by Sara Rider
He bent his head down and whispered in her ear, “Trust me, the pleasure would be all mine. And if you don’t believe me, I’d be happy to prove it to you.”
A shiver thundered through her body and her knees threatened to buckle. “It would be a shame to let all of this hard work go to waste.”
She tilted her face up to his and he met her lips with a fierce kiss. He dragged her skirt up past her hips until she could feel the cool air on the back of her thighs.
She didn’t register the sound of the lock clicking over until the front door flew open.
A teenaged girl walked in. She was tall, with black curls that framed her pretty face and a canvas duffle bag slung over her shoulder. Her eyes widened until they were impossibly large and Julia realized instantly where she recognized her from. She was the girl in the sketch on Fergus’s wall. “Hey, Dad—whoa!”
Julia and Fergus scrambled apart. She pulled her skirt back down her hips as quickly as she could, then turned to look at the man she’d just spent the night with. “You didn’t tell me you had a daughter.”
“What are you doing here?” Fergus spoke more gruffly than he intended to, but there were too many feelings and impulses exploding like tiny supernovas inside of him to be able to think straight. Emily wasn’t supposed to arrive until tonight, long after Julia was gone.
“Um, I think I should be asking you that considering I just learned what color underwear your girlfriend wears before I even learned her name.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Julia flinched beside him. Shit. That came out wrong. He was screwing this up and had no idea how to disentangle himself. “Emily, this is my friend, Julia.”
“I should go,” Julia said, gathering her purse and jacket. “You two obviously need to talk privately.”
Emily dropped her bag onto the floor and stepped out of the way for Julia to leave through the front door. Fergus wanted to stop her and pull her into his arms so he could apologize, but he didn’t. Maybe that made him a jerk. Or an asshole. But he had to focus on Emily right now.
Julia closed the door behind her—not with an angry slam but with a calm, measured tug until the latch sealed behind her. Fergus stepped forward and pulled Emily into a hug. He held onto her for a long time—long enough to erase the weeks that had passed since he’d last gotten to hold his little girl and let her know just how much he missed her.
When Emily squeezed him back just as tightly, everything was right with the world, if only for the briefest moment.
“You weren’t supposed to arrive until dinner time,” he said.
She wriggled out of his arms, signaling the end of the hug. Fergus let her go, quietly lamenting that these hugs became shorter and fewer the older she got. “Mom got called into surgery. Some big, complicated emergency thing that was going to take fifteen hours, and Tom’s out of town for work. Mom tried calling you this morning to say she couldn’t drive me here tonight. I guess you were too busy to answer or something.”
She grinned at him. How the heck had he raised such a smart-assed child? No, not child, he reminded himself. Teenager. “Emily, how did you get here?” He used his most serious, listen-to-me-because-I’m-your-father-who-you-didn’t-just-catch-in-flagrante voice.
“Mom said I could take the bus here. She and I agreed that it would be a good thing for me to learn a little independence. We did text to warn you.”
As far as Fergus was concerned, Emily needed to slow down on her full-throttle quest for independence, but he knew better than to say so. Research showed that girls her age developed better confidence and self-esteem when they were given room to explore and make decisions independently. He understood it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to remove every last memory of Julia’s lips against his so he could concentrate properly. “Look, Emily, what you saw earlier—”
She put her hand up to stop him. “Dad, no. I know what I saw and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Guilt ballooned in his chest. After seven years of living like a monk, he’d broken his promise to Emily in the worst way. What kind of psychological trauma had he just inflicted on her? “We need to discuss this.”
Emily rolled her eyes and flopped onto his couch. When had she started rolling her eyes at him? It had been hard enough when the changes between visits were physical, but he got used to expecting another lost tooth or an extra two inches of height that meant she wouldn’t fit any of the clothes he’d just bought for her. He’d even been prepared for puberty.
But nothing could prepare him for the other changes. The ones that were invisible to the eye but made her nearly unrecognizable to him. The scowl when he expected a laugh. The humor that was suddenly dry as the Sahara. Her personality was a mystery to him—a puzzle where the pieces kept changing shape.
“Dad, we had the sex talk two years ago. Sex is a perfectly normal thing for consenting adults, and nothing to be ashamed of, but not something to rush into either. Always use a condom and have frank discussions about sexual health and consent. Anyone that pressures me to do anything I’m uncomfortable with is the wrong person to be with. Oh, and did I mention consent? ’Cause I’m pretty sure you did three thousand times when we had that conversation.”
He sat down next to her, trying to ignore the way she sounded eerily like him when she mimicked his voice. “And?”
She sighed. “And anyone who doesn’t respect my consent deserves a good kick in the face. I know all I need to know about sex for this stage of my still virginal life. So, if you really want to talk about what happened, why don’t you start by telling me why Julia isn’t your girlfriend?”
There were moments in his life when Fergus wasn’t so sure it was a good thing his daughter was so astute, and this was definitely one of those times. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated? You know I’m going to start using that as a defense whenever I get in trouble. Why did I sneak out of my window in the middle of the night? It’s complicated. Why did I not turn in my math homework on time? It’s complicated. Why—”
“Emily,” he growled.
