Father Formula

“Easier said than done by anyone who knows you,” David countered, opening the car door.

“I’m here to straighten out whatever he messes up,” Alexis said, coming around the car to give David a hug. “You take care of my sister, buddy, or you answer to me.”

She closed the car door as David climbed in behind the wheel.

FERDIE BARKED and tried to follow the car as it pulled away, but Brandon held him back by the collar.

Alexis stared until the car was out of sight, feeling more alone than she’d felt in a long time. Gusty was missing and Athena wasn’t really part of the triumvirate anymore. She had another life now.

And this was the story of her life, Alexis thought—never quite part of the group. Different. Lonely.

“Aren’t these guys going to be late for school?”

Trevyn’s voice interrupted her thoughts and reminded her that she wasn’t alone at all. Lonely, maybe, but hardly alone.

He was tall and broad, dark hair ruffling a little in the afternoon breeze, eyes inky black and taunting. If he was anyone else, she’d admit that he was gorgeous. But he wasn’t. He was the man who’d dropped her effortlessly to the kitchen floor and knelt astride her.

“I know the schedule, thank you,” she replied politely, then turned her attention to Brandon and Brady. “Do you want me to walk you to the bus stop?”

The boys looked at each other in horror.

She realized immediately that had been a faux pas.

Brandon looked hopefully at Trevyn. “Can you take us in the truck?”

“Sure.” Trevyn dug his keys out of his pocket as the boys raced into the open garage. Alexis caught Ferdie’s collar to prevent him from following.

Trevyn smiled at Alexis. “Don’t take it to heart. Being delivered in a truck looks better to your buddies than walking with a woman in tow. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Alexis sighed as she watched them all climb into the truck. Ruled by testosterone at ten and twelve. What a world.

They waved to her as the truck disappeared down the drive. Ferdie whined mournfully.

She walked toward the bushes that surrounded the headland rather than going back to the house, slapping her thigh in an invitation for the dog to follow. She felt edgy and strange here without her sisters. She’d lived much of her adult life without them, but when they were here at Cliffside, they were usually together.

From behind the width of the hedge, she took in the breathtaking view of bright blue sky meeting even bluer water. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep whiff of the salty fresh air. She felt it fill her body and bring back memories of her, Athena and Augusta as children playing like wild things on this lawn.

She’d had dark and selfish thoughts then, she recalled. She used to think that her mother would love her if she could just get rid of the competition. Athena was so competent and Gusty was so charming and agreeable. Alexis, unfortunately, had a gift for candor and a talent for art, neither of which was appreciated by their mother.

In her hopeful, positive moments, the young Alexis was very grateful for her sisters, realizing how bleak her life would be without them. With their mother ignoring them and wanting to claim the limelight herself, and their father taking every opportunity he could to stay away, all they had was one another and the trips to Aunt Sadie’s in Dancer’s Beach.

But when she felt hurt and resentful, she imagined life without Athena and Gusty. She pretended they had never been, and that it was just her, hand in hand with her mother.

There would be no delighted stares of passersby fascinated by three red-haired little girls dressed alike, or in three shades of the same color. No one would stop and tell her mother how beautiful her children were, how much they looked like her.

It would just be the two of them. No one would notice. They would just go shopping together and with no one else to claim her mother’s attention, Alexis would have it all. Her mother would look at her and smile.

She’d seen other mothers do that to their children. They didn’t even have to say anything. Love filled their eyes, made their smiles glow, brought about a ruffle of the child’s hair or a sudden hug.

Alexis had always waited for such a moment, but it never came.

By the time she was a teenager, she’d resigned herself to her fate and allied herself with her sisters in their struggle to find personal value and self-esteem.

Athena found it in an ability to argue clearly with anyone about anything. It was soon obvious she was headed for law school.

Augusta loved knowledge and children, and glowed when she talked about becoming a teacher.

Alexis decided to parlay her art into a life. Art, she’d learned early on, could never be simply a career.

