Father Of The Brat (14 page)

Before he could say or do anything else that would make her crazier than she already felt, Maddy yanked open the door and fled through it. If she hadn’t believed any of the other things she had said to Carver that morning, she had at least honestly meant her final words.

He was indeed doing a good job with his daughter. And he would never have need of Maddy again. Carver didn’t realize what he was getting himself into with her, but she did. And it was up to her to make sure that things between them didn’t go any further than they already had.

Carver didn’t need her. And she didn’t need Carver. As long as she kept telling herself that, things would be all right.

She only wished she could convince herself that that was true.

M
addy was staring at her hot corned beef on rye, French fries and clam chowder, wondering what on earth had possessed her to order such a big lunch in the first place, when something made her look up. The deli across the street from her office was crowded—not surprising seeing as how it was just past noon—and she scanned the faces quickly, not quite certain what she was looking for. When no one looked back, she shrugged and returned her attention to the food heaped on her plate.

She had been hungry when she ordered, she recalled vaguely. But then, she had been thinking about Carver when she ordered, too. Now that her lunch had arrived, it was curiously unappetizing. She shoved her plate away, folded her arms over each other on the table, rested her head upon them, and sighed deeply.

Two mornings ago, she had told Carver he didn’t need her. Two mornings ago, she had thought she could live with that. Unfortunately, forty-eight hours of missing him had only reassured her of just what a fool she had become. Because
before she had made love with Carver, Maddy had only had some vague idea of how it would be between the two of them. Now she knew. And now, she was doomed to replay that single night over and over in her brain for the rest of her life. Because no matter how badly she wanted to, there was no way she could ever allow herself to relive it.

“Maddy.”

His voice came to her as it had that night, soft and lusty and full of affection. When she looked up, she saw Carver standing on the other side of her table, his cheeks burnished from the cold, his hair cascading over his forehead, no doubt a casualty of the blustery autumn wind. His leather bomber jacket hung open over a Columbia University sweatshirt and well-worn jeans, and he appeared to have neglected his morning toilette. A rough stubble of beard shadowed the lower half of his face like a dark glove, and his eyes were smudged below by faint purple crescents. He looked about as good as she felt, she thought. Nevertheless, it would be so nice to embrace him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“I’m following you.”

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You’re what?”

“I followed you here.”

She eyed him curiously for a moment before saying, “I spurned you the other night, and now you’re stalking me for it, is that it?”

He shoved two big hands restlessly through his hair, then pulled out the empty chair on the other side of the table and slumped into it. “Although I’ve gone without enough sleep the past three nights that I’m almost crazy enough to understand the guys who do stuff like that, no. I’m not stalking you. I was coming to see you at your office, and as I drove by the building, I saw you leave and come here. It’s taken me a while to find a parking space.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” he echoed. “That’s all you can say?”

She pulled her plate toward her again, more because she needed something to occupy her hands than because she wanted the food. “What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. But one single syllable that’s really more a sound than a word seems somehow inadequate for everything we need to say to each other.”

She picked up a French fry and toyed with it for a moment. “Okay then. How about if I just ask you again. What are you doing here?”

“I needed to see you.”

She dropped the limp piece of potato back onto her plate and avoided Carver’s eyes. “About what? I told you you’re doing a good job with Rachel and I meant it. That deal you struck with her was perfect. It was just what she needed. Some rules and guidelines, but also a signal that you’re willing to make some changes in your life along with hers. You’re going to be a good father, Carver. You don’t need me there anymore.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Maddy.” He reached his hand across the table to take hers, so she quickly withdrew her own and tucked them into the pockets of her brown tweed blazer. He tipped his forehead to acknowledge her retreat, then threaded his own fingers together before him.

He took a deep breath and expelled it slowly before continuing. “I don’t deny that things between me and Rachel are starting to look up. You had a lot to do with that—with making me see how things were with her. And with making me see how things were with me. I’ve done a lot of soulsearching the past couple of days. The more I look at how I was living before you and Rachel came into my life, and at the changes the two of you have brought with you, the more I see how much I’ve been missing.”

