Her Daughter's Father

“You could walk right into her, and she wouldn’t know you.” Mick turned, almost blocking out the mob behind him. “We can leave now if you want, if you have second thoughts.”

“No.” A woman in a bright red dress floated on a clear path for Mick. Their landlady at Seasider Inn looked different tonight, without her square white pinafore and her cat’s-eye, tortoiseshell glasses. India shoved her cup into her father’s hand. “Here comes Viveca Henderson. I need some air.”

Warily Mick turned. “Yeah, she likes me too much. I think I’d better mention your mother to her again. Where are you going?”

“Outside, to the high school’s dunking booth.” Reluctant or not, she’d come here to find out about Colleen’s life. “The sooner I find someone who’ll gossip about her, the better.”

Bright lights illuminated the parking lot. India passed an apple-bobbing barrel and a kissing booth, manned by girls in cheerleader uniforms. Could one of them be Colleen?

In the booth’s shadows, India glimpsed a young girl in the same skirt she’d bought. India smoothed her hem again. In this light, she couldn’t tell if the girl’s short cap of hair was purple. Suddenly the girl tried to pull away from the boy at her side, but he held on. Leaning down, he spoke close to her ear, and she slid her arm around his waist.

Hesitating, India studied the crowd around the girl and boy. No one else seemed to see trouble. When the boy turned the girl toward the parking lot, she went willingly.

The cool breeze brushed a paper hamburger wrapper past India’s ankle. What would Colleen be like? Would she have a boyfriend who looked too old for her? Would she seem even younger than the girl with the purple hair?

Rubbing her goose-bumped arms, India watched the people enjoying themselves too much to notice the weather or the children. She wished she’d brought her jacket along. Even if it hadn’t matched her froufrou lacy blouse and plaid skirt.

She’d vowed not to meddle in Colleen’s life, and keeping vows was her strength. Yet deep inside, she had to admit she’d thought she might see Colleen here tonight. She couldn’t help wanting to look “cool.” After she’d sorted through her serviceable though faded jeans, the painting overalls her father had provided, or the one good dress she’d packed for just in case, she’d trekked to the nearest mall on the mainland.

Ridiculous.

What would Colleen Stephens care about a stranger’s wardrobe?

A sudden, urgent cry stopped India beside a large wooden planter. She stared back into the crowd, waiting for another cry, but she heard nothing. Just children’s voices and party sounds.

She scanned the little ones weaving in and out of the festival booths. All happy, many laughing. But that one voice, for a moment, higher than the rest—India pushed nervous fingertips through her hair. While the frightened cry still echoed in her head, she turned toward the parking lot’s edge.

With so many cars here, every house in town must be empty. She craned her neck, searching for—what? Almost before she realized she was hearing it again, the thin, high voice arched over the fun once more.

India made a beeline for the sound. In the weaker light beyond the open lot, cars stood in rows. Three rows back, the tall, gangly boy from beside the kissing booth tried to tug the purple-haired girl into a cherry-red sports car while two more girls dragged at her other arm. They all struggled in silence now.

Suddenly the two other girls broke away and ran toward the festival crowds. India had eyes only for the girl who still clung with both hands to the roof of the boy’s car.

“Get in,” he shouted. “Get in or you’ll never see me again.”

Intimately familiar words, in a different context, in a more dangerous situation than when her long-ago boyfriend had threatened her with them, deepened India’s instinctive rage.

“I won’t go with you when you’re like this.” The girl tried to arch away from him, but he only pushed harder.

Her friends ran up to India. Their great relief hurt her. They were just little girls, caught in a bad game of grownup.

One intercepted her. “He’s been drinking. Our friend—Please help us.”

India broke into a run. “Go get more help.”

“Okay.”

With heightened senses, she heard their footsteps fade behind her. In the false light, the paint on the boy’s car looked warm and wet. As she rounded the hood, India slapped her palm on the metal. She would have jumped on it to make him turn away from the girl. He whirled, fists clenched.

“Hey! That’s my car.” Slurring the words, he flailed his arms, to reach for India.

But she bowed her body out of his reach and stationed herself between him and the girl, who stood now, stunned and still.

