Father Of The Brat (16 page)

“Okay, don’t panic,” she said, uncertain whether the instructions were meant for Rachel or for herself. “Look around. Do you see any street signs? Any landmarks? Anything that might help me figure out where you are?”

“I…I don’t think I’m in Philadelphia anymore. But I don’t think I’m in New Jersey or Delaware, either. The bus didn’t cross any bridges. This place looks really…rural or something.” She paused for a moment, and when her voice came over the phone again, Maddy could tell the girl was barely keeping her fear under control. “It’s dark. And it’s starting to rain. I’m at a pay phone in front of some kind of hotel or something.”

A hotel, Maddy reiterated to herself. Depending on the kind of hotel, Rachel could either be in very good shape or in really serious trouble. “What’s the name of the hotel?”

After a brief moment of silence, Rachel told her, “The sign says…Houseman Inn.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It looks like a big house.”

Okay, that was helpful, Maddy thought. That narrowed it down to about a couple hundred square miles that could be either north or west of the city. “Like maybe a bed-andbreakfast kind of thing?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Could you maybe be in Bucks County? There are a lot of places like that up there.”

“I don’t know.”

Maddy began to unbutton her pajamas as she prowled around her bedroom in search of her clothes. “What street are you on?”

Another short pause, then Rachel’s voice came over the line again, sounding even more frightened than before. “I don’t know. I don’t know what street it is. I don’t know where I am. Help me, Maddy. I don’t know what to do.”

She sounded near tears, and Maddy couldn’t quite tamp down her own frustration and fear at being unable to get to the girl
now.
“Okay, Rachel, don’t worry. I’ll find out where the Houseman Inn is, and I’ll be there in less than an hour. If the place looks like it’s safe, go inside and sit in the lobby or someplace that’s crowded and well lit. If anyone says anything to you, tell them you’re waiting for your mother, who’s gone upstairs to your room for a minute, okay?”

When Rachel didn’t reply, Maddy began to grow more concerned. “Rachel? Honey? Are you still there? Are you going to be all right? Will you do what I just told you to do?”

Her voice was very small, very distant and very scared when she finally answered. “I’m still here. I’m okay. I’ll do what you say. But, Maddy?”

“Yes?”

“Hurry, okay?”

“I’ll be there just as soon as I can.” Maddy was dressed in jeans and a baggy brown sweater before she even said goodbye.

In the lobby of the Houseman Inn in Bucks County, Rachel settled the pay phone back in its receiver and sighed with much contentment. Man, if that wasn’t an Academy Award winning performance, she didn’t know what was. Meryl Streep had nothing on her. Maybe she’d go back to
L.A. someday and try her hand at acting. Obviously, she was just oozing with talent.

But first, she had one more call to make.

She dug another quarter out of her pocket, slipped it into the slot and dialed her home phone number. “Carver?” she said when he picked up the receiver at the other end.

She waited for him to complete his worried father routine, listening patiently until he finished railing about where the heck was she and didn’t she realize how worried he was when he came home to find her gone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera—a routine that she was actually starting to kind of like—then continued, “I know I’m late. I’m sorry. I got on the wrong bus or something and wound up in Bucks County. I don’t have enough cash to get home…”

It wasn’t enough that Rachel still scared the hell out of him daily, Carver thought as he tried to squint between the runnels of water cascading down his windshield. Now she had to be doing it on a dark and stormy night, too.

Where the hell was he, anyway? he wondered as he glanced once again at the crumpled map in the passenger seat beside him. There were no lights on the road, nothing but blackness and a slapdash stream of rain that reflected his headlights right back at him in an annoying glare. And how the hell had Rachel managed to get on a bus that stranded her in Bucks County in the first place?

Carver, watch your language.

Maddy’s voice came to him from the dark recesses of his brain, chastising him even in her absence. Why did that still happen? he wondered. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? He had too much on his mind right now with locating his daughter and making sure she was safe. He didn’t have the time or energy to worry about Maddy, too.

His front tire hit a deep rut and the car bounced precariously close to a ditch. At least he thought it was a ditch. Who could tell in this weather?

