Keast, Karen

by The Surprise of His Life

  She made a little sound that could only be interpreted as contradiction. "Yeah, sure," she said, thinking that, despite the fact that it was the end of the day, Walker still looked good. Real good. The jeans that earlier had been crisply starched now hugged his form in a way that was guaranteed to attract a woman's attention. At least, it had attracted hers.

  Stepping toward the cooler of bottled water, Walker poured himself a cup, drank and tossed the cup into the trash. He had known that Dean's buying the sports car had upset Lindsey. He just hadn't known what to say to make Lindsey feel better. If she knew the extent of her father's aberrant behavior, if she knew about his affair, Walker doubted seriously that anything anybody said would help Lindsey's feelings. In fact, knowing would destroy her. In a way he couldn't explain, he still felt as though he himself was betraying her simply by being in possession of the knowledge. On the other hand, he couldn't betray a friendship. Dean's tormented face still haunted him.

  To tell you the truth, I don't always like what I do, either... and I'm not always as kind as you. Sometimes I despise myself... despise myself... despise myself....

  "I know your dad buying the car upset you, and I can understand why. I just don't know what to say."

  As he spoke, he brushed back the strand of hair from his forehead. Fascinated, Lindsey watched him, wondering if his hair felt as soft as it looked. And was the hair on his chest—she could see raven-colored sprigs peeking from the vee of his white knit shirt—just as soft? This last thought caused her pulse to accelerate.

  "You could say yes," Lindsey said, ignoring the racing of her heart... or at least trying to.

  As she spoke, she stepped toward Walker. His eyes went to the gentle sway of her ponytail, around which hung a pert pink bow. It was a mesmerizing sway that reinforced the notion he'd conceived earlier. Namely, that Lindsey was a combination of both woman and child. A beguiling combination, if he listened to his heart. Which he tried not to do. Instead, he focused on what she'd said.

  "I could say yes to what?"

  "To letting me buy you a drink." Before he could respond, she added, "My way of apologizing for my surly mood this afternoon."

  Interestingly, the mention of their having a drink together—or maybe it was that damned provocative sway of her ponytail! —caused his heartbeat to flutter. Whichever, he felt it in his best interest to ignore it.

  "I told you, you weren't in a surly—"

  "I was," Lindsey interjected. "And I insist upon buying you a drink."

  Walker's heartbeat fluttered again. Again, he ignored it.

  "Hey, I'm not dressed—"

  "You're fine," Lindsey said, forcing her eyes not to take a sensual inventory of the length and breadth of his body. "We'll go somewhere casual."

  "You're too young to drink," he said, feeling as though he were being backed into a corner. It wasn't an altogether unpleasant corner, which made him feel all the more backed into it.

  "You told me just the other day how adult I was."

  Walker remembered having done that very thing. And as he stood watching her this moment, he couldn't in good conscience retract what he'd said. Despite the fact that the ponytail emphasized her youth, she looked very much like the woman her years claimed that she was. If nothing else, the way she filled out the pastel-shaded sweater attested to her maturity.

  "You want to see my ID?" she asked teasingly.

  What he wanted was to get out of the corner. Or maybe he didn't want out of the corner at all. Maybe he wanted to be pressured into having a drink with Lindsey. When you got right down to it, what was the harm in it? Wasn't it acceptable for a goddaughter to buy her godfather a drink? Where was it written that it wasn't?

  Suddenly the teasing lights vanished from Lindsey's gray-blue eyes. "I promise you I'm all grown up," she said. Her eyes held Walker's for the fraction of a second necessary to prove her point.

  Walker heard the challenge in her voice. He saw it in her eyes. There was no way he could avoid it. Even if he'd wanted to, which he didn't, because he suddenly needed to prove to himself that everything he'd been feeling of late—his superawareness of Lindsey—was nothing more than an emotional mirage. He glanced up at the clock. It read ten minutes after five o'clock.

  "Let's go," he said, his voice strong and sure in the conviction that he'd just made the right choice. After all, a drink was simply a drink. Why try to make something more out of it?

