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“Melanie?” he called. “What do you want for dinner?”
After a long minute she appeared at the top of the stairs and stared at him coolly. “You mean you’re asking?”
Oh, God.
Pain throbbed in his temples. She was usually very sweet and accommodating—almost too accommodating—but apparently he couldn’t say anything right at the moment. Not that Melanie didn’t have cause to be touchy—he’d royally stuck his foot in his mouth—but if this was what it meant to be a parent, you could keep it.
“Yes, I’m asking,” he said as calmly as possible.
“Whatever I want?”
Yeah, she could have whatever she wanted...as long as it came from a restaurant that delivered or had a take-out menu. He didn’t cook. Toast, oatmeal and coffee in the morning were the extent of his culinary skills.
“Within reason.”
Melanie lifted her chin. “I’ll take a chicken sandwich and sweet-potato fries from the Nibble Nook.”
“That isn’t within reason. You know the Nibble Nook is closed for the day.”
“Then I don’t care. I have geometry problems and an English assignment to finish.” She turned and disappeared.
The afternoon just kept getting better and better. Aaron arched his back, trying to release the tension. He really had to deal with the yard. The neighborhood association had written, complaining about the length of the grass. Why anybody minded, he didn’t know. This wasn’t the garden district of New Orleans, it was a little town that rolled up its sidewalks at night and on Sundays.
Despite his grandfather’s expectations that he would eventually take over one day, Aaron had never wanted to live in Cooperton again...and yet here he was. Of course, coming back would have been easier if George Cooper had retired before the business had fallen apart. Once Aaron got it viable again he’d have to evaluate whether he was going to stay, or consider other options.
Putting on jeans and a work shirt, Aaron went out to the garage. The rented house hadn’t come furnished, but he’d seen a lawn mower and had a couple of hours of daylight left to work.
Forty minutes later he was hot, sweaty, and his shoulders ached. He gazed perplexed at the mower that refused to start; he was a novice at cutting grass, but it shouldn’t be tough to figure out. The mower had gas, and he didn’t think it was terribly old. Yet the damn thing wouldn’t go. Maybe the gardening service used to bring their own equipment because this one was broken.
Frustrated, Aaron shoved the mower back into the garage and headed into the house. The service had told him they were overextended with customers and regretted terminating him as a client, but their regrets didn’t help him get the lawn mowed.
In the kitchen he leafed through a stack of menus. They hadn’t ordered pizza in over a week, and Mama Gianni’s also had a decent chicken Greek salad. Pizza from Vittorino’s Italiano was better, but they didn’t deliver except on weekends. He dialed Mama Gianni’s and ordered the Meat Lover’s special and a family-size salad. Yet as he hung up the phone, he heard Skylar’s voice in his head.
Do you even know what pizza she likes?
Shut up, Skylar, he ordered silently.
She hadn’t changed much since high school—she still had that gorgeous auburn hair and green eyes...and a mouth that wouldn’t quit. She’d sassed the teachers, cussed out the principal, gotten suspended more than once for breaking every rule in the book, and finally dropped out before graduation. It was ironic that a girl who’d skated through classes by the skin of her teeth was now diligently overseeing her kid’s homework. And she wondered why he questioned if she might be a bad influence.
Yet a part of him didn’t blame Skylar for being antagonistic. She’d represented a challenge when they were kids—his pals had dared him to nail her and he wasn’t proud of his teenage self for taking that dare, or for dropping her once he’d done it. No woman, young or old, appreciated being treated that way. It was also hypocritical to think her sexual activity in high school was any more questionable than his own.
When the food came, Aaron ran upstairs to tell Melanie. She was in front of the television, watching a baseball game. She didn’t look up, just nodded and said she’d come down after a while.
“Don’t you want to eat together?” The question had nothing to do with Skylar; he’d already thought they should share more meals. At the same time, he didn’t want to force anything on Melanie—until recently they’d been little more than casual acquaintances.
“I don’t care.”
