by Jane Gentry
No Kids or Dogs Allowed
Jane Gentry
To all the Airedales we have loved:
witty Snooker and goofy Daniel, darling Maggie I and clever Patrick, charming Dillinger the Thief and our rescued Maggie II, the best and sweetest of them all.
Almost all breeds have rescue committees for purebred dogs who need new homes. Call the American Kennel Club headquarters in New York City and ask for adoption and rescue information.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Chapter One
Elizabeth Fairchild gave her daughter an exasperated look and tried to remain calm.
“It is too damned hot for this,” she said.
It was the first of October, and Philadelphia sweltered in unaccustomed heat. Elizabeth twisted her heavy black hair into a bun and skewered it with a pencil. Damp tendrils escaped and tickled her nape. City traffic rumbled outside, and her daughter, Cara, rumbled inside, and that was the trouble with being a CPA with an office at home: there were no secretarial buffers to shield you from the intrusions of the real world.
She bent her head over her papers, hoping to discourage Cara’s attention. “I am trying to work, Cara. Go away.”
“You always have a reason not to discuss it,” said Cara, who was thirteen and knew everything. “Why won’t you admit it? You need a man.”
“I do not need...” began Elizabeth, and heard her voice scaling up toward the E above high C. Then she stopped and regrouped and said in a more normal tone, “I will not discuss this, because it is absolutely none of your business. Don’t you have homework?”
“You don’t even date,” said Cara, perching on the edge of Elizabeth’s desk. “It’s not normal.”
“Go away, Cara.”
“Well, you need sex,” said Cara. “Everybody does.”
Oh, God! thought Elizabeth frantically. How would she know about that? Then she stifled her panic. Cara attended the Harkness School for Girls in Philadelphia. The only boys she saw were in strictly supervised environments, unseductively clad in flannel slacks and school ties and sedate, blue wool blazers. There was no cause for hysteria. Yet.
Cara continued relentlessly. “Vonnie Chrysler’s mother said so.”
“Vonnie Chrysler’s mother has been married five times,” said Elizabeth, “which I think indicates a nearly fatal capacity for self-delusion.” She tried to close the subject by turning back to her work.
Cara thought about this. “You talk funny sometimes.” Then she begged, “Won’t you even look at him?” She was pleading on behalf of her history teacher, over whom her entire class was swooning.
“Certainly not,” said Elizabeth. “Really, Cara. Look at him? You make poor Mr. Salvini sound as if he’s in a shop window, up for sale.” She recalled last year’s history teacher. Cara had been enamored of him, too. She was too young to realize that interesting men were very rare. Last year’s teacher had hair like James Dean—Elizabeth remembered wondering if it had been artfully arranged not to look artfully arranged. No real human male had hair like that.
“You have to at least talk to him,” Cara said. “I told him we had swords and letters and stuff from the Civil War, and we could show them in class. Is that okay?”
Surely Cara’s attention was diverted by this new topic. Elizabeth relaxed a little. “Sure,” she said, determined to keep the wind blowing in this direction. “We’ll get them out after dinner.”
“And after you just talk to him, you could maybe go out,” said Cara earnestly. “Dad wouldn’t care if you just dated somebody. I mean he does sometimes.”
“What I do, except with respect to you, is none of your father’s business anymore,” said Elizabeth. “Just as what he does isn’t any of my concern. We’ve been divorced a long time, Cara.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Cara earnestly. “I mean, even if you and Dad did decide to get back together, he wouldn’t care if you went out with Mr. Salvini.”
“We are not ever getting back together, darling. What gave you that idea?”
“I know you’re not. You told me. That’s why I want you to just talk to Mr. Salvini. Okay?”
Cara continued her impassioned appeal until the phone rang. Elizabeth sighed and lifted the receiver to her ear.
The caller was Miss Edwarda Westcott, headmistress of the Harkness School.
Cara quietly and rapidly disappeared.