A brief flash of red taillights stained the darkness ahead of him, reassuring Carver that he wasn’t entirely alone in the world after all. Evidently, some other poor sap had been summoned out into this mess, too. He nudged the brake with his foot and took advantage of his slowed speed to glance over at the map again. He was on the right road and nearing the intersection he had circled in red. If his calculations were correct—and Carver’s sense of direction was indisputably the best in the universe, he knew—then he should be coming up on the Houseman Inn right about…

Now! he realized when he looked up again to discover that a huge, rambling Victorian bed-and-breakfast had sprung up out of nowhere. He quickly spun the steering wheel to the right and skidded into the inn’s parking lot on a spray of wet gravel and a string of colorful words. He somehow bounced his car into a vacant parking space, leapt out of his seat-and sprinted through the rain to the hotel’s entrance.

Inside the lobby, there was some kind of small ruckus going on at the registration desk, but Carver ignored it as he scanned the room for his daughter. When he didn’t see Rachel anywhere, he scanned the room again, this time dissecting it detail by detail in an effort to locate her. But Rachel was nowhere to be seen. Only then did he allow his small panic to expand into a barely controlled terror. He turned to the registration desk for help and found that the small ruckus had turned into a rather large one. A woman was having words with the desk clerk, words that weren’t particularly friendly. A wet woman. An attractive woman. A woman who seemed very familiar somehow.

What was Maddy doing…?

Understanding suddenly smacked Carver square between the eyes, and immediately, his panic evaporated. Something had been bothering him ever since he’d received Rachel’s phone call nearly an hour ago, and only now did he realize what it was. His daughter had been living with him for nearly two months, covering the city—by bus—in an
effort to familiarize herself with her new digs. She’d visited malls and museums, parks and playgrounds, school and sight-seeing attractions. She knew how the SEPTA bus system worked better than he did. There was no way she would have gotten on one that would take her to Bucks County. Not unless Bucks County was precisely where she wanted to go.

He knew then exactly what Maddy was doing here. Like him, she had been suckered into driving through a godawful night to visit this place, this…this…Carver sighed and took in his surroundings again, noting them a bit differently now that he wasn’t terrified for the life of his daughter.

The Houseman Inn was a pretty nice place, he thought with a satisfied nod. Lace curtains, soft lighting, muted colors, Victorian furniture. The owners had done the lobby up right for the holidays, with sprays of fresh holly and evergreen decorating the mantel and banisters. Huge wreaths hung above the fireplace and registration desk, and a massive tree spattered with gold tinsel and ornaments sparkled in candlelight in the corner of the room.

The bedrooms were probably similarly decorated, he thought further, and probably came complete with fireplaces, potted plants and fresh flowers. The housekeepers probably left little chocolates on the pillows at night, and soaps shaped like butterflies on the bathroom sink. Rachel had scoped the place out nicely. The Houseman Inn was a quaint, tranquil little bed-and-breakfast with all the trappings of a romantic rendezvous.

He sauntered slowly toward the registration desk and wondered how Maddy was going to react when she found out what Rachel had done to them.

She was still railing at the desk clerk when Carver approached her, roaring something about how could the man leave an unattended child…well, unattended? He let her go on for a few minutes more before he cut in.

“This guy probably left the child unattended,” he told Maddy, “because the child in question is more of a con artist than a kid.”

Maddy spun around to face him so quickly that Carver extended an arm to keep her from revolving right out the door. He pulled her into his arms, held her tight, and smiled at the expression on her face—one of shock, censure and surprise. And more than anything else in the world, he wanted to kiss her. Kiss her so hard that neither one of them was sure if the sun would ever rise again.

“Hi,” he said quietly.

“Hi,” she replied automatically, still obviously quite confused.

“It’s nice to see you again.”

“It’s nice to see you, too.”

“So, what do you say? You want to get a room?”

That seemed to snap her out of her haze, because she doubled up her fists against his chest and pushed him away hard. She tugged down the hem of her rumpled, rain-soaked sweater with all the dignity of a queen, pushed a hand through her damp hair, and peered at him over the frames of her fogged-up spectacles. “I’m here looking for your daughter,” she told him sharply.

