Angel of the Morning

by Judith Arnold

  “Are you going to get home soon? I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “Is it a cake?” Annie asked.

  “No, sugarplum,” Diana’s voice emerged through the dashboard speakers. “It’s something for your mother’s store.”

  Dylan twisted around to peer at Annie. Gwen saw him shrug sympathetically. The gesture touched her more than it should have.

  “We’ll be home in ten,” she told Diana.

  “I’ll be over in fifteen. You’re going to love this.”

  Gwen did a quick calculation. Did she want Diana to come over while Dylan was there? Could she get Dylan to leave as soon as they arrived at the house? Did she want him to leave?

  Things would be easier if he did. She wouldn’t have to explain him to Diana.

  But he was Annie’s father, and however belatedly, he wanted to fulfill his paternal obligations. He deserved a few points for trying, didn’t he?

  She’d withhold those points for a while. One book and one movie outing did not a father make.

  Besides, she hardly knew him. One night in bed, no matter how glorious, didn’t a relationship make.

  She pulled into the garage and shut off the car. Behind her, she heard Annie click open her seatbelt. “I’m hungry,” Annie announced. “Can we have dinner?”

  “It’s too early. And you just ate a ton of popcorn.”

  “I didn’t. The man ate it all,” Annie said, pointing at Dylan.

  “Mr. Scott,” Gwen corrected her, shooting Dylan a look. He appeared uncomfortable. Whether his discomfort was caused by being called Mr. Scott or being accused of eating all the popcorn, she didn’t know.

  How utterly mundane and domestic this experience must all seem to a movie star like him. How utterly boring. If he were back in Hollywood right now, he’d probably be hobnobbing with his fellow movie stars, club-hopping, jet-setting, pill-popping, whatever silver-screen celebrities did when they weren’t making films. She imagined it was like some secret society out there, where all those beautiful people hung out together, drinking twenty-dollars-a-sip vodka, swapping romantic partners, and comparing their Oscar statuettes. They probably all had full-time nannies to take their children to see Sky High and feed them when they were hungry. Their children didn’t eat mac-and-cheese out of the box. They ate lobster mac-and-cheese with truffle oil, and their chocolate milk was flavored with Godiva cocoa.

  Really, what could Dylan Scott possibly want in Brogan’s Point? What could he want with Gwen and Annie?

  “We could go out to eat,” he suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Gwen said as she unlocked the door and led the way into the house. For one thing, Annie had probably used up all her good behavior in the theater. She’d need to run around and let off some steam after sitting quietly for so long, and a restaurant was the last place Gwen wanted to see Annie unsteaming. For another thing, if they went out to dinner, unless they drove a few towns away, they’d undoubtedly run into someone who knew Mike. Word would get back to him that Gwen was seen dining out with Dylan. That wouldn’t go over too well.

  She’d have to explain the situation to Mike eventually. If Dylan intended to be a hands-on father, she’d have to let Mike know. He’d been putting some effort into bonding with Annie. How would he feel about having to compete with Dylan for the role of father?

  He couldn’t compete. Dylan had the biological claim.

  Damn. Six years ago, she would have welcomed Dylan’s participation in her life. Today, all he did was complicate the situation.

  On the other hand, he could ease Annie’s life financially. Gwen wouldn’t have to worry about paying for Annie’s college if Dylan provided child support. That seemed like an unconscionably mercenary thought, but Gwen had been a struggling single mother long enough not to care.

  And then...there were other reasons to want Dylan around. Other complications. The smoky darkness of his eyes. The easy curve of his smile. His lean, lanky body. His big, strong hands. His sheer male charisma.

  Her memories of that night they’d spent together. She’d never experienced anything like that before. Or since.

  She felt a flush course through her body, heating her in places she didn’t want to think about with a hungry daughter on the loose and a friend on her way over, and especially with the man who ignited that heat standing less than five feet away from her in her kitchen. “I’ll throw something together,” she said, forcing herself to focus on dinner.

  Although she hadn’t explicitly invited Dylan to stay, he seemed to take her words that way. “We can order take-out if you don’t want to cook,” he said.

