An Act of Persuasion

by Stephanie Doyle

  “Anna, today has been lovely. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Actually I was going to—”

  “I’m exhausted. I’m sure you are, too. So, I’ll leave you to rest alone. I’m convinced that sleeping was so difficult for you last time because the bed was too small. We won’t have that problem with the new one.”

  He bent down and kissed her firmly, but briefly, on the lips then headed away from her before she finally got the chance to say what she wanted.

  “But I think I want to have sex with you.”

  The empty hallway, however, didn’t respond.

  *

  BEN WALKED into his home office and saw the couch waiting for him. He imagined how good it would feel to get off his feet and close his eyes and lose himself to sleep. It had been a good day today. He’d definitely felt as though progress had been made, especially when she’d agreed to the larger bed.

  And, for a moment, when she’d looked at him then at the bed, he imagined that she was seeing them in it together in the near future. Maybe not precisely the way he did, with him above her and inside her, pinned to the mattress so that she would never think about leaving him again.

  No, he doubted she would know how desperately he wanted to possess her. Instead, he thought she imagined them as an ordinary couple, as two people who belonged in the same bed, which was a good thing.

  When he’d left her with nothing more than a kiss, had that been disappointment in her eyes? Had she expected him to make a move on her? After all, he’d flat out told her he wanted her and he’d seen the reaction in her eyes when he had.

  Maybe she thought he intended to go inside her apartment with her. Hell, maybe she’d intended to do the asking herself but he’d cut her off.

  The idea brought a smile to his lips. If he’d left her a little…deflated…then that might be a good change for them. He’d made his feelings regarding sex known. Maybe it was time for Anna to start admitting that she wanted him, too.

  The way she’d looked at him…then at that large bed…

  Of course, Sharpe had interrupted them and removed all thoughts of bed-sharing. Ben walked over to his desk, deliberately holding off succumbing to the couch and its temptation for now. He saw the folder on his desk, the one he knew contained Anna’s birth certificate.

  He had to believe that whatever business Sharpe wanted to discuss with him revolved around Anna and her missing parents. Maybe Mark had found something and wanted to let Ben know about it first, as a courtesy.

  Ben doubted it, though. He had firm suspicion that Mark’s first loyalties were to Anna. Whose wouldn’t be? The woman practically inspired it with her spirit. In seconds she’d managed to make a connection with Mark’s daughter that he doubted Sharpe had been able to do in weeks of communication.

  Ben looked again at the birth certificate and thought about the woman who had come from a childhood like Anna’s. He thought about the heartbreaking stories she’d told him of her time in foster care. Stories she didn’t see as heartbreaking, instead simply accepted them as something that had happened to her. Even now a surge of rage bubbled in him when he thought of some punk-assed kid who was bigger than she was, holding her down and hitting her face so hard he broke her nose.

  Ben took a breath and controlled the urge to seek out that kid and return the favor. He knew she wouldn’t appreciate it.

  Now she wanted to go further into her past. She wanted Ben to take her deeper into where her life had truly started and where it all went wrong. It was probably time to admit, at least to himself, that it wasn’t a place he wanted her to go.

  Especially now. With so much of her life in turmoil between him and the baby. The house had been the first step to giving her the security and comfort he wanted her to have in life. Unraveling the truth about her past now might shake that foundation of security at a time when she needed it most.

  He was supposed to protect the mother of his child. Not upset her. It was self-serving logic. He knew it, but he didn’t care. He would talk to Sharpe tomorrow about stopping the search for Anna’s parents.

  Ben opened a drawer and put the certificate away where he couldn’t see it.

  Then he made his way to the couch and released a deep sigh as he laid down. His body would finally get the rest it needed. Fatigue was still his mortal enemy, sometimes sneaking up on him and hitting him like a fist in the gut. The doctors told him it would most likely be a year before he was truly back to normal. He could see how right they were.