Her talent won her a year’s study abroad in college, and she decided to remain there afterward, loving the daily contact with paintings, sculptures and buildings that had been created by Michelangelo, da Vinci, and all the other names associated with the Renaissance.

And, truth be told, it allowed her to run away. She didn’t have to watch her sisters, so sure what they wanted to do, so secure in their abilities to do it, while she floundered with a skill that was unpredictable at best.

She appreciated being able to launch her efforts thousands of miles from anyone who knew her.

She’d achieved a fair measure of success, was well accepted by the art community in Rome, and sold very well at the small but prestigious gallery that represented her in New York City.

That was far more than most artists enjoyed, Alexis reminded herself as she started back toward the house, determined to find something productive to do. She would have to prepare dinner tonight. With her limited culinary skills, that should take her most of the day to plan and prepare.

She’d just reached the driveway when Trevyn’s truck came rumbling and gasping up the hill. He drew up beside her, stopped and leaped out of the truck.

“Did you beat the bus?” she asked.

“Got there in the nick of time. Did Athena or Dave tell you how to call me from the house if you need anything?”

Alexis now enjoyed a fragile but determined sense of self that was sometimes manifested in the need to be more clever and more right than whomever she dealt with. Trevyn McGinty, however, didn’t seem to understand her need to be superior.

“Thank you,” she said politely with a quick glance at him. She wasn’t sure why, but it made her uncomfortable to look at him too long. His eyes said he knew she was a phoney. He couldn’t know, of course. She attributed that feeling to her worry about Gusty, and the weirdness of their situation. Everything seemed foreign and threatening. “But I’m not worried, and I doubt that I’ll need to call you.”

The cool reply was intended to put him off.

It failed. He grinned, hands in the pockets of a dark blue fleece jacket. “What if you get up in the early morning to make tea,” he asked with feigned innocence, “and surprise another intruder?”

She’d come out without a jacket and rubbed her arms in the thin green knit of a light sweater. Annoyance bubbled out of her politeness. “You find it impossible to be a gentleman about that, don’t you?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Only because you refuse to admit that I had every right to be there.”

“You were using a lock pick!” Her voice was rising. “Why didn’t you knock on the door like a normal person?”

“It was four-fifteen in the morning,” he replied. “Why weren’t you asleep like a normal person?”

“I was…” She’d begun to answer instinctively, then thought better of it. She’d been worried about her sister, worried about her art, worried about being twenty-nine and feeling no closer to an answer to what her life was all about. Art, certainly, but that left her pretty one-dimensional.

“I was thinking,” she finally said. “I know you’d just returned from Canada, but couldn’t you have sat in your car for a couple of hours and waited for a sign that someone was awake?”

The amusement left his eyes. “I’d just seen the news about Gusty. I needed information. I knew Dave wouldn’t mind if I let myself in.”

She could allow him that, she decided grudgingly, even if he had been foolish enough to make love to her sister on a few hours’ acquaintance. But she still wasn’t feeling friendly.

“What kind of person travels with a lock pick, anyway?”

“A former spook. I was always better at it than Dave or Bram, so I carried the pick.”

“Well, in the world of non-spooks, it’s a questionable talent.”

“Sorry. Force of habit. And I didn’t expect the house to be occupied by anyone but Dave, except maybe Dotty. How was I to know he’d picked up four other people?”

“I’d have thought the spy business would teach you to never assume anything.”

Something shifted in his eyes for an instant and she caught a glimpse of old pain.

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to unlearn a lot of old habits from those days.” He looked away for a moment, as though he realized he’d betrayed something personal. When his eyes settled on her again, they were self-deprecating. “The work teaches you to trust nothing and no one, to believe only what you see, and only if you’ve seen it from the beginning. Like lock picking, those qualities don’t help the transition to normal life.”

He leaned down to ruffle the dog’s ears, then pointed in the direction of the guest house he occupied. It looked very much like the two-story brick Colonial Revival that was Cliffside. It also had two stories, but only two windows across instead of four, and no attic gables.

