Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance) (11 page)

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Authors: Carolyn McSparren

BOOK: Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance)
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“Yeah, that was before.”
“Before what?”
Jason turned his head to stare at his father over his shoulder. “Before my momma died and you moved out on me.”
“I wanted you to move with me. Still do.”
“Oh, sure. Bachelor of the year sharing a pad with his son.”
“I’m not bachelor of the year.”
“Right. Why else did you move out? So you could tomcat around where Dub and I couldn’t see what you were doing.”
“That’s not true.”
“You never loved Momma.”
David was so taken aback he had no words for a moment. Then he said, “Yes, Jason, I did.”
Jason shook his head. His eyes were bright with tears. “She told me you didn’t.”
“When, Jason? When did she say I didn’t love her?” His whole body felt cold.
“She said you had to marry her because of me, and she shouldn’t have done it to you. You were in love with somebody else. You gave up your career because of me. You could have been a star, she said, if it hadn’t have been for me and Momma. I could have grown up in New York knowing everybody, doing everything, instead I’m stuck here in Mississippi and I’ll never get out.”
David leaned back against the white brick and closed his eyes. How on earth was he supposed to deal with this? She’d probably been so sick she thought she was clearing the decks, making her peace with her life. Instead she’d dumped a load of grief on the boy he couldn’t possibly have the maturity to handle. David took a deep breath. Better the truth, or some version of the truth, than to make up a lie. “Come on inside, son. Maybe it’s time we talked.”
Reluctantly, like a child about to be sent to the corner, Jason followed his father into the room, shut the doors behind him against the November chill and sank onto the bed.
For a moment David looked at his boy, who would in time grow into his body. He hoped and prayed he could help him grow into his soul.
“I did love your mother as much as I could,” he said. “I won’t lie to you and tell you she was the great passion of my life.”
Jason moved restively and opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.
“She was a wonderful mother and a good wife, even when her health was failing. Did she tell you that I was married before?”
Jason sat up. “Huh?”
David nodded. “It—didn’t work out. When your mother found she was pregnant with you, I was living in New York and newly divorced. There was never any question that she wouldn’t have you, that she—I—didn’t want you. That we wouldn’t raise you together.”
“But your career.”
“My career sucked.” David managed a small laugh at the shock on his son’s face. “True. Whatever your mother did or did not do to my life, she did not drag me away from a great career in the theater. I would have been lucky to scrub toilets on Broadway, believe me. I was a lousy actor. I am a damn fine farmer.” He waved a hand toward the window. “I love Long Pond and I love you. You’re young, and maybe you have the drive and discipline and talent to be a great director.”
“Hell, yes, I do.”
“Fine. Then do it. Give it your best shot. That’s why when you wanted to go to Pepperdine I fought the old man for you. Because you deserve your chance to make it in the crazy business you’ve chosen. I had mine. It was wrong for me, but I won’t spend the rest of my life wishing I’d gone after it. I tried, I failed, I walked away to do something I love and am good at.” He opened his hands and offered them, palms up. “Did I fail at being a father as well?”
Jason sniffed and turned his head away. “I never thought so before.”
“But now?”
“Now I don’t know.” He rolled over and curled into a ball with his face toward the wall. “Go away, Dad, please.”
“Jason...”
“Please, just let me be.”
David pulled himself to his feet, walked over and squeezed his son’s shoulder. From the way it trembled under his fingers, he was certain that Jason was crying. He didn’t know what else to do or say. He slipped out of Jason’s room and sank onto the top step with his head in his hands.
Would he ever be able to tell his son that Kate was the woman he’d loved, still did?
CHAPTER EIGHT
 
