Daddy To Be Determined

He turned on the Home and Garden Channel, hoping Norm Abrams was sharing an interesting building project. Ben leaned his head against the high cushions and let his eyes drift closed during a commercial about waterproof stain.

He was asleep before the commercial was over.

NATALIE AWOKE TO a headache so brutal she dared not open her eyes.

I’m having a stroke! she thought in panic. Or I’ve been struck on the head with something heavy! I’ve been mugged!

Mugged. No. The warm cocoon in which she was wrapped didn’t feel very post-mugging.

And she probably wasn’t having a stroke. She could move her arm, flex her fingers, put them to her head, where there was no evidence of a bump or a cut. So she hadn’t been struck, either.

She tried hard to think, but her aching head made it almost impossible.

Then she realized she could hardly breathe and her throat was scratchy. The cold. She had an awful cold. She’d taken two cold tablets, then two more, then someone had given her a powerful brandy drink….

Suddenly it all came back. The sperm bank, her investigation and KXAV’s humiliating report, followed by her starring role in Jolie Ramirez’s “Celebrity Dish.” There’d been the trip to Dancer’s Beach and Dori’s absence, the lowest moment of Natalie’s life.

Her head thudded viciously in response to her brain activity, and she was forced to give it a rest.

I’m hungover, she thought defeatedly. She wasn’t hurt or ill; she was hungover on cold medication and brandy. She vaguely remembered still feeling poorly after the drink and taking two more pills. Loggers in spiked boots danced in her head, and she lay quietly for a moment, trying to let her mind rest.

But she had to know things. She had to remember where she was. Her head hurt too much, though, to risk opening her eyes.

She remembered a man and a dog in front of Dori’s house, directing her to…the bed-and-breakfast! Yes! She breathed a sigh of relief. Yes. She was on the third floor of a bed-and-breakfast in a pretty brass bed. It was called the Woodsy Cabin Room because there were pine trees and bears and moose on the wallpaper!

She breathed another sigh of relief. There! Her brain was working. She knew where she was. Feeling just a little better about everything, she risked opening her eyes to slits. They encountered bright sunlight and…no pine trees, no bears, no moose.

She sat up, forgetting the state of her head in her sudden panic at the unfamiliar sight of deep, rose-colored walls covered with framed maps and charts and photos of lighthouses.

She was rewarded with a pounding in her head so severe that she put both hands to her ears, certain they were going to fly off from the pressure.

When her head finally quieted, she took another careful look around. Her bed had short, off-center head and footboards in dark wood that suggested she was sleeping on a futon. The dresser was dark wood, and there was a large model of a sailing yacht on the dresser. The yacht was reflected in the mirror behind it so that it looked as though the model and its reflection were in a neck-and-neck race.

In one corner was an upholstered rocking chair in blue and cream; against another wall stood a tall accountant’s desk from another century. Her eyes went back to the chair. Her suitcase lay on it.

She sat very still and tried to remember where she was, and how she’d gotten here. But all she could recall was a very fuzzy memory of a man, someone she’d thought had been sent to…impregnate her.

Oh, God! Oh, God! She turned to the pillow beside her, wondering if she was sharing the bed with someone she hadn’t even noticed in her panic over her strange surroundings.

She emitted a little sound that was half alarm, half amusement at the sight of the two-foot-tall plush bear. One eye had been replaced with a star-shaped piece of felt, and it seemed to wink at her stupidity.

She wished desperately that she could remember what had happened, hoped against hope that she hadn’t done anything truly stupid. But she was here, wasn’t she? she thought grimly. In a bed she didn’t know, in a room that was unfamiliar. Stupid was written all over it.

Well. She tossed the blankets back and carefully put her legs over the side. Her head thumped in response but she ignored it. Her principal priority was to get away before anyone noticed she was awake. If anyone was here.

The clock on the bedside table read just after eight. If she was lucky, whoever owned this home was on the way to work. She studied the bear worriedly for a moment and wondered if it meant there was a child in residence.

She prayed not. She hated to think she’d been out cold in front of a child.

