The Surprise of His Life (7 page)

"Yeah,"
Walker now said into the phone, "I've got that information right
here." As he spoke, he riffled through the thousand and one sheets of
paper on his desk. Dammit! he thought, he had had the information right here
yesterday. Or maybe it was the day before. Or maybe it was on Gerri's desk.
"Give me a sec, will ya?" he said, pushing the button that would
temporarily disconnect him with the caller.

He
had just started for the secretary's desk when another line of the phone rang.
For ten cents—no make that five!—he'd waltz right out the door and forget that
the phone was ringing and that one of his foremen was waiting for some
important figures.

Instead,
he depressed the second lighted button, the one screaming for attention, and
said, "Gal-Tex. Could you hold a moment, please?" Walker didn't wait
for a response, but rather automatically put the second caller on hold.

In
seconds, owing to what Walker considered a lot of luck, he found the list of
figures he was searching for on the secretary's desk. He read them to his foreman,
then terminated the call.

"Thank
you for holding," he said after he'd reconnected the second caller.

There
was a pause, then a soft, feminine voice said, "You sound like a zookeeper
trying to round up all the animals that got loose during the night."

Walker
realized, if only peripherally, that Lindsey's voice was the nicest thing that
had happened to him all morning. In fact, it might be the nicest thing that had
happened to him since he'd last heard her voice. He grinned.

"Your
metaphor is apropos. It is a zoo around here. The phone's ringing off the wall,
and I haven't even uncapped my coffee." As he spoke, he took the lid off
the cup of coffee he'd bought en route to the office. Normally Gerri had coffee
waiting for him, but with no Gerri awaiting him, there'd certainly be no
coffee.

"Ah,
poor baby," Lindsey said in a tone that Walker thought steamier than the
vapor rising from the cup.

He
grinned again, thinking that the vampy sound was even better than nice, which
he hastened to tell himself was all right to think even though Lindsey was his
goddaughter. He was, after all, only making an idle observation.

"And
here I was thinking that you were going to be sympathetic," he said as he
brought the cup to his lips and sipped.

"I
am. And to prove the point I'm going to give you time to uncap the
coffee."

"I
already have, smart aleck," he said around a grin that obviously would not
die. "I've already had a swallow, thank you very much."

"And
can you feel that caffeine racing through your body, waking up every sleepy
little cell?"

What
he could feel was something he hadn't felt in a long while. It was so simple,
so subtle, that he almost wasn't aware of feeling it at all. And he wasn't at
all sure how to define it, except to say it was a sort of hey-isn't-it-great-to-be-alive?
feeling. Even with the phone ringing off the wall, even with work stacked up to
his chin, even with life less than perfect, it was great to be alive with the
day, and its endless opportunities, stretching before him. Lindsey's joie de vivre
must be rubbing off on him.

"Has
anyone ever told you that you can sometimes be a little too big for your
britches?" Walker didn't dare entertain the silk and lace images that
flitted just at the corner of his mind. Such images would be so inappropriate
that there would be absolutely no way to excuse them.

Lindsey
laughed, lilting notes of a cheery song, but then the notes faded and her voice
was serious when she asked, "Has Dad come in?"

"No,
not yet, but he should be here any minute." Before Lindsey could make any
further comment, Walker asked, referring to her meeting with her father,
"How did it go yesterday?"

"It
didn't," Lindsey answered bluntly.

Walker
halted the cup in midjourney to his lips. "What do you mean?"

"Just
what I said. I didn't see Dad."

"But
I thought—"

"So
did I. He called at noon with a list of excuses a mile long. He was still tied
up on the job, he was tired, he needed to run by the office, he needed to darn
his socks." This last was said with sarcastic flippancy.

Walker
but barely heard the sarcasm. He had keyed in to Dean needing to run by the
office. Walker knew that he hadn't, however. Not unless he'd come by after
seven o'clock, which he doubted seriously. Even though he knew that his friend
couldn't be looking forward to the confrontation with his daughter, still it
wasn't like Dean to lie. Another thought occurred to him, causing Walker to
frown. Surely Dean wasn't seeing someone. Was he?

"...please."

Walker
realized that he hadn't heard a word that Lindsey had said.

"I'm
sorry. What did you say?"

"Would
you hang on to him when he gets there? Rope him, chain him, hit him over the
head, but don't let him get away. Okay?"

"You
coming down?"

"I'm
leaving in about ten minutes."

"How's
your mom?"

There
was a pause, then, "I think she's better. It's sorta like falling apart
allowed her the opportunity to pick up the pieces and start all over again. In
fact, over pancakes, she informed me that she'd never really liked those
glasses, anyway, that she'd liked another pattern, but that Daddy had liked
these."

Walker
smiled... and prayed that Dean wasn't having an affair. What in heaven's name
would make a man walk away from a woman like Bunny? How in hell could he expect
to find a woman who would stand so devotedly by him? He couldn't, and so that
put an answer once and for all to the question of whether Dean was having an
affair. He wasn't. Something else was motivating him in his request for a
divorce.

"So
will you hang on to Dad?" Walker heard Lindsey ask.

"I'll
do my best, but he's bigger than I am."

"Yeah,
but you're quicker."

Walker
had heard the comment, which had begun in their high school football days,
countless times over the years—brawny Dean and agile Walker. Grinning, Walker
said, "Tell that to my middle-aged body."

"Ah,
poor baby," Lindsey said once more in that hot-as-a-summer-day voice.

Walker
found himself grinning yet again. "Smart aleck."