  In answer, Walker's heart skipped another beat.

  Within twenty minutes, each having driven his own car, both Lindsey and Walker sat in the lounge of a hotel located in the city's historic Strand district. The bar's dark walnut paneling, its polished hardwood floors, its Victorian ambiance created not only an air of elegance, but also one of intimacy. Scattered among wicker tables stood tall palms, their fronds cascading downward as though bending to whisper a lover's secret, while delicate romantic bouquets of sweet-scented posies graced each table. To add to the intimacy, soft piano music wafted from the back of the lounge.

  "What can I get you?" the waiter asked.

  "I'll have a white wine spritzer," Lindsey said. On the drive over she'd repaired her makeup, adding a pale pink lip gloss to her lips and dabbing perfume behind her ears and in the vee of her sweater.

  "Bourbon and water on the rocks," Walker said, normally not ordering more than a beer. On the drive over, however, as tight muscles had begun to make themselves known, he'd realized that he'd had a bitch of a day. Confronting a friend about his affair made for a bitch of a day, a real bourbon-and-water kind of day. The sight and smell of Lindsey as she exited the car, her lips gleaming in pink, her skin bathed in perfume, her ponytail contrasting markedly with the long, shapely, white-stockinged legs that slid from the vehicle, did nothing to ease the tension of said bitchy day. In fact, they had once more sent his heart into that crazy uneven rhythm. "Just make that bourbon on the rocks," he said, only several notes away from a growl.

  "Tired?" Lindsey asked when the waiter stepped away. She'd heard the dark timbre in Walker's voice. She also noticed the plain aviator sunglasses tucked in his shirt pocket. He'd been wearing them when he'd gotten out of the car. It crossed her mind that her father had wasted a lot of money on fancy colored lenses when the gray-tinted ones Walker was wearing were enough to make a woman salivate.

  "Yeah. I guess so." Totally surprising himself, he grinned. "Either that or I'm in a surly mood."

  Lindsey smiled. "No more surly moods, no more talking about business, and no more talking about Mom and Dad. Agreed?"

  "Agreed. So what do we talk about?"

  "'Of kings and queens or simpler things,'" she quoted from a book that Walker had read to her and Adam dozens of times when they were youngsters.

  Walker's grin turned to a laugh. "I hadn't thought of that in years. Whatever happened to that book? Was it yours or Adam's?"

  "It was mine, and I have it in a chest in the attic. Thanks," Lindsey added as the waiter delivered their drinks.

  "Thanks," Walker repeated, though he had to admit that he felt less in need of a drink than he had minutes before. It was strange how laughter could relax coiled muscles. Maybe that was what was wrong with his life. Maybe that was what all the emptiness was about. Maybe he'd just forgotten how to laugh. Although laughter, like most all things in life, was better when shared with someone else.

  "Plus, I've got all my Winnie the Pooh books," Lindsey said. "I think those must have been the beginning of my love affair with bears."

  Walker took a swallow of his drink, then said, "Ten to one, you missed your teddy bears more than anyone when you were in London."

  "Oh, I don't know. They're great to cuddle, but they don't cuddle back."

  As once before, for just a heartbeat, Walker had the feeling that there was more to what Lindsey was saying than merely the words she'd spoken. The way she was looking at him, so intensely her gaze burned, only corroborated this. But then, she dropped her gaze to the wineglass, sipped the spritzer, and spok
e so normally that Walker thought, again as he had before, that he'd simply imagined the whole thing.

  "Have you heard anything about the baby?"

  "I talked to Grace yesterday, and there's still no sign of Junior. The doctor says any minute, though."

  "That must be exciting—waiting for your first child to be born."

  Lindsey's voice held a wistfulness that Walker couldn't help but hear. Neither could he help but wonder what had happened to cause her to call off her wedding. If plans had gone according to schedule, she'd now be a wife and possibly even a mother. Inexplicably, he found the thought disturbing. Especially the part about her being some man's—Ken Larey's—wife.

  "Do you remember when Adam was born?" Lindsey asked, thankfully breaking into Walker's unsettling thoughts.