  “Fine.” She was too distracted to cook, anyway. But she’d have to do something about Mike. She’d neglected him all weekend. Once she explained to him how Dylan was connected to her and Annie, he’d understand why she’d had to spend today with Dylan. But he probably wouldn’t like it.

  The doorbell rang. “That’s Diana!” Annie announced, racing ahead of Gwen down the hall to the front door.

  “Don’t open it until I say you can,” Gwen reminded Annie, scrambling to think of how she was going to explain Dylan’s presence to Diana. Oh, I just happen to be good friends with Captain Steele of the Galaxy Force. He just happened to fly his spaceship to Brogan’s Point for a quick visit. Or: Dylan and I ran into each other at the Faulk Street Tavern and some song played and scrambled our brains. Or: Dylan is Annie’s father.

  Swallowing, she peered through the beveled window to see Diana on the front porch, holding a large carton. “It’s Diana,” she told Annie, who promptly yanked the door open. “Come in,” Gwen greeted her friend. “Is that heavy?”

  “No, it’s very light.” Diana bounced into the house, preceding Gwen and Annie down the hall to the kitchen.

  Annie skipped rather than walked, peppering Diana with questions about what was in the box. “Is it for me? Is it a surprise? Can I hold the box?”

  “It’s for your mommy’s store,” Diana told Annie, then froze when" she saw Dylan leaning against the counter near the sink, his hair tousled, his jacket off and slung over the back of a chair. She lowered the box to the table and gaped.

  “Diana, this is Dylan Scott. Dylan, my friend Diana Simms,” Gwen introduced them, then braced herself for Diana’s questions.

  “Captain Steele,” Diana said.

  “Not at the moment,” Dylan responded.

  “Well.” Diana was usually quite chatty, but right now she seemed at a loss for words. She turned to stare at Gwen, who simply smiled and pulled a knife from the drawer to cut the carton open. She sliced through the tape and lifted the flaps. The carton was filled with cellophane-wrapped packages. Pulling one out, she laughed. The package contained two cylindrical plastic bottles with cone-shaped caps, one red and one yellow. The red one had Squeeze Pleeze for Ketchup printed on it, the yellow one, Squeeze Pleeze for Mustard.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “I did an estate sale this morning. The deceased had owned a chain of diners. I found three cartons of these Squeeze Pleeze bottles in the basement. Mint condition. Circa 1950. I can’t sell them as antiques, but I’m sure you can sell them at the Attic.”

  “They’re fabulous,” Gwen said, pulling another package from the carton to make sure it contained the same ketchup and mustard containers. “Three cartons?”

  “Two dozen packages per carton. Too many?”

  “No, I’ll take them all. How much do you want for them?”

  “I was figuring seventy-five dollars for the three cartons. You can probably get ten dollars a pop for these. A very nice profit.”

  “Great. I love them. My customers will love them, too. They’re so tacky.”

  “Kitsch,” Diana said. “That sounds better than tacky.”

  Gwen laughed. “Stop by the store tomorrow. We’ll do the paperwork.”

  “And I’ll deliver the other two cartons.” Her gaze strayed to Dylan. “We’ll talk.”

  “Absolutely.” Perhaps by the
time she saw Diana tomorrow, Gwen would know what to say.

  She walked Diana to the door, Annie trailing them, clutching a package of condiment bottles. Gwen didn’t mind if the package got messed up. She’d keep that set for herself. Heaven knew if she’d ever use them, but they made her laugh, and that alone made them valuable.

  Back in the kitchen, she was confronted with Dylan’s presence once more. He shouldn’t look so at home in such humble surroundings, but he did. Maybe it was because he was dressed not as Captain Steele but as a father who’d just taken his daughter to the movies.

  Not just his daughter. He’d taken his daughter’s mother to the movies, too. They’d shared the outing as a traditional domestic unit.

  The idea alarmed Gwen. She mustn’t think of them as a domestic unit. If Dylan wanted to build a relationship with Annie, Gwen couldn’t stop him. But Annie would have to be the only link between Gwen and Dylan. His love life was much too glamorous to have room in it for someone like her.

  She shouldn’t even think of him in the context of a love life. She had Mike, a sales manager at Wright Honda-BMW. Dylan had gorgeous movie stars. End of story.

