That'll Be the Day

by Kress, Alyssa

  Ian's smile faltered.

  "He can handle it. Other kids his age are babysitting."

  Ian scowled.

  "Those are my terms." Innocently, Maggie added, "You think you're going to win, anyway, don't you?"

  "That's true." Ian's brow cleared. "Nothing to worry about."

  "Uh huh."

  Ian shot Maggie his brilliant smile, the deeply charming one, the smile she'd seen two days before with the elderly couple by the ficus tree. "You're on."

  Maggie blinked. His smile nearly blinded her. It nearly made him...wow. She drew in a shaky breath. Handsome?

  "Go." He made a shooing motion. "Prune a pear tree, weed a willow. Whatever. I've got work to do."

  Maggie let out her breath and shook her head. All right. Maybe—maybe—Ian could come off as handsome, in a purely physical way. Did it matter?

  No, what mattered would be winning this bet and driving him crazy, just the way she'd planned. "I'm leave you now," Maggie told him. "But I'll be back by noon."

  "After which you'll be eating my soapsuds," Ian warned.

  Maggie was laughing as she left the building. Oh, all right, she hadn't driven him crazy...yet. But at least he hadn't driven her crazy—yet—either.

  Instead, they were kind of, almost, having fun.

  ~~~

  The desk in Andy's bedroom overlooked the street. Even normally, this orientation made it hard for him to get his homework done. Events taking place on the street below, events as mundane as the neighbor's cat slinking into the rose bushes, the twins across the street shrieking by on their scooters, or a gardener blowing leaves, were all vastly more compelling than reading a chapter in his geometry book.

  Lately, however—since Friday—Andy's distraction had become much worse, even though he was pushing his nose into his geometry book with more fervor than ever. He was determined to be a good student. He didn't want to do anything to push his dad over the edge. Not again, anyway.

  Unfortunately, ever since his dad had praised him on Tuesday for finishing his homework early, Andy hadn't been able to get any homework done at all. It was like his dad had placed a curse on him.

  On Thursday at five-thirty, his dad's Cherokee pulled into the driveway. Andy looked up from his book.

  His dad was home. Finally.

  Leaning back in his chair, Andy felt a huge part of himself relax. His dad was home. Aunt Maggie hadn't suddenly had to take him to the hospital. Andy had worried about that over the last half hour, since he'd expected his dad home promptly at five. He hadn't thought his dad would want to be a second later than necessary, given Mrs. Granby hadn't been able to come babysit this afternoon.

  Andy had nearly fallen over when he'd been handed the note in school. Mrs. Granby couldn't come today. His dad wanted him to baby-sit.

  At first Andy had been gratified. The note meant his dad trusted him—finally. Then he'd been hit by a wave of guilt. His father shouldn't trust him. He shouldn't be giving him new privileges. Andy didn't deserve them.

  Down in the driveway, the Cherokee's motor rumbled off. Andy lifted off his seat so he could see what was happening down below. The driver's side door opened first. Aunt Maggie got out, brushing the curls from her eyes. She was laughing.

  "Come on, admit it. You're going to have to call your tech friends tomorrow."

  The passenger side door opened. Ian climbed out. "No way. I said I was going to set it up, and I will."

  "Ian." Aunt Maggie sounded exasperated, but also amused. "That attitude is just too male. Like refusing to ask at a gas station for directions."

  Ian closed his door. "How did you know? I don't do that, either."

  They were both laughing as they went in the front door.

  Andy sank back down into his chair. How could they laugh? Didn't they realize the seriousness of the situation?

  Then he realized: they could laugh. Sure, why not? They didn't have anything to feel guilty about. Their consciences were clear. But Andy felt like a thick, heavy blanket pressed down on him, pressed so hard he could barely breathe. He had about a ton on his conscience.

  Then, in the depths of this despair, a thought occurred: his dad had been laughing. Laughing! He hadn't seemed worried or depressed or scared. Was it possible—? Did he think—he was okay?

  Andy's gaze lowered to the diagrams in his geometry book. For a moment the blanket lifted. He actually caught a glimpse of blue sky. What if all those precautions listed on the hospital sheet were just that: precautions?

  What if...his dad was going to be just fine? What if...everything could go back to normal, back to the way it had been?

  Happiness shimmered, almost within Andy's reach. But it slipped away again when he remembered something big. Something huge.

  His dad hadn't gone back to work.

  Andy shook his head. Yeah, that was huge all right. If he had any health at all, his dad would be at work. Last year he'd gone into work the entire time he'd had the flu, fevered, nauseous and all.

  No, the only thing that would keep Ian Muldaur out of the office was if he were direly, horribly sick. Or afraid he was about to become so at any second.

  Andy stared at the pink and green tinged cones and cylinders on the page of his open geometry book. The heavy blanket dropped over him like an unwelcome companion. His father was direly ill, and it was all his fault.

  He doubted he'd ever be able to laugh again.