It was surrounded on the back and sides by fir trees interspersed with mountain ash that were now alive with bright red berries. Soon they would attract clouds of little birds.

“I’ve got work to do,” he said, seemingly anxious suddenly to escape her. “If you do need anything, press the com line, then 2.”

“Thank you.” She tried to sound brisk and not too sincere.

He climbed back into the truck and pulled into the garage.

Ferdie loped after the truck, barking, but Alexis called him back. He returned dutifully and she leaned down to kiss his big snout. “You don’t need him,” she assured the dog quietly, aware that the wind might carry her voice. “I’m going to feed you well and take you for walks, and we’re going to keep each other company.”

Ferdie followed her to the big house, but looked longingly in Trevyn’s direction.

Alexis took hold of the old front door handle, depressed the thumb plate and pulled—and nothing happened. She stared at the locked door in surprise for an instant, then smiled reassuringly at the dog as she remembered that Athena had given her a key.

She reached into the pocket of her green-and-brown-plaid slacks and met empty fabric. The key, she remembered, was on her dresser.

“Well, damn,” she told the dog with a sigh. “I’m going to need McGinty after all.”

Chapter Two

Fine, Trevyn thought as he carefully packed bulbs and reflectors into a padded cardboard box. He’d been a fool to offer to help her anyway. She was as different from what he remembered of Gusty as a negative was from a print. It had the same image but everything else about it was different.

The woman he’d danced with the night of the costume party had been warm and funny and had looked into his eyes with a sweetness that had been missing in his life since dark memories had taken over. His mother had had it, but she’d died when he was in high school. The women he’d met in college and since had been smart, ambitious, witty and equal to anything.

He’d appreciated them, but he hadn’t realized how appealing gentle laughter had been until he’d heard it, how completely mind-blowing it was to have a woman walk into his arms and lean her weight into him with a trust that was more instinctive than learned. Something in her had responded to something in him without any real knowledge of him.

They’d talked about nothing important. The eye appeal of Dancer’s Beach, chocolate-covered cherries, the White Sox, Cliffside.

He smiled with the new knowledge that her interest in the house had been part of the plan she and her sisters had concocted to find out why their aunt had left Cliffside to David. It amused him to think that when she’d met him, she’d considered him a criminal.

He should be offended, he supposed, but considering her complete capitulation before the night was over—and the fact that it had resulted in his becoming a father—it was hard to put a bad spin on it.

Anxiety and impatience tried to force themselves into the forefront of his mind when he thought of her helpless and alone—except for the scary guy with whom the boys had reported seeing her at the airport when they’d run away. No one knew whether he was a threat or a friend—and Trevyn couldn’t think about him as the former or he’d go insane.

He’d called Officer Holden this morning and learned only that the verification of passengers whose luggage had gone through that particular carousel was ongoing and, so far, everyone checked out.

Trevyn continued packing, something comforting in the handling of long-used equipment. There was nothing to do but wait.

In the meantime, he would see what he’d gotten on the rolls of film he’d shot in Canada, then he’d concentrate on getting his studio ready in town. Photography was a high-maintenance mistress.

He was just about to lock himself in the darkroom when he heard the lion’s head knocker pound twice against the door. He hurried through the kitchen and the living room, wondering if Dave and Athena had forgotten something.

It was Alexis, Ferdie sitting beside her. Her arms were folded and her chin was angled defensively.

She needed something—already. He tried not to betray his enjoyment in the fact.

He reached a hand out to the dog, who snuffled then licked it. “Yes?” Trevyn asked.

“I left my key on the dresser,” she said lightly, trying to convince him that she wasn’t at all uncomfortable in approaching him. “And the door locked behind me when I carried out Athena’s bag.”

“Oh.” He nodded sympathetically.

She waited for more.

This was just too good.

She drew a breath, her patience clearly strained. She asked courteously, “May I borrow yours?”

He spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t have one.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have one?” she demanded. Realizing her voice had risen, she lowered it and added reasonably, “When you picked the lock, I thought you said you’d only misplaced your key.”

