The Daughter Merger

Unless this woman, Saint Grace, could pull Claire’s bacon out of the fire.

He did hate having to be grateful.

Physically aching to be gone, he took another sip of coffee and said, “I understand you’re a legal secretary.”

“That’s right. Nine to five. The girls, by the way, should be done by four.”

Four. He hadn’t left the office that early in years, except for once when he had come down with the stomach flu and for the three times Claire had hit the road.

Hell, he was entitled. If it would make a difference to Claire…

He came back to the present to realize that Grace was studying him with crinkled brow.

“Is that a problem?”

“No.” David shook his head. “No. Of course not.” He took a last swallow of coffee. “Listen, you must have things you need to get done, and I have some paperwork waiting. I’ll pick up Claire and Linnet on Wednesday. Why don’t I take you all out for pizza afterward? You must hate to cook when you don’t walk in the door until six-fifteen or later.”

“What a nice idea.” She looked pleased—and surprised, which stung.

Apparently he wasn’t expected to be considerate. Which made him wonder what Claire had told her foster mother about him.

“Oh, I wanted to mention that Claire and I have an appointment with the counselor on Thursday. For what it’s worth,” he added sardonically.

“She seems to be making an effort.”

For you, he thought. Resentful yet again, he was then angry at himself for his pettiness. Grace Blanchet had generously taken on a difficult teenager. He had no business blaming her for what was his fault.

She walked him to the door, courtesy worn like skillfully applied makeup, making her hard to read, somehow remote despite her unfailing friendliness and warmth. An unworthy part of him would have liked to see her veneer crack. Surely she got mad sometimes, had moments of being spiteful, passionate, tired. He wouldn’t mind seeing one.

If for an instant he chose to imagine her not angry but passionate, her cheeks flushed, mouth soft, hair tangled, well, it wasn’t a picture he let linger in his mind.

“Thank you,” he made himself say again. “Not just for dinner, but for—”

“No.” A sharper note entered her voice. She closed her eyes, opened them again, said more quietly, “Please. We’ll both get sick of it if you feel you have to thank me every time you come. Let’s just consider it said, okay? I’m doing this for Claire’s sake, and for Linnet’s. I like kids, I’m comfortable with them. Having her is really no problem.”

“Then good night.”

He felt no less guilt, no less relief when he walked away this time.

SLUMPED LOW IN HER SEAT in the darkened auditorium, Claire chewed on her fingernail and pretended to listen to the guy auditioning for Benedick.

“‘Hath not the world,’ um—” he frowned at his script “‘—one man but he will wear his cap with sus…suspicion.”‘ He sounded it out carefully, then continued in the same monotone, one word at a time.

Totally tuning him out, Claire focused on her terror. This was worse than hitchhiking. Way worse. Not that she couldn’t do better than all these morons who’d already gone. But still. There must be forty kids trying out for parts, and half of them had friends hanging out, too. They were all listening. She’d have to stand up there on the stage and face not only the two teachers sitting in the front row who were going to be director and assistant director, but half the school, too.

So far nobody had been mean when someone screwed up, but probably they were all, like, buds. Everybody hated her. Claire knew they did. What if they laughed? Or booed?

Her stomach cramped and she had to scramble out of her seat, whispering, “Excuse me, excuse me,” six times to get to the aisle and race to the bathroom.

When she got back, a totally cute ninth-grade guy who was also—wouldn’t you know—president of the student body was reading Benedick. Josh Mc-Kendrick was really good. You could tell he actually understood what he was saying.

“‘I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such matter,”‘ he declared. And then, with a scowl, he demanded of Claudio, “‘But I hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?”‘

Please, please, please, she whispered to herself. It would be so cool to play Beatrice to his Benedick. People would look at her differently. Like she was cool.

This was taking forever. Finally they finished with the guys and started on girls reading for Hero. Linnet went sixth. Her voice was too soft, but she stood straight, without fidgeting, and read, “‘But nature never fram’d a woman’s heart, Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.”‘

Claire thought she was the best. Hero was sweet. Well, wimpy. Claire hated to agree with her father, but he was right; that’s why she didn’t want to be Hero. This guy treats her really badly, and then she falls into his arms when he realizes he was wrong about her? Yeah, right.

“We’ll start with those reading for Beatrice now,” the director said. “Jessica Wisniewski? You go first, please.”

Jessica was one of the popular girls. She grabbed the script and sauntered out on stage in her flare jeans and peasant blouse, tiny crystal butterflies sparkling in her hair. The scene Mrs. Hinchen was having them read was from near the end, when Claudio had spurned Hero and Beatrice was mad.

“‘I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.”‘ Jessica sounded like she was gossiping with her friends. She kept giggling.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Hinchen said hastily, interrupting before Jessica could go on to Beatrice’s next speech. “Lacy Parker, you’re up next.”

Claire’s hands were sweating. She couldn’t do this, she thought desperately. She didn’t have to! This wasn’t her thing, it was Linnet’s. The only reason she’d opened her big mouth and agreed to audition was…

Her father.

