That'll Be the Day

by Kress, Alyssa

  "She said no." Ian rubbed a hand over his mouth. "She said no."

  No? Andy had been so scared, it took him a minute to process the information. Aunt Maggie had said no. She'd turned his dad down! That was—wow. She'd turned him down. "Oh," Andy said aloud.

  Ian's gaze came back to Andy. "You're relieved."

  "Well..." Andy decided there was no point pussyfooting. Firming his chin, he said, "Yeah."

  One side of Ian's mouth lifted into a rueful smile.

  "Hey, she's my aunt," Andy protested. "If she married you, it would be like—like—"

  Ian leaned back in his chair. "Like switching sides?"

  Andy hesitated, then remembered there was no need to pussyfoot. "Yeah," he agreed. "Exactly that. Like switching sides."

  His dad gave a harsh little laugh. "Well, your problems are over. Maggie won't be choosing my side."

  There was an edge to his dad's tone that surprised and disconcerted Andy. It was like he was really bummed. Like his heart was broken or something.

  "Well..." Andy felt awkward. He didn't want to sympathize with his dad, but he couldn't gloat over his pain, either.

  "Anyway," Ian said, and shook his head. "It's water under the bridge now." His gaze returned to Andy, abrupt and piercing. "Why are you and I on opposite sides, anyway?"

  Andy was too surprised to say anything.

  "We don't have to be," Ian claimed.

  An uncomfortable mix of emotions stirred within Andy. He and his dad did have to be on opposite sides. His dad was the enemy. He took stupid chances. He thought he was indestructible. And since he was indestructible, he didn't need anyone. Certainly, he didn't need his son. Andy pressed his lips together. "I think we do."

  That earned him another long look from his father. "Okay," he finally said, speaking slowly. "You think we have to be on opposite sides. But...how about we call a truce? A cease-fire while we're on this trip. No reason we can't have a good time."

  Andy narrowed his eyes. His heart beat very fast. He had been enjoying himself, before they'd started 'talking.' Maybe a truce would be okay. No shame. It wouldn't mean he was budging an inch or giving up anything. All it meant was that he wanted to have a good time on this trip. As a side benefit, he wouldn't have to keep up the antagonism, which could be something of a burden, truth be told.

  Andy thought about it a moment more, just to be sure. "Okay," he carefully agreed. "A truce."

  His dad didn't try disguising his relief. "Thanks."

  Andy looked away. Why would his dad feel relieved? In fact, why should he even care if they were fighting or not, if Andy hated him or not? He didn't care about Andy.

  "Ah. I think they just called our number," Ian said, turning toward the Taco Bell counter.

  Andy felt a tightness in his chest. His dad didn't care about him but...Andy didn't have to dwell on that for the span of this trip. They'd called a truce. He could forget all his complaints for three-and-a-half days. The tightness in his chest relaxed. "I'll go get it," Andy said, and he did feel lighter as he got up and walked over to the counter.

