Forgotten Father (13 page)

He smiled faintly. “It’s happened.”

“But not very often,” she said, making a guess.
“You’ve probably made a career out of being the dumper rather than
the dumpee.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “We all take our
lumps along the way.”

Reaching up, she brushed her hand along the fern’s
frond, smiling at him. “I’ll bet you stole your first kiss
here.”

Mitchell struggled for a long moment with the urge
to cross the path and steal one now.

Could she really have amnesia?

And if she did, wouldn’t that make it easier for him
to woo his way back into her bed? With her memory impaired, she
wouldn’t recall his furious denunciation by the lake. Framed as she
was by the lush vegetation, she looked arousing and elemental.
True, she was still the same woman, the same sexy-as-hell redhead
who’d seduced half The Cedars out of an old lonely man.

But she was also the same woman Mitchell had made
love to for hours that hot, sultry night so long ago.

He remembered her well and if he knew her motives,
he could still enjoy her in bed, still dabble in the erotic visions
playing through his mind without letting down his guard again.
Hadn’t he always done that? Made love to beautiful women while
keeping his heart aloof and unharmed? He absolutely knew Delanie’s
measure now and that knowledge enabled him to safely play with
fire.

Shifting his thoughts as he adjusted himself on the
bench, he asked her, “So where’d you steal
your
first
kiss?”

“On the swing in my backyard,” she said promptly.
“He was nine. I was ten. The world did not stop revolving.”

Mitchell chuckled. “Not a very skillful kisser, I’m
guessing.”

“No,” she said roguishly, “but I’ve improved with
practice.”

A door slammed shut in Mitchell’s mind. He didn’t
want to think about her “practice,” about the other men who’d had
her before and after him. It was sobering enough to know without a
doubt that there had been others.

A woman like Delanie wouldn’t be alone often.

“Are you married?” he asked abruptly.

She lifted surprised eyes to his. “No. Why?”

Mitchell immediately cursed himself for betraying
interest in the subject. What the hell was the matter with him? He
knew enough not to show that he had a stake in an active
negotiation. And he didn’t have a stake in whether or not Delanie
was married. Not unless it would effect his securing The
Cedars.

He shrugged. “Just wondering.”

From across the three foot wide path separating
them, she met his gaze with speculation on her face.

He’d initiated this conversation for the covert
purpose of checking the legitimacy of her amnesia claim. Instead,
he found himself discussing his own past and blurting out questions
he really didn’t want to know the answer to. After all, would he
want her or trust her less if she were married?

Hell, no.

“So is that nine-year old boy you first kissed now
just a faint and fond memory?” he asked, determined to get his
agenda back on track.

She looked surprised. “Oh, no. We’re still good
friends. I saw him last year when I visited my mother in
Michigan.”

“Does he kiss any better?” Mitchell asked, his voice
dry.

Delanie laughed. “Not that I know of. He has a wife
now and the cutest little baby son.”

“Ah.” Mitchell ignored the tiny spurt of relief.
What difference did it make if her childhood friend wasn’t now her
lover? “So I take it that your mother and father are also divorced.
You said you visited your mother?”

“Yes,” she responded slowly, “but they aren’t
divorced. My father is dead.”

“Recently?” he asked, prompted by the sudden shadow
on her face.

“No.” Delanie brushed a hand through her hair. “He
died of a heart attack when I was eleven.”

“A heart attack?” Mitchell echoed in surprise. “Was
he a young man?”

“Yes,” her smile wavered and then firmed, notching
up several levels in wattage. “Forty-three. But he died of a
massive coronary, all the same. He was a wonderful, brilliant man.
Very, very special.”

“That must have been a real loss,” Mitchell offered
in response to the dimmed light in her eyes and her over-bright
smile. The words felt awkward and rusty in his throat, as if he
were attempting to comfort an enemy’s grief.

She
was
the enemy, he reminded himself.
Erotic and luscious, but still on the other side.

At least until he could get her on her back…or
standing up against a wall. Still on the other side, but very, very
desirable.

He might even be able to seduce The Cedars out of
her like she’d stolen it from his grandfather.

