One of a Kind Dad

by Daly Thompson

  Lilah’s wonderful mood sank. Now Mrs. McDougal’s son knew who’d sent the flowers. But on the other hand, what bizarre circumstance would cause Harold to tell Bruce she’d sent his mother flowers? And how many of her steps would Bruce have to trace in order to find her here in Churchill?

  If anyone could do it, he could. Feeling like a lump of lead, Lilah forced herself to finish shopping, help Jesse put away the food, paper supplies and cleaning products, and greet the boys with her customary exuberance. Even a single, unimportant connection could end her comfortable new life here, the happiest life she and Jonathan had ever known.

  FOR ONCE, GOOD NEWS followed good news, and when Daniel came in from the clinic that afternoon, he went directly to Will’s room. “Will,” he said, “talk to me a minute?”

  At dinnertime, he made his big announcement. “Will’s parents are doing so well with their physical therapy that the doctor says Will can go home in about a month.”

  Besides Will, who looked excited enough to pop, only Jason understood the full import of the news. “Will we ever see you again after you go home?” Jonathan asked mournfully.

  “All the time,” Daniel said. “At school, at Sunday school, we’ll invite him to all the family events, and he can come over anytime he wants to.”

  “We’ll still be friends,” Nick said to comfort Jonathan.

  “And I’ll always be here if you need me,” Daniel said to Will.

  He glanced around the table. Jason wore a half smile, happy that Will was happy but with no desire to have the same thing happen to him. If Maury, who was working at the diner, had been here, he would have reacted in much the same way. Lilah and Jonathan were studying each other, a mother and son who hadn’t had to be separated.

  Nick came last in Daniel’s clockwise scan. In the boy’s eyes, he saw a flicker of fear.

  Fear of what? Daniel longed to know.

  “Tonight we’re celebrating,” he said.

  “How?” Will asked, undoubtedly wanting to know the menu rather than the activity.

  “We’re going stargazing.” He flicked a glance at Lilah, watching the pink rise in her cheeks.

  The boys gave him expressionless faces.

  “At Uncle Ian’s.”

  They perked up a bit.

  “Build a bonfire and roast marshmallows,” he concluded.

  That got them excited. The room exploded into action. Aengus, knowing something good was about to happen, bounced through the chaos, barking frantically. Jesse began packing supplies.

  Jason cleared his throat. “Could I, um, is it okay if—”

  “If Melissa could come, too? Sure thing.” He took it seriously, didn’t smile, didn’t want Jason to feel he was being teased.

  Jason went straight for the phone. Daniel caught phrases of his end of the conversation. “Tell your dad it’s the whole family.” After a pause, “By nine. It’s the younger kids’ bedtime.”

  He shuffled back toward Daniel. “She can go,” he said casually. “I’ll pick her up while you guys are getting your act together.”

  Daniel hid a smile. Apparently the answer had been yes.

  Lilah stood to one side, smiling indulgently at the furor. “I’ll stay here and clean up,” she said.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Daniel said. He put his arm around her and gave her a gentle push. “Get a sweater.” He heard his voice hoarsen as he touched her. “See you at the van in five minutes.”

  A car pulled into the driveway. “Maury’s home,” Nick yelled. “He can go, too!”

  DANIEL MUST HAVE KNOWN, just as Lilah did, that if he stargazed right beside her, it would be too much torture to endure. They all lay on blankets spread over the lush green grasses of Ian’s acreage, coincidentally on the very spot where the center would—God and the Regional Development Board willing—rise over the next few years.

  Jesse tended a bonfire he’d started in a huge metal barrel beside a sheepherder’s shack. Will was more interested in the marshmallows than the stars and only paid attention occasionally when something in the conversation caught his attention.

  Unbelievably, Maury, the worst student of all Daniel’s boys, turned out to be the house expert on constellations. Soon everybody was searching for the star formations that he saw so easily.