  Hell, the sad truth was if Anna had wanted him to make a move today, he doubted he could have made the event very memorable. No, this was better. Let her wait for it, the way she made him wait for it.

  Letting his arms and legs relax and his eyes close, Ben’s last thought was that it was good to be alive.

  And better than being alive was wondering what might happen the next time he saw Anna together with the king-size bed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “NICE OFFICE,” MARK COMMENTED as he sat in Ben’s guest chair. “But why here and not in the heart of the city where all the action is?”

  “I don’t need the flash of Center City. This is a nice, growing community and it serves its purpose.”

  Right, Mark thought. Ben was always about efficiency. He’d never had much use for the extras. That included small talk.

  “So I’ll get right down to it. Anna told me that she gave you her birth certificate.”

  “She did. I’m glad you brought that up. I know I asked this of you before, but now I’m being serious when I say I would like you to stop your investigation. She’s trusted me with the task. I’ll take it from here. There is no point for you to waste your time.”

  Mark should have been surprised, but he wasn’t. He’d already told Ben he had no plans to back off, but that had been before Anna brought Ben into the investigation. She, too, probably would prefer that Mark drop the matter and let Ben handle it. There was no doubt the man was completely capable of finding out whatever Mark would find out.

  Sitting in this office, he felt a little silly now. He’d actually come here to offer a wager. It’s why he hadn’t wanted to discuss it in front of Anna when he saw her at the furniture store. Seemed a little insensitive to use the woman’s past as a challenge between him and Ben.

  Only it had been months since he’d felt anything remotely challenging work-wise. Even the cases he took on seemed like no-brainers to him. He’d been polite when the officers had thanked him for his uncanny work in identifying clues and bringing new eyes to the case, but the truth was he thought whoever had worked those cases to begin with must have been fairly incompetent—or at best, overworked and under-observant.

  No, the only real challenge Mark had faced since returning to the states was trying to win the affection of a teenager who hated his guts. So that wasn’t proving to be very satisfying. Since nothing got his juices going like matching wits with Ben, Mark thought he might use Anna’s situation for his own purposes. His conscience was appeased as long as Anna got the information she wanted. He figured no harm, no foul and a win-win for both of them.

  Only Ben wanted him off the case. And, Mark realized, he felt like a jerk. “I haven’t changed my mind on this.”

  “Look, Sharpe, it’s pointless to have us both looking into the matter. I’m the more obvious choice to do so—”

  “You are?”

  “I’m her… We’re going to be… What I mean is—”

  “As far as I can see you’re still only her baby daddy and nothing else,” Mark said. “She gave the case to me first.”

  “You have a business to run. You should be taking cases that pay.”

  “I can do both. Besides, you know how I feel about Anna.” Mark watched a muscle in Ben’s jaw tick and he took an inappropriate amount of pleasure from it. After all, needling Ben was almost as fun as competing against him.

  “No. Tell me. Exactly how do you feel about my Anna?”

  Mark flashed the older ma
n a smile. “She’s my friend. My only friend in the states really. And because, for some reason, she seems to like you, I won’t upset her by letting her know you referred to her as my Anna. I mean, really. Dude, it’s the twenty-first century.”

  “If you won’t back off, then why did you come here today?”

  “I thought we could… Well, it seems kind of stupid now.” Mark shrugged. “I thought maybe we could bet.”

  “Bet? On what?”

  “First man to find Anna’s parents.”

  Ben actually laughed but it wasn’t a very funny sound. “You are unbelievable, Sharpe. You’re that desperate to prove you’re the better spy that you think we could race against each other to uncover Anna’s past?”

  Was that what Mark was doing? Was he trying to prove something to himself? To Sophie?

  “Look, it was a bad idea. I just thought— I need something. Something I can…win.”

  “Still not getting along with your daughter?”

  “You met her. You heard her.”

  “She’s a teenager.” Ben offered the words as if they were explanation enough.