As soon as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed
it. For better or worse, he didn’t play the game the way Delanie
Carlyle did. He was perfectly willing to pretend to play by her
rules, but he couldn’t forget his own standards. Not even to
rediscover her delectable body, would he lie. He meant to reclaim
his birthright on his own terms.

Yet, at this tenuous moment, the battle between them
seemed peculiarly distant.

From the opposite bench, Delanie smiled sadly and
said, “We were driving alone in the car, my father and I,…I don’t
remember why. His work kept him very busy and my mother did most of
the parenting. But that day, we were alone together on a lonely
stretch of road….”

Mitchell watched her, the cloudy reminiscence in her
eyes, snaring his heightened attention.

The sad smile lingered on her face, shifting into
something more rueful, but no less naked. “He suddenly fell forward
over the steering wheel, just like that, and the car veered off the
road into a ditch.”

Into a ditch?
Mitchell tried to identify the
elusive memory those words tickled.

Delanie speared her fingers through the hair at the
nape of her neck, lifting the red-gold curtain and pressing it
against the back of her head.

“I make myself talk about it every now and then,”
she confessed, the shadows still in her eyes. “Kind of a cheap
therapy.”

“It must have been very hard for you,” he said. “Did
he die instantly? Couldn’t anything be done?”

She shrugged, raking her fingers back through her
hair to straighten it. “It’s hard to know.
I
didn’t know what to do for him and we weren’t found
for several hours.”

“You weren’t found?” he echoed in disbelief. She’d
been alone with her father’s corpse for hours?

She shrugged again. “It was kind of a rural area.
Some cars drove by, but no one stopped for a long time.”

“And you were there with him…alone while he died?”
Mitchell asked in shocked tones, envisioning a child’s horror.

“Yes,” she admitted after a pause. “It was very
difficult.”

“I can imagine,” he said, searching her face. “How
did you deal with it?”

“Not very well,” she said with a deep sigh. “You
know how kids always think things that happen are their fault—“

“How could this have been your fault?” he demanded.
“You were eleven.”

Delanie shrugged. “You said it yourself. ‘Could
anything have been done?’ Yes. Maybe. If we’d had help.”

“So?”

“For a long time,” she said slowly, “I believed I
should have been able to…move him over and…drive the car to get
help. It wasn’t like I was a baby.”

“You were
eleven,
” he said again.

“Some kids drive at eleven,” she replied. “I
recently saw an article on-line about a seven year-old who’d driven
on her father’s lap before. When he collapsed in the car, she drove
him to the hospital.”

“Had
you
driven on your father’s lap?”
Mitchell asked, hearing the faint irritation in his own voice. How
could she blame herself for this?

“No, I hadn’t driven before,” she admitted, “but how
hard would it have been? Kids drive all the time.”

“Not frightened eleven year-olds who’ve never
handled a car before and, particularly not when their father is
collapsed on the seat next to them,” Mitchell said with
acerbity.

“I know.” She nodded. “I really do know that. But
for a long, long time it didn’t seem that way.”

“It must have been very hard to lose your father and
blame yourself for it,” he said gently, getting up from the bench
to sit next to her.

She scooted over to make room for him, a smile
wavering on her face.

“It was hard. I’m afraid I didn’t handle it well at
all, which made it worse for my mother. It wasn’t enough to lose
her husband like that, but then she had her only child blank out
the whole event.”

Mitchell frowned. “What do you mean ‘blank
out’?”

Delanie glanced up at him, her green gaze seeming to
search his. After a moment, she said reluctantly, “I actually
blocked the event out of my memory. Forgot it for a year or so.
They call it a ‘disassociative episode.’ It’s apparently a thing
some people’s brains do when they’re upset.”

Searching her face with a probing gaze, he tried to
read whether or not she was lying. It didn’t seem that way to him
at this minute.

Was the whole story about her father’s death a lie
to bolster her claim of amnesia?

Only
she
hadn’t claimed it. True, she’d told
him about her father’s death, but he couldn’t imagine an easier
story to disprove, if checked on. That sort of thing made the
papers.

