An Unexpected Addition

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An Unexpected Addition Page 11

by Terese Ramin


  Chapter 7

  It was his turn to flush, to squirm, to chuckle with discomfort. He, who, because of his many years in drug enforcement, thought he’d seen and heard everything.

  “Practical, maybe,” he agreed, sounding somewhat strangled, “but hardly a solution.” Of all the conversations he could ever imagine having with anyone—particularly with a woman who was an ex-nun—this wasn’t one. So how had it gotten to this point, anyway? Oh, just lucky, I guess. “Certainly not satisfying. Definitely not long-term.”

  “Oh.” She seemed wistful. Disappointed. Glad. Torn among emotions.

  “Yes,” he agreed gently. “Oh.” He looked down at her, watching the pale eyes with the navy rings around the irises, seeking he wasn’t sure what. Answers, strength, respite from the thing between the two of them that he knew was inevitable. And irreversible. “And not only that, but it wouldn’t do anything for you.”

  “Oh, but I’m used to being celi—”

  She broke off, biting her tongue on what she’d been about to say. It sounded too much like an accusation. He finished it for her.

  “You’re used to being celibate.”

  She nodded.

  “So am I.” He smiled thinly, draped the towel back through its ring to dry. “And it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” A challenge. A dare to deny the truth.

  Self-conscious in her desire to lie, she looked at the ground. “You must have dealt with this sort of thing before.”

  “No.”

  Surprised, she raised her head. “But you’re a man.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted with scorn. He’d expected better of her. “And you’re a sexist.”

  She laughed at that, a dry, humor-filled, self-deprecating sound. “Sometimes. But that’s not what I meant here. I just meant you’re a man, you’ve been married, you aren’t a monk, you’ve been around, you must’ve had to...manage...desires you don’t intend to act on.”

  “Yeah, I have. It’s called not wanting what you can’t have.”

  “I know that one,” Kate said softly. “I use that one. It’s not working this time.”

  Something in him leaped at her admission; he wasn’t alone. In the next instant he quashed elation and regarded her steadily. “No. It’s not.”

  Silence passed between them while they digested revelation, shied from it. Faced hunger, avarice, want. And discarded them as inappropriate to the moment.

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Follow the rules. Remain focused on Meg, because I don’t want to risk losing her. Don’t wind up alone together. Never touch. And you’ve got to quit telling me how scrambled your brain gets when you look at me. For one thing, it’s not dignified. For another, it’s not dishonest to keep something like that to yourself. And third—” He grinned wryly. “Third, hearing how I make you feel makes me crazy. So far, it’s only your timing and the number of kids who’ve been around that’ve kept me this side of the line we keep drawing in the dirt.”

  “Don’t forget fourth,” Kate said quietly. He looked at her. She hunched a shoulder and told Hank the same lie she told herself. “I don’t know about you, but I think...I think I’d only be in it for the sex and that’s not enough.”

  “Good point.” But he looked almost as unconvinced as Kate felt. “So.” He pulled his shirt off the shelf where he’d left it, next to the stiff brush they used to scrub out the llama troughs every day. Gathered it together in his hands and slid it over his head, aware in every fiber of Kate watching him. Of the fact that what he’d rather be doing was taking her shirt off her, putting his hands on her and feeling hers on him. Knowing damn well that, despite what Kate said, if she were to lay down with him the result would be far more than sex, but still less than either of them was entitled to. “We’re agreed.”

  Kate sketched a line between them with the toe of her boot. “You stay on your side of the fence, I stay on mine.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Shake on it?”

  Kate snorted. “After what we just talked about? Not likely.”

  Hank grinned. “You’re learning.”

  “Yeah.” She watched him finish pulling his shirt down over his chest and sighed regretfully. “And ain’t education a bitch.”

  Then she picked up the hose he’d discarded, and to the sound of Hank’s laughter, she turned it on herself.

  Establishing the rules of their relationship didn’t make it easier for Kate. If anything, seeing Hank on a daily basis—even from a distance—got harder.

