He wasn’t sure what calamity he expected, but it wasn’t the sight that greeted him. Angel was sitting in the middle of the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks as she gazed around the room in sleepy confusion.
“I wants my mama!” she wailed.
Didn’t they both, Todd thought wryly as he stared at her helplessly. He sat on the edge of the bed and Angel promptly scrambled to climb into his lap and snuggle against his chest with a tiny sigh.
“Where’s my mama!” she asked on a hiccuping sob.
“She’s away on a little trip, sweetie, remember?”
A thumb popped into her mouth. Big green eyes swimming with tears gazed at him solemnly. Todd could have cheerfully shot Heather on sight right at that moment.
“You’re staying with Daddy,” he reminded her, hoping that would reassure her, even if it did precious little to soothe him.
Her expression brightened. “Daddy,” she murmured happily. “’Kay.”
He stared at her. That was it? The storm was over?
“We gonna play at the park today?” she asked, already scooting out of his arms and heading for her clothes, which he’d once again washed the night before. “Sissy come, too?”
“No, we’re going to Daddy’s office today,” he told her.
Tangled in the T-shirt she was trying unsuccessfully to get over her head, she had no comment on that. Todd helped her with the shirt, then plunked her on the bed so they could deal with shoes and socks. It was not a quick task. She preferred to do them herself, snapping the Velcro buckles into place with evident satisfaction, but she was usually willing to let him switch them to the correct feet afterward before scrambling down from the bed and toddling off to the kitchen in search of cereal. He’d bought the biggest box in the store after they’d left Henrietta’s the day before.
He realized as he tried to gather up enough toys to keep Angel entertained that he should have arranged for a sitter. Finding one now on such short notice would be impossible, though, and he couldn’t rely on Henrietta. She had a business to run, too.
After breakfast, he piled Angel into the pickup’s borrowed car seat, lent to him the day before. He vowed once again to buy his own before the day was out.
Usually the drive to the production facility was his favorite time of the day. He could spend those few minutes planning his schedule and pondering problems that needed creative solutions. Today, Angel had a thousand and one things to say as they drove. When she wasn’t delivering her opinion on something, she was asking questions, most of them questions for which he had no answer.
“Why’s the sky blue?” she asked.
“Sorry, sweetie, I have no idea.”
“How come?”
“Because I never checked it out. Maybe there’s a book on the subject. Or we can look on the Internet when we get to the office.”
“’Kay.” She fell silent, but not for long. “Hey, Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Are there boy cows and girl cows?” This as they passed a pasture dotted with an entire herd.
“Yes.”
“How do you know which is which?”
Oh, boy. “You can just tell, that’s all. Boy cows are called bulls.”
“’Kay.” Blessed silence fell. “Hey, Daddy.”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Do you gots a mommy and a daddy?”
“Yes,” he said warily. That was definitely not a topic he cared to pursue.
“Are they my grandma and grandpa?”
He hadn’t thought about it before, but the relationship was undeniable. He had to wonder how they would feel once he told them. His mother would probably be overjoyed, might even pay him a long-overdue visit, but his father? He would probably rail that the child was doomed.
“Daddy, are they?” Angel prodded.
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
The truth was, he wasn’t sure. The last time he’d heard from his father, he’d been living in New England. His mother had been in Palm Beach last winter, but no doubt had moved on. Neither of them stayed anyplace for more than a few months at a time. For the first time, he recognized that they’d found their own ways of hiding from the past.
“I’m not sure,” he told Angel.
“In heaven?”
He turned a startled gaze in her direction. “No, not in heaven. Why?”
“Because Sissy’s mommy and daddy are in heaven.”
Todd suspected that Lyle Perkins was somewhere else entirely, but he kept that opinion to himself. “She told you that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Once again, there was silence, but it didn’t last more than a minute or two.
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“I gots to go to the potty.”
“Okay. We’ll be at the office in just a minute.”
“Now, Daddy,” she said with urgency.
The next couple of minutes were among the most awkward of Todd’s life as he slammed to a stop on the side of the road and helped Angel out of the car to a makeshift and hardly private bathroom in some tall grass.
“Daddy, that cow is watching me,” she protested.
“No, he’s not.”
“I can’t go with him watching me.”
Todd moved her to the opposite side of the road, where the mission was finally accomplished.
By the time they got to the office, he was so worn-out he could have happily sprawled on the couch and taken a four-hour nap. Instead, he prepared for his 10:00 a.m. meeting with Megan, which was likely to include a whole lot of questions about why he’d dragged his daughter to the office, as well as why he still had her at all. It was not a conversation he was looking forward to.
At fifteen minutes before ten, Peggy stuck her head in. “Got a sec?”
“Sure.” She came in, caught sight of Angel and grinned. “New assistant?”
“Don’t ask. What can I do for you?”
“Well, actually, I came in here to ask what you’d think about scrapping that segment on summer berries today, but I didn’t have anything specific in mind to replace it. Seeing Angel, I think I do. Can I borrow her?”
“You want to borrow my daughter?” He was torn between curiosity and relief.
“Your daughter?” she said slowly. “I see.”