  “She is and she isn’t.”

  Mark thought about the performance he’d attended a few nights ago. The mayor of Philadelphia had hosted a fund-raiser and had asked Sophie to perform along with a few singers and dancers. Mark had insisted on accompanying her as a way to better understand the life she was living.

  He had sat with Marie backstage and watched as, once again, Sophie did something to the piano he’d never seen another performer do. She didn’t play the instrument. She brought it to life. She didn’t make music. She told amazing, complex and wonderful stories.

  When it was over, she’d graciously greeted the mayor and many of his guests. Answering the questions about her gift, her age and how she kept up with her schooling and her plans for the future. She behaved like…a professional.

  A grown-up woman in a girl’s body. When he’d driven them home, he’d tried to pay her compliments to that effect. It seemed ridiculous to say, since he’d had nothing to do with raising her, but he’d been proud of her. Not only her talent, but her poise, as well.

  She hadn’t responded to any of his comments and Mark was starting to feel as if he would never get through to her.

  “I heard her play once,” Ben said now. “She has a spectacular gift. You didn’t say anything about that when you mentioned you came back for her.”

  “I’m still coming to grips with simply being a father, let alone the whole prodigy thing.”

  “You understand you need to give it time. A father-daughter relationship can’t happen instantly. At least, I would imagine that it can’t. I might have better advice for you if the baby is a girl.”

  Mark nodded. It didn’t matter that Ben didn’t have a child yet, his advice made sense. Of course Mark needed to give it time. That’s what he was doing. Inch by inch. He accepted every invitation the Warrens offered for dinner or lunch. He took every opportunity to be with Sophie alone when her grandparents didn’t give her a choice to refuse his company.

  He tried to be funny, he tried to be open-minded. He tried to be a cool dad. What teenager didn’t want the cool dad?

  His apparently.

  “Of course, if you push her too fast, it will only make her dig her heels in harder.”

  Mark listened to the words he’d said to Ben only a few weeks ago and knew Ben repeated them intentionally. “You think you’re being funny, don’t you?”

  “I’m not attempting to be humorous…although I won’t lie and say it didn’t feel damn good to give you some of your own medicine. Because while you weren’t wrong, now you know how I felt.” Ben seemed to lose the icelike facade he’d always maintained around Mark. It was as if he acknowledged their common bond. And they were finally talking to each other, man-to-man. “Patience used to be our strong point, you know.”

  “Tell me about it. I could sit for hours in an unventilated room with temperatures outside spiking over a hundred degrees and simply watch a window across an alleyway on the off chance someone would show up for a meeting. Now I feel like I can’t stand being in my own skin for five minutes at a time. When I’m with Sophie I have this ridiculous urge to pick her up and start running without having any idea where we’re going. God, I can’t believe I said that out loud.”

  And that he’d told Ben, of all people, how crazy he was feeling was the total kicker. Mark could only imagine how uncomfortable his former superior was right now with what had been a healthy dump of too much information.

  Except when Mark looked at him, Ben didn’t look uncomfortable. Instead he looked…sympathetic.

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I want to do most days with Anna. It’s…unnerving. Unfortunately, we find ourselves with two people who wouldn’t particularly appreciate that experience.”

  Mark could see that, maybe for the first time, Ben understood what drove Mark to compete with him. They were more alike than they were different.

  “It was ridiculous to use Anna’s past as some kind of wager between us.”

  “It was.”

  “Are you going to tell her?”

  “No. You weren’t trying to be insensitive. You’re simply having trouble adjusting to civilian life. And the reason why you’re making this adjustment doesn’t seem to be giving you a break.”

  “A break? Try not a crack. She hasn’t given a smile or word freely. I don’t know what the hell to do because I don’t think she understands that this is about more than only letting me into her life. This is about us making a life together.”

  “What are you saying? You want that room you’re making for her in your home to be permanent?”