  He grinned. "Yeah. He was two and half weeks late. Phyllis was so uncomfortable that she was about to jump out of her skin."

  "Night or day?" At Walker's inquiring look, Lindsey clarified. "Was he born at night or during the day?"

  Walker grinned again. Was this becoming a habit? he wondered. If so, he could grow accustomed to it. "Babies are never born during the day. They always come at night. Usually after midnight."

  "I take it Adam was born after midnight."

  "Three-oh-six." Walker took a swallow of his drink, then said, "And I never slept through the night again. At least not for a long while. There were diapers and feedings and colic and nightmares and, then, just when I thought I had him out of my hair, he got his driver's license, and I stayed up half the night listening for the car."

  I stayed up half the night. Not we stayed up half the night. Only in the last few months, as she'd matured into a full-fledged adult, had Lindsey realized how difficult it must have been for Walker to raise his child alone. The fine job he'd done gave her a deeper appreciation of the man. It was just one more reason for her to love him.

  "Do, uh, do you ever wish you could start over?" Lindsey asked as she stroked the cool tulip-shaped wineglass. "I mean, do you ever wish you could have another child?"

  "Good heavens, no!" Though he'd been undeniably emphatic, he realized that the days of raising his son, the early days which he'd shared with his wife, were probably the most enriching of his life. In those days, he hadn't felt empty. In those days, he hadn't felt as if he were simply going through the motions of living.

  His answer wasn't what Lindsey had wanted to hear, though it was pretty much what she'd expected. Every woman knew, though, that a man could be made to change his mind.

  "I'm too old to start over," she heard Walker say.

  "You're not too old."

  "Besides, all the women my age have already raised all of the babies they want."

  Lindsey smiled and said, as casually as though they were discussing the weather, "What you need is a younger woman."

  Walker laughed, but the laugh was forced. He kept seeing the image of Dean and a flame-haired young woman—a woman young enough to be his daughter. "Yeah, well, I'm the last thing a young woman wants or needs."

  "I don't know. Could be you're selling yourself short."

  The sincere look she gave him made his heart skip a beat. It also made him change the subject.

  "So, tell me about your job in London."

  The topic led quite naturally to her fill-in job at Gal-Tex and, even though they'd vowed not to discuss work, they found themselves doing so.

  "Does that prospectus have to be ready Monday?" Lindsey asked. "I could do it this weekend."

  "Uh-uh. It won't be needed until the end of next week. Besides, you don't need to spend your weekend working."

  "You don't spend yours working?"

  "That's different."

  "How?"

  "I own the company... at least half of it." Uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation—he might have to confront the loneliness that forced him to work late and weekend hours—he said, "I thought we agreed not to discuss work."

  "Fine. Let's dance."

  Her request, so blandly, so bluntly given, caught Walker totally off guard. His startled look said so.

  Lindsey laughed and leaned forward, as if speaking of a conspiracy. "I don't know how to tell you this, but women have been liberated. They can now ask men to dance."

  "I have heard of women's liberation, smart aleck. And I have no problem with women asking me to dance."

  "Then what do you have a problem with?"

  He glanced around the room, indicating the occupied tables. The pianist, a blonde chicly dressed in black chiffon, was playing and crooning a ballad about the first time ever she'd seen her lover's face. "No one's dancing," Walker pointed out.

  "So? There's a dance floor. See, right there by the piano."

  "I see, but—"

  "But what?"

  "I have two left feet."

  "I'll bet you don't."

  "Trust me, I do. I also have a bum knee."

  "No big deal. We'll slow dance." She pushed back her chair. "C'mon."

  "Lindsey!" he whispered, grabbing her hand to keep her seated. Her hand felt warm—just the way it had the night she'd taken his hand in hers. He pulled his hand away, uncertain why he was fighting the warmth, uncertain why he was fighting her offer of a dance. He just felt he should. On the off chance that all of her was as warm as her hand.