  Still... Those eyes. That smile. Those dense brown curls. Six years ago, she’d run her fingers through those curls. She’d kissed that smile. She’d lain on top of him, below him, their bodies touching at every point, merging, fitting together like a lock and key. A dark shiver spun through her at the memory.

  The wisest thing would be to ask him to leave. But the words wouldn’t come.

  “Can we have pizza?” Annie asked. “I love pizza.”

  Pizza wasn’t exactly healthy—but those words wouldn’t come, either. “I guess we can order a pizza,” she said.

  “With lots of cheese. I love cheese. What do these bottles say, Mommy? I can read ‘for’ but the other words are hard.”

  “Ask Mr. Scott,” Gwen said, turning from Annie to rummage through her stack of take-out menus in the drawer beside the broom closet. If Dylan wanted to be a father, he could start by explaining phonetics to Annie.

  ***

  The pizza was fine. The phone call from Mike wasn’t. “What do you mean, I can’t come over?” he asked. He didn’t shout, but there was a definite rumble of anger and resentment in his voice.

  “Dylan Scott is here,” she told him. She didn’t want to lie, but she also didn’t want to go into detail with him on the phone. Was it a lie of omission that she hadn’t yet told Mike that Dylan was Annie’s father?

  “I get it. It’s a lot cooler to hang out with a movie star than with me.”

  “We’re not hanging out,” Gwen insisted. Right now, as she moved around the kitchen, flattening the empty pizza box and carrying dirty dishes to the sink, Dylan was hanging out with Annie in the basement playroom. She hoped they were reading more of the book Dylan had given Annie, but for all Gwen knew, he was teaching her how to pass a football, or how to cheat at poker, or how to handle herself on the red carpet at a film premiere. “I knew Dylan a long time ago, before he was famous,” she explained carefully. “We’re just catching up a little.”

  “How the hell did you know him? When was he not famous?”

  “A long time ago,” she repeated.

  “So...what? I’m just supposed to sit on my hands until he leaves town? If he’s an old friend of yours, he should be a friend of mine, too. If we get married, my friends will be your friends and your friends will be mine.”

  Not necessarily, Gwen thought. One of his closest friends was Jimmy Creighton, who worked with him at Wright Honda-BMW. Gwen had always thought Jimmy was a jerk. And Mike wasn’t crazy about Gwen’s friends, either—Jimmy’s ex-girlfriend Monica, and Emma Glendon, who taught art classes at the community center, and Diana. Somehow, she suspected, Mike and Dylan wouldn’t become pals.

  But they’d have to learn to get along, if she decided to marry Mike. And if Dylan was true to his word about remaining in Annie’s life.

  “I don’t know how long he’s going to be in Brogan’s Point,” she told Mike. “If it’s a while, of course you’ll have a chance to get to know him.”

  “Lucky me. The big hot-shot movie star might lower himself to be friends with me.”

  “He’s not like that.” As if Gwen had any idea what Dylan was really like.

  “All right,” Mike said. “Tell you what. When your good friend the movie star decides he’s tired of pretending he’s one of us normal people, you let me know.”

  “Don’t be that way, Mike. I’ve never tried to keep you from spending time with your friends.”

  “My friends are all guys,” Mike pointed out.

  True. And if Gwen was totally honest, she’d admit that her feelings for Dylan were not exactly friendly. She distrusted him. She feared the upheaval he could inflict on her life. She worried about how he’d relate to Annie, whether he’d woo the little girl with books and movies and pizza, and then walk away as he’d walked away from Gwen.

  And the way he stirred a deep sexual yearning inside Gwen, a yearning she hardly recognized because it had been so long since she’d last felt it... She couldn’t call that feeling “friendly,” either.

  “I’m sorry, Mike,” she said, meaning it. “I don’t know what’s going on right now, but you’re going to have to let me figure it out.”

  “Fine, babe. You figure it out. You know how to reach me when you do.” With that, he disconnected the call.

  Wonderful. She’d upset Mike, and she wasn’t even sure what she’d upset him for. Possibly nothing, if Dylan decided fatherhood didn’t interest him and he decamped for Los Angeles after a few days. Nothing, if he abandoned Annie and erased this stay in Brogan’s Point from his memory. Nothing, if he walked away.