A few minutes later Elizabeth, much annoyed, concluded her conversation with Miss Westcott. Miss Westcott had done all the talking and had requested, in a voice which brooked no refusal, a conference at 8:00 a.m.
Elizabeth went to the head of the stairs to summon the transgressor.
“Cara!”
No answer.
“Cara!”
Still no answer.
She went downstairs and out into the yard. Cara was industriously weeding a flower bed.
“Cara,” said Elizabeth. “Who is Melody Riker, and why is Miss Westcott calling me about her?”
“She’s this stupid girl at school,” said Cara sullenly. “I hate her.”
“I understand she’s new this year. It’s only October. How could you learn to hate her in four short weeks?”
“She’s a total dweeb,” said Cara. She leaned on the trowel and looked glum.
“Why’s she a dweeb?” asked Elizabeth patiently.
“She feels like she’s just going to die if she doesn’t answer every single question in class, all day,” Cara said, insulted by the mere idea. “It’s so gross. All the teachers just lo-o-ve her. She thinks she’s so cool, and she’s not.”
“What are you doing that would make Miss Westcott want me to have a conference with her parents?”
“Nothing.” Cara saw the look on Elizabeth’s face and said it again, earnestly. “Nothing. Honest, Mom. I don’t even talk to her.”
Cara, unsettled by her mother’s suspicious scrutiny, scooted on her bottom until she was hidden by some shrubs and began to chop at a new set of weeds.
Elizabeth returned to her desk and reached for the school directory. Riker. Riker. The name sounded familiar. Maybe they’d been introduced at the first PTO meeting. She shook her head. She couldn’t put any faces to the name.
Well, they were new, after all, and she could hardly be expected to remember everybody. She thumbed through the pages to the Rs and found the Riker entry. Melody’s father had a local address. Her mother had a different name and lived in New York.
Elizabeth slapped the book onto the desk and stared at it thoughtfully for a few seconds. She’d only have to deal with the father; at least she wouldn’t be outnumbered. She leaned back in her desk chair and gazed out her open window at the maples in the front yard. They were beautifully red and gold—except for the two sturdy saplings that had sprung up of their own accord a few years ago. Those were still green. Obviously adolescent, thought Elizabeth, since they were deliberately stubborn and out of step. How in the world, she wondered, could Cara possibly be...
* * *
...How in the world could Melody possibly be in trouble for fighting? Steve wondered, astonished by Miss Westcott’s call. Not that he hadn’t done enough fighting in his own youth, at that Dickensian boarding school he’d attended while his parents were living it up at the embassy in Riyadh. But Melody, who got teary-eyed at the idea of a mousetrap and thought Disney’s Peter Pan was violent?
She wasn’t available for interrogation. She was across the street at her friend Caroline’s, squealing about whatever it is thirteen-year-old girls squeal about.
Which, he considered, picking up a stack of unread mail, was everything.
Another day in the life of a single father. Melody was turning him gray. It wouldn’t be long until there wasn’t a single strand of blond left in his thick hair, if all of her adolescence was as stressful as the beginning.
He propped his feet on his kitchen table and shuffled through the mail. There was the daily letter to Melody from her mother, which augmented the daily phone call at bedtime. Marian might be a long-distance mother, but she made every effort to be involved in Melody’s life. Steve wondered what Marian knew about Cara Fairchild—Melody told Marian nearly everything. He tucked the envelope behind the others.
Next up, A Chance to Win Ten Million Dollars! He’d had about one a week of those in the last year, thanks to magazines he’d bought from Melody’s Scout troop. Hadn’t won ten million yet. A package from his publisher, containing fan mail; letter from his agent, asking if he wanted to be the keynote speaker at a science fiction convention; a letter from the IRS. Damn it, they kept sending the same letter over and over and over and he was tired of responding to it.