It was obvious that she had a lot of questions, but she refrained from asking them. Instead, she merely repeated her request. “Can I borrow her?”
“Of course,” he said a little too eagerly, then caught himself. “For what?”
“We’ll do something on teaching kids to cook. I’ll see if I can get mine over here before we tape, and maybe Tess, too. A lot of moms are probably frantic this time of year trying to think of ways to entertain the kids, especially on a rainy day. Maybe we can give them some ideas for simple recipes.”
“Sounds great, but don’t you think Angel’s a little young to be cooking? So far her only recipe calls for dry cereal in a bowl.”
“She may not be much help, but she’s too cute to leave out. The audience will love her.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.” He told himself his eager reply was because he trusted Peggy’s instincts and not because he was desperate to get a few uninterrupted minutes of work done.
“Absolutely.”
“Peggy, before you go, fill me in on whether you and Johnny have resolved your differences over your taking on this new show. We’re at a crossroads. I don’t want to finalize things if there’s any chance at all you’re going to back out.”
“I won’t back out,” Peggy said fiercely.
“And Johnny’s okay with that?”
A smile spread slowly across her face. “Let’s just say I’ve made it worth his while. I—”
Todd held up his hand. “Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know the details as long as your marriage is solid again.”
“Not yet,” she said slowly. “But it’s getting there. Trust takes time. It’ll be a while before I have compl
ete faith that he won’t cheat on me again, and it’ll probably take just as long for him to believe that he’ll always come first with me, no matter how involved I get in this new career. The bottom line is that we love each other, we have a family and a long history, and we want it to work.”
“I’m glad for you.”
She chuckled. “You’re just relieved that I’m not going to bail out on you.”
“That, too,” he admitted.
“Is that it?”
He nodded.
Peggy knelt down in front of Angel. “Hey, sweetie, want to come with me to the kitchen?”
“We bake cookies?” Angel asked hopefully.
“Maybe,” Peggy said.
Angel promptly tucked her hand in Peggy’s and headed for the door without a backward glance. As they left, Todd breathed a sigh of relief.
Megan wandered in just then. “I gather Peggy arrived just in time to save the day.”
“You could say that.”
“Jake talked to Heather yesterday,” she announced, sitting across from him.
Todd stiffened. “Oh? Where is she?”
“He wouldn’t say, but he did say she promised to be back tomorrow.”
That should have filled him with more relief than it did. He should be ecstatic that this little trial by fire of hers was almost over, but for reasons he didn’t care to examine too closely, he wasn’t. In fact, he felt an awful lot like he was about to lose something he’d just barely discovered, something very precious.
24
When Heather got back to town on Tuesday at dinnertime, she headed straight for the diner, convinced she would find Todd and Angel where Henrietta could serve as backup.
“Haven’t seen them since Sunday morning,” Henrietta announced.
Alarm flickered. “What do you mean you haven’t seen them? They haven’t been coming here for dinner?”
“Nope.”
Vaguely unsettled by that news, she sank onto a stool at the counter. “What do you suppose they’ve been doing for food?” she murmured. “Surely he’s not taking her to the fast-food place outside of town.”
“I don’t know for sure, but I heard something about Peggy teaching a bunch of kids how to cook during one of those tapings. Maybe they’ve been eating at the studio.”
Todd had taken Angel to work? Heather was stunned. For some reason she’d expected him to hire a sitter or find a local day-care to keep Angel out of his hair. In fact, she had envisioned him going about the interviewing process to make the arrangements in his usual thorough, methodical way. Of course, maybe he had done just that and deemed none of the candidates suitable. She had a feeling if he ever took to the idea of fatherhood, he would be far more compulsive than even Jake Landers.
“You planning on eating, working or what?” Henrietta inquired testily.
The tone was so uncharacteristic that Heather regarded her friend with concern. “Are you still mad at me for running off the way I did?”
Henrietta flushed guiltily. “No. Sorry. I shouldn’t be taking my bad temper out on you.”
“Has something happened? Are you okay? Has something happened with one of the kids?”
“I’m just plumb out of my mind, if the truth be told.” She sighed deeply, then met Heather’s gaze. “Last night I told the judge I’d marry him. Frankly, I don’t know what came over me. He’s been pestering me for so long I guess he finally just wore me down. It didn’t seem to make much sense to wait for that so-called deadline I’d set. It’s only a few days away, anyway, so what difference does it make if he remembers or he doesn’t? He asked, I said yes, and that was that. I must be crazy, getting married at my age.”
Heather went to her and gave her a tight hug. “You love him, that’s why you agreed to it. Now, stop second-guessing yourself and be happy. You deserve to be.”
“What if…?”
“No what-ifs,” Heather insisted. “Everything’s going to be perfect. You’re going to live happily ever after. Did you set a date?”
“A week from Saturday,” Henrietta admitted, looking shell-shocked. “Once I said yes, we agreed there was no point in wasting time.”
“Good grief, that doesn’t give you any time at all to plan a proper wedding. Why so soon?”
