He was tempted to take Thomas up on his offer. He really was tempted. He missed Trevor beyond belief and the daily phone calls to his son weren’t even coming close to filling the hole in his heart. But he couldn’t allow himself to give in to that temptation. As rotten as it sounded after accepting Thomas’s hospitality, he still didn’t trust the man. He would never put his son in a situation where he might be hurt.
Trevor craved a bigger extended family. Ginny and her family had disappeared from Trevor’s life when he was only six weeks old. As far as Trevor knew, he had no mother, no aunts, uncles or grandparents and he had developed the innocent tendency, born of youth, to latch on to the people who entered his life. Trevor had been heartbroken when he had to leave the hospital and the extended family he had made of the doctors and nurses.
Integrating Trevor’s life with doctors and nurses was unavoidable, but purposely thrusting Thomas and Sydney into his son’s life would be inexcusable no matter how much he missed the little boy. “Thanks for the offer, but it will only be for a few days, until the test results are back. I wouldn’t want to bring havoc to your home. It’s unbelievable what a five-year-old can do to one house.” He managed to smile as if he meant it. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to deprive Ma Bell of all the extra revenue she’ll be making in that time.”
“The offer is still open if you change your mind. This old house could use some excitement.” Thomas settled more deeply into the chair. “I’ve been after Sydney for years to get married and give me some grandchildren to spoil.”
Thomas’s voice had been teasing, but Ellis picked up a note of seriousness beneath the gentle kidding.
A flush of embarrassment swept over Sydney’s face. “I really don’t think it would be appropriate for me to get married and have a couple of babies just so you would have grandchildren.”
Ellis felt sorry for Sydney. If Thomas hadn’t abandoned Catherine Carlisle and their unborn child, he would have been a grandfather five years ago. “Sydney’s right, Thomas. Having a child to make someone else happy usually never works out.”
Ginny had gotten pregnant with Trevor because she saw the end of their marriage looming on the horizon. She hadn’t wanted to lose the way of life she had grown accustomed to. She had thought a baby would hold the marriage together, and she was partly right. Ellis never would have divorced the mother of his child. He believed firmly that a child needed a mother, and since he needed and wanted his child, the marriage was staying together. Ginny had been the one to initiate the divorce and the very substantial hole in his bank account. He hadn’t minded too much. He figured he had gotten the better part of the deal. He had gotten Trevor.
“Oh, I know that, Ellis.” Thomas turned his head in Sydney’s direction. “My daughter knows I’m kidding, but sometimes I do wish she wasn’t so damn picky.”
“Picky?” sputtered Sydney.
He nearly chuckled at the look of outrage on Sydney’s face. “Now, Thomas, a woman has the right to be a little picky when it comes to choosing a husband and a father for her children.”
“I really don’t appreciate your help, Mr. Carlisle, on the subject.” Sydney glared at her father, and he was positive that if Thomas could have seen her took he would have dived for cover. “I also don’t appreciate it, Dad, that you would bring up the subject of my lack of a husband and children in front of a stranger.”
“Ellis isn’t a stranger. He’s Cathy’s boy.” Thomas puffed out his chest in pride. “Besides, you already had two fine catches, but for some unknown reason you let them both go.”
He was positive Sydney was praying for the floor to open up and swallow her whole. Maybe he should be thankful that Thomas hadn’t taken an active part in his upbringing.
“Dad, I don’t believe in catching men or letting them go.” Sydney gathered up her papers and not so subtly slammed the folders down on top of each other. “Since you seem to want to talk sports, I’ll leave you and Ellis to converse to your hearts’ content.” She picked up the paperwork and headed for the door. “I’ll check in on you, Dad, before I go to bed.” She glanced at Ellis. “Give me a call if you need anything, Mr. Carlisle. Good night.”
Thomas gave a low whistle and a soft chuckle as soon as Sydney left the room and her footsteps could be heard going up the stairs. “That girl has a mind of her own.”
Ellis had already learned that much about her. Now he was learning more about her. “I think she was a little upset with you, Thomas.” He had a feeling she was more than just a little upset. Sydney had not only been embarrassed, she had been furious.
Thomas sat back in his chair and smiled. “That was the whole point, Ellis.”
“You actually wanted Sydney mad at you?” Maybe the doctors had been wrong. Maybe the accident had scrambled Thomas’s brain. Why would he want his daughter upset with him? From what he could tell, Sydney had been caring for her father since the accident. What in the world would Thomas have done without Sydney’s help all these months?
“No, I don’t want her mad at me. But I do want her to show a little emotion. Ever since the accident she’s been treating me like an invalid and tiptoeing around me as if I would break.”
Thomas had a point. Sydney did overprotect her father. But Sydney also had a reason for being so sheltering. “Can I make a comment as an impartial observer?”
“Shoot.”
Any man who goaded his daughter into showing some type of emotion should be strong enough to handle the truth. It really shouldn’t have mattered to him, but he had seen Sydney’s face when she had stormed out of the room. Thomas had hurt her, and hurt her deeply. “If you don’t want Sydney hovering around you like an invalid, stop acting like an invalid.”