Sitting here with her, the fresh scent from her hair
tickling his senses, the luminous green of her eyes melting some of
the ice in his chest, Mitchell found himself believing her. In
spite of everything between them.

Even lying, cheating goldiggers loved their fathers
and grieved when they died.

Mitchell reached an arm around her shoulders and
drew her against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said, resting his chin on her head.
“I’m sorry you had it so tough.”

Sitting here in this quiet corner of his
grandmother’s conservatory with his arms around Delanie and her
head on his shoulder, he couldn’t find a flicker of interest in
doing battle with her. Not now, anyway.

******

Mitchell put the report he’d been studying back on
his grandfather’s desk and tilted back in the desk chair. He’d made
the old man’s office his base of operations since working from The
Cedars. Just being in the room brought back a wealth of warm
memories.

Even now at the end of a long day studying balance
sheets and cash flow reports, being in this room left him feeling
nostalgic.

He closed the cash flow file folder and rubbed the
back of his neck, noting how far the afternoon had advanced by the
shadows outside the window. He’d been working steadily since
noon.

A knock sounded at his closed door.

“Come in,” he said absently, sifting through the
papers on top of the desk.

The door opened and Delanie stepped into the room.
In one hand, she carried what looked like a bottle of champagne and
clutched the ribbons tethering a vivid bunch of helium balloons.
Balanced in the other hand was a small cake ablaze with lit candles
that cast a glow on her face.

“What the—“

A mischievous grin lit her eyes as she nudged the
door shut with one foot. “Happy birthday!”

Mitchell looked at her in bemusement. He’d almost
forgotten the date himself. How had she known?

Wearing a soft green pantsuit that clung deliciously
to her curves, Delanie crossed the room, humming the birthday song,
the blazing cake in her outstretched hand.

“No one should celebrate their birthday alone,” she
said, setting the bottle of wine on his desk before she lowered the
flaming cake on top of the files and papers littering the
desktop.

With the number of candles she’d put on the thing,
they were in real danger of starting a fire.

“It’s not a big deal,” he commented, watching her
tie the bunch of balloons to the arm of a chair on the opposite
side of his desk.

Glancing up, she looked at him through narrowed
eyes. “I was right about you. You’re lousy at celebrating. Haven’t
you ever heard of living for the moment?”

“Yes,” he responded dryly. “It’s usually the motto
of people who don’t like to work.”

Delanie picked up the bottle of wine and handed it
to him. “Spoken like a man who’s forgotten how to play. Open
that.”

He received the bottle with amusement and watched as
she crossed the room to the alcove that hid a small
kitchenette.

“Aha! Cups.” She swung back to face him,
triumphantly bearing two paper cups. “Open. Open!”

Mitchell obediently peeled back the foil and
wrestled with the cork till it surrendered with a soft
pop.

Splashing some of the chilled wine into the cups
she’d provided, his gaze fell on the small cake, still blazing on
his desk.

“Think you got enough candles?” he asked wryly,
wondering if she thought him so much older than herself.

“Well,” Delanie said with what he recognized as mock
seriousness, “I found out that you’re twenty-nine today. But I
thought it might be more appropriate to celebrate your spiritual
age.”

“Thanks,” he said, crossing the room to place the
open champagne bottle in the sink. “And that would be…?”

“Fifty-seven,” she said promptly.

Mitchell laughed. “Then your spiritual age must
be—“

“Ninety-four.”

“More like four or five years old, from the looks of
it.” Amused by her silliness, he shook his head and lifted his
cup.

Delanie reached out, her hand on his arm, stilling
his movement. “Let’s toast. To many more celebrations.”

He glanced down at her, the moment seeming a
snapshot in time. In the sweep of a few minutes, she’d brought
light and laughter into the room.

Just because it was his birthday. And birthdays
should be celebrated, not spent alone.

Putting her cup on the corner of his desk after
taking a sip, Delanie grabbed his arm and tugged him forward. “You
have to make a wish and blow out your candles before the smoke
alarm goes off.”