“I had,” he replied, “and when I found it, I gave it to Athena. I imagine that’s the one she gave you. Have you tried the windows?”

She was beginning to realize he was playing her like a violin. Her gaze was condemning. “You and David put the storm windows in yesterday.”

He snapped his fingers. “That’s right! I forgot.”

She told him with her eyes what she wanted.

He gave her a look that told her she was going to have to ask for it aloud.

She shifted her weight, threatened him with a fulminating glare that bounced right off him, then closed her eyes and expelled a deep breath.

“Would you, please,” she asked, emphasizing the please, “pick the lock for me?”

Yes. That did feel as good as he’d imagined it would. But she was Gusty’s sister, after all, and he was, despite her contention, a gentleman.

“I’d be happy to,” he said amiably.

HE HAD THE DOOR OPEN in a matter of seconds.

Alexis forced a grateful smile. “Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.”

He inclined his head as he pocketed the pick. “I meant it when I offered it earlier. We’re probably going to be in-laws, after all.”

“Really.” She tried to imagine her sweet, gentle sister married to this smart-mouthed man and couldn’t quite see it. But she was carrying his baby.

It was on the tip of her tongue to invite him in for coffee, but it was too hard to make the concession.

“I’m going to town in the morning, if you need anything,” he said. “You can come along or just give me a list.”

“Thank you, but I thought walking to town would be a good way for both Ferdie and me to get our exercise. I promised that I’d see he got his walks.”

Trevyn nodded. “All right. Well, I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Thanks again.”

“Sure.”

Alexis closed the door behind him, then parted the drapes to watch him walk away. For all his personality problems, she thought, watching the easy movement of tight, lean hips, he had few physical ones.

Disgusted with herself for noticing, she closed the drapes, then spent the afternoon being domestic.

She put a load of laundry in the wash, checked the contents of the kitchen cupboards so that she could pick up what she needed on tomorrow’s walk. She discovered a decided lack of chocolate, pastry and peanuts.

Dotty was an excellent cook who provided good home-style healthy meals. While Alexis appreciated that, she knew that left to her own devices, she would eat mostly what didn’t have to be cooked and could be carried around in her hand. Of course, she had to find something for the boys to eat for dinner.

Then inspiration struck. She would take them for hamburgers or for pizza! She couldn’t do that every night, but a small adventure tonight would help them get acquainted.

She put her clothes in the dryer, then took Ferdie out into the yard for a game of fetch. He played eagerly.

The wind picked up and Alexis decided to add a jacket to her shopping list tomorrow. Sunny Italy didn’t require one, but fall in cool, rainy Oregon would.

The scent of pine and salt air brought back tumbled memories of her childhood, though, and she stopped a moment to inhale. She remembered picnics with Aunt Sadie on the beach, Alexis and her sisters playing with their dolls in the front yard, and when that grew tiresome, climbing trees and playing hide-and-seek in the woods behind the house.

She’d always tired first of the playing-house games, though Gusty could have fed and diapered her dolls forever. Alexis and Athena would eventually escape her scenarios of adult sisters in suburbia having babies and dinner parties and run to the woods for more physical exercise.

Gusty would eventually join them when she grew lonely, but she didn’t enjoy running and climbing like her sisters did.

Alexis experienced a paralyzing pang of desperation. Where was she? What had happened to her? And who was the “scary-looking man” Brandon and Brady had seen with her at the airport?

Unable to pursue that thought without going crazy, Alexis called Ferdie to her and went back into the house. She filled the dog’s bowl, gave him fresh water, then went to check on her laundry.

She folded it, then carried it upstairs and placed it on the dresser. She had the room Athena had occupied before she moved in with David. The bed and the dresser were different, but she enjoyed the familiar sight of the Mickey Mouse alarm clock on the bedside table.

She opened the sketchbook she’d brought with her from Rome and looked through all the studies of faces she’d done on the plane. Since she’d arrived, she’d done sketches of the boys, both reaching up to dunk the ball in the basket, and several of Ferdie running, sleeping, leaping in the air for a Frisbee.

