He might be headed for med school.
Right. He loved his kids. His wife was torturing him, but he loved his kids.
He took a deep breath. He loved his wife as well. They had lost something, and what they had lost might have been his fault. Was his fault—in her eyes. But she wouldn’t take an apology for what he had done, much less a suggestion that she just might have driven him to his actions. And still…
He did love Julie.
Even if right now she was…
“The worst bitch this side of heaven or hell!” he muttered, sliding out of his car at last, his briefcase in hand.
He had barely stepped out of his car when Sam, their neighbors’ Saint Bernard, came loping around to the front of the house.
“No, Sam!” he shouted.
Too late. Sam came rocketing toward the car, jumping up to slam Jon against it. With his massive, sticky tongue, he licked Jon’s face from chin to forehead.
“Get down, you lunk!” Jon demanded, pushing at Sam’s gigantic barrel chest. Sam had enough dog spit to drown a human with a single lick. “Sam!”
His voice was firm and hard and Sam fell to all fours, wagging his lethal tail a mile a minute.
“Sam, Sam!” Mari Twigs, the skinny little twelve-year-old from next door who considered herself Sam’s master, came running into the yard. “Oh, Mr. Radcliff, I am so, so sorry!” she gasped.
He wanted to yell. He wanted to tell her to keep her moose-dog creature in her own yard, but somehow, he counted to ten. “Mari, get him home, huh?”
Mari nodded gravely. She clutched Sam’s collar. The dog started to drag her home, but she was still looking at Jon, giggling.
“Um, there’s just a bit of mud on your shirt, Mr. Radcliff,” Mari said. “Sam’s sorry though, really sorry.”
“Yeah, Sam’s sorry,” Jon muttered, heading into the house.
He banged on the front door, but no one answered. He could hear an old Doors number blaring from his daughter’s stereo system. He fumbled in his pockets for his keys, then realized the door wasn’t locked. Swearing, he entered his front hallway.
He tripped over his son’s Rollerblades, nearly falling himself, sending the Rollerblades sliding so that they knocked against the foyer table. The vase upon it crashed to the floor.
Still, no one appeared.
“Hello, I’m home!” he called out.
Right. As Christie would say, Like anyone cared!
Skirting the smashed vase, he made his way through the handsome sunken living room, the dining room, through the pantry, and into the kitchen. Julie was leaning against the refrigerator, sipping a glass of champagne. Millie Garcia—dragon woman—was seated at the kitchen table, and old Jack Taylor was at the sink, working at the cork of another champagne bottle. Ashley was cutting the napkins into tiny pieces with her new plastic scissors, and Jordan had his gerbils running around on the kitchen counter. No one seemed to notice Jon as of yet—the strains of “Light My Fire” weren’t quite as loud here, but they were still more audible than the sound of footsteps.
Jon discovered that he was almost uncontrollably angry. Whatever the hell had happened to a home being a man’s castle? Hell, he didn’t need a damned castle, just a quiet refuge from the storm.
He strode into the kitchen, tossing his briefcase on the table and loosening his tie. It probably didn’t help that the temperature seemed to be holding at an all-time high for December. “Hello, darling,” he told Julie, who looked startled and unhappy at his arrival. Julie would be thirty-eight on her next birthday; somehow, she still managed at times to look no more than a woman of twenty or so. She stayed very slim, and her face was a classic oval that never seemed to age. Her blue eyes had gone from an excited, exuberant bright shade to a dark and guarded one the second she had seen him. Her smile had faded. If there had not been others in the room, he was certain she would have moved away when he planted a quick kiss on her lips. As it was, he was certain that she’d cringed.
He could damned well guarantee she didn’t pucker in return.
But he didn’t care right then. He opened the refrigerator, drawing out a beer even as Millie offered him champagne.
“Naw, thanks, I’ll stick to the classless stuff in the can,” Jon told her. “What’s the celebration?” he asked, taking a long swallow and staring at his wife. God, he was starving. He’d skipped lunch to get to his meeting faster. Now one swallow of beer and he felt a strange buzz in his head. No food. He’d better be careful. The kitchen might smell of champagne, but there wasn’t the first scent of food within it.