I don’t care... How many times a day did he hear that from her? Good Lord, teenagers were impossible, and Aaron felt a fleeting sympathy for his grandparents. He wasn’t close to them, though his grandfather had supposedly “groomed” him to take over the company...mostly with lectures about the value of hard work. Nonetheless, it couldn’t have been easy to take on a resentful kid, tired of being shuffled between his divorced parents and other relatives. That was one of the reasons he’d agreed to have Melanie live with him for the year. He could have refused, but he knew what it was like to be a Ping-Pong ball in someone else’s battle of wills.
CHAPTER TWO
SKYLAR PULLED A casserole from the freezer and put it in the oven to heat. She liked cooking; she just didn’t enjoy it after spending hours over the Nibble Nook’s fryers—the volume of French fries and onion rings they went through never failed to astonish her. As the owner, she filled in wherever necessary, and today the fry cook had phoned in with a child-care problem.
Tiredly she pressed a hand to the aching small of her back. The long, hard days used to be more fun. Jimmie had made everything fun, no matter what they were doing.
The cat walked into the kitchen and stared at his empty bowl in dismay. He meowed plaintively.
“Karin?” she called. “Bennie has to be fed and his litter box scooped.”
“The first play-off game is on.”
“Then you’d better hurry,” Skylar said. “We’ve talked about this. You wanted a cat and he’s your responsibility.”
“But Mooommmm, I—”
“Now, Karin. He’s hungry.”
Karin stomped into the kitchen. “He isn’t mine, not really. Bennie always ends up with you in the morning. He’s supposed to sleep with me. It’s like I’m kryptonite or something.”
For an instant Skylar wished she could have a single evening free of teenage angst. “That’s because he keeps getting kicked off the bed. You thrash around and when he’s had enough, he goes someplace quieter.”
“I do not.”
“Trust me, I couldn’t keep a blanket on you, even as a baby. A professional soccer team doesn’t kick that much.”
Muttering under her breath, Karin poured food into the cat bowl and petted Bennie, despite her sulk. It wasn’t easy insisting she take care of her chores—she used to watch the baseball play-offs with her dad, and Skylar could see the weepy melancholy beneath her daughter’s defiant surface. The previous autumn Karin had sobbed straight through her favored team’s sweeping victory; hopefully this year wouldn’t be as bad.
“Here,” Skylar said. “I made a snack for you to eat during the game. And there’s caffeine-free cola in the fridge. I’ll bring dinner in when it’s ready.” Normally they ate meals at the table, but this wasn’t a normal night.
Karin brightened and took the bowl of fluffy buttered popcorn. “Gee, thanks, Mom.”
When Karin was back in the family room, Skylar sat at the kitchen table, feeling melancholy herself. She wasn’t a baseball fan, and it used to drive her crazy during the play-offs and World Series to have Jimmie and Karin riveted to the television. More than once, a game had gone into extra innings or there’d been a rain delay, and he’d let her stay up to the bitter end, even on a school night. When she fell asleep at school the next day, there would be the inevitable phone call from her teacher, who was always mollified by Jimmie’s abashed apology.
Skylar would give anything to have those days back.
Instead, she had Aaron Hollister and his sister and her temper getting her in trouble. She had to be more careful. Aaron hadn’t seemed interested in Karin in their encounters, but she couldn’t take any chances. She refused to think of him as Karin’s father. Jimmie was Karin’s dad. He’d soothed her as a teething baby, been scared stiff when she broke her collarbone in the fourth grade, saved for her education and welcomed each and every sticky child’s kiss and homemade Father’s Day card. Skylar ached at the memories—Jimmie romancing her as a new mother had been one of the biggest surprises of her life. They’d gotten married when Karin was four months old—he’d simply refused to see any reason they shouldn’t be together.
She glanced around the kitchen, shivering though it was warm. She’d had such a good life with Jimmie, so much better than she had ever expected to have. He’d loved Karin without reservation, and his family had accepted them both. The Gibsons must have been worried for their son in light of her youth and disreputable upbringing, but they hadn’t shown any hesitation. If Jimmie loved her, that was all they’d needed to know.
But Jimmie was gone now. If he were here, he would reassure her that Aaron or his family couldn’t possibly hope to get custody of Karin after such a long time. It was a worry that Skylar had harbored over the years, pushed into the background of their lives together, yet still there.
