Taboo Daddy

by Crowne, K. C.

  “What are you talking about?” My mind was bouncing all over the place. A part of me wanted to punch the man in the face to shut him up. The other part wanted to know more. “What meeting? Nobody told me about any meeting.”

  “You were sent a message,” Kepler said. “You chose not to respond.”

  “I didn’t get any message!”

  “You have one more chance,” the man warned me. “LM is willing to meet with you again Thursday afternoon. Same place as before. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I’d be there if I were you, Clark. If you decide not to show up, your family may not be as safe as you believe.”

  The men around the table pushed back their chairs and filed toward the door. I watched them go, feeling as if I’d stepped onto a movie set. Was this real life?

  How could my father have left me in this situation? I thought I’d known the man. The father I knew would never have put my child and me in danger.

  Had I really known him at all?

  * * *

  Did Jenna really have to leave? Tess asked.

  I rested the spoon I was using to stir the pasta sauce on a paper towel so I could more easily sign back to her. She was ready to go and stay with her friend, I said. We knew she wasn’t going to stay here with us forever, right?

  I guess. Tess scowled, and I had to smile. Part of using sign language effectively was communicating your emotions via facial expressions, and it was definitely an aspect of the language that my daughter had no trouble with. I could always tell what she was thinking. But I wish she could have stayed. She was fun to have around.

  Yeah, I thought so too, I agreed. At least she was able to come join us for dinner tonight.

  Tess brightened a little and nodded.

  Why don’t you pick out a pasta shape, I suggested, and Tess went to the cupboard to sift among the boxes.

  I was intensely relieved that Jenna had decided to join us for dinner. I hadn’t been at all sure she would, especially after she’d bolted. Something about our experience at Bergdorf’s seemed to have really shaken her, because she’d started packing as soon as dropped her off at the condo. By the time I’d come home from work, her bags had been ready to go and she’d informed me that she would be staying at Sara’s house for a few days.

  It was a terrifying thing to come home to after being threatened by Kepler. I wanted nothing more than to keep her where I could see her, to know that those people wouldn’t be able to hurt her. For a moment, I even thought about telling her everything that was going on. But I didn’t want to scare her, and I couldn’t force her to stay. She was so clearly uncomfortable.

  Dinner tonight would be an opportunity to check in. It would reassure me to see her, to verify with my own eyes that she was alright.

  It did disturb me a little that Tess seemed to be getting so attached. That was the one thing I’d really wanted to avoid. I didn’t want to put her through all the drama of watching me date someone, worrying over whether that person would become a permanent fixture in our lives. I didn’t want her to develop a relationship with Jenna only for her to leave. That was a heartbreak my daughter didn’t need and shouldn’t have to go through.

  Tess re-emerged from the cupboard with a box in hand. R-o-t-i-n-i, she spelled.

  Do you know the sign for it? I didn’t.

  Tess shrugged. She thought for a moment, held up an R shape with her fingers, traced a quick spiral in the air, and finished by tapping her fingers against her lips. Spiral R food.

  I laughed. Okay, I agreed, and imitated her sign back to her.

  The lights overhead flashed, indicating a guest at the door. I hadn’t told her that while she was searching for the rotini that the doorman had called up to announce her arrival.

  Jenna! Tess turned, dropping the box of pasta on the floor, and sprinted for the front door. So much for not wanting them to get attached, I thought ruefully as I picked up the box. It was way too late for that.

  Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, right? There was no reason the two of them couldn’t be friends, assuming Jenna was willing to have a preteen for a friend. After all, Jenna had been the one to help Tess redesign her room. They’d spent time together while Jenna was staying here, time without me. They had a history and a bond that didn’t really involve me at all. I didn’t have to be romantically involved with Jenna for her to be a part of my daughter’s life. It would be good for Tess to have a woman she could talk to about ‘girl things’ if she needed to.

  Jenna walked into the kitchen wearing the Bergdorf jeans.

  “You sent these to Sara’s house,” she accused. “Didn’t you?”

  For a moment I couldn’t respond. I’d forgotten how great she looked in them. All I could do was stare.

  Tess tugged at my arm. Sign!

  “Oh,” I said, signing as I spoke. “Sorry. Sorry, honey. She asked if I bought her those jeans.”

  Did you?

  I couldn’t very well lie about it. “Yes.”

  Were they a birthday present?

  “They were a thank you present,” I explained. “To thank her for the good work she did on your room.”

  Oh, Tess said. Can I get new jeans?

  “Maybe you can get new jeans. For now, set the table please.”

  Tess rolled her eyes dramatically, a skill she’d developed over the past few months, and went into the kitchen to collect plates.

  “You did send me the jeans,” Jenna said. “Why?”

  I shrugged, trying to give the impression that it wasn’t a big deal. “You liked them,” I said. “You looked good in them, and we had to leave the store before you could buy them. I just thought you ought to have them.”