Julie didn’t answer; she was swallowing champagne, a big swallow of it.
“Jon, your wife made her first half-million-dollar sale today,” Millie told him. “She sold the Pearsons the Trendmark house in the Gables.”
He arched a brow to Julie, feeling the strangest sinking sensation. Well, hell. He didn’t think that he was that much of a chauvinist. He wanted her to be a success, right? Or did he?
Honestly—no. So far, he’d thought that maybe she was holding on to him for the money. Not in a really greedy way—just holding on because his was the income that kept the home and the kids in good shape. His was the income that would send Christie—then Jordan and Ashley in good time—to college. And admit it, old buddy! he told himself. He had wanted her to need him for that income.
He lifted his beer can to Julie. “Here, here! Congratulations!”
He set his beer down. Not to kiss his wife again. One brush of cold lips was enough for the moment. He went to the table and slipped his arms around Ashley. She looked up from her industrious cutting at last. “Daddy!”
“Ash. Napkins aren’t for cutting, huh?” He kissed the top of her head. “Jordan—get the rodents out of the kitchen,” he said firmly.
His son, tall for his age, a nice-looking combination of him and Julie, with his green eyes and Julie’s light blond hair, looked up guiltily.
Jon glanced to Julie. His glance, he was certain, was condemning, and he just couldn’t manage to care that he was going to aggravate her further. “Julie, what’s he doing with the rats in the kitchen?” he grated.
She was going to hate him for that. She hated to be humiliated in any way in front of Millie. Millie was the next best thing to the Messiah in Julie’s eyes. He didn’t care. No matter what the celebration, the gerbils didn’t belong in the damned kitchen.
“They’re not rats, Daddy,” Ashley corrected, “they’re gerbils.”
“One and the same, honey,” Jon said.
“They weren’t hurting anything,” Jordan protested, eyeing him evilly.
Right. Jordan’s mother was the good parent, willing to overlook the small things.
“I love the gerbils, Daddy,” Ashley said.
“But you’re going to get gerbil poopies in your peanut butter sandwiches if you’re not careful!” Jack Taylor warned.
“Get them out of the kitchen, Jordan,” Jon said firmly.
Jordan obeyed. Ashley started to laugh, pointing at Jon’s shirt and jacket. “Daddy, you have marks all over you. Are those gerbil poopies?”
“No. It’s mad-dog muck,” Jon said.
“Mad-dog muck?” Ashley asked.
Even Jack Taylor was smiling then. “It does look like your latest client was a mountain lion out for blood,” Jack said ruefully.
Jon tried to smile. “Yeah, right. My last client was that Saint Bernard. Julie, haven’t you asked the neighbors to please keep that animal in their own yard?”
“I’ve asked them, Jon,” she said. Her tone was abrasive.
“Daddy, I like Sam in our yard!” Ashley wailed. Her eyes welled with tears. She stared at him as if he were planning to send her best friend away. Jordan suddenly swore as he dropped a gerbil. Jon snapped at him quickly. Before Jordan could apologize, a door slammed from elsewhere in the house. Jon frowned and started back through to the living room in time to see his elder daughter chasing out after the dark-haired kid who was hurryi
ng from her bedroom toward the front door.
“Christie!” he thundered.
She stopped. The dark-haired kid had already gotten out. Christie looked fearfully from the door to her father as if he were the worst possible nuisance imaginable.
“What!” she snapped out.
“What the hell were you doing in your bedroom with a boy?”
“Playing the stereo. I’ve got to go, Dad, I’ve—”
“Get back in here.”
“I can’t. He’s going to think—”
“Want to hear what the hell I’m thinking?” he demanded. His fists were clenched at his sides. He was about to blow a gasket. He had to get himself under control. “I think that I’d better not see a male coming out of that side of the house again, unless you want to find yourself grounded until your twenty-first birthday!” he raged at her.