“Do you think you’re a big man, because you can bully a girl like this?” India sized him up at about seventeen. At least six inches taller than she, and forty pounds heavier, he was mad and drunk enough to be plenty mean. She didn’t dare break her gaze from his to check on the girl.

Completely unintimidated, he marched toward India, his fists again at his sides. “Who are you?”

“The woman you’ll have to go through to get to her.” She braced her hands on her hips and hoped the girl stayed behind her. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, India waited for him to strike—and for instincts that had dragged her this far to tell her what to do next.

The boy stopped. “You don’t know her. You don’t belong here. Who are you?”

“We’ve covered that. Where are your parents? Do they know about you?”

“Know what about me?” He stumbled forward. “You hit my car.”

Backing into the girl, India eased her away from the car. She risked a quick glance inside. No keys on the seat. She couldn’t see the ignition.

“Go home.” India pretended she wasn’t afraid. “Before this girl’s friends bring the police back. And next time, pick on someone your own size.”

“I’ll—” Before he could say what he planned to do, a man appeared out of darkness.

“Keep your filthy hands off my daughter.” He hauled the boy around to face him. With his fists full of the kid’s collar, the man studied the girl behind India. “Colleen, are you hurt?”

India stiffened. Her heart lodged in the back of her throat. Go now. Run, before she sees you.

Somehow, she couldn’t move.

“Colleen!”

“I’m fine, Dad.” The girl edged around India, her voice a young echo of India’s mother’s. Rachel sang like an angel. She sang lullabies her grandchild would never hear. And this child spoke with Rachel’s voice.

India wobbled. Plaid skirt and purple hair brushed into a thick cap. The girl who’d served Mick the glass of pink punch.

More than one Colleen might live on Arran Island.

India stared at the man. Strong and inflexible as granite, from wide, high cheekbones to the dent in his chin, his face softened as he searched his daughter for injury.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Her father, he had the right to stay and make sure. He would take her home and comfort her—and hopefully talk to her about boys who drank too much and threatened young girls.

Before Colleen could answer, her friends slipped through the cars to surround her with tears and relief. She collapsed into their arms, instead of in her father’s.

Why? Teenaged angst? Or something deeper, some problem that might motivate a young woman to look up to a boy like Colleen’s bad choice.

India lifted her hand to the girl with the fuzzy purple hair. More than one Colleen might live on Arran Island, but she doubted it. She took one step backward and then two more. Before anyone noticed her again, she faded into the darkness.

CHAPTER TWO

INDIA GLANCED FROM the adjoining door to her father’s room, to the old beige phone on the bureau. For the first time in years, she craved the comfort of her mother’s serenity. She dialed.

Her mother picked up on the first ring. India broke into her hello. “I saw her, Mom, but she’s in trouble.”

“I should have come with you, too.” Through the telephone lines, Rachel Stuart’s voice sounded tinny and far away and too much like Colleen’s.

“She has purple hair, and a boy tried to drag her into his car. I think he’s her boyfriend. If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have hurt her.”

“Her boyfriend?” Rachel squeaked.

“What kind of parents let their daughter date a boy like that? She’s not old enough to date. Even I know she’s not old enough. Maybe I know better than anyone.”

Rachel’s response came more slowly. “Daughters sometimes do things their parents don’t know about.”

India tightened her hand on the phone. “How am I supposed to answer that? I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to hope Jack and Mary Stephens are more suspicious than you and Dad.”

“So do I, but don’t leap to conclusions. Wait awhile.”

Impatient with the same Zen-like acceptance Rachel had shown her in similar straits, India lashed out. “I don’t plan to use this as an excuse to announce I’m her mother, but I hope her real parents won’t give her the freedom to hang herself.”

Rachel’s silence lengthened. Finally she took a tolerant breath that sounded nearer than her voice. “Maybe she made one innocent mistake tonight. Honey, don’t push me away again. I’m glad you called me first and that you want to talk to me, but I’m not sure how to help you. I don’t want to suggest anything that will make you turn away from me, but I really don’t believe you can judge Colleen’s family situation by one incident. Stay there. Keep your eyes open.”

India shook her head, alone again with decisions about the child she’d given up already. She shuddered. Talk about repeating history. When she’d known she was pregnant, she’d turned first to her mother. And Rachel’s answer? Give the child to someone who can make her a good life.