Natalie got as far as the bathroom off the bedroom before she realized what she was wearing. The red-and-black flannel shirt she remembered. But the baggy, waffle-patterned black thermal underwear did not belong to her. Did it?

And if it didn’t, who had put it on her? The man she’d thought had come to impregnate her?

With a groan of agony, she fell forward against the door molding and closed her eyes. For a woman who’d once had charge of her destiny, she was making one self-destructive move after another.

After a moment of self-pity, she pushed herself upright again, went into the bathroom, filled the sink with water, found a facecloth and did her best to cat-wash quietly so that if anyone was still around, she could make her escape without disturbing them.

She dug through her bag, found a pair of brown cords and a brown turtleneck sweater, and ran a comb cautiously through her painful hair. She folded the black underwear neatly and left it on the foot of the bed.

Then she opened the door silently and, with suitcase in hand and a blue jeans jacket slung over her arm, tiptoed to the head of a wide stairway. On second thought, she reversed direction and went down a smaller back stairway she hoped would lead to a rear hallway and a back door.

She discovered a moment later that she’d been mistaken. The stairway ended in a bright red-and-white kitchen into which small-paned windows all along one side spilled sunlight.

At a farmer’s table in the middle of the room, a man sat reading the paper, while two little girls finished bowls of cereal, their moods apparently morose.

Natalie drew in a breath, distressed at having stumbled into the very confrontation she’d hoped to avoid—and with two beautiful children!

For one instant that would stay with her for a long, long time, she let herself believe that she belonged here, that she’d just showered and dressed and was joining her family for breakfast. The girls were as beautiful as any she’d dreamed of having.

And they looked delighted at the sight of her, grim moods falling away and broad smiles curving their mouths.

“Daddy!” the older of the two girls exclaimed, dark eyes brightening. Natalie guessed her to be seven or eight. “She’s awake!”

“Hi!” The second child, probably a couple of years younger, knelt up on her chair in excitement. “My name’s Roxie!”

The man looked up from his paper and turned his head in her direction. He had close-cropped, dark brown hair, a strong nose, a square chin with the slightest cleft in it, and a mouth that might have lent that tough face a little softness if it had been smiling.

But it wasn’t. And a pair of mahogany-brown eyes said clearly that he disapproved of her.

Time began again and reality descended upon her with a crash.

He was the man in her blurred images of last night. And she’d mentioned impregnation to him; she knew she had. He must think her either a slut or a complete idiot. She didn’t really care to know which.

To her utter and complete surprise, he pushed back from the table and stood. “Good morning,” he said politely, if a little stiffly.

“Good morning,” she replied in a raspy voice. She cleared her throat and smiled at the girls. “Hi. I’m Natalie.”

The older girl tried to get up, but the man stopped her with a look. Then he transferred The Look to Natalie. It made her, too, stay in her place.

“I’m Ben Griffin,” he said. “My mother owns the bed-and-breakfast where you were staying. These are my daughters, Vanessa and Roxanne.”

She smiled at each in turn. Bright smiles that could not be squelched by The Look were offered to her.

“I’m pleased to meet all of you,” she said, transferring her suitcase to her other hand. “And I want you to know how grateful I am for your hospitality.”

She had a million questions. Had she been rowdy last night and had his mother asked him to get rid of her? Had Natalie invited herself over? Had he invited her after her impregnation remarks?

On second thought, maybe she didn’t want her questions answered.

Vanessa turned to her father. “I knew she’d have a nice voice. Does she have to go?”

“Yes, I do,” Natalie replied quickly, unwilling to let Ben Griffin be put on the spot after whatever it was she’d done last night. “I have to…go to work.”

“Isn’t that in Philadelphia?” he asked.

She wondered how he knew that, then realized that if she’d asked him to impregnate her, chances are she’d told him where she lived. She swallowed a groan.

“Yes. I have to get to the airport.”

“I’m afraid we left your car at my mother’s,” he said. “I’ll drive you when I get back from taking the girls to school and day care.” He pointed to the bowl at the fourth place set at the table. “Why don’t you have some cereal and a cup of coffee, and I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.”

