Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Carolyn McSparren

  “You’re serious.”

  “Indeed I am. As it was, she made do with her hand. She slapped me.”

  “She what?”

  “Keep your eyes on the road. Those ditches we’re driving between look as though they might be full of alligators. God, this country is flat!”

  “So that’s what Otis meant when he asked if you wanted to press charges?”

  “Yeah. A good coating of makeup should cover her handprint on my cheek. I don’t think I’m going to have a black eye, although—” she ran her tongue over her teeth “—the inside of my lip is cut.”

  “Sweet heaven, Kate, if I’d thought I was putting you in any danger, I’d never have brought you down here.”

  “I know that.” Without thinking she laid her palm on his forearm. The car shimmied and then righted itself. She snatched her hand away.

  How could the electricity between them have lasted twenty years?

  They drove in silence along back roads, narrow and lined with stubby trees. On either side stretched flat fields, already plowed or still covered in the stubble of this year’s soybeans and cotton. Suddenly David pulled over to the side of the road and leaned across her. “That’s Long Pond,” he said, pointing across the field.

  The house was large and luminously white, with a Palladian colonnaded front porch and second-floor balcony. It loomed up no more than a mile across the fields as though it were a giant riverboat riding seas of mud and dirt. A few immense old trees in the yard swayed leafless in the late-November breeze.

  “My Lord,” Kate whispered.

  David started the car again. Several miles down the road he turned right, and after another couple of miles or so turned again between gleaming white board fences into a gravel driveway that ran past barns, silos and outbuildings to a turnaround at the front steps of the house.

  Now Kate saw that the lawn was small for such a big house. Land must be too precious to waste on luxuries like grass. The house was surrounded by big azaleas that would bloom gloriously come spring.

  Arnold’s rental car stood in the parking area under a broad naked pin oak. David stopped at the front steps and reached around to shake Jason’s shoulder. “Wake up, son, you’re home.”

  Jason grumbled, sat up and opened the car door.

  “I’ll put the car in the garage. Dub is very particular about his automobiles,” David said.

  Jason half stumbled up the front stairs and across the porch with Kate following. As he reached the double front doors, they opened, and a tiny woman, like an elderly wren, flew out.

  “Jason!” She threw her arms around him and dragged him inside. “You go right upstairs now and scrub that jailhouse stink right off you and put on some clean clothes. I laid ’em out for you on your bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jason said. He said over his shoulder, “I’m going to sleep for a week. Don’t call me for dinner.”

  The woman turned and held out her hands to Kate. “You must be Miz Mulholland. I’m Neva Hardin, Dub’s housekeeper.” She took both of Kate’s hands and pulled her into the front hall. “Thank you for bringing my boy back home.”

  Kate had no idea how old the woman was. Her face was as wrinkled as an apple doll, but her spine was straight, and she moved with the grace and speed of a young woman.

  Kate smiled down at the woman, but looked up when she heard Dub’s booming bass. “Get yourself on up to your. room, boy,” Dub said. “Then when you look halfway human, come and join us on the back porch for a little afternoon libation.”

  “I just wanna sleep, Granddaddy,” Jason said as he passed his grandfather and Arnold Selig, who stood just behind him.

  “You got to eat.”

  “I’ll fix myself something later.” He disappeared down the broad hall at the head of the staircase.

  Dub watched him a moment anxiously, then turned to Kate with a broad grin. “Well, come on in,” Dub boomed. As he descended the broad peach marble staircase, he held tightly to the curving banister.

  “This is an incredible house,” Kate said.

  “It’s just your basic old southern dogtrot house,” Dub said.

  “Dogtrot for mastiffs and elephants, maybe.”

  “Built right after the war.”

  “Civil?” Kate asked.

  Dub grinned. “Second World. Whenever my daddy got really mad he’d accuse my momma of having set fire to the old house just so she could get her a fancy new one. The old one was a dogtrot too, just not so fancy.”