  Lilah smiled, thinking of Daniel’s constellation expertise, and shivered, remembering his kiss. Jonathan lay beside her, looking at her occasionally, as if he was thinking about Will, who’d been away from his mother so long.

  Nick and Will were on opposite sides of Daniel, with Nick as close to him as he thought he dared to be without looking babyish.

  Jason, his head resting on Aengus’s haunches, gazed up at the sparkling sky, probably wishing he was alone with Melissa, who lay a proper distance away. They hadn’t touched each other all evening, behaving in front of the family as if they were just friends. They were thoughtful kids, both of them.

  Maury, exhausted from his shift at Mike’s Diner and his constellation lecture, had fallen asleep.

  Ian leaned against the shack, his arms folded across his chest, not participating, just observing as he so often did.

  Lilah closed her eyes for a moment. It was so tranquil. Was this the beginning of a worry-free life for her and Jonathan, or was it the calm before a violent, destructive storm?

  Enjoy the peace for now. It could be your last chance.

  “I’M GOING TO FAINT.”

  Daniel turned toward Lilah. She did look pale. In white trousers and a blue silk shirt, the same shirt she’d been wearing the morning she’d joined their lives, she was lovely. She’d be lovely lying on the floor in a faint, too, but it wouldn’t go over well with the audience.

  “Calm down,” he told her. “It’ll wow them.”

  “Let’s start then, and get it over with.”

  He smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he whispered to Lilah, “take your seats. The show will start in one minute.”

  She sat down, looking like the next in line on death row, and he stood before the audience. After a short introduction, he signaled for the film to begin.

  It was smooth and beautiful, the rolling fields of Ian’s farm gradually turning into a mockup of the center made with the architect’s models. Ray had done a remarkable job. Lilah had had a brainstorm, and had conscripted Reverend Galloway to narrate the film. His sonorous voice vibrated throughout the packed room.

  The film segued into scenes of the center in Connecticut, with children gathered at the table in one of the homes, playing baseball on a field with mountains in the background—just as they would on Ian’s land—and gathered in the recreation room for a movie.

  The last segment had been Ray’s idea. “Need to shoot the reactions of the townfolks,” he said, “then cut and splice to weed out the cuss words.”

  “Reverend Galloway would never, um, cuss.”

  He gave her a “where did you come from?” look. “This part will be a talkie.”

  They’d ended up with a balanced set of responses, from a gushing, “We love the feeling that our community is doing something good for these poor, abandoned children,” to “What center?” which netted a laugh from the audience.

  As for background music, the Churchill Consolidated High School band played a soothing and relatively recognizable version of “Climb Every Mountain.” Daniel had suggested, “With a Little Bit of Luck,” which had earned him a look from Lilah, the kind of look that made him smile each time he recreated it in his mind.

  It didn’t matter if the band was good. Every kid in that band had a parent or two, and they’d all come to the meeting.

  When the film ended and the lights went up, the room was hushed. Then slowly the applause began, rising to a crescendo that rocked the room.

  Daniel was consumed by elation. He didn’t want to break the spell. Every element of the PowerPoint presentation was duplicated in the handout.

  “I’ll give you time to glance at the printed materials, and then I’ll be
happy to answer your questions.”

  There was only one question, and it came from Ed Wilcox. “I just wanna know how soon we can get going on this thing.”

  The board withdrew to vote. The center had its unanimous approval.

  Daniel and Lilah said their goodbyes, then went to the van with impeccable propriety. As soon as they were inside, though, Daniel gripped her hand and raised it in a victory salute. “We did it!”

  The powerful aura of success vibrated through the van. “You did it. Oh, Daniel, I’m so…”

  He lowered their hands, putting hers to his lips. “We did it. You’ve been my inspiration.”

  He gazed at her, drew her closer. Excitement still hummed through him, spiked by desire. He started the engine, drove a few blocks, then said, “I’m too keyed up to sleep. Know what I want to do? Go to Ian’s farm and walk the site.”