“I could take a cab there,” she demurred, sure all he needed was to be put to more trouble on her account.

He shook his head. “Cab service died last year.”

Roxie, still kneeling on her chair, leaned across the table to shake cereal into the empty bowl. “We really like Frosted Pups. It has colored candies in it, but Daddy says we can’t have that except sometimes on Saturdays. It doesn’t have enough…” She turned to her sister for help.

“Nutrition,” Vanessa enunciated carefully. She pushed the milk in the direction of the empty chair. “Daddy said you could stay for dinner,” she added in a rush.

Natalie guessed by the way Ben Griffin stopped in the act of removing a battered suede jacket from the back of his chair that the child had lied.

But he shrugged on the jacket without correcting her.

“That’s very generous,” Natalie said, beginning to feel his disapproval like a weight and hating that she couldn’t respond to the children’s warmth. She knew he wouldn’t like it. “But I really have to go today.”

Both girls looked crestfallen, and she was at a loss to understand their interest in her when she’d hardly spoken to them.

“But I can have breakfast first,” she said, hoping to draw back the smiles. She put her suitcase down by the door and went to the table.

Ben poured coffee into her cup, then excused himself to find his car keys.

Vanessa took a napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and walked around to hand it to her. “Would you like a banana for your cereal?” she asked.

Natalie opened the napkin onto her lap. “No, this is fine, thank you. What grade are you in, Vanessa?”

“I’m in second. Roxie’s in preschool.”

“But I’m gonna get my ears pierced,” Roxie said, coming around the table to press in on the other side of Natalie. She put a fingertip to the jade stud in Natalie’s closest earlobe. “And I’m gonna get earrings just like yours!”

Vanessa rolled her eyes. “She’s not getting her ears pieced until she grows up. Daddy says we’re too young. Do you think we’re too young?”

“Definitely,” she said. “You have to take care of your ears very carefully when you have them pierced or you get an infection. And it’s easier to remember all the things you have to do if you’re older.”

“How old were you?” Vanessa asked.

“I was in high school,” Natalie replied. “My friend gave it to me as a present for my birthday.”

“You were sleeping last night,” Roxie said, leaning her elbow companionably on the table beside Natalie’s bowl and smiling up into her face. “I thought you were Sleeping Beauty! I wanted Daddy to kiss you, but he didn’t want to.”

Natalie bet he didn’t. “I wasn’t feeling very well.”

Vanessa confirmed that with a nod. “Grandma said you had a cold, then you had some brandy, and you didn’t answer the phone.”

Natalie propped her elbow on the table and rested her forehead in her hand. It ached abominably.

“Dillydally if you’re able,” Roxie sang to her, quoting the old aphorism, “but keep your elbows off the table.”

Natalie dutifully lowered her elbow.

“That wasn’t polite!” Vanessa scolded Roxie. “She’s company.”

“Daddy says we have to have good table manners all the time!”

“Us, but not her! She’s a grown-up!”

“No, no, that’s all right.” Natalie put an arm around each girl to defuse the argument. “Thank you, Vanessa, but Roxanne is right. Good manners are always important.”

Their father returned with a key ring hooked over his index finger. He took in the scene of the three of them and his brow darkened.

Natalie dropped her arms from them and swallowed a lump in her throat as she smiled. “You girls have a good day at school,” she said. “And thank you for getting my breakfast together. I’m very glad that I got to meet you.”

“You ready, girls?” their father asked.

Vanessa sighed. “Yes. Come on, Roxie.”

Vanessa picked up her lunch box from the counter, and Roxie took a well-loved doll from beside her bowl. They stopped to wave as their father held the back door open.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to Natalie.

The heroic thing to do, she thought, as he closed the door behind him, was to quickly finish her cereal and start walking to the B-and-B. Her suitcase had wheels, and Dancer’s Beach was small enough that it would take her only a moment to figure out how to get to the B-and-B from here.

She congratulated herself on the first reasonable plan she’d made since her unfortunate decision to use a sperm bank to get a baby in her life.

She finished her cereal hurriedly, had several sips of hot coffee, then rinsed out her dishes and put them in the sink.