  She couldn’t relieve her own tension simply by tossing some comment at him, because now she understood that as far as Hank was concerned such commentary was merely a tease that made self-control more difficult. Also, the more she saw him, the more she liked him.

  He was hardly the pasteboard character his looks and his daughter had proclaimed him to be. He was as multidimensional as people come, as vulnerable as his daughter. And a man capable of emotions he could neither control nor let anyone else share.

  She didn’t know who he’d been when he’d worked undercover, but the man who sprayed and fertilized trees with her sons, who invited his daughter to help him raid their collections of South American souvenirs and Indian artifacts in order to keep Mike and Bele in “dig fossils,” and who squeezed Li’s shoulder when she was nervous before her audition for the county symphony, simply grinned and hugged her afterward when Li won her chair hands-down-going-away was a man Kate had never expected to meet. Never even considered might be out there.

  Had never let herself dream of finding.

  Besides being sexy as all get-out, the Hank she saw daily was decent, honorable, honest and able to laugh at himself—all things she’d recognized before but had half decided would diminish as the summer wore on. Instead of diminishing, however, Hank’s talents only seemed to increase as time wore by until Kate uncovered the secret he hid deepest: he was a man capable of loving without reservation or restraint, without conditions.

  No matter what game Megan played, he stayed within range, refused to walk away even in those moments when she treated him to her worst. That his daughter couldn’t see past her own pain well enough to see how much her father loved her was something Kate recognized, as well. Understood that as much as Megan needed to hear the word, needed him to tell her rather than try to show her how he felt, Hank could hardly voice his love for her in any way Megan could hear. And it made Kate ache for them both.

  Love them both.

  It also made it harder for her to stay away from him. But she understood that he couldn’t afford to let her near even to offer comfort—or perhaps that was especially to offer comfort—because she had a feeling she knew where comfort could easily lead. Passion was a sneak thief and a con artist that could gull and dupe its way through the noblest emotions, leave them stripped and tattered all over the floor. So instead of even allowing herself to do something as simple as offering to pour Hank coffee, she stayed on her side of the breakfast table and let him pour it for himself. Instead of enjoying a few minutes of purely adult conversation on the front porch after supper, she adhered to the rules and kept kids or llamas or bolted doors or an electric fence between them.

  But she couldn’t stop herself from seeking him out across a distance, meeting his eyes, reading the same sense of urgency, of need, in him as she felt in herself. Couldn’t stop the want.

  And July got older, bolder, hotter, greener, the sky stayed blue and streaked with jet streams and the sun burned....

  The tenuous peace fell apart early on a brooding, muggy and torpid Michigan evening tasting of storms that refused to come.

  It was the fifteenth of July, the thirty-eighth anniversary of Genevieve Mathison’s birth. Hank never thought about the date. Megan did.

  They were alone at the guesthouse—a rarity, what with Megan spending most nights in the extra bed in Li’s room and with them both taking me
als up at the main house with the family. As Kate put it when Hank had stiffly suggested he wouldn’t want to intrude on the Andens more than he and Megan were already, since Hank was paying for his and Megan’s beds but they were also putting in long days working for Stone House, the least the Andens could do was provide the board. Except that Hank was never quite sure what headway he and Megan were making as father and daughter, the arrangement worked well. But tonight when he came in to clean up before supper, Megan was there ahead of him, dressed to the nines and carelessly expectant.

  Maybe he should have had a premonition or figured it out, then, but he had other things on his mind: Kate swimming in the pond with Mike and Bele, modestly attired in a skirted one-piece bathing suit that teased his imagination no end, for instance.

  “Wow.” He made a circling motion with his finger, whistled appreciatively when Megan turned slowly to give him the full effect. She was dressed in a slim-cut, sleeveless white buttonfront dress and white strappy sandals. There were small pearl studs in her ears, a pearl cocktail ring on her right hand and a slim gold watch on her left wrist. Her hair was soft, pulled gently away from her face by a comb in a style he’d always particularly liked on Gen. He didn’t think he’d ever seen his daughter look more grown-up or more beautiful. “You’re a knockout Is that dress new?”