  If he could just keep forgetting the horribleness of being unimportant, this trip could turn out to be fun.

  ~~~

  "So what are we going to make for dinner?" Kathy hung over the counter that edged Maggie's kitchen. She was practically bouncing off the walls, she was so happy. "It can be something we like, for a change, instead of having to please picky Andy."

  "Yes." Maggie did her best to smile back at the irrepressible Kathy as she opened her refrigerator to check the contents. Her own mood had been...odd since her epiphany that afternoon. Distracted. Depressed. For some reason, anxious. After closing up the nursery, she and Kathy had gone clothes shopping, but it hadn't helped Maggie's mood.

  "How about a big salad?" Kathy suggested. "With everything."

  "Sounds good." Maggie continued to stare into her refrigerator.

  "Uh, you going to take out the lettuce and stuff?" Kathy asked.

  "Mm? What?"

  "The stuff for the salad," Kathy prompted. "Aren't you going to take it out?"

  "The salad. Right." Maggie managed to focus long enough to pull a head of lettuce out of the crisper drawer of the refrigerator.

  "And some tomatoes. Here, let me help." Kathy jumped down from her stool and skipped around the counter.

  Maggie stood back and let her niece fetch the salad fixings from the refrigerator. After her earth-shattering revelation that morning, she'd walked around in a fog. Fortunately, she'd had very few customers. She'd spent most of her time thinking about Ian, and how he'd been the one man in her life who'd ever stood up to her.

  Wasn't it strange that he was also the one man who'd really gotten through to her? She'd let him in further than she'd ever let any other guy. She'd allowed herself to become vulnerable to him. Very vulnerable.

  "Okay, I think that's it." Kathy briefly squinted into the refrigerator, then closed the door. At that moment, the telephone rang. "Huh." Kathy glanced toward the clock. "Must be my dad."

  God, Kathy was right, it probably was her dad, calling to check in.

  Maggie didn't want to get the phone. She had absolutely no desire to talk to Ian. For one thing, he was furious with her, and for another, she was furious with him.

  Okay, not furious. Embarrassed. He'd said horrible things about her—and they were probably all true.

  But what she'd said to him had been true, too. He had dominated Sophia in their marriage. At least, that's the way it had always looked to Maggie. She was certain that he'd seek to dominate her, too, if she'd agreed to a formally sanctioned relationship. She had a sinking feeling, in fact, that her attraction to him came from some hitherto unknown desire on her part to be dominated. That would explain why she'd become so vulnerable to him.

  But in the meantime, she couldn't expect an eleven-year-old to run interference for her. "I'll get it," Maggie gave in.

  Her fingers clenched around the receiver as she picked up the kitchen mobile phone. "Hello?"

  There was a detectable pause on the other end of the line. "Hello," Ian said. "Kathy get to your place all right?"

  He sounded amazingly cool and collected, Maggie thought, or maybe that was because her heart had accelerated to about a hundred beats per second and she didn't feel cool or collected at all. "Uh, she got to the nursery just fine. We were about to start dinner."

  "Oh. Good." Another detectable pause. "By the way, thanks for taking her on such short notice."

  "It's nothing." Maggie's fingers were like vises around the telephone. Emotions welled up inside her: strong, hard to understand emotions.

  "Well," Ian said.

  Maggie closed her eyes. They had nothing more to say to each other. The hard to understand emotions became more jumbled and more powerful. She opened her eyes again. "I'll get Kathy for you."

  Quickly, Maggie held the phone out to Kathy. "Your dad."

  "Thought so." Kathy reached out for the phone with a big smile of anticipation. "Hi, Dad." It didn't take long before she giggled at something Ian must have said. "Yeah, we're having fun, but I still miss you." Not quite under her breath, she added, "Not Andy, though."

  A perverse impulse rooted Maggie to a spot where she could watch Kathy enjoy her conversation with Ian. Familiar and loving, it was exactly the kind of conversation Maggie would no longer have with the man.

  "Uh huh," Kathy said. "Right. Well, that's good."

  What? What was good? Had he regained his confidence about being on a business trip? Maggie bit her lip and suppressed her curiosity. She had no reason to care.

  "Mm." Kathy's smile faded into something more thoughtful. "You know I did. Right. Right. Okay." She rolled her eyes and sighed. Then, with her ear to the phone, her gaze flicked around to find Maggie. Before Maggie could guess what she was about to do, Kathy asked, "Did you want to talk to Aunt Maggie again?"

  Time seemed to stop, or maybe that was just Maggie's heart stopping. On Tuesday she'd said goodbye
to Ian, an irrevocable goodbye. And yet, for a split-second, she actually hoped he'd ask to talk with her.