A waitress approached them then, and asked Carver if he’d like to order. He mumbled a few words to which Maddy didn’t pay attention, because she was too busy trying to ward off what she could feel coming next. Somehow, she was certain that Carver was going to tell her things she
didn’t want to hear. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a single way to stop him.

When the waitress left, he started talking again. “Because of a daughter I never knew I had, I’m developing this newly settled lifestyle that seems as if it’s going to be oddly enjoyable. It’s going to be more predictable, more stable, more…more normal. I’ve made some concessions in my life where Rachel is concerned, concessions I never thought I’d make, but ones that are actually improving the way I live. What’s really strange is that I’m willing—I’m actually eager—to make more.”

Maddy didn’t know what made her ask the question, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Like what?”

He hesitated for a moment before replying. “Well, like…like I think it would be nice if my life included a meaningful, and hopefully lasting, relationship with a woman. What do you think?”

She, too, paused before answering him, to gather her wits about her and to choose her words very carefully. “I think…I think that would be good,” she heard herself say, proud of herself for keeping her voice completely free of emotion. “For…for you and Rachel both. You need a stable influence as much as she does.”

He nodded slowly and eyed her intently. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Because there’s one woman in particular that I have in mind for the job. If she’ll have me.”

The warning bells Maddy had been waiting for went off in her brain with the quickness and menace of a house afire. She didn’t want to hear anything more he had to say, didn’t want to know the particulars of what was going on in that wily, misguided brain of his. Whatever plan Carver had in mind, if it included the two of them, it would never work. There were a number of reasons for that, all of them good, she thought, but she was certain he wouldn’t accept any of them. Therefore, her only recourse was to stop him now, before he said something they were both going to regret.

“I have to get back to work,” she blurted out, shoving her chair away from the table with enough force to send it toppling backward. “I didn’t realize how late it is.”

Carver looked puzzled. “It’s not late, Maddy. You were just getting started with your lunch.”

“It’s late,” she repeated as she searched through her purse for her wallet. “Trust me. It’s late.”

“Sit down,” he instructed her calmly. “You’re not going anywhere until I’ve finished with what I have to tell you.”

Maddy supposed it was inevitable that she and Carver would have to eventually confront whatever strange fire had risen up between them. It was too intense, too undying and had been burning for too long. It wasn’t likely to be extinguished just because she wanted it to. So, slowly, she closed her purse, righted her chair, and sat precariously on the edge of it. Then she folded her hands primly before her, looked him right in the eye and said, “Okay, say whatever it is you want to say. Then I have to get back to work.”

Her encouragement seemed to act as a signal for him to withdraw, because for a long moment, Carver never said a word. He only studied her as if she were some fascinating biological specimen under glass that he was trying to figure out.
Socialworkerus changetheworldus,
she thought whimsically. A species near the brink of extinction. Maybe Carver was trying to figure out how to bring the whole breed back in numbers. Too bad he didn’t realize contemporary society simply couldn’t accommodate such a life form. Contemporary society was what had killed it off in the first place.

“You were saying…” she said quietly in an effort to make him get on with it. The sooner she could escape, the better.

Carver blinked, feeling for a moment as if he had forgotten where he was or what he was going to say. Then he remembered Friday night. He remembered all the things he had felt while he and Maddy were making love. He recalled their misspent youth and the strange mixture of emotions he had experienced at eighteen, recalled all the things he could have told Maddy then, had he even vaguely understood his
adolescent confusion. He remembered all the things he wanted to say to her now. So he rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, deliberately crowding himself into her space.

“I was saying that I’m actually beginning to enjoy all the changes in my life that Rachel has brought with her. And that I’m actually looking forward to the ones yet to come.”

Maddy almost smiled at him. Her lips did in fact complete the gesture, but the look in her eyes countered any levity that her mouth conveyed. The realization didn’t sit well with him at all.

“That’s good, Carver,” she said, her voice no happier than her expression. “I’m very happy for you.”

“I was hoping to hear that you would be happy for us.”

She shrugged. “Okay. I’m happy for you and Rachel both.”

Carver shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean ‘us’ as in me and Rachel. I meant ‘us’ as in me and you.”