Christie gasped. Good. He hoped that he was rattling her, damned hard. She had on too much makeup, and her little plaid skirt was too short. And she was too thin. She was dieting for her boyfriend, or so it seemed. All the cool girls wanted to be toothpicks.
“Mom knew I was in there with Jamie. We were just listening to music.”
“Just listening to music.”
“Mom knows enough to trust me.”
“I don’t want boys in your bedroom.”
“Why, Dad?” she demanded belligerently, hands on her hips. “Why can’t you just trust me in my own house with my own family in it? You just hate Jamie, and you just hate him because he’s different. What, Dad? You think I can’t sleep with a guy in a car, a park, an alley, somewhere else, anywhere else?”
He froze. His temptation was to walk over to his daughter and give her a sharp slap across the face.
He didn’t do it.
“Because this is my house, and you’re my daughter, and I’ve told you that you won’t have boys in your room, and that’s that,” he told her. “Because I damned well said so!” he added furiously.
His anger left him quickly. He felt weary, deflated. It wouldn’t work, he thought. She was just going to ignore him and go racing after her boyfriend, and then what was he going to do?
They stared at one another. Damnation, but she was another Julie. Her mother’s eyes seemed to stare at him as she defied him. She tossed back a length of her beautiful blond hair. Then she suddenly cried out, “I hate you, Dad. I hate you, hate you, hate you!”
Hate you…
God, did they all really hate him? What the hell had he done that was so very wrong? All he really wanted to do was love and provide for his family! He hadn’t erred that far; it had been damned miserable and he’d only looked for someone else back then because…
Julie hadn’t wanted him. Not then. At least, he hadn’t thought that she wanted him.
And his ego had been at stake.
Christie ran past him. He heard her bedroom door slam.
Millie and Jack came into the living room, Julie following quietly behind them.
“You’ve been home five minutes,” Julie said lightly, “and everybody’s happy.”
“I’m so damned sorry if I upset the gerbils,” Jon snapped.
Julie’s eyes were ice-blue with cool contempt.
“These kids can’t just do whatever the hell they feel like doing while you’re celebrating, Julie,” he said.
“They weren’t doing anything that terrible,” she grated back.
“Well, well, busy day!” Jack said, brushing aside the darkening words between them. Jack offered Jon a kindly smile. “We’re going to be getting out of your hair, Jon,” Jack added. “Let you have your home back.”
“It was a great sale,” Millie said, smiling as she gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Your wife made a really, truly, great sale!”
“You’re right, she did,” Jon heard himself saying.“So where are you two going? Such a great sale can’t have been fully celebrated already.”
Jack Taylor started to frown; Millie arched a brow. “Jon,” Julie began uneasily, “Millie and Jack were just on their way out—”
“That’s silly. Hey, we owe Julie a real celebration, right? We’ll go out somewhere great to dinner. How does that sound?” Jon demanded.
“No, no!” Jack protested.
“You and Julie should celebrate,” Millie said.
“Don’t be silly—trust me, Julie would be crushed if you didn’t come with us.”
He didn’t add that Julie would surely just as soon not celebrate with him.
As it was, Julie didn’t look thrilled; again, it didn’t matter. Jon walked around into the kitchen area, calling to his younger children. “Ash, Jordan, wash up, quick. We’re going to take Mommy out to dinner. Oh—Jordan, go call Christie. Tell her we’re taking Mom out.”
Jordan, hands filled with gerbils, frowned. Ashley jumped up, giving him a hug and kiss at last. “Good, Daddy. Can we go to Chuck E. Cheese’s?”
“Well, I’m not sure Chuck E. Cheese’s would be Mommy’s pick for a restaurant, and tonight is just for her. We’ll get to Chuck E. Cheese’s soon, though, I promise.”
“Right. Mommy will get to take you.” His wife’s dry voice sounded from directly behind him. He hadn’t realized that she had followed him back to the kitchen.
She backed off somewhat when he spun around. The absolute dry and bitter edge left her voice when she spoke. “Jon, this isn’t necessary. Jack and Millie bought me champagne. And I think that Christie will refuse to go. The rest of us aren’t really dressed, and you’re wearing paw prints.”
