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He showed her where to put her hands, then counted for her as she awkwardly tried to follow his lead. At the end of the song, she took a deep breath. “I’m glad it’s you and not a boy,” she said, her expression filled with frustration. “I’m no good at this. I’ll never have a date.”
“You’ll get the hang of it long before you’re old enough to go on your first date,” he promised just as he spotted Ernesto and Selena coming their way. His brother-in-law looked oddly out of sorts.
“How’d Daisy talk you into being here?” Ernesto asked, his tone sour. “You wouldn’t catch me near this place if Adelia hadn’t raised a fuss.”
Elliott caught the shadow that passed over Selena’s face at her father’s thoughtless words.
Instead of talking back to her father, though, she whirled on Daisy. “That’s my dress!” she announced in a voice loud enough to carry to several nearby girls, who immediately giggled. “Mom must have dug it out of my throw-away pile.”
Elliott frowned at his niece. “Selena, enough!” he said sharply since Ernesto seemed to have no interest in correcting his daughter. “You’re deliberately trying to embarrass your cousin.”
“She’s not my real cousin,” Selena said nastily. “And you’re not her real dad.”
At Selena’s cruel words, Daisy looked stunned, then burst into tears and ran from the room. Elliott hesitated only long enough to give Selena a disappointed look. “I thought your mother had raised you to be kinder than that,” he said quietly. He held his brother-in-law’s gaze. “And you have nothing to say about this kind of behavior?”
Ernesto only shrugged. “What can I say? She’s her mother’s daughter.”
Elliott shook his head, wondering not for the first time what on earth was happening to his sister’s marriage. “I’ll deal with both of you later.”
He took off to find Daisy. She was pushing ineffectively at a locked door at the end of the corridor.
“Niña,” he said quietly. “Little one, I’m sorry.”
“I want to go home,” she pleaded, turning her tear-streaked face toward him.
“And I will take you, if that’s what you really want,” he told her. “But sometimes when people misbehave as badly as Selena did in there, the best thing to do is hold your chin up high and show people that you’re better than that.”
“But everybody’s laughing at me,” Daisy said, her eyes filling once more with tears. She regarded him with bewilderment. “I thought we were friends. Why would she be so mean?”
Elliott wondered about that himself. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I think perhaps she is very unhappy tonight.”
Daisy looked intrigued by his response. “How come?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, not wanting to suggest that Ernesto had let her down. “But I think she took her own unhappiness out on you. That was very wrong, but perhaps you will be the bigger person and find it in your heart to try to understand and forgive her.”
Daisy seemed to consider his words for a very long time before she met his gaze and asked with a sniff, “Do I have to?”
Elliott had to turn away to hide a smile. “No, little one, you don’t have to, but I hope you will. Despite what happened here tonight, we’re still family.”
She sighed heavily. “Okay, I’ll think about it.” She met his gaze. “But I still don’t want to go back. Please, can we go?”
“Why don’t we go to Wharton’s for ice cream?” he suggested. “How about that?”
She gave him a wobbly smile. “Ice cream would be good.”
On the way to Wharton’s, she wiped away the last of her tears and turned to him. “Before Selena said all those things, I had a good time, Elliott. Thank you for taking me.”
“Anytime,” he assured her. “And I had a good time, too. Next year’s father-daughter dance will be better. I promise.”
And first thing in the morning, he intended to get to the bottom of whatever had made his niece behave in such an uncharacteristically rotten way. His brother-in-law might be comfortable letting it slide, but he most definitely was not.
* * *
“Selena said what to Daisy?” Karen asked, her expression stunned when Elliott described the awful scene at the dance. “Why would Selena do such a thing? Daisy adores her. She must have been crushed.”
“At first, yes,” he admitted. “But a hot fudge sundae seemed to go a long way toward making her feel better.”
“At least this explains why she went straight to her room when you got back here just now and didn’t answer when I asked about the dance.”
“She felt humiliated, no question about it,” he admitted, looking chagrined. “For my niece to do such a thing…” He shook his head. “Honestly, though, I’m more worried about Selena right now. Something was not quite right with her tonight. I got the sense that Ernesto had no desire to be there and had made that plain to her. Maybe his insensitivity explains why she was so mean to Daisy.”