  Her soft voice throbbed through him like a jungle beat. “I’d like that.”

  They must have talked on the fifteen-minute drive across the river to LaRocque, then down the narrow road to Holman, but he couldn’t remember what they’d talked about. He wasn’t listening to anything but the music in his own mind, absorbing the scent of Lilah next to him and feeling the want and need surging through his body.

  He parked beside the sheepherder’s shack. It took all his self-control to get out of the van, take her hand and begin the walk across the dewy grass. The land seemed to stretch out into space just as the sky did.

  “If I have my bearings right,” he said, hearing his voice crack, “the main building should go up about here.”

  “And the houses in a circle around it, with gravel drives circling around from the main road to them and on to the…”

  “The playing fields over there,” Daniel murmured. “And…”

  “Children everywhere,” Lilah said. “Happy, having fun, getting over the sad circumstances that brought them here.”

  Her voice quivered. He couldn’t hold back any longer. He spun her toward him, took her in his arms and pressed her face against his chest. “You made it all happen,” he told her. “Not just the presentation tonight, or having the genius to catapult Reverend Galloway to stardom…” He felt her soft laugh against his chest. He pulled her tighter and laced his hand through the silk of her hair. “You gave me the support I needed to believe in myself and in the center. All of those things, they made my dream come true.” He tilted her head to look into her eyes. “You are my dream come true.”

  Her lips met his with certainty this time, her need and his meeting in a flash of lightning that made their kiss sizzle with pent-up passion. It was a kiss filled with the joyous energy of flicking tongues, caressing hands, each body seeking the heat of the other. He trailed his mouth across the corners of hers, across her cheek to her ear, which he outlined with his tongue, relishing her soft moan and the way she went limp in his arms.

  He slid his hands down to her buttocks, pulling her closer to his raging heat, fitting her to him, feeling her move instinctively against him. The sky lit up with electricity, and thunder rolled through him.

  “Daniel,” she panted, “I think that actually was thunder and lightning.”

  And the rain began to fall, huge drops splattering their heads. “Run to the shack,” he told her, and together they raced to the little building, bursting through the door soaked and laughing.

  HAD THE STORM SAVED HER from herself? What she was doing here wasn’t fair to Daniel. She couldn’t make love with him when she was living a lie. Or had it sealed her fate? She was more alone with him than she’d ever been, and she wanted him with a desperation she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling.

  While these thoughts spun frantically through her head, he wrapped a blanket around her and another around himself. They were the blankets they’d lain on as they stargazed on that recent night, and now a stack of them sat at the foot of a rustic bed.

  Resisting Daniel would be easier if the cosmos weren’t conspiring against her and providing a perfect place to make love. She shivered—from excitement rather than cold. She wanted nothing more than to be in that bed with Daniel. And she could read on his face, in his eyes, in the touch of his hands on her, that he wanted her just as badly.

  But he doesn’t know the truth about me. He doesn’t know I’m living a lie.

  “You’re cold.”

  The low throb of his voice and his steady gaze were enough to warm her. When he wrapped his arms around her, he made her feel alive and cherished. He brushed her mouth with his, teasing her lips with his tongue.

  Suddenly it wasn’t like teasing anymore. Now he kissed her hard and deep, his hands moving over her back in an exquisite rhythm as his tongue explored her mouth. She slid her arms around his neck, too aroused to remember why she was supposed to be pushing him away. Thinking at all was impossible with Daniel touching her, so she stopped trying and let herself be a mindless creature of pure sensation, reveling in the joy of being close to him. She slipped the blanket off her shoulders, and in a second, his joined hers. Now they were much closer. It was better, but it still wasn’t enough. She wanted him to surround her. She wanted him inside her.

  She freed her lips from his and said breathlessly, “I think now is when you’re supposed to say, ‘We have to get you out of those wet clothes.’”