  "You need to loosen up, Walker. Live a little. How am I ever going to get you to run off with me to Timbuktu if I can't even get you to the dance floor?" Rushing ahead, she said, "Look, I'll make you a deal. If the pianist plays... oh, I don't know, 'Misty,' let's say... yeah, 'Misty'... if the pianist plays 'Misty' next, we dance. If she doesn't, we don't. Fair enough?"

  The expression on Lindsey's face, the spark in her slate-gray eyes, was one of utter playfulness. Once more Walker was reminded of how alive Lindsey was. Of how alluringly alive she was. Of how irresistibly alive she was. Leaning back in his chair, he heard himself assume the same playful posture.

  "Let me get this straight," he drawled. "If the next song the pianist plays is 'Misty,' we dance. If it's not, we don't."

  "Right. Deal?"

  Walker considered all the songs—the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands—that the pianist had to choose from. What were the chances of her playing one specific song? Walker gave a half grin, the sign of a man confident of his win because the deck was stacked in his favor. "You've got yourself a deal."

  "Good," Lindsey replied, pushing her chair back farther and rising. "Excuse me a moment. I'll be right back." With that, she crossed to the pianist, bent and whispered something, then started back toward the table. The triumphant look she wore said that Walker had been had.

  Despite his loss—which curiously he also viewed as a win—he had to admire her style. "You, uh, you wouldn't call that cheating, would you?"

  "Not in the least. I'd call it guaranteeing that I get what I want." She held out her hand. "Time to pay off."

  The beginning strains of "Misty" spilled from the piano and filled the silence.

  In a single gulp, Walker downed what was left of his drink. Something told him that he was going to need what fortification he could get. Standing, he placed his hand in hers—dammit, why was her hand always so warm?—and, following as she led, walked to the dance floor. It was he, however, who stopped, turned her and pulled her into his arms. After all, a deal was a deal, right?

  He took Lindsey by surprise. She'd known that he'd have to take her in his arms, but she'd expected to be the one to make the move. She might even have to force the issue. His assertiveness startled her, pleased her and left her wholly breathless. She'd been in his arms before-countless times when she'd been growing up—but she'd never been in his arms after she'd realized her love for him. Except for that moment at the airport, which was marked primarily by its brevity. Now, however, she was in his arms in earnest... and for the duration of a song. What was that? Two minutes? Three minutes? Could she force the brief time to make up for all the lonely nights she'd
lain awake wondering what it would feel like to be held by him?

  "See," she said, hoping that she didn't sound as breathless as she felt, "you don't have two left feet."

  Her eyes were on his, and he could never remember seeing anything that looked more beautiful. The blue of a peaceful ocean shone through, a shimmering blue shaded with silver. The look, almost translucent, was one of serenity. The thought crossed Walker's mind that maybe that, serenity, was what was missing from his life. Maybe he was blaming emptiness, and more recently, lack of laughter, when the truth was that he lacked serenity in his soul.

  "That may be open to debate," he responded to her comment about his feet.

  "How's the knee?" she asked.

  "Fine," he said. His knee hurt. Like hell. But suddenly the pain seemed unimportant, even irrelevant.

  The pianist sang softly, of not knowing one's right foot from one's left, one's hat from one's glove, because one was too misty and too much in love. Walker realized that he was about as confused as the person in the song, for suddenly, slowly, he seemed to have stepped into a surreal world. A world he could never remember inhabiting before. A world composed of nothing but sensation. He was keenly aware of the small of Lindsey's back, the slight concave where his hand rested; he was painfully aware of her palm merged with his; he was bewilderingry aware of the occasional brush of her thighs against his. He was also aware of wondering if people were watching them and, if so, did they think them father and daughter? Or, worse, did they think him an old fool? On this last score, Walker told himself that he was just ultrasensitive because of Dean's affair.

  Lindsey, too, was inundated with feelings. The hair at the nape of Walker's neck felt soft and silky beneath her hand, while the hand that held hers felt solid and strong and big. And then there was the brush of his thighs against hers—intimate, yet not intimate, socially proper, yet bringing to mind things forbidden on a public dance floor.