Chapter 4
Sydney glanced from the closed door of the police station to the sky, searching for an answer. She squinted against the brightness of the sun, but didn’t receive any heavenly message. Somewhere between last night in the den, when she had left in a snit, and this morning, she had lost a page of life, or had missed some boat that she didn’t even know had been docking.
Her father had changed with the sunrise.
It was as though Thomas St. Claire had awakened to the world around him and decided it was time to get on with his life. Someone, or something, had snapped some spirit into him. Her instincts were telling her it had been Ellis. But how? What in the world could Ellis have said that she hadn’t already? She knew her father better than anyone. What could a stranger have said or done that would have pushed one of her father’s buttons?
All morning long she had been suffering from this really queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it had been Ellis’s presence that had motivated her father into rejoining the living. But why? There had only been one reasonable explanation. Ellis was her father’s son and Thomas knew it. Thomas had discovered his real son, his real flesh-and-blood child, and decided life was indeed once again worth living.
Made perfect sense to her, except for one small fact. This morning while they were at the medical lab giving their blood samples, her father had requested that Ellis also give a small sample so that a test could be done to prove he was not Ellis’s father. She had a feeling Ellis’s reluctant agreement came more out of fear her father wouldn’t have gone through with the blood sample needed for his son than from his own curiosity.
So she was back to square one, standing on the sidewalk outside the police station, where she had just escorted her father so he could visit the “guys.” It was the first time he had stepped foot into the brick building since the accident. She had seen the shocked yet smiling faces of men who were not only former colleagues but friends as well. Everyone had greeted Thomas with open hearts, offers of coffee and the teasing refrains about the world coming to an end. She had felt her father’s momentary surprise at such a greeting and then she had seen his smile. Satisfied, she had left him sitting in a place of honor, surrounded by friends and cradling a cup of coffee.
She should be delighted.
So why wasn’t she? Her gaze shot up the street and landed on the dark green Mercedes. Ellis’s car. Ellis had insisted on driving to the medical lab, three towns over. He had then offered to drop Thomas off at the police station and hang around town to do some shopping while her father visited with his friends. But she had declined his offer, feeling as if she were being pushed farther and farther out of her father’s life.
Instead of taking the few unexpected free hours to catch up on some work, she had insisted on coming to town with them. She was Thomas St. Claire’s daughter and if anyone was going to help him negotiate the sidewalks of Main Street it was going to be her, not Ellis.
She headed in the direction of Ellis’s car and noticed it was empty. He hadn’t waited for her to come back out of the police station. She hadn’t expected him to, so why did she feel so dejected? Ellis surely didn’t need her to show him where everything was in town. Everything a person could want or need was on Main Street. From the local bank, to Marclay’s Market, to the beer distributor. It was all there on one tree-lined street.
With a heavy heart that knew monumental changes were once again happening in her life and that she was helpless to stop or alter them, she entered the pharmacy to do her own shopping. She grabbed a red plastic basket and headed for the aisle containing shampoo.
She got as far as the second aisle. Her feet faltered at the sight of Ellis staring at a rack jam-packed with coloring books. The look of anguish on his face pierced her heart and touched her soul. It was the look of a father missing his son, his critically ill son. She watched as his hand slowly raised and touched the glossy cover featuring Winnie-the-Pooh. The trembling of his fingers tore at her anger and shredded it to pieces. How could she hold whatever was happening in her relationship with her father against Ellis? He was only trying to save his son’s life.
Her feet barely made a sound as she walked down the aisle and stood beside him. Ellis didn’t hear her as he continued staring at the coloring book. She could tell he wasn’t even seeing the brightly colored books. She had to say something to dissolve the sadness of his memories. “My favorite has always been Tigger.”
Ellis blinked, as if coming out of a dream, and glanced at her. A sad little smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Trevor received a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh from Santa when he was two. He still has the bear, and most nights Winnie’s one of the lucky ones who gets to sleep in his bed. The rule is, no more than three animals in bed at the same time.”
She smiled at the picture of a little boy snuggled under the blankets surrounded by an army of his favorite stuffed animals. “I’m sure it must be a hard decision for him to make every night.”
“It’s near impossible most nights.” Ellis reached and picked up the coloring book. “He now has a time limit on how long he has to decide.” The coloring book behind the one he had just taken had a picture of Tigger and some sad-looking donkey, whose name she couldn’t remember. Ellis reached for that one too. “Why Tigger?”
“Why not Tigger?” She wasn’t really up to date on the adventures of Pooh and his friends in the hundredacre woods and knew she couldn’t compete with the parent of a five-year-old. In some distant corner of her mind she just knew she had always liked Tigger better. A couple of her friends who had children were walking encyclopedias when it came to cartoon characters and television shows.
“I’ve always been partial to Eeyore, myself.”
Her memory kicked in; Eeyore was the name of the sad-looking donkey. “The grumpy donkey who eats thistles? Now that’s a strange choice.” She glanced at the two books in his hand. “Are you buying them for your son?”
“I’ll stop at the post office and overnight them to him. It will give him something to do instead of driving Mrs. McCall crazy all day. Trevor likes to keep busy.” Ellis selected a box of crayons and added them to his basket. “Did your father have any trouble getting settled in with his friends?”
