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He hesitated for an instant, then agreed. “Fine. I’ll be there.”
Whatever the cost, she had a boyfriend, at least for the duration of her dad’s visit.
There had to be a better word than boyfriend. Lover, partner, significant other? Nothing quite described their nonrelationship.
She drove away, behind schedule and seriously short of time, and wondered if she’d ever before seen eyes as blue as his.
ERIC RAN a couple of extra miles after work, but still felt as though his brain were full of cobwebs. He wanted to sidestep any little committee chores his mother had lined up for him, but was the price of Mindy’s help too high?
He wasn’t ready for a new relationship, but keeping Mindy at arm’s length was harder every time he saw her. The impulse to take her in his arms and let nature take its course got stronger all the time. But he’d felt that way about Cass not very long ago, and he’d been as wrong about her as a man could be.
Sure, sometimes bachelor life was lonely after working hours, but he had friends and interests to keep him occupied. He didn’t need a new best buddy who expected him to become a son-in-law.
If he’d been free earlier in his office when Mindy had called, he would’ve cheerfully helped her orchestrate a breakup her father would believe. But when she walked into his examining room, he hadn’t wanted an abrupt end to their tentative relationship. He’d had a flash of inspiration. They could trade favors and make both parents happy. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea but seemed reasonable. An “I help you, and you help me” kind of thing.
After the run he scrubbed himself hard under a tepid spray. He hadn’t moved away from frigid Iowa winters to shiver in a cold shower, but his body chemistry had a way of reacting to Mindy that was totally at odds with his intentions. He was usually indifferent to women whose pets he treated, but he’d gone beyond his normal professionalism with Mindy. She turned him on, and the lukewarm water didn’t do much to cool down his involuntary interest in her.
She’d already put him off his stride. After her un-scheduled appearance at his office, he’d called Mrs. O’Brien’s St. Bernard Bozo instead of Beau Geste. He’d forgotten what a foul disposition Sugar Baby had until the cat punctured his latex glove with her needle-sharp teeth.
He never gave more than ten seconds thought to what he wore, but this evening he stood in his walk-in closet in white briefs and couldn’t make up his mind. If he really were courting a woman—what a corny, old-fashioned word—he’d wear his navy blue blazer and gray dress slacks. That outfit was sure to be a father-pleaser, especially to a man who probably slept in his wing tips, but what message would it send to Mindy? What if she were interested in him, and this was her way of attracting his attention.
“Yeah, right,” he said skeptically.
He knew a come-on when he saw one, and he wasn’t getting any signals from her. Was that why he had this strange feeling about their deal? Was it because she was more immune to his dubious charms than he was to her very real attractions? Or maybe he should be flattered. He didn’t need enough reforming and reorganizing to interest her. Wayne might be biased, but Mindy apparently went for men she could make over. Cass had tried that with him, and he didn’t want Mindy or any other woman trying to change him.
He yanked an old pair of jeans and a black knit turtleneck off the hangers. Hopefully wearing them wouldn’t send any messages one way or the other.
He got to Mindy’s house twenty minutes late because he belatedly remembered to stop for a bottle of wine as an offering for Wayne.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said when Mindy opened the door.
“No problem. I’m doing lemon-pepper chicken and marinated vegetable kabobs on the grill, nothing very fancy.”
Since his usual bachelor fare ran to omelettes or salads and submarines from the supermarket deli, it sounded elaborate to him.
“I was expecting leftovers from Mountain Monty’s.”
She laughed lightly, an altogether pleasing sound. “Dad had steak and eggs for breakfast, then polished off the last of the leftovers for lunch. Apparently his low cholesterol diet is on vacation.”
“I heard that, young lady,” Wayne said from the couch where he was lounging with his foot resting on a mound of pillows. “I’ll go to the store with you tomorrow and cash some traveler’s checks so you can stock your kitchen.”
“Dad, you don’t have to buy groceries. I make a good living.”
This had the ring of an old argument. Eric presented the wine to Mindy and ambled into the living room to sit opposite the patriarch in a high-backed Boston rocker.