“I’m sure you’re right, Mom.” Old habits died hard. She couldn’t help saying what her mother wanted to hear. “I’ll get Dad. He’ll want to say good-night to you.”

WHITE PAINT PERMEATED the fine black bristles of the brush India dragged carefully over the window ledge. What am I going to do?

Dip the brush in the paint-spattered can.

I promised not to involve myself in her life.

Wipe the bristles against the can’s lip.

But he could have hurt her—and her father knew him. Her father wasn’t surprised to find them together. India turned her face away from paint fumes that rose with the brush, but she had to look back to paint the trim her father had primed.

“Time for lunch, honey.”

She jumped at Mick’s hesitant voice from below her. Was she so transparent he felt he had to be gentle with her? “You can take off the kid gloves, Dad. I’m all right.”

“I guess, but let me be perfectly honest. Your mother’s worried about you, and I’m not supposed to trust your usual ‘I’m all right’ response.” He climbed her ladder’s lower rungs, forcing her to hold on or topple off. “You’ve lived close by, and you always showed up on the required occasions, but you were always all right. You didn’t want college tuition. You never asked me to help you with stuff a dad’s supposed to do, get your keys out when you locked them in the car, paint your apartment. I guess time between you and me stopped when you were sixteen. I’m not always sure what to say to you or how to put it, but I’d like you to try to trust me.”

India shook her bangs out of her eyes and offered a contrite smile that felt strained. “I didn’t abandon you and Mom. I let you help me make a bad decision, and even though it was completely my decision, I haven’t felt comfortable with you since.”

Mick took the brush from her. “Blame us for it. Be as angry as you can, but stop hiding from me. I came here to help you. When will you forgive me enough to think of me as your father again?”

“I’m guilty, not angry. I’ve even wanted to blame you and Mom, but I know better.”

“Excuse me, Miss—Mrs.—Ms.—ma’am.”

Startled by the gravelly, unsure voice, India leaned around her father. The ladder swayed, but the tall man below steadied it as if she and Mick weighed nothing. Instinctively, her heart ricocheting in her chest, India grabbed her father’s wrist. “Dad.”

“I’m Jack Stephens.” The man, his blacker-than-black hair in silky curls that stroked his up-tilted head, eyed them with embarrassment. “I couldn’t hear you until I got close enough to realize I was interrupting.”

India gripped the aluminum ladder’s cool edge. What had she said? What could he have heard? Nothing that would expose her connection to Colleen, but plenty she and her father should have discussed years ago in private.

“No.” Mick curved his hand around India’s. “We’re on our way down. I came up to remind my daughter the Fish Shop stops serving lunch in twenty minutes.” With a quick pat, he released her hand and started down. “I’m Mick Stuart, and this is my daughter, India.”

Skipping the last several rungs, Mick dropped to the ground. Taking his cue, India tried to remain calm. Act normal. She clung to the sides of the ladder, but at the last minute, she couldn’t risk touching Jack Stephens. Even brushing against him would feel like involving herself with Colleen. She skipped the same rungs her father had, to leap away from Jack.

Confusion lined Jack’s broad forehead. She searched his face, high cheekbones, dark chocolate eyes that returned her intense interest. Jack smiled. He looked far younger than the forty-two she knew him to be.

His smile called up every defense she’d ever constructed. This man was her child’s father. Colleen’s father, as India could never be her mother.

“Hello, Mr. Stephens.” India stepped to Mick’s side. “My father handles the business. Dad, I’ll go on to the Fish Shop and order for you, okay?”

“No, wait.” Jack reached for her arm, but she pulled away. As his fingers drifted through air, he looked slightly embarrassed. “I came to see you. I believe we met at the festival.”

India swept her ponytail over her shoulder. Nervously she inspected the pale yellow strands splayed across her palm. “No, I think I’d remember.”

“You helped my daughter. I’d like to thank you.”

For fifteen years, she’d handled every situation life tossed her way, including a plane crash and a heart that stayed empty no matter how hard she tried to fill it. She might not have made the right choices, but she’d chosen. She flipped her ponytail back and took control. “How did you find me, Mr. Stephens?”

“Jack. My name is Jack.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “This is a small island. I just asked if anyone had seen you, and a friend told me Tanner’d hired you and your father to paint his house.”