Bennie rubbed against her leg, purring madly, and she reached down to stroke him.
“Hey, boy,” she whispered. “You should go in with Karin. She needs you.”
He wandered toward the door. She could swear that he’d understood, though being a cat, he had to show his independence. Anybody who said felines were just selfish little beasts was wrong. No matter how egomaniacal, Bennie was fond of his humans. He just had to act as if everything was his idea—dogs were far more direct with their affections.
She got up and gathered a basket of laundry. The problem with housework was that it was never done, especially with a teenager in the house. Why her daughter had to change clothes ten times a day was beyond her. When she was that age she had been lucky to have four or five outfits, much less an overflowing closet.
Skylar winced. Back then, clothes were the least of her problems. The police and her teachers had labeled her incorrigible, and she’d come close to self-destructing. Her mother and father hadn’t noticed—they were too busy having public screaming matches and getting arrested for bashing in the windows of a neighbor’s car or some other drunken behavior. Skylar had both envied and resented the other kids for having nice, ordinary parents who didn’t knock them around, the way her parents did when they were tired of beating on each other.
Yet somehow, for reasons beyond understanding, she’d believed in the fairy-tale family, and Aaron’s family had seemed oh-so-respectable from the outside. That could be why she’d finally gone out with him. She hadn’t realized that being rich and publicly proper didn’t mean a thing. You could still be a louse.
The phone rang, and Skylar hurriedly started the washing machine before answering.
“It’s me, dear,” said her mother-in-law. “Are you busy?”
“Hi, Mom. No more than usual.” Skylar tucked the receiver under her chin as she folded clean towels. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. But Joe has the baseball game on, and I was wondering how it’s going over there.”
Skylar pictured her daughter’s stormy face. “The way you’d expect. Karin is watching, too.”
“I figured she would be.”
They were both silent for a long moment. Skylar wished she could tell Grace about her confrontation with Aaron, but she’d never discussed Karin’s biological father with her in-laws. Jimmie was the only one who’d known it was Aaron Hollister. Well...almost the only one.
It was odd. She would have sworn that nobody had guessed she was pregnant when she dropped out of school, and she’d deliberately moved to Trident to keep anyone from guessing. Yet S. S. Hollister had tried to give her payoff money after Karin was born. Skylar figured Aaron must have put it together and told his father—but if she was wrong and he didn’t know that Karin was his biological child, or had made himself forget, she’d rather keep it that way.
Payoff money...Skylar gritted her teeth. As if she’d gone to them for support or something else. She had ripped the check in half and told Sullivan Spencer “Spence” Hollister exactly what she thought of him and his son and where he could stuff his money. He’d simply laughed and walked away...forever, she hoped.
“Oh. Sorry, Grace, what was that? My mind was drifting,” she apologized, realizing her mother-in-law had broken the silence with a question.
“I just asked how Karin is doing in school so far. She was obsessed with her studies last year.”
“She’s no longer obsessed,” Skylar said drily. “This afternoon she informed me that her geometry problems are lame and aliens have replaced the principal with an android look-alike who drinks double espresso lattes all day and plots ways to kill students with boredom.”
Grace chuckled. “Good Lord. Aliens?”
“Yes. She’s now into Star Trek. Yesterday I found her practicing the Vulcan hand signal for ‘live long and prosper.’ At least I think that’s what it was, not something rude.”
“She wouldn’t have to practice that.”
Skylar instinctively looked at her fingers. No, you didn’t have to practice rude gestures. She’d begun flipping birds at her teachers in junior high school...a piece of information she’d prefer her daughter didn’t find out. Karin may have heard stories about her mother over the years, but since she hadn’t asked any questions, she probably wasn’t taking them seriously.
“When did this new interest in science fiction begin?” said Grace.
“That weekend she was sick and we couldn’t come for dinner. One of her friends loaned her a set of the Trek movies. Two days and half a bottle of cough syrup later, she was a fan.”
Grace chuckled again. “That’s our Karin. When she embraces something, it’s with all her heart.”
They chatted another few minutes before saying goodbye.