  ~~~

  Maggie couldn't remember when she'd spent so many hours of a day laughing. As she walked from the car to Ian's front door, her cheek muscles felt sore.

  To think, it was Ian who was responsible for her mirth. They'd wrangled and joked and teased each other all day. The climax, of course, had come when noon had rolled around. Maggie had found Ian with his nose still in the instruction book. He didn't even hear her call time on him.

  "Ian," Maggie had tried, leaning on the counter looking into the office area.

  He hadn't answered. Instead, he'd put the book down and his gaze had fixed on a little box sitting on the desk. Very intently, he'd moved a connection from one point on the box to another. Then he'd stared at the whole, as if waiting for something to happen.

  "Ian," Maggie'd repeated. "It's noon. Wanta boot up my new computer?"

  "Hm?" He was still staring at the box.

  "It's noon. Our bet?"

  "Our bet," he repeated, zombie-like. An espresso lock arched over his forehead, showing he'd been running his hands through his hair.

  That lock of hair, together with his intent focus, made her smile. He was being so...male. But in a peculiarly endearing sort of way.

  Coughing, she wiped the smile from her face. "Ah, you were supposed to have everything running by noon."

  "Noon, eh?" Though he was still staring at the box, he seemed to have heard her. "It couldn't be noon."

  "Look at your watch."

  Ian scowled and pried his gaze from the little box. He looked at his watch. "Damn," he whispered.

  "Time to call Mrs. Granby." Maggie couldn't help gloating.

  "Not quite time yet." Shifting his gaze back to Maggie, Ian lifted a finger. "I didn't mean noon California-time. Didn't you know? The bet concerned noon...Hawaii-time."

  "Ian." Maggie was laughing so hard she could barely get the words out. "You couldn't get this done by noon—Japan-time!"

  "Not true!" His eyes lit, challenging.

  "No." Struggling to control her laughter, Maggie crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not making another bet. You lost this one. Call Mrs. Granby."

  "Double or nothing."

  "Forget it."

  In the end, scowling, he'd called the elderly babysitter to tell her not to come to the house. But that had hardly been the end of it. No, they'd traded barbs about his ability, or lack thereof, to supply her with a working computer system. And then they'd wrangled about Maggie's ability, or lack thereof, to make a sale from each customer who walked in.

  By the time they started back home, nei
ther one of them had conceded any ground, and yet Maggie had felt invigorated, rather than the opposite.

  It had been a far different experience than the kind she was used to having with Ian.

  Now as they approached his front door, Ian said, "Keys," and held out his hand.

  "What?"

  "Hand me the keys," Ian ordered. "I'm going to open my own front door."

  His tone of voice made Maggie tighten her grasp on the set of keys. "Oh, come on."

  "Hey." His eyes hit hers. "Give me a little wiggle room here. I gotta remember I can do something."

  "Oh, you can do something, all right." Maggie's grasp relaxed and she dumped the keys into his hand. "I saw you plug and unplug a lotta wires into little boxes. It was real macho."

  Ian grinned.

  Maggie's smile faltered. She wasn't even quite sure why. But...there'd been something, a sort of sudden and unexpected inner hiccup, when Ian had flashed her that grin. The hiccup left a ripple behind, like a stone dropped into a still pond.

  Ian turned and unlocked his front door. "Let's see what kind of chaos ensued in Mrs. Granby's absence," he muttered.

  Maggie drew in a deep, silent breath. She resisted the urge to clear her throat. "You're a total worrywart," she told Ian.

  "I'm a realist." Ian pushed open the door but stood aside and gestured for Maggie to go through first.