India couldn’t hold back an admiring smile. He’d worked her own plan against her. “You didn’t have to come. I’m sure anyone would have helped your daughter. She didn’t want to go with that boy anyway.”

In obvious relief, he braced his hands on his hips. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that, but I can say how grateful I am for what you did. Colleen’s friends said Chris almost dragged her into his car.”

So Chris was his name. India tried to look through Jack’s handsome self-consciousness to the man beneath. Shouldn’t he know what kind of boy this Chris was? His grip on the kid’s neck implied he’d understood.

“Fortunately, she held on until I got there.” India wiped her hand on her shirt and held it out to him. “Thanks for stopping by. I was glad to help.”

Sliding one foot forward on the grass, Jack took her hand. India released her fingers from his, uncomfortable with a sudden warmth that sizzled up her arm. She noted the dusty jeans that clung to his muscled thighs, the faded Georgetown sweatshirt that stretched across his chest beneath a dark blue field jacket. How did a fisherman get so dusty?

The same pale dust flecked her father’s clothes, but he’d spent the day stripping old paint off Mr. Tanner’s trim. Had Jack lost his fishing business since he’d adopted Colleen?

Could this situation disintegrate any faster? Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. She needed time to think. At any moment, Jack might see something of Colleen in her. She couldn’t let him have even the smallest suspicion. She had to escape his observant gaze.

“I’m starving, Dad. Mind if we go now?”

Mick’s weathered skin flushed with embarrassment at her brisk tone. India squeezed his arm, amazed he didn’t see her point.

He hung back. “We shouldn’t leave our equipment out, India.”

She turned him toward Mr. Tanner’s crushed-shell driveway. “It’ll be fine. Come on.”

“I’ll walk with you.” Jack’s deep voice stayed at her side as he lengthened his stride to keep up. India looked anywhere but at him.

At the top of the driveway, she slid into the passenger seat of her father’s panel truck. Mick took his time coming around the hood, talking to Jack Stephens in quiet words she couldn’t decipher. Tapping her feet on the floor, she was breathless when her father finally lifted a farewell hand to Jack and opened the door.

“Nice to meet you,” Mick called.

Jack nodded. His questioning gaze made him look vulnerable, despite his height and work-hardened body. Wind lifted his silky jet curls again. India shifted in the truck seat. What color would Colleen’s hair be under all that purple?

WAITING FOR COLLEEN outside the Arran Island House of Beauty, Jack tipped his soda can up. The cool drink tasted good on such an unnaturally warm spring day. As he dragged the back of his hand over his mouth, he eyed the woman balancing her groceries, her keys and the bulky D.C. newspaper while she pushed through the grocery’s front door.

In baggy overalls and a dark blue shirt, with the sleeves rolled up her slender arms, she looked more child than woman. Her long corn-silk ponytail didn’t help.

If not for her, Chris Briggs might have hauled Colleen into his car. He might have killed them both, driving under the influence. With a shudder, Jack took another swig of soda that bit at the back of his throat.

His father-in-law came out of the market carrying his own copy of the newspaper. Hayden nodded toward India Stuart as he passed behind the commercial van emblazoned with the words, Stuart Painting. He spoke to her, but she shook her head. With a friendly shrug, he crossed the street in four strides and stepped onto the curb beside Jack. “She’s the one?”

Jack nodded. “She’d rather spill everything in those two bags than ask for help.”

Hayden grinned. “I offered. Did you?”

“No.” Jack smiled, unsure of his response to India. “I figured I’d irritated her enough when I thanked her this morning.”

Hayden thwacked the paper against his thigh. “She’s cute, though.”

“Cute?”

“Go over there and help her, son.”

Jack opened his own truck’s door. “I have enough woman trouble, and I thought you stayed on to help me.”

Hayden cocked an eyebrow at the apparent non sequitur.

Jack looked at Hayden with affection. “Your advice just keeps getting worse.”

Watching India Stuart, Hayden came around the truck and took the other seat. “Yeah, I guess. Maybe she’s too young for you.”

Shouldn’t the guy feel some sort of loyalty toward Mary? Jack danced uncomfortably around thoughts of her, himself.