She grinned innocently, diffusing all his frustration. “Yes?”
“Want to go out for pancakes?”
“With whipped cream and strawberries and Nutella, even though Mom doesn’t like me eating that much sugar for breakfast?”
He nodded.
“Awesome. You’re the best dad ever.”
Fergus sighed in relief. For a little while, everything was right in the world again. But eventually he was going to have to talk to Julia, and nothing about that was going to be easy.
15
“How about the children’s museum?”
For the fifteenth time that day, Emily wrinkled her nose. “Sure, that could be very…educational.”
Fergus sighed. Despite all his planning and best intentions, he hadn’t found one thing to do with Emily that didn’t involve hanging out and eating an unholy amount of sugar and other unrefined carbs. “I guess you’re too old for the children’s museum now, huh?”
“Yep.”
“We could go snowshoeing or skiing.”
Emily caught his gaze from the other side of the couch with a deadpan look, which he met with an equally impassive stare. Then they broke into laughter. Neither of them liked the cold or the snow. It was one the reasons neither of them missed the East Coast. When Emily was little, Nicole used to make him take her outside to build snowmen after the first snowfall every year. They complied, but only because of the promise of hot chocolate afterward. The constant rain in the Pacific Northwest wasn’t his favorite thing either, but it was a heck of a lot better than frostbite.
“I guess we could talk about what you’re planning to do about your scholarship next year.”
Emily’s jaw hardened. In spite of all the ways she’d changed over the years, her stubborn look had remained the same. “No thanks.”
“It’s a big decision. The kind o
f thing you should talk to your parents about.”
“Mom’s already made me talk about it for hours. There’s nothing left to say.”
Fergus lowered the volume on the TV to a whisper. “So you’ve made your decision?”
Emily hesitated, picking at a loose thread at the hole on the knee of her jeans. “Not yet.”
He waited.
“If I take the scholarship, I have a way better chance of getting into a good college in the future, but there’s no art or music classes. And none of my friends will be there. So no matter what I decide, it’s going to suck,” she finally said in a huff. “And that’s why I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
He was glad his stony silence could still pull an answer out of her, but what he really wished for was for Emily to ask for his advice. “Okay, what do you want to do today?”
“I want to do what you want to do.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Is that a trick question?”
“It’s not a question. It’s an answer.” She curled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees, tucking her hands into the cuffs of her black sweater. “We have museums and zoos and all that kind of stuff in Seattle, and Mom and Tom have dragged me to all of it. I don’t want to do that while I’m here. I just want to spend time with you. We never do what you want to do.”
“Emily, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old dad. I’m boring. When I’m not working I spend my time doing puzzles and tinkering in the garage.”
“Okay, let’s do a puzzle.”
Fergus glanced down at the intact puzzle on his coffee table he and Julia had completed just two nights ago. “All right. Why don’t we go buy a new one? There’s a bookstore downtown that sells these amazing puzzles.”
“I get to choose, right?” He nodded and she grinned in response. “Awesome.”
Twenty minutes later, they walked into Pearson’s Books and Collectibles, a large brick-façade shop in the center of the historic part of downtown. There were knickknacks and tchotchkes galore for sale, as well as two stories of bookshelves. But what brought Fergus back time after time was the entire wall of puzzles, from the classic European collectible makers to smaller, cult classic brands. Everything a jigsaw junkie could ever want.
“This is like nerd heaven,” Emily exclaimed with wide eyes as she took in the bright display. She beelined straight to the Ravensburger fairy-themed puzzles, just as he’d expected. Despite her teenaged wardrobe turning increasingly to shades of black, his daughter had always had a penchant for bright, fantastical things. His own tastes were more muted—cars, nature, and vintage Star Wars themes—but if Emily wanted fairies, that’s what she’d get.
They walked through the display, eyes glued to the kaleidoscopic of puzzle images as they debated which one to get. Fergus didn’t even notice anyone else around them until he reached for a puzzle of a Maserati at the same time as another customer. Their hands brushed together and he knew instantly who it was without looking at her. He had memorized the feel of her skin.
“Julia?”
He turned to see her, red hair flowing in cascading waves around her face, cheeks pink from the cold, and a yellow scarf wrapped around her neck. “Fergus. Hi.” Even without the high-pitched inflection of her voice, he could tell she was nervous just from the way she chewed on her bottom lip.
He wanted to pull her close. Kiss her like he’d been dreaming about since the first time their lips met in that passionate moment in the library parking lot. The impulse was so strong, he would have abandoned his good sense and tact to do just that, but for one reason: Emily.
Instead, he held himself stiffly, fighting the urge to reach for her. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, ah…” The question seemed to surprise Julia. She looked at the puzzle box in her hands. “I felt bad about finishing your puzzle the other night, so I was going to buy you a new one. Do you prefer Maseratis or Lamborghinis?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Their gazes finally met properly and the sparkle in her eyes nearly floored him. “Yes, I do. I’m sure there’s an etiquette rule about not finishing someone else’s puzzle, and the need to make up for that impropriety if it does happen.”