  "A pessimist," Maggie insisted. Meanwhile, she was grateful to feel the inner ripples fade as she waltzed past Ian and through the front door. "There. See?" She turned in the center of the living room. "No beer bottles littering the floor. No flood from a stopped-up toilet."

  Ian gave a skeptical look around. "Appearances can be deceiving." In a louder voice, he called, "Kathy! Andy! We're home." When only silence greeted them, he turned to lift his eyebrows.

  He wasn't going to make Maggie nervous. She was certain—well, almost certain—that Andy could handle being in charge.

  Then Kathy's voice came from the top of the stairwell. "Dad? What's up?"

  For all his doomsaying, Ian didn't appear all that surprised to hear his daughter's voice, or the apparent normalcy of its tone. He turned his head toward the stairs. "Your Aunt Maggie's hungry," he called. "Come on, we'd better feed her, or who knows what might happen?"

  "Brat," Maggie said. "Not you, darling," she called to Kathy, who looked down from the second floor railing. "I meant your father, of course."

  "Oh, of course," Kathy replied, though her expression looked bewildered.

  "He's the one who's starving," Maggie explained to Kathy. "He's been whining to me about it for the past hour."

  "Delicately commenting," Ian corrected.

  "Delicate, my foot," Maggie muttered.

  Ian threw Maggie another grin, then turned back to Kathy. "Can you get Andy, hon? We don't want to make this expedition last too late on a school night."

  "Oh, we're going out? Sure." Kathy disappeared. Stocking feet went running across the upstairs landing.

  Ian turned back to Maggie. His cheerful smile dimmed. "What's wrong?"

  "Hm?" Maggie shook her head to clear it. That smile of his had given her another hiccup. A bigger one. "Nothing. Uh, no, nothing."

  He blinked, but whatever he might have said was interrupted by the arrival of both children at the top of the stairs.

  "Where are we going?" Kathy skipped down the stairs first.

  "It's not your turn to decide." Andy clumped down after her.

  "I know," Kathy turned to hiss at him.

  "Okay, okay." Ian's voice attempted to calm the waters.

  In her off-balance state, Maggie thought she heard a note of uncertainty in his voice. But that couldn't be right. Ian was always certain, especially when it came to his children.

  "Is it Andy's turn, then?" he asked the kids.

  Kathy was at the bottom of the stairs now. She turned to regard her brother. "Well, it is, isn't it?"

  "Yes." Andy finished clumping down the stairs. "But I don't care. You can decide."

  Kathy widened her eyes. "After you—? Gee, why'd you have to make such a big deal of it then, if you didn't care?"

  Andy shrugged.

  Kathy turned to meet eyes with Maggie. The message was clear: men.

  Maggie did her best to smile back at Kathy. The girl was absolutely right. Males were utterly crazy, no doubt about it. Oh, there were a few considerate, far-in-between exceptions, the few, here and there, Maggie had gone out with over the years. But for the most part, the entire gender was impossible, with Ian topping the list.

  Oh, this was still true. Absolutely.

  "How about we all agree on a place?" she suggested.

  "You're talking high-end diplomacy here," Ian muttered.

  "Pizza," Maggie threw out, feeling a little wild. She'd just felt another hiccup, this one from the mere sound of his voice.

  "Pizza's fine by me," Andy muttered.

  "Pizza's great," Kathy chirped.

  "As long as they have pasta or salad, too," Ian put in. He set a palm in the center of his chest. "I'm watching my cholesterol, you know."

  Maggie threw him an appalled look. Yes, of course he was. How stupid. But for a minute there she'd actually forgotten—yes forgotten!—about his infirmity. "Antonio's, then," she said.

  Ian smiled at her. "Antonio's it is. With Andy's blessing." He swiveled toward his son. "Since it is, officially, his turn."

  "Antonio's is fine," Andy mumbled.

  Maggie watched Ian watching Andy. She saw his brows flinch down. She saw concern flit unmistakably across his features.

  Well, of course he was concerned. She'd already figured out he actually cared about his children. But right then it felt peculiar to notice Ian's concern. It felt like a tug, acting in concert with the hiccups. Bigger, pondlike ripples followed.

  Finally it occurred to Maggie what all the hiccups and ripples might mean. She stilled.