“I
’LL PAY for my own lunch,” Kate said.
“No, you won’t,” Dub said, reaching for her check. His hand brushed hers and lingered.
She removed her fingers. Since the cost of her lunch would eventually have gone on her bill for expenses anyway, she didn’t fight, although she felt a pang for David’s pocketbook. She’d have to check with her partners to see whether she could make some sort of accommodation on the grounds that David was, in a sense, family, and deserved professional courtesy rates.
She slid out of the booth, and waited while Dub stood as well. As he came to his feet, she saw a look of total confusion cross his face. He caught himself two-handed on the table, and stood blinking at her as though he had no idea who or what she was.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He took a deep breath and was his old self. “Shoot, yeah. Sometimes when I get up too fast my blood pressure doesn’t catch up with me for a second.” He grinned and ushered her toward the front with his hand against the small of her back once more.
There wasn’t much she could do about that if she didn’t plan to be rude, but the moment Dub reached for his wallet, she ducked out of reach. “I’ll wait for you outside,” she said, and grabbed the front door.
As she stepped onto the sidewalk, Arnold called to her from his car, which was parked two slots down from David’s Navigator.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“Lunch. With Dub. Why?”
“Because your cell phone is either not turned on, or you left it in your room again.”
She made a face. “It’s in my purse, but I think it’s probably out of juice. I didn’t plug it in last night. Is there an emergency?” She realized that Dub now stood behind her, listening avidly.
So did Arnold. He smiled at Dub, took Kate’s arm and moved toward his car. “Come on. We need to talk.”
She slid in on the passenger side and waited until he’d settled behind the wheel.
“We have to ask for a change of venue,” he said without preamble.
“I agree.”
He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “There’s no way in hell to impanel a jury in this county that hasn’t already made up its mind one way or the other whether Jason Canfield is innocent or guilty.”
“And what brought you to this conclusion?”
“I’ve spent the morning fighting with the coroner, the sheriff, the district attorney and half the city fathers to get Waneath Talley’s body moved to Memphis for the autopsy.”
“Were you successful?”
“Yes. She’s on her way. I am not going to be nominated for Rotary’s Man of the Year in Athena, let me tell you.” He wiped his forehead. “The coroner wanted to sign the death certificate as homicide, would you believe, and let her family bury her! I ask you! In the middle of the investigation.”
“Poor Arnold. I can certainly see their point. I know it’s hard on the family, but it’ll be doubly hard on Jason if we can’t get firm evidence about her cause of death. I have a witness to his loss of his tire iron, by the way.”
“Good.” Arnold leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. “When I came down from Long Island, I thought one day I’d like to retire and become a small-town lawyer—you know, like Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
I am fast changing my tune. There is a great deal to be said for big cities. I prefer being anonymous to having small children dog my footsteps and hurl imprecations at me.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Yes, Kate, I am joking.” He opened his eyes, but didn’t change position. “I see you managed to get rid of your ex, but retain his car. I do hope he’s not lying in a ditch somewhere.”
“Might be simpler if he were.”
Arnold raised an interrogative eyebrow. “Oh, really? Are we rekindling the flames of passion, old thing?”
Kate considered lying. She decided against it and opted for at least a portion of the truth. “He apologized for twenty years ago, did some fast explaining that made more sense than it probably should have. The thing is, Arnold, I still respond to him the same way I did the first time I saw him.”
“And how was that? You are the least impressionable female I’ve ever met. I certainly don’t impress you.”
She laughed and touched his arm. “Sure you do. Just not that way.”
“My luck, always the buddy, never the lover.”
“Lovers come and go, buddies go on forever. Besides, I’m older than you.”
“Not much.”
“At any rate, I don’t think anybody is allowed more than one love-at-first-sight per lifetime. Maybe per several lifetimes. The first time I laid eyes on David Canfield, I felt as though I had known him for aeons.”
Arnold dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “Oh, no, not one of those ‘old souls together’ things. I can’t stand it. Next you’ll be telling me you asked him about his sign.”
“No. I didn’t even speak to him. The first time I saw him was at the first read-through for
Death of a Salesman
my junior year. He was playing Biff. I was doing props. I got to the theater early for the first read-through and came into the door at the back of the house.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. The scene opened before her as clearly as though she were watching one of Jason’s movies.
“The theater was dark, the stage was bare and dark except for one naked worklight hanging down center stage on an extension cord. He was sitting cross-legged on a packing case dead center. His head was bent over his script, and the light turned his hair pure bronze. He couldn’t see me in the dark, but for some reason he raised his head and looked right at me out of those incredible eyes. I knew in that moment that I wanted to marry him. I didn’t even know his name.”
“Judging from what you said yesterday, this was not a good thing.”
“We had nearly three glorious years as lovers and spouses, which is more than most people have, I suspect.”
“Before he screwed it up.”
“I’m beginning to think I was as much at fault in the screwup as he was.”
“Oh, come on! Kate! The guy was an unfaithful louse! You said so yourself.”
“He’s changed.”
Arnold groaned again.
Kate laughed. “I am not going to hop into bed with him. But I’ve made a bargain with myself. I’m going to try to see him as the man he is today, and try not to think of what he was like when we were married. That way, maybe we can at least be friends.”
He sat up and turned a serious face to her. “Kiddo, you are out of your mind if you think that guy intends to settle for friendship.”
 