No
sooner had Walker hung up than three more calls came in back to back. Some
valve had blown on Rig Four, a foreman needed some time off because of a death
in his family and someone was questioning the amount of his pay check. All in
all, a pretty routine Monday morning—if he'd had a secretary to help him run
interference. But he didn't. All he had were two hands and another ringing
telephone. No, make that two lines ringing. As he picked up the receiver, the
front door opened and Dean Ellison walked in.

"Grab
the other line, will ya?" Walker said, motioning to the phone on the
secretary's desk.

Tall—he
was exactly three-quarters of an inch taller than Walker, with beefy arms,
mammoth shoulders and a solid stomach— Dean did as requested. For minutes, both
men spoke to their respective callers, then, within seconds of each other, they
hung up.

"Whatever
we're paying Gerri," Walker said, leaning back in his desk chair, "it
isn't enough."

"Busy,
huh?" Dean asked, edging his leg over the corner of the secretary's desk
and sitting down.

"That's
an understatement."

"You
need to hire some temporary help."

"Yeah,
I will."

Walker
was aware that the conversation was strained. It had been ever since Dean had
announced his intention to seek a divorce. Walker supposed that Dean felt
defensive, as though he thought he, Walker, was going to judge him. Which
Walker was trying hard not to do. Damned hard! He just wished that Dean would
open up and talk to him. Walker had thought there wasn't anything they couldn't
talk about, but he'd obviously been wrong.

Maybe,
though, if he were honest, he would admit that Dean had pulled away from him
months before he'd demanded the divorce. Looking back, Walker realized that
Dean had pulled into himself. Also, he had become obsessed with health and
nutrition and working out. He'd bought a membership at a local spa and spent
every free minute there, pumping iron, doing sit-ups, anything that broke a
sweat and threatened an inch of fat. It was about that time, too, that he
changed his style of dress. Always conservative in his clothes, he began to
wear neon-printed pants, jewelry, and sunglasses with iridescent mirrored
lenses. It was also during this period that the gray in his hair miraculously
disappeared, though there was no way he could eliminate the receding hairline.
Maybe Bunny was right. Maybe Dean was simply going through a midlife crisis.
Maybe everything would settle back down in time. Then again...

Walker
thought of the classic affair that was usually associated with a mid-life
crisis. He had a devil of a time thinking of Dean with a woman other than his
wife. He just couldn't believe that Dean would stoop to that. No, whatever else
might be going on in Dean's life, Walker couldn't believe that he was having an
affair.

"How
was your weekend?" Walker asked, taking a swallow of coffee.

Dean
whipped off his sunglasses and shoved them into his shirt pocket. His eyes
didn't quite meet Walker's. "Fine. Rig Three is operational. The part
held."

"Good.
Did, uh, did you come by the office yesterday?"

Dean's
gaze slid into his friend's. He shook his head once. "No, why?"

"Just
wondered," Walker said, taking another casual sip of coffee. "By the
way, a valve blew on Four."

Something
akin to relief sped across Dean's face. He obviously preferred the safe topic
of work. "I've got to go out there anyway." He checked his watch.
"I guess I could go on and—"

"Lindsey
just called. She's on her way here."

Walker
thought that the expression on Dean's face would have been funny if it hadn't
been so tragic.

"Why's
she coming here?" Dean asked.

"To
see you. She says ya'll are having a hard time getting together."

"Yeah,
well, I've been busy... Rig Three and that hassle… I can't just drop
everything. I've got responsibilities. The valve now on Four..." All this
he stammered, one word tripping over the other.

"She
thinks you're avoiding her," Walker said, pulling no punches.

"Avoiding
her?" Dean asked, his voice pitched a tad too shrilly. "That's
ridiculous."

"Is
it?"

"Of
course, it is!" he said, raking his hand through his tinted hair.
"Why would I want to avoid her? Why would I..." He stopped, sighed,
then swore.

Silently,
Walker watched as his friend slipped from the edge of the desk and went to
stand before the window. Outside the sun shone, but it did so through a
smattering of clouds. The weather forecaster predicted showers. So did Walker's
knee.

Dean
turned suddenly, saying, "What am I going to tell her?"

It
was the old Dean asking the heartfelt question, the Dean who'd been his friend
all through high school and college, the Dean he called his best friend, the
Dean he'd die for if need be.

"How
about the truth?" Walker said softly.

Dean
laughed harshly and speared his fingers back through his hair. "And just
what the hell is that? How can I explain something to her that even I don't
understand?"

Walker
stood and, rounding his desk, perched on the edge in a pose similar to the one
Dean had only moments before abandoned. "Then tell her that."

"I
owe her more than that, man." His voice displayed his self-anger. "A
helluva lot more."

"She'll
settle for what you can give her. If it's all you can honestly give."

"Yeah,
sure, just the way Bunny did."

The
sarcasm clearly revealed that his confrontation with his wife hadn't gone well.
But then, Walker hadn't supposed it had.

Dean
sighed, as though he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders and that,
even though those shoulders were massive, they weren't up to the burden.

"I
don't know, Walker," he said, obviously mystified himself by what he was
feeling. "Have you ever felt like life was choking you to death? Have you
ever woken up in the middle of the night wondering if this is all there is to
life? Have you ever broken out in a cold sweat because you thought maybe that
it was, that you were never going to have anything more than you already
did?" Before Walker could respond, his friend added, "Hell, we're
getting old, or hadn't you noticed?"

Walker
angled his knee into a more comfortable position. "Yeah, I noticed."

"Don't
you want anything more than you've got?"

Walker
didn't even have to ponder the question. "Yeah," he answered, "I
want what you're throwing away. I want someone in my life who loves me—warts
and all. I want someone to smile at me first thing in the morning. I want
someone to give a damn whether I come home in the evening."