  "Oh. Okay," Kathy said. "Goodbye, then." She took the receiver from her ear and clicked off the phone.

  Such a small action, with such a big significance. Ian had not wanted to speak with Maggie.

  Maggie felt her hope turn to bile. Stupid. Idiot. Why would she hope Ian wanted to talk with her? They weren't together any more, and Maggie was glad of it. Glad! Even if she were her own sort of control freak, Ian was worse, a thousand times worse. Plus he'd asked for the ultimate domination of marriage. In the contest of wills between them, he'd jockeyed to win. Take over. Subsume.

  With the phone still in her hand, Kathy looked up then and straight into Maggie's eyes. Her gaze was clear and perceptive.

  Maggie's bristly defensiveness fell away. She felt as if the child was looking right into her, seeing what Maggie thought she could hide or dismiss. Her curiosity about Ian's business trip, her reaction to the brief sound of his voice, and all of the emotion roiling inside her. She'd wanted Ian to ask to speak with her because—despite everything—she was still into him.

  Dammit, she was still in love with him.

  She was in love with the one man who had the potential to dominate her. A man who was an even bigger bully than she was and a man who'd asked for the additional—and unacceptable—advantage of marriage.

  Not to mention, a man who now quite clearly detested her.

  If she'd tried, Maggie could not have further abandoned her entire life's philosophy of remaining a strong and independent woman, one who would never let a man interfere at all, let alone ruin everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Stu Kaynor, of KGR, AIA, had to stop talking. A stream of impassioned Italian interrupted his speech about how his Kansas City firm qualified for the job of construction architect for the new music center.

  Vito, the world-class design architect, finished his foreign-language declaration by lifting his fist and slamming it down on the cherrywood conference table.

  Ian suppressed a wince at the sound. Meanwhile, everyone else at the table went still. The staff from KGR, John Corbeley and Vincent Moreland from the funding agency, the three assistants from Vito's office, and Andy—all stared with varied expressions of terror and awe at the Italian prima donna.

  Doing his best to smile as if nothing were wrong, Ian turned to Teresa, the sloe-eyed beauty Vito had brought along to translate.

  Neither embarrassment nor shame rippled her haughty face as she translated Vito's speech. "He says he sees nothing here to indicate this architect has ever handled a project of this size or importance. His portfolio is lacking. And there is no indication he could handle such a jump upward from his previous work."

  Another silence fell over the table; the general discomfort was intense. Meanwhile, Vito sat with his dark eyes flashing and his face flushed.

  Ian was hardly surprised by Vito's performance, nor by his lack of tact. These had been displayed already in the three interviews they'd so far conducted that day. As project manager, he was wondering how to smooth things over when Vito took the problem out of Ian's hands. With another stream of vehement Italian, he rose from his seat. He made a sweeping motion with his hands, indicating Teresa and his two other staff members should also rise. With Vito leading, they left the room.

  A final silence, one of relief, followed in their wake. Ian drew in a deep breath, and turned to Kaynor. "I apologize, Stu. I think the fellow needs a can of Metamucil."

  Stu Kaynor chuckled and waved aside Ian's apology. "Don't worry about it. I knew this job was a long shot. You guys are gonna go with TLM, right? They do all the big construction around here."

  "Uh..." Ian wondered how to answer. From the corner of his eye, he caught Andy rubbing a hand over his mouth. TLM had been their first interview of the morning, and Vito had already pronounced an emphatic judgment against the big architectural firm. Ian smiled. "We haven't decided yet."

  Kaynor nodded. "Maybe next time."

  "Right." Ian rose and shook the other man's hand.

  With similarly apologetic faces, Corbeley and Moreland from the Music First funding agency also shook Kaynor's hand. Then everyone filed out of the room.

  Out on the sidewalk, John Corbeley turned to Ian with a smile. "So, see you at Morgan Design at three-thirty?"

  Did the guy seriously think the story was going to be any different there? Ian wondered. Hell, Vito might not even bother to show up. "Sure," he said out loud. "We'll be there."

  Corbeley glanced over toward Andy and grinned. "You'll be there, too?"

  Andy shifted weight. "If that's okay with you guys."

  "Sure it's okay." Corbeley gave a mock punch to Andy's shoulder. "You're about the only ray of light in this whole thing."

  "Someone who's actually enjoying these meetings," added Moreland, with a laugh. "And paying the closest attention.