“Two minutes and I’ll have on a clean shirt and jacket,” he said curtly.
Julie looked as if she were about to protest.
“Mommy, Mommy, we’re going out special for you!” Ashley cried happily. “I’m so happy! It’s like your birthday.” She diverted Julie’s cold gaze from Jon’s eyes.
“Oh, yeah. Just like,” Julie said.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Jon told them.
“But, Jon—” Julie protested.
“Is there anything to eat in the house?” he demanded bluntly.
She flushed. “I was—I was busy with Pearson late. Making his offer, negotiating… I mean, it all happened in one afternoon. I didn’t get a chance to go to the store, and we were in sad shape to begin with. But I didn’t see it as a problem; I’d figured we’d order pizza in.”
“We’ll go out.”
“But it’s rather late—”
“I haven’t eaten all day. I don’t want a damned pizza. Decide where you want to go.”
He left her in the kitchen.
They went to an Outback Steakhouse, a mistake, because they had to wait almost an hour for a table. Even Ashley, who loved to hold the little buzzers that summoned each dining party when their table became ready, lost patience waiting for her little gray cube to jiggle.
Still, once they were seated and fed, dinner was decent enough. Or he was starving by then, one or the other. He wasn’t in a mood to cut fat—he was in a meat mood. He-man canned beer and red meat mood. If he clogged a few arteries that night, so be it. His steak was delicious.
Millie was a barracuda—Jon had long since discovered that—but oddly enough, she seemed to be on Jon’s side that night, though she was usually a bra-burning antimale militant. She was friendly throughout the meal—asking serious questions about the Bobo Vinzetti pizza case.
Maybe Millie was just trying to make sure that Jon and Julie didn’t have much of a chance to talk.
Maybe that was damned fortunate.
Christie had come along meekly enough. She ordered a small steak and actually appeared to be eating it rather than shoving the little pieces around on her plate. She did argue with him throughout the meal about driving to school with Jamie. She did it well—she set forward her facts. Jamie Rodriguez had gotten straight A’s in driver’s education. He drove a beat-up old car, but it was a beat-up old Volvo wagon, and he was extremely careful. “If you only took some time, Dad, you’d like Jamie. He’s a s
traight-A student all the way round.”
“Thank God someone is. It’s your last year, kid,” he told his daughter. “If you don’t get your grades up, you’re going to be out of the colleges you want.”
“I want to go to a state school,” she said firmly.
“Christie, you’re not looking at your opportunities.”
Again his daughter stared at him with her mother’s eyes. “That’s interesting. You want your wife to stay at home and blow noses but you want your daughter to be superwoman, a Harvard grad.”
“What’s the matter with Harvard—other than the fact that Jamie Rodriguez won’t be there?”
Christie stared at him—with her mother’s condemning eyes, once again—and then excused herself in an icy tone to go to the bathroom.
Ashley knocked her silverware on the floor and spilled a Coke. Jordan, who usually ate well, ordered a huge steak—and didn’t touch it.
The restaurant was really busy. It had taken a long time to sit, a long time to eat, and even a long time to get coffee.
By the time it was all over, Jon had just one thought.
The meal had been exhausting.
It was almost eleven before they were home. Julie was saying they’d never get out of the house in the morning. Ashley was going to be cranky and miserable.
“I told you, I’ll drive the kids in the morning,” Jon said irritably.
“Right. Well, good. Then I’ll only have them whining for the first hour of the day because they’re so damned overtired,” Julie said.
“They can’t possibly whine more than you do,” Jon muttered.
He braced himself, ready for her response. Amazingly, she didn’t have one. Maybe she hadn’t heard him.
They were in his car, and Ashley was sleeping on her lap. Christie and Jordan were bickering in the backseat.
He pulled up in front of their house. He started quickly from his own seat to come around and lift Ashley from Julie’s lap so that she could get out.
Julie was already out of the car, Ashley crushed to her breast. In quick, precisely whispered words, she told him what he could do to himself.
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