  Mark could hear the surprise in Ben’s voice. Because it was one thing to have a relationship with his daughter. It was a completely different thing to want to finish raising her. Did he want that? Had Dom and Marie been fifteen years younger and in better health, would he have been okay with letting Sophie stay with them while he continued to watch her life from the sidelines? He’d like to think he wouldn’t have. He’d like to think that no matter what, now that Helen was gone, it was time for Sophie to be with him.

  “She might not have a choice. You haven’t met her grandparents. They’re in their seventies and not in very good health. I might be the best option for Sophie at this point.”

  “Then you’ll figure it out. If you want it to work as badly as I can see you do, then you’ll make it happen. You’re not a quitter and I’ve yet to see you not get what you want.”

  “Thanks.” That meant a lot coming from Ben.

  “Will you back off Anna’s case and let me handle tracking down her parents?”

  Mark could have accepted what Ben had said earlier. It didn’t make sense for both of them to look for the same thing. He had no doubt both of them would find whatever information was out there to learn. They were too good at what they’d done in their former lives to not be able to handle a basic request for information, even with an obstacle like false names.

  But something in Ben’s expression made Mark pause. Despite playing it cool, Ben wanted him to back off. Badly. This was more than suggesting Mark would be wasting his time by doubling Ben’s efforts.

  “Will you tell me the real reason why you want me to back off?”

  Ben tilted his head. “No.”

  Wrong answer. It meant Ben had an agenda and, for Anna’s sake, Mark couldn’t live with whatever consequences came from that agenda. At least he could provide Anna with some neutrality. For everything she’d done for him, he felt as though he owed her the simple courtesy of finding her parents.

  “Sorry. I made a promise to her. She asked me to find them. I’m going to find them.”

  “You won’t. Not before I do.”

  “I’ve had the birth certificate for weeks longer than you’ve had it. What makes you think you’ll beat me to the information?”

  “A hunch.” Ben shrugged.

  “Okay, well, w
e said no bet. But I don’t see anything wrong with using your little statement there as…motivation.”

  “You’re pathetic, Sharpe.”

  “Don’t I know it?”

  Mark left the office feeling lighter than when he’d gone in. For a few moments there, it had felt as though Ben were a friend. There simply to listen and let Mark get some of the shit he was feeling about his relationship with this daughter off his chest.

  Two old adversaries who could see how their lives had changed and take comfort from each other in knowing that neither would forget the past. Maybe Anna wasn’t his only friend in the states after all.

  *

  “CAREFUL, CAREFUL.”

  “Lady, we got it.”

  Anna stared down the mover and he stared back hard. Considering he was holding up one half of her dining-room cabinet, she let him win. “Sorry. I’m a little anal about this stuff.”

  “Really,” he muttered. “Couldn’t tell.”

  Deciding it best to avoid the surly moving man who was sweating through his blue uniform shirt, Anna left the dining room and made her way to the living room where Ben was carefully measuring the wall.

  “Geezus, Tyler, pick a spot in the middle and hang it up.”

  Ben turned to give Mark a scorching glare. “To be properly centered I need the length of the wall.”

  Mark walked over and put his finger on a spot. “Trust me. That’s the middle of the wall. I’m a crack shot and have an excellent sense of topography. I know where the middle is.”

  Ben continued his measurements. “If you would like to be useful, I’m sure there are other pictures that need to be hung.”

  “There are. Upstairs in her room. But, nut job that you are, you won’t let me in her bedroom.”

  “There is no reason for an employer to be in his employee’s bedroom. Yes, while I concede that I am, in fact, calling the kettle black, it doesn’t change that I’m right. You stay downstairs and out of my way.”

  Mark turned toward her. “Anna, will you talk to him?”

  Anna smiled and watched as Ben finally tapped in the nail to hang her favorite painting. It was a print, not an original, but it was signed and numbered and she considered it her first big art purchase. A man and a woman in formal dress dancing on the beach. Very romantic.