  She shook her head shyly. “No. You’ve seen it before, but it’s been a while.”

  “No-o-o,” he said, light and teasing, drawn out with disbelief. “I’d remember if I’d seen you in that outfit before.”

  She flushed, suddenly all gawky teen. “Thanks. But you didn’t see it on me. It’s Mom’s. She wore it to Aunt Sara’s wedding. It finally fits me. I always wanted to wear it”

  “Mom’s.” The foreboding that hadn’t prickled through him earlier sifted along the edge of Hank’s nerves. He’d thought he got rid of all Gen’s clothes—or rather had asked her sister Sara to do it within months of her death. The jewelry he’d put aside for Meg himself, presented the pearls to her six months ago when she’d turned sixteen. Knowing what was inside it because he’d told her, she’d tossed the box aside without opening it. Apparently things had changed since then.

  He took another long, hard look at his daughter. God, she did remind him of Gen. Not so much physically as something in her demeanor: hair, makeup, attitude...almost as if he was looking at a photograph. Almost as though Megan had taken a picture of Gen into the bathroom with her, set it up in front of her and copied the image onto herself.

  Nope, he decided uneasily, this didn’t feel right at all.

  Things had been going misleadingly well of late, he knew, and he felt he should have been prepared for something. But dressing like Gen, to be Gen... Even given Meg’s repertoire of creative ways to act out, this was a new one. He didn’t like it

  But then, like many parents, he knew he was prone to not liking things he couldn’t understand.

  Still, this did seem awfully morbid and unhealthy. He also didn’t know how to handle it. Or why it was manifesting now. It wasn’t Christmas, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, the anniversary of Gen’s death or even the Fourth of July, so why...

  Try to stay cool, he advised himself. Keep it light. See where it goes. Maybe she’s just got a ... a special date.

  “Did Aunt Sara give the dress to you?” he asked idly.

  “Un-unh.” Megan smoothed tanned hands down the length of white. “She let me choose whatever I wanted to keep, when she was sorting through Mom’s stuff. I kept most of it. We’re the same size now.”

  Not I’m the same size she was, but We’re the same size now.

  He kept his voice neutral. “You mean you’re the same size Mom was, don’t you?”

  “What?” Megan looked at him, distracted. Not sensitive to the comment the way Hank thought she’d be. Not actually seeming to notice it at all. “Oh, yeah, sure. Was.”

  Agreement, simple as that. So why couldn’t he accept her concession without suspicion?

  Without concern.

  “So what are you up to tonight, all dressed up?” he asked.

  Mistake. He knew that the moment the question left his mouth.

  Her head came up, all of her attention captured; hurt crossed her face. “You know.”

  Oh, hell. Either she’d told him something he’d forgotten, left him a note he’d never read, or this was one of those read-hermind-psychic things, where no matter what he did or how carefully he proceeded he screwed up. He was already screwed.

  “Uh, I don’t think so, honey.” Women who got hurt at the drop of a hat and who made him walk on eggshells so he wouldn’t hurt them more were a pain in the butt. And yes, she was his daughter, she owned his heart, she’d inherited many of her emotions from her mother, but right now she was hurt, he was tiptoeing on eggs and, damn it, when she was like this she was still a pain in the butt. “I’m sorry if I’ve forgotten something, but maybe if you tell me what it is we can fix it—”

  “Fix it?” She was offended, incensed; Hank knew he’d fix nothing tonight. “We shouldn’t have to fix anything. I’m not your secretary, I shouldn’t have to remind you, you should just know, you should be able to look at a calendar sometimes and remember on your own. Instead, you always have to ruin it—”

  Sweet heaven. Hank stared at his daughter, pale and appalled. Memories tumbled backward five years to Gen’s last birthday three months before she died, two months before she told him she was five months pregnant. Hindsight and hormones had explained the way Gen lashed out at him that night—in words and emotions Megan repeated, now, almost verbatim.