“I didn’t bother to try out,” she’d have to tell him. Which was exactly what he expected.

No. She’d go up there if it killed her.

Which it might.

“Claire Whitcomb?”

Her knees were jelly when she stood up and started down the aisle. She stumbled over somebody’s book bag and heard a whispered sorry. It seemed to take forever to get to the front row. She took the script in stiff fingers, then tripped again on the stairs going up to the stage. If anybody laughed…Claire turned and faced the audience with a glare.

Silence.

She could see faces better than she’d expected. Linnet had moved up closer to the front and was smiling encouragement. Josh McKendrick was whispering something to Jessica Wisniewski. The door at the back opened and a man came in, letting it ease shut behind him.

Claire gaped. Her father. What was he doing here?

She stole a glance at the clock. Five o’clock. This was taking forever. He must have sat in the car for ages and then decided to hunt for them.

But, oh wow. Wasn’t he lucky, arriving just in time to watch his darling daughter? He stood unmoving at the back, waiting for her to make a fool of herself.

“Claire?” Mrs. Hinchen prompted.

Claire moistened her lips and looked at the script. For a moment the words on it were all a blur. She absolutely could not do this.

You can! she told herself. Deep breath. Show everybody. Especially him.

Mrs. Hinchen had highlighted Beatrice’s speeches with a hot pink marker. Another deep breath, and Claire focused on the opening lines. She’d already heard them over and over.

You can.

“‘Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman! O! that I were a man.”‘

Mom had always complained that even her whisper could be heard two blocks away. Now Claire let her scathing voice soar to the back, to her father. She let her bitterness be Beatrice’s.

“‘O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.”‘

It came more easily. A sense of power flooded her veins and made her giddy. She was better than Jessica Wisniewski. Better than anyone. She was dazzling her father, who had been so sure she couldn’t do it.

Still facing the audience proudly, Claire finished at last, a heartfelt, anguished cry, “‘I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.”‘

Her voice seemed to linger in her ears, if not the air. In the long moment of silence that followed, her confidence drained from her with a whoosh, and heat rose in her cheeks.

She’d made a fool of herself. Nobody else had acted. If you were cool, you didn’t.

But then, suddenly, kids were clapping. As she stared, incredulous, somebody—Josh McKendrick—stood. Others joined him. They were giving her—her—a standing ovation. Dazed, she kept standing there.

Mrs. Hinchen’s smile was broad, approving. And her father—Claire’s gaze sought the back of the auditorium.

Her father was gone.

He probably hadn’t even stayed to watch. Unexpected anger gave her the courage to grin, wave and walk nonchalantly off the stage.

Without tripping.

CHAPTER FOUR

DAVID WHITCOMB’S MERCEDES BENZ was parked at the curb in front of the condo. Grace had known he would be here, of course, but still the awareness that he must be inside gave her an odd start. He was not a comfortable man, the kind she could easily imagine grabbing something to drink and the newspaper and making himself at home. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of him at home in her place. She wanted him at arm’s length.

And yet she’d insisted he come often, feel at ease. Claire needed him. As long as Claire lived here, Grace had to try to do what was best for the girl.

But when she let herself in from the garage, Grace couldn’t let go of the day’s tension the way she usually did the moment she stepped into her home, her refuge. Instead she felt a wariness almost as great as if she suspected an intruder. He was here, somewhere.

A muffled shriek of laughter from upstairs told her where the girls were. They wouldn’t be giggling like that if he were up there with them. She glanced briefly at the telephone, but messages could wait. Going out to dinner gave her a good excuse not to think about plans for the annual fall school carnival, which she, ever ready to wave her hand in the air, had volunteered to organize.

Pausing only to pet Lemieux, who was curled in a too-small cardboard box she had left out just for him, Grace set down her purse and moved quietly through the dining room.

She found David in the living room reading the newspaper she’d left on the table that morning. He didn’t hear her coming, and for a moment she was able to observe him unseen.

He’d tossed his suit jacket on the ottoman and loosened his tie. His face showed weariness he hadn’t yet let her see. She had the sense that the newspaper was a time filler, that he wasn’t really concentrating. As she watched, he let out a soft sigh and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes.

Grace felt a quiver under her breastbone. What would this guarded man look like if he smiled? His laughs to this point had been bitter, more a rough sound than a genuine curve of the mouth. Was he stern in the office? Did he have a sense of humor? Was he capable of tenderness?

She hoped so, for Claire’s sake. For hers…well, it hardly mattered, Grace had to remind herself, as long as he was civil. If he ever were to smile at her with devastating charm…the flutter in her chest at the image her mind conjured was enough to scare her. She should be grateful that he was uninterested in her as a woman. If he were…face it, she’d be in trouble.

She must have moved, because he turned his head in that contained way he had, in the same instant assuming a mask of distant civility.