  "Yeah," Corbeley agreed. He turned to Ian. "I'd like to put him on the payroll."

  Andy rolled his eyes, and everybody else laughed. "Three-thirty," Corbeley called. Then the two men from Music First walked off down the sidewalk.

  God, another interview. No, another fiasco, Ian corrected. This whole trip was turning into a colossal waste of time. Whatever plans Ian might have had for obtaining a set of working drawings from a local architect were fizzling into thin air.

  The only bright spot, although admittedly a big bright spot, was that Andy seemed to be way into it. He'd put on a suit and tie this morning without a word of complaint. As he sat through every meeting, he appeared truly fascinated. Moreland hadn't been kidding. Andy really was paying close attention.

  Andy's behavior was a mystery to Ian. True, Andy had agreed to the truce Ian had proposed, but Ian hadn't expected Andy to live up to it. Why should he? Asking for a truce had been a selfish act of cowardice on Ian's part. He'd begged for peace instead of knuckling down to figure out what Andy's problem really was.

  But Ian hadn't felt up to wrangling with Andy the day before. He'd still felt shell-shocked about Maggie, like he was missing a limb. He'd just wanted something at least to seem right in his life.

  Today his relationship with Andy was seeming all right, although Ian suspected that's all it was: an appearance.

  "So, we've got an hour-and-a-half." He looked toward Andy. "You hungry?"

  Andy shook his head. "I could go for something to drink, though." He waved in the opposite direction to which the men from Music First had gone. "I think I saw a bunch of shops and stuff that way."

  "I wouldn't mind stretching my legs," Ian admitted.

  It was nice, probably too nice, to walk side by side with Andy in an easy, amiable manner through the newly revived business district. Ian knew he hadn't truly earned this companionship. It was only the result of their truce.

  They reached a street of funky shops in an artsy neighborhood and ambled along until they found a tiny café that served soft drinks and coffee. They chose their drinks and sat down at a small table.

  "I have a question." Andy tore off the paper covering his straw.

  "Shoot."

  Andy stuck the straw through the narrow opening of his soda bottle. "Do you think this Vito guy is going to like any of the architects you're interviewing?"

  Ian snorted his answer.

  Andy pursed his lips. "I was thinking the same thing."

  Ian stirred his cup of decaf. "You know, we actually did hire an architect three weeks ago. Vito fired him."

  "Let me guess." Andy grinned. "He wasn't good enough."

  "How did you guess?"

  Andy chuckled. "You know what I think?"

  "What's that?" Ian sounded casual, but privately he was goggling. Andy was sitting with him, having a conversation, and chuckling?

  Andy took a long sip of his drink. "I think Vito's scared."

  "Scared?" Ian felt like goggling again. What a fascinating idea.

  "Yeah." Andy took another long sip of
his drink, his brow furrowed. "Well, maybe 'insecure' would be closer to what I mean. He figures he might not be so great if you're having to hire another architect to help him."

  Ian stared at his son. His observation was so...spot on.

  Andy's gaze flicked over to Ian. "You think that's nuts."

  "No," Ian said, quickly. "I don't think it's nuts at all. In fact, I think you've hit the nail on the head."

  "You do?" Andy looked surprised, and flattered.

  Ian slowly nodded his head. "Yes, I do. And I don't know why I didn't see that myself, except—"

  Andy gave his father a querying look." Except?" he prompted.

  Ian gave a laugh. "Except, it hits too close to home. I'm pretty much like that, myself. Don't like to admit I need help." He shook his head. "And it gets me in trouble, too."

  Andy stilled. "It gets you in trouble? How?"

  "How?" Too late, Ian realized he'd placed himself on the edge of a dangerous precipice. He didn't want to unload on Andy. His son was already over-anxious regarding Ian's heart condition. He didn't need more fuel poured on that fire. Stalling for a time, Ian drew in a long breath.

  Across the table, one side of Andy's mouth began to curl. So much for their truce. Ian had apparently just ended it.

  Frantically, he wondered how to halt the impending disaster. Should he unload on Andy? "Uh, how have I gotten into trouble lately?" he asked out loud, and laughed, a laugh of helplessness and borderline hysteria. It was an honest, if not terribly dignified, response to the question.

  "All right, let me see if I can remember the whole list." He leaned back and steepled his fingers. He was flying on a wing and a prayer here, with no real idea of where he was going or why—but he had to do something honest, he realized, if he wasn't going to lose Andy completely. "Out of the blue, for no apparent reason, I had a heart attack," Ian began. "That might not have been so bad if I'd set up any kind of support system. But I hadn't. Utterly arrogant, I'd assumed nothing could ever happen to me."