He’d tried. He’d tried as hard as he could with Mary, accepting her accusations when she’d told him he’d driven her to do what she’d done to their marriage. He’d wanted a child as badly as she had. But as he peered through the House of Beauty’s plate glass window, trying to identify which shadow belonged to his daughter, Jack wished he’d never found out the truth about Mary’s affair. Wished he’d never known she’d settled for him only to keep the child they couldn’t make together.

“There she goes.”

Jack thought Hayden meant Colleen, but when she didn’t stroll through the beauty salon’s doors, he turned to the other side of the street in time to watch India’s van rumble dustily away. Jack curled his fingers around the steering wheel.

“When I thanked her, she acted almost angry. She couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

Hayden offered a sage nod. “People don’t like to get involved. Maybe she’s just a nice woman who helped Colleen because she couldn’t pass a child in need, but she doesn’t want to be thanked. Wouldn’t you have helped a child in Colleen’s position?”

Being in the right place at the right time didn’t explain the ice in India Stuart’s dark blue eyes. “I think there’s more. She had to force herself to look at me.” He pushed her from his mind. “Colleen is my first concern. I’ll talk to Chris as soon as he crawls out from under his rock again.”

“Didn’t you speak to his mother?”

“I tried to talk to Leslie, but she isn’t the same since Tom left them. The whole time we talked she nursed her youngest, and her twin boys climbed all over us. I think Chris requires more energy than she can give him. I suggested he should help more, and she told me he puts all his time and money into that fancy car of his.”

Hayden bounced his fist against the knee of his trousers. “You’ll find him. Hey, if he won’t listen to you, maybe you can set that Stuart woman on him again. From what I hear, she held her own.”

“I can’t afford to see the humor.” Jack broke off, pleasantly surprised as Colleen pushed carefully through the shop door.

A breeze lifted her honey-blond hair into her eyes. Impatiently she brushed it away with a furtive glance, as if she didn’t want anyone to see her without her purple rebellion.

Jack’s relief evaporated. “I don’t think she gets it yet, either. Maybe I should have her thank India Stuart in person, too. It’s only polite, and admitting her mistake to a stranger might make her see how big it was.”

AFTER THEY PUT AWAY THEIR equipment the next day, India and her father headed to the town square for an open-air market Mrs. Henderson had told them about. The local library sponsored a booth that sold used books. India stopped there first.

“You’re new in town,” the woman behind the wooden counter said. “I’m Nell Fisher.”

India held out her hand. “India Stuart. Mrs. Henderson told my father and me the market opens here every week.”

“Yes.” The other woman waved a work-gloved hand at the people who strolled up and down the neat rows. Now that the weather had gone back to chilly normal, everyone wore coats that flapped around them and rubbed the wooden stalls. “We probably have something you’d like. I recommend Clem Tyler’s hydroponic tomatoes, and Reverend Goodling’s wife tats beautiful lace collars and cuffs, if you’re in the market.” An excellent saleswoman, she pointed over her shoulder, at a rocky lean-to with its back to her stall. “And, of course, the requisite tie-dyed-anything-you-ever-wanted-to-wear booth.”

India laughed. “Do you always participate?”

Mrs. Fisher nodded. “When I can get away. I don’t have an assistant just now, so I have to close up while I’m here, but I hope to turn a couple of the youngsters into patrons, while their parents shop for better prices than we can get in the stores out here. You’ll notice we don’t have room for a mall, and we pay the price for our isolation.”

India picked up a dog-eared copy of Peter Pan. “Do you read to the children?”

“If I gather a large enough crowd. You seem pretty interested.”

India hesitated. Gossip ran both ways. Would a house-painting librarian make Colleen’s neighbors suspicious? But no, she and her father had agreed on what she should say, to cover her failings as a painter. She was helping him out, the best he could afford. “I usually work as a librarian. I’m on sabbatical, and my father needed a hand.”

“Really?” Interest lit Mrs. Fisher’s eyes. “And how long do you plan to stay on the island?”

“Depends.” India’s breath grew short. “We don’t know how much business we’ll find for my father.”

“Maybe you’d like to help me out if you have some free time in the evenings. We have a volunteer program.” Mrs. Fisher lifted a stack of books onto the counter. “I just don’t have a volunteer to man it at the moment.”