“That’s no excuse,” Karen said.
“Of course not,” Elliott agreed, for once not taking his family’s side. “I think there’s a lot more to the story. Adelia hasn’t been acting herself lately, either. I’ll get to the bottom of all of it tomorrow. And, trust me, Selena will apologize.”
“A forced apology won’t mean much,” Karen said.
“But it is necessary, nonetheless,” he said with conviction. “People in this family do not behave in such a way.” He gave Karen an apologetic look. “I’m so sorry the night was ruined for Daisy. I wanted so badly for it to be special, a memory she could cherish.”
Karen could see how upset he was that a member of his family had caused her distress. “As you said, the sundae went a long way toward fixing things. I’m sure it will all blow over.”
He hesitated, then said, “There is one thing Selena said that I think we should discuss, something we could correct.”
Karen frowned at that. “Why is it up to us to correct anything that Selena said out of spite?”
“Because we can,” he said simply. “She said Daisy wasn’t her real cousin and that I wasn’t her real dad. We’ve talked before about me adopting Daisy and Mack, but we haven’t made a decision. Maybe it’s time we did.”
Karen nodded distractedly. The subject of adoption had come up in passing before. She’d let it slide, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. Tonight, though, she simply couldn’t focus on such an important topic.
“We’ll talk about it,” she said, “but not now. I need to check on Daisy.”
Elliott’s sigh hinted at his exasperation, but she ignored it. Tonight Daisy came first. She was still seething over what had happened. At least this once Elliott hadn’t rushed to take his niece’s side. Sometimes, she thought, he wore blinders where his family was concerned. There had been a few occasions when Adelia, his other sisters and even his mother had been just as careless of her feelings. Thankfully, though, that was mostly in the past.
As she stood to go to her daughter, she leaned down and kissed him. “Thanks for taking such good care of her.”
“It’s my job,” he said simply.
She found Daisy in bed with the covers pulled up high. The dress, which had been the cause of tonight’s incident, was in a heap on the floor.
“You should have hung this up,” Karen said lightly, picking it up and putting it on a hanger.
“Why? I’ll never wear it again. I don’t want it here. Give it back to dumb Selena if she cares about it so much. And I don’t want to go to Grandma Cruz’s after school anymore, not if Selena is going to be there.”
Karen sighed at the stubbornly determined note in Daisy’s voice. She sat on the edge of the bed, still holding the dress as she met her daughter’s gaze. “We’ll discuss where you’ll go after school another time. I’d rather focus on what happened tonight. Maybe I can help you to understand it.”
“Selena’s just selfish, that’s all.”
Karen shook her head. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You know, don’t you, that what Selena said most likely wasn’t about the dress at all?”
“What then?”
“Elliott seems to think her dad wasn’t very excited about taking her to the dance, not the way Elliott was so happy to be there with you. I suspect Selena was jealous.”
Daisy sat up, her eyes wide. That her idol might have been jealous of her clearly intrigued her. “Of me?”
Karen nodded. “You know that Elliott adores you. It made him feel great that you asked him to take you to the dance. Ernesto seemed to think it was a chore or a duty he couldn’t get out of. I’m sure that hurt Selena’s feelings. Can you understand that?”
Daisy’s expression turned thoughtful. It was a lot to ask of a nine-year-old that she try to grasp the impact of an adult’s hurtful actions.
“I guess,” she said eventually.
“Then maybe you can think about focusing on how lucky you are to have Elliott as a stepdad and consider forgiving her,” Karen suggested.
“Maybe,” Daisy said grudgingly.
Karen leaned down to hug her. “Just think about it. Good night, angel. I’m sorry your first dance wasn’t everything you wanted it to be.”
“It started out okay,” Daisy admitted. “Elliott was teaching me to dance.”
“He’s got some very nice moves on a dance floor,” Karen said, smiling at the memory of dancing with him at their wedding.
“All the other girls were watching him,” Daisy admitted. “I think they all wanted to dance with him.”
“I imagine they’ll have a lot of questions for you on Monday morning,” Karen said. “But you’ll have to tell them he’s taken, that he belongs to your mom.”
Daisy giggled. “Mom!”
“Well, it’s true,” Karen said.
“I think he’s the best stepdad in the whole world,” Daisy said.