It was the undertone of bossiness in the answer that made him forget himself for a moment and smile.
“The Maserati,” Emily said. “Definitely the Maserati.”
Julia’s smile widened. “Maserati it is.”
“And you should come over tonight to do it with us,” Emily said.
“Emily,” Fergus growled.
“No, it’s okay,” Julia said. “We having another Red Zephyr viewing party tonight at Clem and Jake’s place.”
“I love that show,” Emily said.
“Emily, that show is way too old for you,” Fergus said.
“Dad, you bought me the box-set of the books.”
“That’s different.”
“I’m fourteen. It’s not like I haven’t seen a spacebeam battle or a ship blow up onscreen before.”
“You’re welcome to come, if you like,” Julia said before Fergus could stick his foot deeper into his mouth. “Everyone’s been asking if you’re going to show up again.”
Emily looked to him and tugged at his sleeves. “You have Red Zephyr viewing parties with your friends and you never told me?”
“Not exactly,” he started to say, but it didn’t matter because Emily didn’t seem to care about his answer.
“We have to go. I want to meet your friends.”
“The more the merrier,” Julia said. “And there will be some healthy snacks.”
Fergus frowned. “But what about our puzzle?”
“Well, I still need to purchase the puzzle, wrap it, add the card with a personalized note, and then have it delivered to you in a tactful manner,” Julia said. “And I can’t promise I can accomplish all that by tonight.”
He wanted to say yes, if only for an excuse to be closer to her again. He didn’t like the way things ended so abruptly the other day, not knowing how she felt about the fact he had a daughter. He’d never had to navigate any of this before. But he didn’t want to dilute his time with Emily, either.
Julia’s smile faded quickly. “Only if you want to, though. There’s no pressure, of course.”
“We’ll be there,” Emily said, tugging Fergus’s arm. “Right, Dad?”
Fergus’s jaw clenched, but he’d never been able to say no to his daughter. “Okay. If we have time, we’ll think about dropping by.”
Julia nodded, but he couldn’t read the expression in her eyes before she turned to go.
Is Emily too young to watch Red Zephyr?
Emily rolled her eyes as Fergus waited for the response. “Are you really going to turn the car around if Mom says yes?”
They’d been sitting in front of Clem and Jake’s place for the last five minutes waiting for Nicole to answer the text. “No. But I’ll know that I need to lie to her about it.”
A text popped up on his phone. Emily reached over and twisted his wrist so she could see the response. “Ha! Told you Mom would say it’s okay. Now can we go inside before we miss the start of the show? I want to meet your friends.”
“They’re not my friends.”
“Just like Julia’s not your girlfriend?” She blinked innocently, like a woodland creature from a Disney movie.
“Emily. If we’re going to talk about that, then we should really talk about it.”
She huffed. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry I said anything. Can we just go inside?”
His answer didn’t matter because she had already opened her door and stepped out of his car. He got out and followed her up the porch steps of the small craftsman house. Even before he knocked, he could hear the bustle of people inside. He wasn’t shy, exactly, because he didn’t see the point in caring what people thought about him. But he didn’t have an easy time making friends, either. He was big and grumpy, with a face no one would call friendly, and for the last seven year
s, he’d been focused entirely on Emily and work.
His discomfort wasn’t helped by the fact the last time he’d come here, the invitation hadn’t even come from Julia. He still wasn’t sure if it had been a joke or not. Nothing about that fact made him excited to be here. But one thing did: Julia.
Clem opened the door with a huge smile. “Fergus! You came! That’s wonderful. And you’re just in time.”
He and Emily stepped into the living room full of people crowded onto couches and chairs, with snacks piled high around them in mismatched bowls and platters. Julia was in the far corner of the room. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, making him feel like a million dollars.
Fergus waved tentatively to everyone, knowing he needed to make an effort and model polite behavior for Emily’s sake. “Hi. This is my daughter, Emily.”
Everyone in the room swung their gazes to Julia at the far corner of the room, and he would have sworn he heard a few of them gasp. He’d assumed she would have told everyone about Emily already, but apparently he’d been wrong.
There was another teenaged girl there, Fergus realized with relief. A blonde girl about Emily’s age who came up and introduced herself as Olive, one of Clem’s nieces. The girls seemed to hit it off immediately, breaking into a conversation about their favorite characters and ships on the show as they settled into a corner of the floor.
He walked over to Julia. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. I’m glad you made it. There’s a spot on the couch, if you want it.”
He sat down, leaving just enough room for her to sit next to him. She eyed the small space and pressed her lips together. He would have given anything to know what was going through her mind in that moment. “There’s room,” he said hopefully.
“That’s okay. I’ll sit on the ground.” She turned before he could protest and took a seat in front of Eli, resting her back against her brother’s legs.
His disappointment stung, but he deserved it. He hadn’t told her about Emily. He wasn’t even sure why. Mostly because Emily was so precious to him, he didn’t want to share her with anyone. He liked Julia a lot—maybe even more than a lot—but he was like an infant learning to walk when it came to relationships, constantly tripping himself up and banging his head against every sharp corner.