THE LATE NOVEMBER afternoon was already shadowing toward evening, while the sky darkened with scudding clouds as Kate headed for the junior college. She’d stopped off to shop for warmer clothes, and now had to drive around for several minutes before she managed to slide into a visitors’ parking space as someone else drove away. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees in the last thirty minutes. For the first time, she remembered that they were drawing a bead on Christmas.
She shivered in her thin wool blazer, and walked quickly into what she assumed must be the building that housed administrative offices, since it was closest to the visitors’ parking area.
After one false start she located the office of the dean of admissions. Behind the counter that ran the length of the office stood a bored girl with elaborately braided hair and turquoise fingernails that would have been excessive on a Mandarin. She glanced up from the latest issue of
People
magazine, popped her gum and regarded Kate with basilisk eyes.
Kate smiled politely and introduced herself. “I need a list of the classes Waneath Talley has taken here and the names of the professors who taught them.”
The girl shook her head. The beads in the ends of her braids clacked. “That’s private.”
“Actually, it’s not,” Kate said. “Her grades would be, of course, and her transcripts and things, but the classes she took—that is a matter of public record.” She pointed to the blinking computer terminal at a desk behind the counter. “I’m sure you can call them up and print them out for me in five minutes.”
“Uh-uh. Not without the dean telling me I can.”
“Ah. Well, then may I see the dean, please.”
For the first time, a small smile played over the girl’s lips. “Uh-uh. She’s in a staff meeting.”
“And where might that meeting be?”
The girl raised her eyes. “Upstairs with the president.”
“Thanks.” Kate turned away, then turned back. “You know, I can get a judge to issue a subpoena for those records, and I can certainly depose you if I have to. And your dean. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to drive downtown to the sheriff’s office to spend four or five hours giving me a deposition. Pity, when you could have saved us all so much time and trouble.” She walked away.
“Hey,” the girl called. “You really gonna make my dean give a deposition?”
Kate shrugged. “If I have to.”
The gum popped. “Oh, shoot. What was her name again?”
Five minutes later Kate had a list of Waneath’s classes, the room numbers where they were held and the names of the professors teaching them this semester. She stopped at the information desk for a campus map, then realized that people were streaming out of offices all around her. She checked her watch. Four twenty-five. Drat Obviously nobody believed in working late. She checked Waneath’s schedule. One of her classes met at six in the evening and another at nine. Unfortunately, they met Tuesdays and Thursdays, not Wednesday.
Since she was here, she decided to take a chance on finding at least one of Waneath’s professors still in his office. Three of the offices were in the same building on the third floor. She hurried across the darkening quadrangle toward the largest of three ugly buildings, entered, and was struck by the universal campus odor of cigarettes, paper and sweaty bodies.
She found the first two offices dark. As she rounded the corner toward the third, she walked straight into David. He caught her arms, while she caught her breath. She shook him off and backed two steps away outside the torrid zone that seemed to surround his body when she was near him.
“Kate?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
She felt her heart turn over at the flash of sheer delight in his eyes at seeing her. She took a deep breath.
Keep it professional, kiddo
.
“Checking out Waneath’s classes and trying to speak to her professors. What are
you
doing here?”
He fell into step beside her. “I’m an adjunct. I teach two courses in agribusiness.”
“I didn’t know.” She turned to him. “Did Waneath take any of your classes?”
“She wouldn’t have been caught dead designing flowcharts on pig farming.”
“Did you see her?”
He hesitated. “I ran into her from time to time.”
“Do you know whether she started dating somebody after Jason left for college?”
He shook his head. “Never saw her with anyone. I think she was just marking time so that her daddy wouldn’t make her get a job, or worse yet, give her one at the dealership.”
“Why didn’t she go away to school?”
“I doubt that she saw much point in college, except to be able to answer that she was a student during the question-and-answer sessions at her pageants.”
“Here’s Professor Gregson’s office,” Kate said, checking the number above the door. She felt David’s breath on the nape of her neck and shivered. “Damn,” she said and sidestepped. “Dark as pitch. Don’t these people actually work for a living?”
“Come on, Kate. You grew up on a campus. You know how college professors moan if they have to teach three classes a semester and hold office hours once a week.”
“I assumed junior colleges would be different.”
“Nope. They still tell everybody they’re going to the library to do research when they’re on their way home for the first martini of the day.”
“Yeah. My daddy did a lot of so-called research,” Kate said acerbically. David had done his research as well. Have to keep that in the forefront of her mind when he was this close in a darkened hallway. “I wonder if any of these guys was researching Waneath.”
“Mark off Gregson. J.T. stands for Janice Theresa. I don’t think Waneath swung that way even to cadge herself an easy A.”
“Here’s the list. Any of these people possibles?”
“I think Mike Ballard is gay. Thomasson is married, but he’s the pipe-and-tweeds type that attracts women like flies. I have no idea whether he takes advantage of the offers. Vasquez I’ve seen, but not to speak to. He’s unmarried and what Waneath would probably consider a hunk.” He handed the list back. “Sorry I can’t be more help.”

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