“I think so, too,” Karen said softly. The very best.
And when she weighed that against the petty annoyances that had come between them lately, there was absolutely no contest. The day she’d found Elliott had been the luckiest of her life. When the going got tough—and there was little doubt that it would again—she needed to remember that.
* * *
Elliott usually barely managed to squeeze out a half hour for lunch on Saturdays, but this week he turned his eleven o’clock appointment over to the spa’s other personal trainer and headed to his sister’s, determined to get to the bottom of whatever was going on in her household these days.
When he drove up to the large home Ernesto had built on a wooded acre of land outside of Serenity, he heard the kids splashing in the pool around back. Normally he would have circled around to greet them, but today his only goal was to get Adelia alone for a heart-to-heart conversation.
Just as he was about to ring the doorbell, the front door was flung open and Ernesto brushed past him, a scowl on his face. From inside the house, he heard Adelia shouting after him not to bother coming home.
Elliott closed his eyes, muttered a prayer for guidance, then walked inside to find his sister alone in the kitchen slamming dishes into the dishwasher, tears streaming down her face. He walked up behind her and put his arms around her.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
She turned to him, her expression stricken. Wiping ineffectively at her tears, she tried to force a smile. “I didn’t know you were here. How’d you get in?”
“Your husband kindly left the door open as he left,” he said wryly. “I heard, Adelia. I heard you tell him not to bother coming home.”
She waved off the comment. “People say things like that all the time. I didn’t mean it.”
“It sounded to me as if you did.”
“Oh, what do you know? You’re still in the honeymoon phase. What do you know about marital fights?”
He smiled at that. “Karen and I have had our share.”
“And gotten past them,” she said, her tone brisk. “Ernesto and I will, as well. Now, let me pour you a cup of coffee. I have some of Mama’s cookies here, too.” She frowned then. “Why aren’t you at the spa? I thought Saturday was one of your busiest days.”
“It is, but I thought we needed to talk about what happened last night.”
She frowned, looking genuinely mystified. “Last night? Did something happen at the dance? Selena didn’t say a word. Neither did Ernesto.”
“I’m not surprised,” Elliott said. “It wouldn’t show either of them in the best light.” He described the scene at the dance. “Selena deliberately humiliated Daisy in front of all their classmates.”
“I am so sorry,” Adelia said at once, her expression heartsick. “I’ll deal with this right now. Selena’s behavior was totally unacceptable. Poor Daisy. My heart breaks for her.”
She was about to call Selena in from the pool, but Elliott stopped her. “I think the more important question may be why she was so upset that she lashed out in the first place.”
When she didn’t immediately answer, he prodded, “Adelia?”
Adelia sighed heavily. “I suspect you can blame her father for that. Ernesto didn’t want to go. Just as I’d feared he might, he invented some sort of important business meeting and intended to bail at the last minute. I stepped in and insisted that he couldn’t disappoint his daughter like that. I’m afraid Selena overheard us arguing. She knew her father was ready to choose business over her, that he didn’t care if he let her down.”
“Has that been happening a lot lately?” he asked, holding her gaze. “The fighting, I mean.”
She blinked and looked away. “We’ll work things out. We always do,” she said, almost by rote. It sounded as if she’d been using the same words to try to convince herself for some time now.
“Have you talked to Mama about whatever’s going on?” he pressed.
She gave him an incredulous look. “Are you crazy? And listen to her lectures on how it’s all my fault if things aren’t a hundred percent rosy in my marriage? You know how Mama is. She believes all husbands should be treated like kings, even if they’re acting like asses.”
Elliott smiled at her assessment. “True enough,” he said. “She was certainly devoted to our father, no matter how unreasonable he was being.”
“Trust me, Papa was a bastion of reason and calm compared to Ernesto.”
There was a bleak note in her voice that Elliott found worrisome. “Adelia, is he bullying you? Abusing you?”
She closed her eyes, her cheeks pink with embarrassment. “Nothing like that. I’d never allow it. For all of my weaknesses, I do have enough pride not to tolerate such disrespect.”
“I hope not,” he said, still concerned. “I’d straighten him out if he ever raised a hand to you.”
Adelia almost smiled at his vow. “I know you would, and I love you for it.”