He tossed it into the trash, along with the chance to win ten million, and went to his office to work on the book he was writing, last of a series of five. The book was due in three weeks, and he was behind schedule. And thanks to Melody, tomorrow morning would be lost to labor, since he had to spend a long unpleasant stretch of time consulting with the Fairchild kid’s parents.
In addition to his more important concerns, in two hours he had to come up with something for dinner. Melody was tired of pizza, Chinese, Tex-Mex and fast-food hamburgers. And to tell the truth, so was he; they’d been ordering out nearly every night for a month. For a man who’d lived alone for much of his life, he was unreasonably inept in the kitchen. Maybe he’d buy a cookbook and a couple of decent pots and pans. He’d never much liked to cook, but he liked to eat. And so did Melody. Definitely time to learn something about that alien technology looming menacingly from the wall labeled Oven.
Spaghetti. He could cook spaghetti with reasonable Oscar Madison-like facility. After he looked up the Fairchild entry in the school directory, he’d to go to the store. He stuffed the mail he hadn’t thrown away into one of his many junk drawers and made a list: spaghetti, sauce, hamburger. And as an afterthought: wine, ice cream and get a check cashed so Melody would have lunch money. He hoped, with a niggling feeling of guilt, that the Harkness kitchen cooked better than he did.
Oh, well. She seemed to be growing nicely on what he’d been feeding her. Unless her present unpleasant change of personality was due to some kind of malnutrition.
* * *
Miss Westcott had been headmistress of the Harkness School for twenty-five years. She looked deceptively pliable, with her matronly figure and her curly gray hair, because she had the self-confidence of a neurosurgeon and the command presence of Julius Caesar. Her laser glare had been known to reduce senators, combat generals and captains of industry to mumbling incoherence in twenty seconds flat.
Elizabeth had passed under the stern Westcott jurisdiction, herself. Consequently, she hesitated outside the closed office door for a few seconds, stifling a feeling of schoolgirl panic.
No conversation came from behind the old oak door. Great. Melody’s father hadn’t yet answered the summons, and Elizabeth would have to face the dragon alone.
She tapped on a dark wood panel, opened the door and stepped inside.
A tall man stood as she entered. Steel gray eyes met her green ones and locked there for a short, electric second. Then his lids narrowed and his thick blond brows lifted slightly to acknowledge an instant, undeniable and mutual attraction.
Now there, she thought, is an interesting man. He had a long, straight Yankee nose and a long, straight flexible mouth and a long, lean tan face which made his hair seem even blonder than it really was. His hair did not look artfully arranged. It looked as if he had toweled it dry, combed it into place and commanded it to stay put.
Her back was turned for an instant as she moved past him to an empty chair. She felt a delicious prickling at the back of her neck: he was indulging in the kind of frank male inspection which had indicated aroused interest since Adam had first caught sight of Eve.
Elizabeth tossed her head like a flirtatious girl and sent a froth of black curls skimming across her shoulders. It was an automatic reaction to his attention, as unplanned as blinking. She was astonished at herself. With an effort she collected her wits, sat down in one of the burgundy leather wing chairs that faced Miss Westcott’s desk and turned to speak to him.
“You must be Steve Riker,” she said.
“And you’re Elizabeth.” He smiled and stepped forward and took her hand.
Afterward Steve could hardly recall the ritual politeness or the smile. But he remembered, with uncanny clarity, the sight of her, the sound of her husky voice, the small soft hand which was so warm in his own. The slight enchanting apricot flush, which heated her cheeks as he touched her, freed an essence of autumn air and sweet, late-summer flowers. She wore a dress the color of a Southern sea, which reflected luminously in her dark-lashed green eyes.
And no wedding ring.
God bless Melody, he thought, for being an intractable adolescent twit. He returned the hand to its bemused owner and said, “I understand we have a problem.”