Nothing about the view from the window above the sink looked familiar. She walked into the living room and looked out the large window. She saw that the house was on a hill just above town, and that it was probably six or seven blocks downhill, then just about half a mile to the B-and-B and her car. A cinch. At home she ran three miles every other day.

Unfortunately, she discovered a moment later, she ran far better than she walked. When she turned to head back to the kitchen to retrieve her suitcase and leave quickly, she caught her foot on a two-by-four in the hallway that she hadn’t noticed on her way in. She fell flat on her face, a burning pain ripping through her right ankle.

Chapter Three

Ben dropped Vanessa off at Matthew Buckley School. Children streamed toward the building from all directions.

“I think you should ask her to stay for dinner,” Vanessa said as she leaned over to kiss him goodbye. “I think she’s very nice. It isn’t her fault that she couldn’t wake up and Grandma had to make her leave ’cause she’d promised her room to somebody else.”

All he needed at this point in his life, Ben thought, was a ditzy blonde with eyes like those of a silent-film star, all anguish and repentance. Life was hard, but you had to behave with some common sense and resist being splashed all over the news. Even if you were beautiful.

“You heard her, Van,” he replied. “She has to go home.”

“That’s ’cause she knows you don’t like her.”

“I don’t even know her.” He tried to plead innocence.

“You look at her the same way you look at us when we do something we’re not supposed to do.”

“But it doesn’t mean I don’t like you, does it?” he challenged. “It just means I want you to do the right thing.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know you like we do,” his daughter explained patiently. “She probably thinks you don’t like her.”

She was so much like her mother. “Will you please go to school?” He pinched her nose and unlocked her door. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said, but grudgingly.

Roxie was silent all the way to the day care. He’d have probably gotten the same treatment from her before she got out of the car, except that Marianne came to open her door. She was tall and angular with a long dark braid and soft hazel eyes that devoured him every time she looked at him.

To his recollection, he’d never done anything to encourage her, but she’d either misinterpreted something he’d said or done, or she was simply determined to lust him into submission.

She leaned into the car as Roxie darted off to join her friends. “Good morning, Ben,” she said. With the children, she had a loud, high-pitched voice. With him, it dropped an octave and was little more than an intimate whisper.

“Good morning,” he replied, putting a briskness into the greeting so that she couldn’t misinterpret it.

“The Butlers and the Kaminskis think you’d be a wonderful addition to the board,” she said. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to reconsider?”

The implication was in the subtle inflection. He kept his smile brisk, too. “Nope, sorry. Too much to do.”

Her expression became sympathetic. He mistrusted that almost as much as the direct come-on. “I know. Single fathers have such a tough road. Hopefully, the right woman will come along very soon.”

The right woman had gone, but he kept that to himself. “I’m pretty determined to go it alone. But thanks for your concern.”

She apparently hadn’t heard him. “She could be right under your nose,” she suggested.

Mercifully, his cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, turning the key in the ignition, then picking up his phone and flipping it open. He backed out of the driveway as he answered, Marianne staring wistfully after him.

“Ben, it’s Mom.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“How’s Natalie this morning?”

“Fine. Having cereal. We’re coming by in a little bit to pick up her car.”

There was an aggravated sigh on the other end of the connection. “Ben Griffin, I swear. Life drops a beautiful woman right into your lap, and you send her packing.”

He shook his head at the road. “Life didn’t drop her, Mom, you did. And it’s not going to work, so cut it out, all right? You want anything from the bakery on my way to your place?”

“Don’t try to soft-soap me with promises of pastry,” she said with affronted dignity.

“Okay. I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes.”

“Ben!”

“Yeah?”

“An apple fritter. A big one.”

“You got it.”

All right, Ben thought. He was the one in control. He had to fight every moment to maintain it, but right now, he was in charge.

OR SO HE THOUGHT.

When he walked into the house, the table was cleared and Natalie’s dishes were in the sink. But there was no sign of her. Her suitcase was where she’d placed it when she sat down to breakfast.

Maybe she was freshening up, he thought.