The work was skillful, but she knew when it came to putting paint to canvas, she would be devoid of ideas, lacking in inspiration and, after three long months of that, without the will to try.

She would have wallowed in self-pity, but she’d taught herself to combat this mood over the past year. All she had to do was remember the artists she revered. Michelangelo, who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back on scaffolding over a period of four years; Matisse, who painted by attaching his brush to a long stick when he was too old and ill to get out of bed; the contemporary Chuck Close, who was paralyzed and used a forklift to raise himself to work on his huge portraits and had a device attached to his hand to allow him to paint.

A slump was hardly the same as an infirmity. She would recover from this, if she could just figure out what had caused it in the first place.

In the meantime, she had to keep working.

She called one of her studio partners in Rome and asked him to mail the large wooden box in which she kept all her paints, the jar that held her brushes, her roll of canvas.

“Bella!” he exclaimed worriedly. “You are not coming home?”

“Not for a while, Claudio.” She wanted to tell him that this was home, but he was just twenty and he’d known her only in Rome. He wouldn’t understand. “I’m sending you money to cover the postage.”

“Money? What is money?” he demanded. “The studio is cold without you, Lexia.”

She smiled at his impassioned voice. She thought he had the potential to be a fine artist, but so far he had more emotion than skill. Still, skill could be learned and emotion couldn’t, so things were in his favor.

“Don’t try to charm me, Claudio,” she teased. Flirting was second nature to him. “We both know you’re in love with Giulia.”

“Giulia,” he said, his rich accent putting scorn into the name, “has gone to Palermo with Ponti. My heart is a stone. It beats no more.”

“Oh, Claudio.” She was sure he was heartbroken. He and the vintner’s beautiful daughter had been friends since they were children, and Claudio’s adopted father had worked for Giulia’s. Their romance had blossomed only a year ago, just before she went to spend six months with relatives in New York. When she returned, Ponti, the son of a famous Italian designer had pursued her relentlessly. He’d also been a childhood friend who’d noticed her beauty and maturity when she’d returned home. “I’m sorry. I thought she’d have more sense.”

“The whole world is mad,” he declared, then added with theatrical tragedy, “and I am alone.”

“Well, now’s your chance to make a date with that pretty little waitress at the trattoria. You’ve always admired her.”

He sighed. “I pine for you,” he said, “and you send me to other women.”

“I’m too old for you, Claudio,” she said practically. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“What is age, bella,” he asked, “when the heart yearns?”

She smiled to herself. She should be lucky enough to find a man closer to her own age who was this persistent. “Then consider the fact that I’m almost six thousand miles away, my friend. You may dismiss age, but distance must be dealt with. Now, go ask that pretty waitress for a date tonight and stop this foolishness. Let me know how it goes. And don’t forget to send my paints and brushes.”

“You wound me.” He was silent a moment. “Very well, I will send your things. But when the night is quiet, you will hear my heart beating for you, no matter how great the distance.”

“Unless Giulia comes back to you,” she taunted.

“You are a devil woman,” he accused, a smile in his voice.

“Goodbye, Claudio.”

“Goodbye, bella.”

Alexis hung up the phone, longing for her fourth-floor studio in the heart of the noisy, busy city. But only for a moment. She remembered quickly the frustration she’d felt there the past year, and though she’d been very upset about her missing sister, she’d also been grateful for an excuse to come home.

She turned in the direction of a soft whine just in time to see Ferdie burst from the room and race downstairs. She heard excited barking as the front door opened and closed and the boys’ voices returned his greetings.

Alexis went downstairs to welcome them home and found them already in the kitchen, rooting through the freezer. They emerged with softball-sized blueberry muffins.

She watched Brandon wrap his in a paper towel and place it in the microwave with obvious experience. Then he nuked Brady’s muffin while his brother retrieved two cans of pop and the butter from the refrigerator.

“How’d everything go today?” she asked.