“How’s your ankle?”
“Fine as long as I treat it with RICE. That’s rest, ice, compression and elevation.”
Eric knew that. He’d done enough track and field sports even before he got to college to be familiar with trainer’s lingo, but he was here to be the deferential suitor. From where he sat, he could see Mindy in the kitchen struggling with the cork in his bottle of wine.
“Let me,” he offered, walking over to her.
The nice thing about having the living room and kitchen as one large room was being able to see her as she worked. The bad thing was Wayne had a front-row seat to watch them together. Eric remembered his deal and moved up to her intending to carry out his end.
“Something smells nice.”
He nuzzled the back of her neck, soft and fragrant under her short-cropped sable hair. It seemed natural to wrap one arm around her waist, which looked slender and sexy in a long black skirt with big splashy yellow, red and green flowers. Her midriff-baring yellow top rode up so his arm was circling warm silky flesh. He should’ve braved an icy cold shower.
“I need to put the chicken on,” she said, pulling away.
“I’ll help you.”
He picked up a tray of foil packets and followed her down the hallway between the back rooms. They walked out through sliding glass doors onto a small flagstone patio, where she had a propane gas grill and a round white-metal table with two matching chairs and umbrella.
“This is nice,” he said.
“Except for having neighbors so close I can’t use the grill without attracting people who want to give me cooking advice.”
She kept her eyes averted. So far she hadn’t looked directly at him, not even when she answered the door.
“You know,” he said softly, “if you want your father to buy our act, you’re going to have to gaze longingly into my eyes.”
They both laughed self-consciously.
“I’ve had some second thoughts,” she admitted as she carefully laid the packets of chicken on the barbecue, still not meeting his eyes.
“And?”
Was she going to let him off the hook? Did he want her to?
“This is terribly unfair of me, expecting you to give up your free time like this.”
“Can’t complain about the eats.”
“Really, Eric, we can call this off right now. I’ll still help as much as I can with your committee, but I can’t ask you to—”
“Mindy,” he interrupted, even though he didn’t know what he wanted to say.
“You’re so busy,” she went on.
“When I agree to a deal, I keep my word,” he said, trying to sound resolute and committed.
“But I feel like I’ve trapped you into this.”
She kept fussing with long kabobs of potato, onion, mushroom and colorful yellow, red and green peppers.
“Look at me.”
He wanted to talk to her face, not the back of her head.
She looked at him over her shoulder, just long enough for him to see miniature bolts of green lightning in her intriguing hazel eyes.
“Enough fussing,” he said. “The food is fine.”
She turned and faced him squarely, then reached up and straightened the collar on his turtleneck. One minute she was willing to let him back away from their bargain, and the next she was fixing his shirt. The woman just couldn’t leave him alone. He took her hands in his and stared so intently she dropped her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said meekly.
“I’m going to go inside and talk to your dad,” he said gruffly.
“I meant what I said. You don’t have to do this….”
He went into the house without answering.
5
DAD WAS ONLINE AGAIN when Mindy got home from work late Friday afternoon. She’d moved the patio table into the living room and set up the computer there so she had access when her father was sleeping in the spare bedroom. Still, the arrangement wasn’t working well from her point of view. She did all her planning, organizing and accounting on her computer, usually in the evening. But after being home alone all day, her father was more chatty then he’d ever been before.
“How was your day?” he asked in a hearty voice from his spot on the couch.
“Fine, Dad.” Except for a crabby caterer, a carpenter whose wife had been in labor for twenty-one hours and counting and a client whose check bounced. “Did you find things to keep you busy today?”
“I found a list of e-mail addresses from my class at Penn State. I connected with a guy who lived next to me our freshman year. Now he’s right here in Phoenix. We had a good online chat.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Peaches did her welcoming dance while Mindy kicked off her sandals and enjoyed the cool tiles on the soles of her feet.
“Don’t leave your shoes where I can trip over them,” her father warned.
