When she saw the determined set of his chin and the intense look in his eyes, she knew she should have bolted when she had the chance. Before she realized what was happening, he curved one hand around her nape, and roped his arm around her waist. Then he jerked her forward against him, and plundered her mouth with his.

It was an extraordinary kiss. Quite unlike the ones he had bestowed upon her the night before. This kiss was desperate, anxious, fearful. Carver kissed her the way a man kisses a woman he knows he’s going to lose, a man who will do anything to keep her from leaving. He shoved his body up against hers, pressing her hard against the front door, and held her face firmly in both hands. She felt his fingers wind fiercely through her hair, and gasped when he thrust his tongue into her mouth as if he couldn’t taste her deeply enough. She felt the heart of him ripen against her belly, and she began to grow faint with wanting him.

Over and over he kissed her, plunging deeper each time, even when she thought he would split her in two if he tried to go any further. He dropped one hand to her breast and stroked the peak lovingly, a surprisingly gentle caress in light of his ferocious embrace. And all the while, he crowded his body more urgently against hers, pressing her back against the door as if he intended to send her right through it. Maddy felt every muscle, every inch of sinew marking her, as if Carver wanted to make sure he left his indelible imprint upon her forever.

And then, as quickly as he had been upon her, he pushed himself away. The two of them could only stare at each other then, amazed, appalled and completely out of breath.

“See?” Maddy finally managed to gasp out. “Sex. That’s all it was. That’s all it would ever be between you and me.”

Carver shook his head slowly. “No,” he murmured. “I’ve had sex before, Maddy. And it was never like what I have with you.”

She fumbled behind herself for the doorknob, gripping it fiercely when she finally located it. “You did a good job with Rachel this morning,” she told him on a rush of words. “You don’t need me anymore.”