He was halfway to the coffeepot with his commuter mug when he heard a faint voice from the direction of the living room.

“Ben?” it called. “Is that you?”

He was touched by an unsettling foreboding. Was that Natalie?

He followed the sound, then stopped in his tracks at the sight of her lying on the carpet, propped up on an elbow, her face pale, her mouth tight. The two-by-four he’d brought up from the basement that morning to remind himself to fix the front porch railing had been flipped over and lay partially under her.

No, he thought firmly. This is not happening to me.

He dropped to his knees beside her and saw that her left ankle was purple and already several times its normal size.

“I think it’s just a sprain,” she said heavily. “But I can’t get up. If you can help me and just take me to my car…” Then she added mournfully, “I’m sorry. I didn’t see the lumber.”

It was his fault, but he wanted to blame her. “What were you doing in here, anyway?” he demanded.

She nodded as though she’d expected that accusing question. “I was determined to walk to town so you wouldn’t have to drive me, so I came to look out the window to sort of orient myself. I’m sorry. I know I’ve just made everything worse. But if you can just get me to my car, I’ll be fine.”

“Right. Like I would do that.” He had no reason to bark at her, but it helped relieve the anger he felt that she couldn’t just walk out of his life this morning as he’d hoped. As he needed. And it was all his fault.

He slipped an arm between her propped elbow and her side, then one rather familiarly under her hips.

She wrapped her arms instinctively around his neck. “I can hop if you’ll give me a little support.”

He ignored her and brought himself to a standing position without losing her. He strode through the house and out to the van, though she had to open doors.

He put her in the middle seat in the back, so that he could prop up her foot. He handled it carefully, placing it on a pillow he kept for the girls. Then he looked up at her to ask if that was comfortable.

She looked pale and miserable.

His anger evaporated. “I’ll take you to the clinic to make sure you didn’t break anything.” He put a plaid blanket with a fleece lining over her. “Just lie quietly. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

She lay back with a groan. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I hate this.”

Yeah, me, too, he thought silently.

“I know you hate it, too,” she said for him. “I meant to be less trouble and ended up being more. I don’t seem to be able to make a right move lately.”

“I’ve had my share of those days,” he consoled her. “Just relax.”

She was quiet as he drove down the hill and headed up Beach Avenue toward the clinic.

“Was I…causing a scene last night at your mother’s?” she asked, her voice sounding stiff and choked.

He decided she could use a break. “No,” he replied. “She called me because you wouldn’t answer her knock, and she knew you hadn’t eaten. She was worried about you.”

“I was probably sleeping. I’ve had a difficult couple of weeks and I haven’t slept very well. Then I was taking pills and she gave me that toddy….”

“She had other guests coming in last night to whom she’d promised the room, so she had to…remove you.”

The silence was thick for a moment. He could hear her sorting through words for the right thing to say. Then she uttered a little sound of exasperation and blurted, “There’s just no subtle way to ask this.”

He couldn’t see her in the rearview mirror because she was lying down. He had the weirdest sensation that he was having a conversation with an invisible woman.

“Ask what?”

There was another heavy pause, then another abrupt question. “Did I say anything to you about…” She stopped as though it was just too hard, after all, then seemed to reconsider and began again. “Did I ask you if you’d been sent to impregnate me?”

He had to admire her willingness to confront an uncomfortable situation head-on.

“Yes, you did,” he answered. Then he decided he could give her another break. “Of course, I was confused, but after you passed out and my mother was packing up your things, we saw the newspaper. It explained some.”

Natalie groaned aloud, a muffled sound that suggested her hands were probably over her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m usually the epitome of decorum, but then I don’t usually drink. I guess that little bit of brandy made me more direct than it’s safe to be. I apologize if I offended you.”

He turned into the clinic parking lot. “I’m a builder who’s spent most of his time working in the company of other men. I’m not offendable.”

“But your girls are so sweet,” she said, a trace of self-loathing in her voice, “and I can tell by the way you are with them that you’re trying to provide a gentle, protective upbringing, and here I’m pushed into your life, trying to compromise you before I even know your name, then passing out cold.”