  “Well,” she said, running her hands along the seams of the pants. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You were right about them,” she said. “They are better made than any pair of jeans I’ve ever owned. I’m not sure it’s enough to justify that price tag, but...well, they’re good jeans. I’ll admit that.”

  “You look good in them.”

  She bit her lip, a smile on her face. “Thanks,” she said.

  There was an awkward silence. I got the sense that she was just as confused about how to act with me as I was about how to act with her. Should we acknowledge the romantic and sexual tension that had been present between us, or were we going to pretend we didn’t feel it?

  I cleared my throat. “How are things at your friend’s place?” I asked. “Are you settling in okay?”

  “Oh.” She looked relieved at the innocuous change of subject. “Yeah. It’s nice to have the time to spend with Sara, even if it is for a messed up reason. It’s kind of like having a long sleepover together like when we were younger.”

  “That does sound fun.”

  “Yeah. Sara’s always good for a laugh. When I showed up at her place, she immediately took me out to the bodega on the corner and we bought three bottles of wine and a bunch of different cheeses. We had a tasting last night.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  “We watched old episodes of Sex and the City and laughed. It was kind of like being back in college. Great fun, but really silly.” She smiled. “It was just what I needed, honestly. Something I didn’t need to take too seriously.”

  I nodded. “You’ve been through a lot lately. Any word from the police yet?”

  “No. I think they’re also not taking things too seriously.”

  “Really? Their special investigative team didn’t turn anything up?”

  “I’m starting to doubt whether there even was such a team, to be completely honest with you,” she said. “They probably pulled a couple of guys who hadn’t seen the place yet over and had them check it out, and they called that a special investigative team.” She rolled her eyes, looking remarkably like Tess. “I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of faith in the cops to solve this one.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure my apartment break in i
sn’t exactly the worst thing the NYPD is looking into. Or maybe it’s just hard for me to believe that I could get an answer.” She paused and sighed, shrugging unhappily. “Maybe it’s hard to believe that my apartment will ever feel like a safe place again.”

  I ached to reach out and hug her, but I resisted. “It will,” I assured. “When terrible things happen, it can make you feel like your life will never be comfortable again. But we adapt, as much as it sometimes feels like we won’t.”

  “You’re thinking about your wife, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

  I nodded, a sad smile on my face. “After she died, for the longest time, I felt like I was sleepwalking through my days. It felt like I was just killing time on Earth, waiting until my stay here was over too. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to feel normal again.”

  “And do you?” she asked.

  “Not entirely,” I admitted. “I guess I never will completely. But someone told me once that eventually I’d go a whole day without thinking about her, and that’s happened. I get up in the morning, and my first thought isn’t the fact that she’s not here. And my family feels whole again. I’m able to be a father to Tess without constantly brooding about who’s not here with us.”

  “You’re healing, in other words.”

  “And so will you,” I promised.

  “What happened to me—it’s not like I lost a loved one. It was just a break in.”

  “It was a trauma,” I corrected. “It’s okay to feel messed up about it. It’s okay that it’s changed the way you feel as you walk through the world. You don’t have to be okay just because worse things have happened to other people. That’s not how this works.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Noah. And thank you for letting me stay here while I got my feet back under me.”

  “I really wish you’d come back,” I admitted quietly.

  She shook her head. “It isn’t a good idea,” she said, adding, “for either of us. We made that decision when we were both upset, when we’d both just left my house...but it’s not smart.”

  Tess came tearing back into the kitchen. Table’s set!

  “Okay,” I signed to her. “You stir the sauce while I make the pasta.”

  “What can I do?” Jenna asked.

  “You’re the guest,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “Of course I do. Come on, let me help.”

  Jenna can make the salad! Tess signed.

  I shrugged. “How about it?” I asked. “You want to make the salad?”

  She grinned. “I make a great salad. You two have no idea what you’re in for. Do you have olive oil and vinegar?”

  “Up there,” I said, pointing to a high cabinet.

  The rest of the meal preparation passed quietly. As for dinner itself, it was an enjoyable hour and a half. Jenna’s salad was incredibly delicious, and Tess and I both had second and third helpings. Finally, when the dishes had been cleared and the leftovers had been put away, I turned to Tess. “You’d better head off to bed,” I said, signing as I spoke.

  What? No! I want to stay up and hang out with Jenna!

  “It’s bedtime,” I said firmly.

  “I’m going home soon anyway,” Jenna said, making an effort to sign. She didn’t have many of the necessary words, but I go home was easy enough. She also knew enough about deaf culture by now to put on a sad face, indicating she was sorry to be leaving.

  But was she really? I had no idea. She was so hard to read. She’d run out of here yesterday like her tail was on fire, but we’d just enjoyed a meal together like good friends. I wanted to open a bottle of wine and keep her here for a while.

  I wanted to confide in her about everything that had been going on with LM, Kepler, and the men who had been threatening me. But I didn’t dare. The more she knew, the more at risk she was likely to be, and I couldn’t chance those men hurting her. I felt awful at the thought that they’d probably broken into her apartment to send me a message. She had been driven out of her home because of me. No, I couldn’t tell her anything.