“We don’t need a lot of fancy foolishness at our age,” Henrietta declared, but there was an unmistakable hint of disappointment in her eyes. “We’ll be married at the courthouse. A judge from the next county will come over to perform the ceremony.”
The thought of such a no-frills ceremony appalled Heather. She refused to go along with such a thing, not for these two wonderful people who’d waited so long to be together.
“Absolutely not,” she told Henrietta indignantly. “You deserve a beautiful dress, lots of flowers, an elegant reception, the works. If you want white doves flying overhead and rose petals scattered everywhere, you should have them. Forget about getting married in a stuffy courtroom. You’re going to have a church wedding, just the way you should have had years ago. It’ll be followed by a magnificent reception, so that everyone who loves you can be there to tell you how happy they are for the two of you.”
“All that at my age? It’s a waste of good money,” Henrietta declared.
“If it makes you happy, it is not a waste.”
Henrietta’s eyes brightened. “But the date is so soon. How can we possibly…?”
“Don’t you worry about that. I am not letting my best friend in Whispering Wind get married without doing it up right. You leave the details to me. I’ll get Flo to help and I’ll talk to Todd. He’s an expert at making miracles happen overnight. He’ll want to help. I know he will. This will be our present to the two of you.”
Assuming he was still speaking to her, of course. Then, again, this was about Henrietta, and she knew he would move mountains for her. He would even put aside his anger at her for as long as it took to pull the wedding together, and he would spare no expense doing it.
She gave Henrietta another brisk, reassuring hug. “If I’m going to pull this off, I’d better get started, but I’ll be back at work in the morning, if that’s okay.”
“The customers will be mighty glad to see you,” Henrietta said. She hugged Heather back. “So am I.”
Heather tried to think of another time in her life when a homecoming had meant as much, but she couldn’t. She was still basking in the warm feelings when she arrived at the studio. Sure enough, Todd’s pickup was in the parking lot, even though it was after seven.
She looked for him first in his office, but the room was dark. She thought she could hear childish squeals from down the hall, though, in the studio where Megan’s show was taped. The red light above the door was off, indicating they weren’t taping at the moment, so she quietly opened the door and slipped inside. Then she stared at the set in stunned silence.
The usually spotless kitchen in which Peggy taped her segments was splattered with what appeared to be spaghetti sauce. Pots and pans were piled haphazardly on every surface. A half-dozen children, Angel among them, were seated at the kitchen table, along with Todd, Peggy, Johnny, Megan and Jake. It looked like some family gathering, except for the surrounding cameras and technicians, who were evidently setting up another shot.
“One last take,” the director called out. “Everybody ready on one. Five, four, three, two, one, and action.”
A camera light blinked on and he pointed to Peggy, giving her her cue.
“That’s it for this week,” she said. “This is only for the brave. Or those who have maids to do the cleanup.” Then her gaze circled the table. “I take that back. Look at these faces. Not the smudges and smeared spaghetti sauce, but the expressions. Aren’t they worth a little extra cleanup? That’s it for now. See you next time you come to visit Megan’s World to see what our budding young chefs can cook up.”
“And we’re out,” the director said, giving them all a thumbs-up. “That’s a wrap.”
Megan pushed back from the tab
le, looked around the set and moaned. “My God, will you look at this? What have we done?”
“We have taught our children to cook,” Peggy said. “I can hardly wait for the next segment. The first two have been terrific.”
“But spaghetti sauce,” Megan whispered. “We had to be nuts.”
Just then her gaze landed on Heather and her expression hardened ever so slightly. “Well, well, look who’s decided to come home.”
Heather heard the censure in her voice, but she drew herself up, squared her shoulders and stepped into the light, her gaze locked on Todd’s face.
“Mama!” Angel shouted with glee, and came running toward her at full speed, holding out her arms.
Heather gathered her up, but she kept right on staring at Todd, whose gaze finally dropped before he turned and moved off to hold a hushed conversation with Megan.
“Chin up,” Peggy murmured to Heather. “And don’t pay any attention to Megan. You know how protective she is of Todd. All that matters is how you and Todd resolve whatever’s going on between you.”
Heather gave her a grateful look. “Thanks.”
“Now, let me get the rest of these hellions out of your hair. I’m sure you and Todd have things you’d like to talk about in private. Johnny, help me round up our kids. The cleanup can wait till morning.”
Peggy cleared the studio in record time. Even Megan succumbed to her urging and Jake’s quiet insistence. She didn’t leave before casting one last scowl in Heather’s direction, however.
Heather stood where she was, listening to Angel’s chatter with half an ear as she watched Todd move around the studio doing whatever he could to avoid her.
“Aren’t you even going to say hello?” she asked eventually.
His gaze shot to hers. “I have a lot of things to say to you,” he said slowly. “‘Hello’ isn’t on the list.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Okay, then, let’s get Angel back to my place and into bed and you can get all those other things off your chest.”
He shook his head. “You go ahead. We’ll talk another time.”
“Why not tonight?”
He regarded her coldly. “Because right this second I am so angry with you I’m not sure we could have a civilized conversation. Just take Angel and go.”
Angel Mine Page 28