  “Excuse me,” Arnold said quietly. “What, precisely, is a dogtrot house? I am, as Kate will recall, born and bred on Long Island.”

  Dub slipped his hand under Kate’s arm and began to guide her to the right of the stairs toward the back of the house. She saw the glint of water from what must be a swimming pool or an ornamental pond of some sort.

  “Well, son, originally it meant a cabin that was built in two parts—one on each side of a big open central hall. Sleeping rooms on one side, parlor on the other. The center stayed open so...”

  “The dogs could trot through unimpeded.” Kate finished.

  “So now any house built with a big old central hall front to back is called a dogtrot house, at least down here.”

  “Thank you,” Arnold said.

  “But Momma had to have it both ways,” Dub said. “She was bound and determined to have a center staircase right out of Ashley Wilkes’s house in Gone with the Wind.”

  “I don’t remember that his was this broad,” Kate said.

  “Or this...”

  Kate watched Arnold search for the appropriate words and grinned at him.

  “Or this, um...marble,” he said finally.

  Dub glanced at the staircase with chagrin. “Momma wanted what she wanted, and cotton prices were high right about then.” He shrugged. “Not like now.”

  From behind them, Mrs. Hardin said, “Now that Jason’s home, I’m leaving, Dub.”

  “Yes, fine, Neva,” he said absently.

  “The country captain’s in the warming oven, salad’s in the refrigerator, the table’s laid and the cobbler’s in the microwave. All you got to do is heat it up for dessert.”

  Dub seemed to be ignoring the woman. She gave an exasperated sigh and turned to Kate. “Since this happened he’s been in another world. Did you get all that?”

  “I’m not much of a cook.”

  “Huh, anything’s better than that man. He’s hopeless.” Neva Hardin shrugged into a windbreaker, picked up a leather handbag from what looked to be an original Sheraton chair beside the front door and walked out. “I’ll be here tomorrow before lunch,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Yes, fine.” Dub said to the closing door. Then to Kate and Arnold, “Come on out onto the back porch.”

  “Um, isn’t it a bit chilly?” Arnold asked as he followed Dub toward the back of the house. Then, as he entered the glass-enclosed room, he said, “Oh. Of course.”

  The room resembled an old-fashioned Victorian solarium complete with tropical plants that Kate could not begin to identify. Through the back windows she saw that she had been correct. Stairs led down to a large rectangular swimming pool above which a haze of mist drifted lazily. The pool must be heated. It would probably be usable until January if the weather continued to be as warm as it had been today.

  Beyond the pool stood a low but substantial house with its own colonnade. “That’s where David had his office until he got uppity and built him a new house after Melba died,” Dub said.

  “Now, Dub, it wasn’t like that,” David’s voice said amiably.

  Kate turned to see David lounging against a bar built into the side of the room. His voice sent shivers down her spine, even when he wasn’t speaking to her. She caught Arnold’s raised eyebrows. She’d have to watch herself. Arnold knew her entirely too well.

  David handed Kate a glass of white wine. “Still like Chardonnay, or have you moved up to martinis?”

  “Chardonnay is fine, thank you.”

>   “Mr. Selig?”

  “Gin and tonic, please. Light. I’m driving us back to that ghastly motel.”

  “What?” Dub said. “Thought I told you, you two are staying right here at Long Pond. David’ll take you on up to your rooms right this minute if you want to freshen up.”

  “I don’t think so, Dub.” Kate said. “We need privacy. So, we’ll have our drink and a strategy session, then we’ll go to town and find someplace to have dinner.”

  “Hell no!” Dub said. “You think Neva Hardin leaves me country captain and cobbler every night? That dinner’s for you. And the boy, when he wakes up.”

  “Pardon my ignorance again, but what is country captain? Sounds positively cannibalistic.”

  “Shoot, son. Chicken with rice and raisins and things. Hot rolls too, if I remember to put ’em in the oven. Neva Hardin thinks she’s perfect, but she damn well forgot to mention the rolls, didn’t she?” He seemed inordinately pleased at her omission. “She always makes rolls for company.”