  No. Impossible. Not Ian. Another man, maybe—she hadn't given up on the species entirely—but not Ian.

  "Maggie?"

  She blinked. Ian's concern was now directed her way. "What?" she asked. "Oh. Sorry. Did I miss something?"

  Ian's answering smile was condescending. "Only the fact we're about to go out the door. You ready?"

  Maggie mentally shook herself back to earth. See that smile? she scolded herself. Those ripples couldn't be about Ian, not that way. "Oh, I'm ready." She summoned forth a condescending smile of her own. "As soon as you give me back the keys."

  If he'd scowled in reply, it would have been perfect. She would have remembered exactly why she couldn't be having ripples about Ian.

  But instead he laughed. "Here." He tossed her the keys.

  Maggie caught them. Pure reflex, because the rest of her was in deep shock. No, I couldn't have just shivered. Not over Ian.

  She absolutely refused to believe it.

  ~~~

  Sitting in a plush booth at Antonio's, gazing into the oversize, paperboard menu, Ian felt like he was humming. It had been a vastly satisfying day.

  Oh, he hadn't finished putting together Maggie's new computer system. She'd taken every opportunity to alternately gloat or complain about this fact. But such was a detail. The important thing was he'd been able to forget, for several minutes at a stretch, that his life had fallen apart around him. Large blocks of time had been spent without remembering he might never go back to work and no longer had a life purpose.

  Thanks in large part to Maggie, he'd simply enjoyed being.

  "I want plain cheese," Kathy announced.

  "Like we didn't already know—" Andy began, but abruptly cut himself off. His brown eyes went back to his menu. "Can we get half olives and onions on that, Kath?"

  Ian lifted his eyebrows. A compromise? Originating from Andy? Not that he wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth, but...it was unusual.

  Kathy shot a glance at Andy as if she, too, were having trouble believing her ears. "Sure," she told her brother. "Half something else is
fine."

  Ian cleared his throat. "Maybe your Aunt Maggie has a preference."

  "Oh." Andy's expression went contrite, or was that additionally contrite, as he flicked his gaze toward Maggie. "Sorry, Aunt Maggie. What do you like on your pizza?"

  "Hm." Maggie didn't raise her face from her own menu. "Actually, I'm thinking of getting a plate of pasta. If you don't mind my opting out."

  "Oh, we don't mind," Kathy said cheerfully.

  "I'll do the same," Ian said. "Opt-out pasta." He closed his menu.

  Maggie kept staring into hers.

  For a moment, Ian's pleasant mood wavered. Maggie's intense preoccupation with the menu seemed odd. In fact, she'd acted kind of distracted ever since they'd picked up the kids from his house.

  Was something wrong? Oh, hell, had he done something to upset her? It wouldn't be hard. She was as prickly as one of those cacti she sold from her nursery.

  Ian chewed the inside of his cheek. On the other hand, sulking wasn't Maggie's style. If something was bugging her, she'd come right out and tell him.

  Wouldn't she?

  Finally, she closed her menu with a flourish. "All right. I'm ready."

  Ian decided to test the waters with a gentle dig. "You mean I don't get to make a crack about indecisive women?"

  Maggie's eyes flashed in his direction, but she switched her focus to the jar of bread sticks in the center of the table. "You would have been awfully sorry if you'd tried to make such a remark, no matter what." Smiling wickedly, she plucked a bread stick from the jar.

  Ian chuckled, but watched as she crunched down on her bread stick. He could swear she'd just avoided looking at him.

  "I suppose you're right," he said slowly. "Gotta keep on your good side, don't I?"

  She shot another brief glance at him. "Indeed."

  Andy looked from one of them to the other. His expression turned worried, or was that more worried? "Hey, go easy on her, Dad." Left unsaid was, you can't afford to screw up.

  No, Ian thought, he couldn't afford to screw up. But it would take a lot to screw things up with Maggie. She'd clearly decided Ian was a 'cause,' one she'd go far to champion.

  All the same, he didn't want her upset. She'd been great to him, just great. She probably didn't even realize how much she'd contributed to his brighter outlook with all the guff she'd given him the past few days. She sure hadn't held back, hadn't treated him like an invalid. She'd acted as if it would be his own fault if he couldn't keep up with her.