Skylar put the clean linens away and went to check on Karin in the family room. Things had been awfully quiet—no yelling at the pitcher, no declarations that the umpire needed glasses, and no shouts of triumph or despair.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s the score?”
“Five–zip, Dodgers.”
Skylar might not be a baseball fan, but she knew Karin’s three-word report meant the Los Angeles Dodgers were ahead. “Isn’t that the team you’re rooting for?”
Karin shrugged. She wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t happy, either. “It’s only the bottom of the fourth inning. They’ll probably blow it.”
Skylar let out a discouraged breath. Karin was a bright, enthusiastic kid...except when she was thinking about her dad being gone. “And they might win,” she reminded gently. “I’m sure Grandpa Joe would love to get on the phone with you.”
Karin didn’t respond, but she inched farther toward the end of the sectional couch. Right. She didn’t want the phone; she wanted someone sitting next to her...she just didn’t want to ask someone to sit next to her. Skylar thought of the dozen different tasks she should get done. It was a busy week, and she had a meeting on Thursday at City Hall that would take all evening.
She sat down. “Okay,” she said. “It’s time I learned more about baseball. Tell me what’s going on. The ones in white are the good guys, right?”
A small giggle escaped from Karin. “You’re really silly, Mom.”
* * *
AARON DROVE PAST the Nibble Nook the following morning and scowled. He had a huge job in front of him getting Cooper Industries back in shape, and Skylar wasn’t making it easier by befriending his sister. Well...her daughter had befriended Melanie, but it was essentially the same thing.
There were numerous cars at the hamburger stand, along with motorcycles and a couple of big rigs parked at the side of the road. They obviously served breakfast, and he had to admit, the scents wafting into his car were tempting. On the other hand, the presence of motorcycles and 18-wheelers was disturbing—the drivers of those vehicles weren’t necessarily a bad element, but there were no guarantees.
Almost as if taunting him, a tattooed cyclist got up from a table and strolled to his Harley. He spat on the ground and adjusted himself in his grubby-looking jeans before roaring away.
Wonderful.
Exactly the element an impressionable teenage girl needed.
Peggy was at her desk when he walked in, and he gave her a brief nod. He wasn’t thrilled with having Peggy as an assistant; she was efficient and responsible, but she was zealously loyal to his grandfather and likely calling him daily with reports on the company. Someone was informing George Cooper of the changes and new policies being made by his grandson, though he wasn’t showing a great deal of interest other than to say, “What’s good for Cooperton is good for Cooper Industries.”
Any warmth George possessed had mostly been shown to his employees and the town. He could be a genial man-of-the-people in the flash of an eye, but inside his own home he was cold and uptight. No wonder Aaron’s mother had rebelled—she’d fled Cooperton and done nothing but play ever since.
The phone rang before he reached his desk. It was Peggy, saying his father was on line one.
“Yes?” he said, punching the button.
“That’s a fine way to greet your old dad.” Spence Hollister was only “your old dad” when he wanted something.
“I don’t have time for games, Dad.” Aaron tucked the receiver under his chin and sorted through a stack of phone messages Peggy had left on his desk. A new phone system with voice mail had been installed months before, but he hadn’t decided whether his calls should continue to be screened by Peggy in a traditional executive style, or to take them himself.
“That’s always been your problem—you don’t enjoy life.”
“Some of us have a job. Why didn’t you call my cell phone?”
“I assumed you’d changed the number after moving to that Hicksville. You didn’t have to take over the Cooper company, son. For God’s sake, give it a decent burial and get out. Your mother never wanted to go back there—it’s the only thing we ever agreed on the entire time we were married.”
A headache stabbed Aaron’s temples. Much as he regretted giving up his lucrative position as CEO of a computer company, he couldn’t abandon Cooper Industries. He might have to give it a decent burial, but not until he’d done his best to keep it alive.
“What do you want, Dad?”
“I... Hang on. We’re having a spot of trouble with a champagne cork.”
A feminine laugh sounded in the background, and Aaron shook his head. His father was between wives, so his companion could be anyone from a London society deb to a belly dancer. Spence liked his ladies young, beautiful and endowed—and since he had an abundance of charm and wealth, they liked him, too.