  It was all the permission he needed. He groaned as he reached slowly for the top button of her shirt. One after another, the buttons slipped free until her blouse fell open. He leaned forward and kissed the valley between her breasts.

  The sensual feeling of his lips on her skin made the last of her control evaporate. He must have felt the same way, because his breathing was ragged as they frantically tugged off clothes.

  Just before the last garment dropped to the floor, he fumbled a condom out of his wallet. Then he picked her up, stretched her out on the bed and lay beside her, pulling her body over his. As he kissed her deeply, he also caressed her, running his hands over her skin until she was nearly insane with desire. At last she knew the whole of him, hot skin, muscular body, flat stomach, his intense need for her.

  In her aroused state, she felt powerful. She sat up, straddling him. Never letting go of his gaze, she lowered herself onto his erection, melding their bodies, their hearts. She’d never believed in fate until now, but the sensation of being with Daniel was so perfect that she truly believed they were meant for each other.

  Slowly she moved over him, savoring the sensations that were engulfing her. She knew she was pushing him to the edge of his willpower with her deliberate, provocative movements. He reached up to cup her breasts, his fingers teasing her taut nipples.

  Unable to contain her desire any longer, she moved faster, faster, her breath coming in tight gasps. His hands moved to her hips, urging her on, pushing her toward the brink. With one last frenzied motion, she flew over the edge, the world exploding around her. She heard the deep, desperate groan that seemed to come from his very soul and collapsed onto his sweat-slicked chest, tingling with pleasure.

  She lay there, both of them gasping for breath, for a moment, then she slid to his side, resting her head against his arm. “Wow,” she murmured.

  He drew her close. “Yeah. Wow.”

  All the reasons they shouldn’t have made love flickered dimly at the back of her mind, but they were no longer important. Nothing mattered except what she felt for him, and what he felt for her. What problems existed could be resolved and overcome.

  He shifted her to her back and smiled as he kissed her slowly, his tongue slipping inside her mouth, his leg slipping between hers.

  “Yum,” she moaned.

  “Yum. Definitely yum,” he said, and made love to her again, more slowly this time. When she climaxed, she felt as if her bones would dissolve.

  In the deepening darkness she clung to him, deliciously sated at last. The rain had stopped. Thunder rumbled in the distance, matching the beating of their hearts.

  Even if she could never have him again,
she’d have this memory in her heart forever.

  Chapter Eleven

  She’d allowed herself those wonderful hours of love with Daniel and had relished the delicious dreams that followed it. In the morning Lilah confronted the fact that she’d made a selfish mistake, one she couldn’t take back.

  If only she could believe Bruce had given up trying to find her. If only she could give herself completely to Daniel without reservation. She’d known him for such a short time. How long had she been in love with him?

  Until now, it had been a hopeless love. She wasn’t in his league and she could never have him, just dreams of him. But now they’d kissed, touched, blended into one person. If she had to run away again she’d be left with, not merely dreams, but memories she’d never be able to forget.

  She’d told Jonathan they were through with running away. She just hoped she could keep her promise.

  She put on a cheerful face and went about her morning routine. When Daniel stepped into the kitchen, her heart thudded, her cheeks, her whole body flushed with heat. When he managed a kiss behind her ear in the split second they were alone, the ache of desire curling inside her was pure agony. She wanted to make love with him again and again and again.

  Instead, her life seemed to consist of flipping pancakes, again and again and again.

  When Daniel removed himself to the clinic, she felt as if he’d been torn away and had taken most of her with him. But by the time the boys were off to the pool, she’d managed to calm down and focus on reformatting copies of the PowerPoint slides that the head of Child Services would need for writing the first and most important grant proposal, which they’d submit to a well-endowed private foundation. The support of that foundation would be the bedrock of their fund-raising efforts.

  Daniel came in for lunch with the boys. He seemed to be trying hard to treat her casually, but he wasn’t succeeding any too well. His gaze kept meeting hers. She tried to look away, but found herself captured in his spell.