  Anxiety nibbled at her gut. She’d eaten only one slice of the pizza, but she felt queasy and unsteady, as if the kitchen floor had suddenly turned to quicksand. She set down her cell phone, washed the dishes in the sink, and stacked them to dry. Then she descended the stairs to the playroom.

  She found Dylan seated on the floor with Annie amid an ocean of Legos. Annie was building something and Dylan was watching her, a couple of bricks in his hands. He snapped them together, pulled them apart, then snapped them together again.

  Like relationships, Gwen thought. So easy to create, so easy to break.

  “It’s a space ship,” Annie announced, pointing to the shapeless structure she’d created. “Like what Captain Steele flies in.”

  Gwen eyed Dylan, who shrugged amiably. “She’s the engineer. I’m just her assistant.”

  “I built it all myself. You know what would be really cool? If Captain Steele could fly around on a kite. He could be brave like Maggie.”

  “He’s very brave,” Gwen said, then smiled, feeling foolish. It wasn’t her job to get Annie to admire Dylan. If he wanted to be her father, he would have to win her over on his own.

  “He could fly into outer space on a very big, special kite,” Annie explained. “With per-pellers on it, and a cat inside. He could teach the cat to sing.”

  “I doubt that,” Dylan protested with a laugh. “I’m a terrible singer.”

  “But you’d be so brave, you’d sing anyway. For the cat.” She added a few more bricks to her structure.

  “Cat or no cat,” Gwen said, “it’s bath time.”

  “No!” Annie’s face folded into a scowl. “I’m not done yet.”

  Gwen eyed Dylan, wondering whether he’d still want to be Annie’s dad after he’d witnessed her stubbornness and her crystal-shattering whines. He met Gwen’s stare, looking less alarmed than curious. Perhaps he’d dealt with temperamental little girls before. Or perhaps he was just being brave, the hero Annie wanted him to be. Little did he know that dealing with an angry, fussing little girl could require more courage than conquering extra-terrestrial villains at the far end of the galaxy.

  “You can finish building the spaceship another time,” Gwen said, lifting Annie’s creation. “But you have to clean up all the loose Leg
os. We’ll put the spaceship on the shelf for you to finish later.”

  “No! No! No!” Annie tried to pull the spaceship out of Gwen’s hands. Her attempt detached a chunk of Legos and she let out a howl.

  Gwen lifted what remained of the spaceship higher, out of Annie’s reach, and extended her free hand to collect the other piece. “We can snap that back on,” she said in a low, soothing voice. “Pick up the loose pieces, sweetie. Mr. Scott has to leave now.”

  Dylan shot her another look, and apparently decided not to argue. He must have realized she could handle only one defiant person at a time. With Annie battling her, she didn’t want to have to battle Dylan, too, and she was grateful when he rose from the floor in a single, fluid motion and nodded at Annie. “Your mom’s right,” he said. “It’s bath time.”

  “Are you going to take a bath, too?” Annie asked him, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “I’m more of a shower guy, myself,” he told her.

  She blinked a few times, possibly to keep from crying, possibly because she didn’t know how to take his comment. But she subsided before erupting into a full-blown tantrum, and occupied herself gathering the stray Lego bricks and dumping them in their bucket.

  He scooped some of the Legos from the floor and added them to the bucket. His hands, so much larger than Annie’s, could clean the mess more efficiently. Gwen tried to catch his eye, to signal him that it was Annie’s responsibility to clean up her toys. But he’d been playing with the Legos, too, at least a little. Gwen supposed he was setting a good example by tidying up after himself.

  As soon as the floor was clear, Gwen gave Annie a gentle nudge toward the stairs. “Bath time,” she repeated. “Say good-bye to Mr. Scott.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Scott,” Annie repeated with a pout. “I don’t want a bath.”

  “You don’t want to be stinky at school tomorrow, do you?” Gwen teased, but Annie continued to sulk as she stomped up the stairs.

  Gwen turned to Dylan. “It’s a school night,” she said, some sort of apology, although she had nothing to apologize for. He’d barged into her day and consumed nearly all of it. Letting him know she was ready for him to leave might be a bit rude, but his showing up uninvited this morning and insinuating himself into her Sunday plans had been a bit rude, too.