  Kate glanced at David, who merely shrugged and raised a glass of what looked like cola at her in silent salute. “We’ll stay for dinner,” she said. “But we will not spend the night.”

  “We’ll see.” Dub said and rubbed his hands together as though he’d won a victory. “Got to thank you properly for bringing my boy home to me,” he said.

  “You did that already.”

  “Well, I’m doing it again. How quick can you all gel the charges dropped?”

  Kate blew out a breath. “I haven’t done any criminal-defense work in well over six months. I agreed to try to secure bail for Jason, then Arnold and I are heading back to Atlanta.”

  “Leaving us in the lurch? No way.”

  “The firm has an excellent team of criminal litigators.”

  “Hunh. Cost more’n Long Pond’s worth, probably.” Dub was growing agitated. His fingers drummed on the side of his glass. “Didn’t want to bring you in the first place David said my lawyer, Jack Slaydon, wasn’t good enough Shoot, he’s good enough to deal with a piece of foolishness like this.”

  Watching him, Kate remembered Jason’s five-finger exercises in the interrogation room and wondered whether nervous tics could be passed along in the gene pool.

  “Whatever you may want to think, this is a far cry from foolishness,” she said. “The district attorney is planning to convene a special grand jury in January.”

  “Can he do that?”

  “Absolutely. And if it’s like most grand juries, they’ll do as they are told and return a true bill against Jason.”

  “Well, shoot, you got to stop ’em.” Dub stood and began to pace. “Jason’s not guilty of a damn thing except being young and getting mixed up with a woman who wasn’t half good enough for him.”

  “And fathering her baby.”

  “What?” David asked. He walked around the edge of the wicker sofa on which Arnold perched uncomfortably, sat and leaned toward Kate. “She was pregnant?” He shook his head. “It’s not Jason’s.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Kate said.

  “Because he always uses a condom.” David flushed and looked away. “I taught him that.”

  “Yes, that’s a lesson you’re qualified to teach,” Kate whispered.

  Dub looked from one to the other with his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  Kate finished her wine and set the glass down on the table. “Perhaps I’d better see what we need to do for dinner, if you’ll point me at the kitchen.”

  “Lord, no,” Dub said. “You’re company.”

  “Mrs. Hardin says you’re hopeless in the kitchen, Dub. I can at least turn on an oven and start a microwave. Let me do it, please. You all sit here and finish your drinks.”

  “I’ll show you,” David said.

  Trapped again.

  She followed him out a door in the side of the room and into a large and extremely modern kitchen with a center island and a steel-fronted stove and refrigerator. “I assume those rolls Dub wants baked are in the refrigerator,” she said cheerfully.

  “Kate, stop it.” David curled his hand around her upper arm as she passed him. “Brittle never became you.”

  She froze and stood, passive, refusing to acknowledge his power by trying to shake him off.

  “I remember you were a great believer in justice even twenty years ago,” he said softly. “Is it justice to punish Jason for something that I did to you? To us? My God, .Kate, look at him. He could be our son, yours and mine.”

  She yanked her arm away and turned a furious face to him. “Wrong button to push, Mr. Canfield. If you remember, you and I discussed having a baby, and decided we couldn’t afford for me to quit supporting us until you starting getting decent parts.”

  “I remember.”

  “Has the old gang informed you that I don’t have any children?” She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a large crystal bowl of salad covered securely in plastic wrap and then found a pan of raised rolls ready for the oven. She banged the pan onto the counter and leaned over it. “When I married Alec, he had two grown children and a ten-year-old vasectomy. We tried twice to reverse it, but it was no good. So Jason is the son I never had, never will have. The son you had because you couldn’t stay out of bed with an old girlfriend.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “How was it then?” She walked over to the oven and gave a vicious twist to the dial until it reached three hundred and fifty degrees. She turned and leaned against it. “And if you dare give me that old ‘it didn’t have anything to do with us, babe,’ I swear I’ll slap you silly.”