No, I certainly don’t want you to fall again she thought. “Did you get to your doctor’s appointment all right?”
She still felt guilty about not driving him there herself, but the day had been impossibly busy.
“The cab was twenty minutes late, but I allowed an extra forty-five for the trip.”
When had her father ever been late for anything, unlike Dr. Eric Kincaid who made a specialty of keeping people waiting? And not calling the woman he was supposed to adore.
“I do have good news,” he said.
“What?”
“The doctor says my ankle is coming along fine. Apparently the emergency room handled it okay. I’ll be back on both feet sooner than I thought.”
“That’s great news, Dad.” No more worrying about a phantom boyfriend, not that her father asked about him more than twenty or so times a day.
“That’s not the good news.”
Whoops.
“I’ve decided to stay through Christmas.”
“You mean stay another—”
“I haven’t had Christmas with you in a long time.” Interrupting was one of his little habits that was driving her up the wall.
Her father would be living in her house, micro-managing her life, giving her helpful advice. Until Christmas. She felt panicky. Maybe she could rent a temporary office—no, too expensive. She loved her father, but she desperately needed her space, especially during the busiest season of the year for her business.
“I don’t do much to celebrate Christmas,” she said.
Now there was an understatement. Last year she and Laurie had done each other’s nails and shared a frozen pizza. Her best friend was originally from Rhode Island and, like Laurie, Mindy preferred to make the annual pilgrimage home to see her family in the summer.
“This year we’ll do it up big. You and Eric can help me trim a tree—”
“Dad, Eric probably has other plans. His family will expect him to…”
“We’ll work it out. Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, I’m flexible about when we open presents.”
“Aren’t you forgetting Dwight and Carly and Sam and Kim? I can’t imagine you’d want to miss your grandchildren’s Christmas. You always spend holidays at their house.”
“No problem. I called Carly’s dad today. They’re going to take the family on a trip to Florida as their Christmas present. Renting a condo for a week. They’ll surprise them with the news on Thanksgiving. They can still celebrate a late Christmas with me when we all get home.”
“Sun, sea, beach, amusement parks. Doesn’t sound much like Christmas,” she mused aloud.
“Now don’t be envious, Mindy. Maybe you’ll go some place exotic for your honeymoon, maybe a Caribbean cruise. I might be persuaded to spring for the trip as a wedding present.”
“Dad, I have no plans whatsoever to get married in the near future.”
Peaches ambled away and went to her favorite hidey-hole at the far end of the couch where only the white tips of her paws revealed her location. Even the dog was cringing at her father’s premature offer of a honeymoon—or maybe it was his plan to intrude on her canine kingdom for more than a month.
“I have to level with you,” she went on, wishing she could tell him the whole truth without badly hurting his feelings. “Eric and I are only dating very casually. We have no plans for the future. He’s not interested in commitment, and I like things the way they are.”
“We’ll see,” he said smugly. “Meanwhile, I’ll have more time to get to know him better. He’s the first decent boyfriend you’ve had, so I hope it’s a sign your taste in men has improved.”
“You’re not being fair—”
The phone on the kitchen counter rang shrilly, which was probably a good thing. She grabbed for it, wondering if her father saw himself as an aging Cupid with thinning hair and a bum ankle.
“Yes, Mrs. Wilmer. How can I help you?” Mindy said after the Scottsdale social leader identified herself.
Mindy was setting up a database for Kitty Wilmer’s long Christmas card list, a tedious chore that involved reading an endless number of names and addresses written in the woman’s tiny, cramped handwriting, which included thirty years’ worth of additions, deletions and changes. She had to finish soon so the mailing labels were ready for the cards. It was the kind of picky job she hated, but Mrs. Wilmer could throw a lot of business her way if she was happy with her work.
“I have a pencil right here,” Mindy said as she started to jot down a few more additions to the list. The woman collected people as if they were coins.
At least her father got bored and thumped out to the back porch on his crutches for some early evening air.
Christmas! Her tenuous deal with Eric would never hold up that long.