  But she did feel like someone I could confide in. Preparing dinner tonight, I’d told her things about my grief process after my wife’s death that I’d never told anybody before.

  “Are you sure you won’t stay?” I asked her as Tess disappeared upstairs. “I have a really nice merlot I’ve been saving.”

  “I should go, Noah, really.” But she lingered.

  She wants to stay, I thought. Some part of her felt the same reluctance to part as I was feeling. I stepped closer to her, feeling a charge buzz between us. It was almost tangible, this connection. I could almost see it. “Stay,” I said quietly. “Just for an hour. Just stay.”

  “Noah…”

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t know what we are,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “And until I figure it out, I need to keep my distance.”

  I took her hand and pulled her close. She didn’t resist, and her body came flush against mine. Our eyes met. In that moment, I forgot my worry over Tess’s growing attachment to this new woman in our lives. I even forgot my fear that I was putting her in danger with my closeness to her, painting a target on her back that my enemies would try to exploit. All I could think about was her warm skin and her soft body.

  She looked up at me, total trust and abandon in her eyes.

  I bent to kiss her, moving slowly, giving her all the time in the world to pull away, but she didn’t resist. Instead, she rose on her toes to meet me.

  The taste of her was intoxicating. A thrill shot through every nerve in my body. I wanted more.

  She pulled back. “I have to go,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Then she was out the door, and I was standing in my front hall, my head spinning.

  Chapter 24

  Jenna

  “All right,” Sara said firmly. “Get up off the couch.”

  I opened my eyes and looked up at her. “What’s up?”

  “You’ve been lying there all day,” she said. “I know you’ve got a lot going on, but really, enough is enough. You can’t just lie around moping. We’re getting out of the house.”

  “I went out of the house yesterday,” I pointed out.

  “You went to Noah’s,” she countered. “And then you came back looking all frazzled and worked up, and you still haven’t told me what happened.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing happened.”

  “Uh huh,” she said skeptically. “Come on. We’ll go out and get some food, and you can tell me all about it.”

  “Out where?”

  “There’s a new sandwich place I’ve been wanting to try.” She kicked the couch cushion. “Come on, up. You need to get your mind straight.”

  I had been lying there brooding all day, so she was right, technically. I hadn’t even changed out of my pajamas. “Okay,” I agreed, getting to my feet. “Give me a minute to get changed and we’ll go.”

  Staying with Sara meant sleeping on the couch rather than in my own private guest room like I’d had at Noah’s. It meant living out of my suitcase instead of putting my clothes in a drawer. I wasn’t complaining, of course. It was good of her to give me a place to crash. But at Noah’s, if I’d been feeling moody, I could have gone into my room, shut the door, and been left alone.

  Of course, if I’d been staying at Noah’s, I’d have a lot more to brood about.

  Sara wasn’t blind, I knew, and I was sure I’d come home from dinner last night looking wild eyed and weird after the kiss Noah and I had shared. How could I have allowed such a thing to happen? It had been so irresponsible of me. Every time I told myself I wasn’t going to let things escalate between us again, I went back on my word.

  Maybe I just needed to stay away from him altogether.

  Because what I’d said to him was true. It was too hard to be with him with the relationship as nebulous and undefined as it was. I wanted to know what we were. What the future held. I couldn’
t let him know that when he’d referred to us as ‘friends’ it had felt like an arrow in my heart.

  I dressed casually in a strapless denim sundress and put my hair up in a clip. Sara smiled when she saw me. “You clean up good,” she praised.

  “Thanks,” I said. “What kind of sandwich place are we going to?”

  “It’s supposed to be really good,” Sara said. “According to my coworker, they make this green goddess sauce that really takes the sandwiches to the next level. I’ve been meaning to go ever since I heard about it.”

  We could walk to the restaurant, Sara said, so we stepped into our shoes and headed out the door of her apartment. It was a warm, beautiful day, the kind that made me glad to live in a place like New York. Even though this city was ripe with crime, even though my apartment would probably never have been broken into if I’d lived in Iowa or Kansas, I was glad to belong to this city full of active, moving people who were always on their way to somewhere.

  “You’re right,” I told Sara. “I did need to get out of the house. Thanks for getting me to do this.”

  Sara shoved my shoulder lightly. “Next time you should just listen to me without arguing first.”

  “I’ll work on that.”

  “Now, tell me what happened between you and Noah.”

  “Come on, I told you, there was nothing.”

  “Right,” Sara said. “Okay. Nothing. Now let me tell you what I see. First you go out for drinks with me and leave with him.”

  “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I get it. He’s a cute guy. But I’m your friend. You could at least be honest with me. You hooked up that night, right?”

  “Okay,” I admitted. “We did.

  “And then the next morning you found out your apartment had been broken into and you decided to stay at his place.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “Which means you feel safe with him.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, nodding. “So given all that, what prompted you to show up on my doorstep the night before last?”