He came
this
close to telling her she was adorable when she was angry, thought better of it, and instead told her, “So am I. And something tells me she’s holed up here with my Walkman, the holiday issue of
Seventeen
magazine, a twelve-hour supply of Diet Coke and nachos, and an L.A. phone book, charging the whole thing to my American Express account.”

Maddy’s eyebrows arrowed down in a clear display of confusion. “What are you talking about? She was frantic when she called me.”

“She sounded frantic when she called me, too.”

Maddy shook her head. “I don’t understand. She told me she’d had a fight with you. That she was afraid to go home. Why would she call you? Why would she call us both?”

Carver shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans because he knew he was going to reach for her again if he didn’t. “Look around, Maddy. What do you see?”

Warily, suspiciously, she did as he instructed. “I see the lobby of a bed-and-breakfast, why?”

“It’s a nice place, isn’t it?”

She eyed him more suspiciously. “Yes.”

“Avery
romantic
place, right?”

Maddy surveyed their surroundings again. “I suppose so. What does that have to do with anything?”

Instead of answering her, Carver turned to the desk clerk. “Do you have a reservation for Carver Venner?”

The harried-looking little man searched quickly through a box of index cards and seemed relieved when he located what he was looking for. “Here it is. A reservation for Mr. and Mrs. Carver Venner. Room seventeen. Your luggage has already been taken up. I’ll just need for you to fill out this card and sign by the X. Do you want to leave the room on your American Express?”

Maddy’s glance darted from the man she had been berating back to Carver. “Mr. and Mrs.?” she repeated. “Complete with luggage? Just what’s this all about anyway? What are you trying to pull, Carver?”

Without responding to Maddy, he reached into his back pocket for his wallet, opened it, and sifted through a small selection of credit cards. “Yep, it’s missing,” he said as he completed the action a second time. “Man, that kid is some piece of work.” He turned to the desk clerk. “The signature on that card is nontransferable, you know.”

“She hasn’t signed anything yet,” the man told him. “She said you’d be here to do that.”

Carver turned to Maddy again with a resigned shrug. “Can my kid call ‘em, or can she call ‘em, huh?”

Still looking confused, Maddy opened her mouth to say something, but the desk clerk prevented her by making another announcement.

“Oh, and your daughter left a message for you, too.”

He extended a piece of paper toward Carver that Maddy snatched from his hand and opened. He looked over her shoulder and read along with her.

Hi, guys,

Thanks for coming to my rescue. The least I can do is return the favor. I checked out your room before I reserved it, and it’s really nice. You’re lucky. You got the last one. Lanette and I are on another floor. By now we’ve siphoned the gas from your cars. And AAA doesn’t service this part of the county. I checked. It’s a pretty crummy night for walking, so you might as well just stay here until morning. The rooms have fireplaces. And they leave these cute little chocolates on your pillow at night. It’s the coolest thing. Anyway, have fun. They’ll be bringing you some stuff to eat after you get settled in. See you in the morning.

Love, Rachel

“’Love, Rachel’?” Maddy repeated.

“She’s starting to feel more comfortable with expressions of affection,” Carver said. “I think it’s very encouraging.”

Maddy eyed him narrowly and turned to the desk clerk again. “What room is she in?”

He hedged, inspecting a worn spot on the desk. “She, uh…she asked me not to say.”

“And she probably slipped you twenty bucks in the process to help you keep your word, didn’t she?” Carver asked wryly.

This time the desk clerk studied his fingernails. “Actually, it was fifty.”

Carver gaped at the man. “Fifty bucks? Where did she get fifty bucks?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Starting next week, I’m cutting that kid’s allowance in half.”

“Carver, don’t you realize what Rachel’s done?” Maddy demanded. “She’s stranded us here.”

He smiled at her. “Yeah, she’s brought us back together but good, hasn’t she?”

Maddy didn’t like the warm, wonderful look Carver was giving her. She liked even less the warm, wonderful feelings that look sent spinning throughout her nervous system. “We are
not
back together,” she told him.