This time Maddy was the one to blink as if she had forgotten where she was. “Oh.”

He frowned. “There’s that sound again.”

“What sound?”

“That
oh
sound you seem to be so good at. And I don’t like hearing it this time any more than I did the first time. Just what does ‘Oh’ mean, anyway?”

She sighed, tucking the fingers of both hands beneath her glasses to rub her eyes. She seemed to do that a lot, Carver thought, rubbing her eyes when he was around. And for some reason, he got the feeling she didn’t do it so much be cause her eyes were bothering her as she did because she didn’t want to look at him.

“Normally, in conversation, I suppose it’s an expression of resolution,” she said softly.

“Resolution,” he repeated. “I see. And just what exactly have we resolved here?”

She dropped her hands and gazed at him levelly. “We’ve resolved that you want something from our relationship that doesn’t coincide with what
I
want.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes, it’s a fact.”

“So you’re a mind reader now, is that it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then how do you know what I want?”

“Okay, I don’t know what you want,” she amended. “But I do know what you
think
you want.”

He chuckled dryly. “Well, that’s good. It’s nice that one of us knows so well what I want. I only hope you know what you want, too, because I sure as hell don’t.”

Her lips thinned into a tight line. “Then allow me to explain things to you the way I see them.”

“Please, by all means explain my own hopes and desires for me. Evidently you have no faith in the fact that I might be able to understand them myself.”

“Fine. I will,” she snapped. She, too, leaned forward over the table, bringing her face to within inches of his. “Less than a month ago,” she began, clearly straining to be civil, “you were hit right between the eyes with a daughter you never knew you had. Literally overnight, you became a father with a fully grown kid you didn’t have a clue about raising. You needed some guidance. You got it from an old friend—me.”

“Come on, Maddy, you know we’re so much more than old friends….”

She ignored him and continued. “Now things between you and Rachel are looking up. It appears that the two of you are eventually going to work through this just fine. As a result, you’re overcome by these rosy feelings of wanting a normal, happy family life, one complete with wife and mother. And because I happen to remind you of a simpler time in your life, because I’m the most recent romantic entanglement you’ve had, because of some lusty youthful attraction we satisfied the other night—”

“Satisfied, Maddy? Speak for yourself. I’d say that night only inflamed the attraction to the melting point.”

“Because of all those things,” she continued without acknowledging him, “you think I might be a likely candidate for the job. Am I pretty much on track here?”

“Pretty much,” he conceded. “Although I think the reasons you listed are a bit shy of the truth. The reason I think you might be a likely candidate has nothing to do with our past history or your sudden reappearance into my life. The reason for it is because I’m beginning to realize that I have some very serious, very deep-seated feelings for you that are anything but adolescent in nature.”

“Well, you’re wrong about that.”

Carver was about to launch into a really good how dare you assume to understand my feelings tirade when their waitress returned with his BLT and soda. He waited silently while the young woman arranged his lunch on the table before him and asked politely if there was anything else she could get him. He was about to tell her that yes, there was, that if she could bring him a glass of ice water for him to toss in Maddy’s face to make her sit up and take stock of reality, he’d be much obliged. Instead, he used the time to calm himself down, told the waitress he was perfectly content with the way his lunch had turned out, at least, and that there was nothing more he needed. Nothing that she could bring him anyway.

Then he returned his attention to the woman who sat opposite him. “I’m wrong about that,” he repeated blandly.

“Yes.”

“Wrong about my own emotions.”

“Yes.”

“Wrong about the fact that I think I’ve fallen in love with you.”

She did have the decency to blush when he told her that. He supposed he should take some stock in the fact that she showed some kind of response, even if she didn’t say a word to acknowledge she had even heard him.

“Wrong about the fact that I think I’ve fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love with you,” he clarified. “The kind of love that lasts through two decades of separation, long past
a teenaged infatuation that in itself was pretty intense. The kind of love that explodes into a frenzy of physical demand like the one the two of us enjoyed the other night. The kind of love a man feels for a woman when he’s certain he can’t live without her. Wrong about that, am I?”