  He hadn’t known their daughter had been near enough to hear, let alone that she would remember.

  She was ranting at him now, nearly shrieking. Had worked herself up well past the ability to hear anything, but especially reason. Stamping around, tearing off the ring, watch and earrings, pitching them onto a table, she was well beyond Gen’s hormonedriven but justifiable—he had forgotten her birthday that year, many years, after all—anger.

  Had forgotten many things important to his wife, in pursuit of his job.

  But this wasn’t Gen screaming at him now, it was Megan, and this anger was more like the temper tantrums she’d suffered from when she was three and four and didn’t want to do something. Then he, when he was home, or Gen would literally have to lie on top of Megan while she screamed uncontrollably—often for nearly an hour—simply to prevent her from throwing herself into something or off of something in her rage and doing herself serious damage.

  Small and young as she’d been, adrenaline had made her strong and frightening, able to nearly lift him off of her. And despite the time or two Gen had mentioned something about Megan giving in to moody rages since then—probably, now that he thought about it, about the time Megan might have been headed into puberty, like a pre-PMS sort of thing—Gen and Hank had both thought their daughter had pretty much outgrown her tantrums by the time she started kindergarten at five.

  Now, however, it didn’t appear as if Meg had outgrown anything. Her uncontrolled rage scared Hank more than anything he’d seen his daughter do since Gen died—including Mother’s Day, when she’d come in high and thrown the dollhouse at him.

  This was beyond his knowledge and ability to manage; beyond, he was very much afraid, even the department psychologist’s expertise. For himself, Hank couldn’t very well simply lie down on top of his sixteen-year-old daughter and let her scream and flail at him until she exhausted herself, the way he’d been able to cushion and protect her from herself at four. As for the department’s psychologist...helpful as the woman wanted to be, her primary training was in test giving and dealing with adult agents who were as adept at disguising their anxieties and appearing normal in her presence as they were at dissolving in a crisis. She’d never been exposed to this side of Megan, felt that Hank was dealing only with adolescent rebellion complicated by the death of a same-sex parent. Clearly this was more than that

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe
he was overreacting and this was normal sixteen-year-old behavior under this very specific set of circumstances. Sexist as it might sound, maybe this was merely a not-so-simple case of PMS and she’d be fine in a couple of days. Or maybe when this tantrum played itself out, everything would be fine. Maybe this was merely another form of release, like hysteria or crying.

  And maybe he was a terrified parent grasping at straws of rationalization and hope.

  Helpless, he reached out to touch Megan’s shoulder, wondering how an expert would handle this; tried to gather her into his arms to quiet and reassure. She screamed and struck at him, scratching his arm with sharp polished nails and pushing him away, and he could only stand powerless, watching her remove herself to the bedroom she’d been assigned but rarely used. The door banged shut behind her, the lock snicked into place. Silence was abrupt and complete, as hard on his ears and psyche as Megan’s rage had been.

  Not sure what he intended, he walked to the door of her room, wanting to be near her, somehow. Inside the room he could hear her sobs—more like paroxysms of unintelligible wrath at first—and slumped to the floor beside her door, worn and alone, his back to the wall.

  He didn’t know how long he waited with his head leaned back, eyes shut, listening to her. Knew only that the time and voice of her pain, grief, rage, whatever, seemed interminable and costly. Gradually relaxed only when Megan’s emotional frenzy took on the quieting tones of real tears. Then he wrapped an arm around one upraised knee, let his other leg slacken sideways and awaited Megan’s return.

  Kate wondered about Megan and Hank when they didn’t appear for dinner, stopped when Li mentioned she thought father and daughter had some sort of special evening planned—dinner out or something, Meg had said. The announcement made Kate curious, but busy with supper preparations and mildly concerned about Risto’s latest unannounced disappearance, she merely wished Hank a mental godspeed and hoped that the thaw between parent and child had finally begun.

 

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