  “It had everything to do with us. You never gave me a chance to talk to you, to explain...”

  “Come on, the last thing I needed was explanations and excuses.”

  He shook his head. “Reasons but no excuses.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “When you flew off to the Dominican Republic and came back divorced a week later, I couldn’t believe it.”

  “One of the perks of being a legal secretary in a big firm. They take care of their own. I warned you the day I married you that the one unforgivable sin in my book was infidelity. I watched my mother trying to live with her devil’s bargain with my father year after year. You knew damn well what it would do to me. But you’re different from Daddy. He always tried to hide his latest. You wanted me to find out. You sure as hell set it up that way.”

  “Ah, are we going to be dining soon?” Arnold said from the doorway. “If not, I don’t believe Dub is going to be awake.” He made drinking motions and raised his eyebrows at them. “So sorry if I’m interrupting anything. Amazing how raised voices carry in this house.”

  David scowled at Arnold, but Kate grabbed him and shoved him toward the counter. “Put those rolls in and watch them. They burn quickly.” She turned to David. “Is there a bathroom on this floor? Suddenly I am feeling extremely dirty.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I’M WORRIED about Dub,” David said to Kate as they carried the last of the dishes holding the dregs of peach cobbler into the kitchen. “He seems distracted, and his color’s not good. This thing has hit him harder than he lets on.”

  “I hardly know the man, but he’s not what I’d call distracted. He ate a good dinner, and kept us in stitches. In fact, he’s giving Arnold a real education in the genus good ole boy.”

  “Dub’s acting as though if he ignores all this, it’ll go away on its own.” David shook his head. “By the way, he has an honors degree in political science from Brown. A good ole boy he is not.”

  “I recognize that, but Arnold grew up on Long Island He’s only recently been transplanted to Atlanta. Mississippy is as foreign to him as Bosnia and not nearly so civilized.” She rinsed the last of the dishes and slid them into the dishwasher. “But I agree that Dub keeps veering away from talking about the murder. He’s treating this little dinner party as though it were a purely social occasion.”

  “He always jokes and clowns around
to avoid hearing things he doesn’t want to hear and dealing with situations that don’t suit him. Deep down, he’s scared.”

  “He’s right to be scared. I haven’t had time to do more than hit the high spots in the arrest report, but they definitely have enough to indict.”

  “And convict?”

  “That’s something else again.” She wiped the counter clean and rinsed the sponge under the tap. David sidestepped her to pick up the coffee carafe and pour himself a second cup of decaf. Suddenly, she leaned on her hands and closed her eyes. How often had they cleaned up after their own meager parties in New York? No dishwasher, of course, but the rhythms weren’t that different. It was as though their bodies still remembered the logistics of living together, even though their hearts—well, her heart at any rate—rejected the idea.

  “You okay?” David asked solicitously.

  “Just tired.” God, how tired! This day seemed to have started last week. “And we still need to discuss what happens next with Jason.”

  “Stay here tonight.”

  “David...”

  “Listen to me before you say no. It makes sense. You can work on strategy over breakfast when everyone’s fresh.”

  She shook her head. “Not a good idea.”

  “I told you I won’t be here, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “What’s bothering me is being unable to get away from my clients to confer with my colleague in anything remotely resembling privacy.”

  “I’ll give you the key to my office. You and Arnold can have all the privacy you want out there. The rooms upstairs are much nicer than that motel. You’ll have your own bathroom, and I can guarantee plenty of real hot water.”

  “The Paradise Motel has hot water.”

  “Occasionally.” He raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice seductively. “King-size bed. Your bathroom has a whirlpool tub.”

  Sinking into a hot whirlpool, feeling her tense muscles relax, big fluffy towels and a huge bed to sprawl on. She groaned and closed her eyes.

  “It would make Dub happy. He gets lonely out here.”

  “Jason’s here,” Kate answered. “Why, by the way?”