“No, he’s over there acting like he’s been crowned king for the day.” She noticed that Ellis had called Thomas her father and not their father. She was dying to know what had gone on in the den after she left last night. It had been around eleven when she heard both her father and Ellis come upstairs. The room Ellis was using was directly next to hers and she had heard him moving around for hours after he shut the bedroom door. Ellis obviously didn’t require a lot of sleep. “Can I ask you a question?”
He gave her a curious look. “Sure, ask away.”
She noticed that he didn’t say he would answer it, just that she could ask. “What did you and my father talk about last night after I left?”
“Different things.” Ellis took a couple of steps to his right and studied a shelf of children’s books. “My mother mostly.”
She studied his hands as he flipped through the books to the ones at the back. He had strong, capable-looking hands. His fingers were long and slender with neatly trimmed fingernails. He had the hands of a pianist. He had the hands of a lover. She wondered what they would feel like sliding over her skin. With an involuntary gasp at such an outlandish vision, she jerked her gaze away from his hands and down to the bottom rack of books.
Ellis gave her a strange look before turning back to a book about the circus he had uncovered. “Why do you ask?”
She willed the blush staining her cheeks to fade. “I couldn’t help noticing my father has a different outlook on life this morning. He hasn’t been in town since the accident. After six months of refusing all visitors at the house, he decides he wants to visit his friends at the station. Seems a little sudden to me.”
Her gaze caught the edge of a book hiding behind a copy of Auto Mechanic Monthly. She pulled it out and smiled at the cover. It was titled The ABC’s of Jungle Animals. From Apes to Zebras. It sounded perfect for Ellis’s son. She hugged the book to her chest. “Did you happen to say anything to my father that might have motivated him to go visiting today?”
Ellis’s gaze landed on the book she was clutching to her chest His gaze seemed to linger there for an awfully long time before he raised it to her face. “There might have been something said.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Your father seemed a little concerned about how you are treating him.”
“Treating him! What do you mean, how I am treating him?” As far as she knew, she hadn’t mistreated her father. She had been bending over backward to make sure his life was as comfortable as humanly possible. Thomas St. Claire didn’t even have to think about something before she had gotten it for him. “What exactly did he say?”
“Relax, Sydney, your father just felt as if you were treating him like an invalid.”
“An invalid?” She hadn’t been treating him like an invalid. She had been handling him with love, a daughter’s love. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him if he didn’t want to be treated like an invalid, he should stop acting like one.”
“You didn’t!” Who did Ellis think he was, telling her father he was acting like an invalid? Thomas St. Claire was an invalid. He could act any way he wanted. If anyone ever had just cause for acting a little needy, it was her father. “Who gave you the right to say such a thing to my father?”
“He did, when he asked for my opinion. Your father doesn’t leave the house, except for an occasional doctor’s appointment or when you force him to sit out back on the patio. He refuses to see any visitors or to talk on the telephone. All he does is shuffle from bedroom to kitchen to den all day long. Your father acts like an invalid, thus you treat him as such.”
“He’s blind! How would you treat him?” It was obvious that her father and Ellis had done some serious talking last night. Talking that hadn’t included her. She was angry about being excluded from their conversation, but more importantly she was hurt. Her father had talked to Ellis, a complete stranger, about how his daughter treated him.
Ellis replaced the circus book and frowned at the pitifully small assortment of children’s books. “If
I had a father who I loved as much as you obviously love yours, I would probably treat him the same way you are treating Thomas. I would be overly protective and afraid to allow him to take any chances in case he got hurt.”
“Is that how you treat your son?” She had heard his words, but she had also heard the experience behind them.
“Your father is a full-grown intelligent man. He’s not a five-year-old little boy.”
She heard the truth behind his words. Her father and Trevor were two totally different people, with totally different needs. Her father obviously wanted her to stop being so protective. She could do that. It would be hard, but she could do it. His first step toward independence was this trip to the police station. She was sure there were going to be more to follow. It was time for her father to regain control over his life.
The book she clutched to her chest dug in at a tender spot. She lowered her gaze. “My father needs to start facing life again while little five-year-old boys need to learn their ABC’s.” She smiled and handed Ellis the book. “I believe your son would enjoy this one.”
Ellis reached for the book, read the title and smiled. “Thank you, Sydney. Trevor will love it.”
His smile did strange and frightening things to her heart. A small spark of warmth had started in the middle of her chest and slowly spread its way outward. How was it possible for the flexing of a few facial muscles to affect her heart so?
“Of course you realize that he will compare these animals to the ones he already has cluttering his room.” Ellis waved the book at her, but he continued to grin. “Lord help me if there’s an animal he doesn’t already have. I could be spending months tracking down a stuffed warthog or some other ghastly beast”
The heat in her chest spread farther. “Speaking of tracking down animals, do you want some company on your maiden voyage into the ark? The Two-By-Two shop can be a frightening experience for those weak at heart.” She had seen more than one poor parent or grandparent struggling out the door weighted down with creatures twice their size.
A Father's Promise (Intimate Moments) Page 6