“I am sorry about that,” said Elizabeth, looking into the penetrating gray eyes and liking what she saw. Liked the entire package, basically. Liked the eyes and lean brown face and the long legs. Liked the tweed jacket and the broad shoulders in it and—yum—liked the unseductive, straightforward, no-nonsense smell of the after-shave which she caught as he leaned forward to take her hand. Well, she mustn’t act hypnotized.
“I gather that Melody has given your daughter quite a bit of trouble,” said Steve.
“Miss Westcott told me it was the other way around,” Elizabeth said. “As a matter of fact, I got the idea that their little feud was upsetting the entire school.”
The door behind them swung open and Miss Westcott came in, breathing fire.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “it is. And something has to be done about it. They have somehow managed between them to force every child in the Lower School into one faction or the other. I had two eight-year-olds fistfighting on the lacrosse field yesterday. Fistfighting. At my school.”
Elizabeth took a deep breath and moved nervously in the big, uncomfortable chair. “But Cara told me that she and Melody don’t even speak to each other.”
“They don’t,” said Miss Westcott grimly. “But everybody else does, with insults and catcalls too various to relate. I have assigned so many detentions that the Lower School is beginning to resemble a juvenile incarceration facility.”
“Has the school counselor talked to them?” asked Elizabeth tentatively.
“Yes,” stated Miss Westcott, “and I commend her efforts. The girls merely reiterate that they don’t like each other and give vague, specious, undeterminable reasons for their rancor. Why they do not like each other is not at issue. This is a matter of plain bad manners, which we, as of this minute, will refuse to tolerate.”
She leaned forward and punctuated her words by tapping on the desk with a cut-glass paperweight, which she held in her hand.
“As of today they will be assigned together in everything. In the dining room, in the classroom, on the playing fields and in the chapel. Every sport, every project, every social occasion. They will succeed together or they will fail together. For every unkind word that is uttered or uncivil act that is committed on the behalf of either girl, by any party whatsoever, Melody and Cara will receive a detention. I am going to do away with this idiocy before it infects the Upper School, too.”
Steve cleared his throat. “Uh. I can see the
justice in trying to force them to bridge a chasm that they’ve created, but what if it doesn’t work?”
Miss Westcott speared him with an icy, slivered glare. “It simply does not matter what they think of each other. What matters is that each girl learns to exhibit common courtesy and intelligent self-control upon every occasion. It is our job to enforce good manners, and we intend to offer every opportunity for them to be displayed. It is your job to teach good manners, and how you do it is your own affair.”
She stood. “It is Tuesday. Next Tuesday is Parents’ Night. We will discuss our progress then. The girls will be waiting for you on the Upper School steps this afternoon after their detention. You may pick them up there.”
She set the paperweight down with a thump and left the room.
There was a turgid silence. Finally Steve said, “I haven’t had an interview like that since I was in the Army and two of my men got drunk and tore up a whorehouse.”
Elizabeth shook her head slowly. “I simply can’t imagine Cara with the kind of personal magnetism that would mobilize half the school.”
“Or Melody, either.” Steve gathered his long legs underneath him and stood. “Why don’t we go get some coffee and discuss our mutual confusion?”
She tilted her head to smile into his eyes and took his breath away. Her polished ebony hair curled enticingly around her face; her emerald silk dress clung discreetly to her alluring curves. Milk white pearls nestled against the shadowed hollow of her throat—a hollow just made for the touch of a man’s lips, for the slight gentle flicking of his tongue.
He didn’t particularly want the coffee. What he really wanted was a long, slow, deep, soul-stirring kiss. And after that he wanted—suddenly he felt short of oxygen. What he wanted didn’t bear thinking about. Not in this light and on this occasion. With an effort he forced his wayward libido to behave itself and realized she’d been speaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you say?”
“Coffee,” she told him. “There’s coffee here. Do you want some?”
Steve looked across the big room and saw a mahogany sideboard bearing a plate of cookies and a silver coffee service. Crystal lamps burned softly on each end, and cups and saucers gleamed politely in the buttery glow.