Donning her own, Grace strolled into the living room. “You made it.”

“Eventually. The audition ran until five-thirty.”

“So you haven’t had to wait long.” Oh, she was a fount of brilliance tonight.

“No.” He appraised her, a lightning-quick glance that made her flush with a sudden, desperate desire to be beautiful, shapely, to provoke a spark of hunger in those hooded eyes.

Praying her cheeks hadn’t turned pink, Grace kicked off her heels and sank onto the couch. “So, did the girls say how the audition went?”

“Aside from long?” A hint of a rueful smile quirked one corner of his mouth so fleetingly she’d have missed it if she blinked. It was enough to steal her breath.

“Um…” Focus. “Aside from long,” she agreed.

Lemieux, the snowshoe Siamese cross, strolled into the living room, having abandoned his beloved box, and leaped to her lap. Grace couldn’t help a small “oomph,” when his muscular body landed. He circled, settled and began happily purring when she petted him.

David shook his head in seeming bemusement at the drool from the contented cat forming a puddle on her skirt.

“What did your daughter say the cat’s name is?”

She explained that he was named after the hockey star, Mario Lemieux. Then, feeling David’s still fascinated stare, she prodded, “The audition?”

He tore his gaze from the cat. “I missed Linnet’s reading, but I saw Claire’s.” The oddest expression crossed his face. “She was incredible. She got a standing ovation.”

Pride. That’s what she saw in his expression. Pride he hadn’t known he felt, didn’t quite know what to do with.

“Does she know you saw her read?”

His face shuttered. “I told her on the way home.”

“And?”

“I said she was great. Talented.” The soft voice was emotionless.

Grace wanted to shake him. “And?” she prompted again, less patiently.

“For a moment I’d swear she looked pleased. She asked, ‘Do you really think so?’ Linnet jumped in with how great she was, and how many people stopped them on the way out to tell her that. I asked when they’d find out whether they got the parts. My daughter had remembered by then that she has to be invariably negative with me. She shrugged and said it didn’t matter, that some popular ninth grader would get any good one.” Furrows formed in his forehead. “I tried to tell her they’d be crazy not to cast her. She went for the rude ‘Like you know anything about it.”‘

“But she was pleased. Just remember that.”

He shook his head. “Claire doesn’t believe me.”

“Maybe not this time, but if you say it often enough…” She stopped, realizing how preachy she sounded. “I don’t know why I’m lecturing you. I’m certainly no expert.”

“And yet, you’re raising a great kid yourself. You must be doing something right.”

“I’d like to think so,” she admitted. “But my two cents is hardly needed when you’re seeing a counselor.”

“Oh, yeah. We’re seeing one. Have seen.” His grimace carved a groove in one cheek. “Heck, make it plural. We’re on number three now. I figured Claire didn’t like the first one. Or the second one. Maybe she’d respond to someone else, I told myself. Now, I’m beginning to wonder. But do you know, plenty of these people don’t have kids themselves. I asked number one. Well, no, she admitted. She’s never had children.”

Grace’s hand paused on Lemieux’s sleek tan-colored back. “But she’s studied them.”

“Is that the same thing?” He sounded deeply cynical. “Claire isn’t mentally ill. How the hell does somebody learn from books how to raise a normal kid to be happy, self-confident and productive?”

Lemieux protested the lack of fingernails, and Grace automatically resumed scratching.

“I doubt anyone believes there’s a magic formula. And think about it. You can be knowledgeable about something you’ve never done yourself. Just remember all the coaches and movie directors and teachers, for example.”

“Maybe.” David’s eyes, clear and intelligent, pinned her. “Tell me what you were going to say earlier. Your two cents.”

Her cheeks warmed again. Wishing passionately that she had never opened her big mouth, Grace said diffidently, “Only that I believe the most important thing we can do is praise our children often, and tell them just as often that we love them.”

“Love and praise,” he repeated, deadpan.

He wanted some secret, and she had offered the equivalent of the ABCs. Something stupidly obvious. Her chest burned. She felt stupid.

“I’m sorry,” Grace began. “I’m sure the answer for you and Claire is far more complex.”

David let out a sound that might have been anything: a sigh, a grunt of wry laughter, self-disgust. She realized he hadn’t even heard her hasty apology.

“Love and praise,” he repeated. “Neither of which I have any talent whatsoever at expressing.”

Appalled, she began, “Oh, but…”

“My personal life, Ms. Blanchet, has not been an overwhelming success. Chances are, you’re right about why.” He looked at her without expression. “Perhaps we should go for dinner now.”

She couldn’t leave it at that. “Rebellious teenagers can happen to anyone.”

His eyes were opaque. “Can they?”

“And divorce sure as heck can. You weren’t the alcoholic.”

“Maybe I drove Miranda to drink.” He seemed to be musing, as though the subject were of merely academic interest.

“Did you?” she dared to ask, and then instantly wished she hadn’t. She already knew as much as she had to know to help Claire. The rest of this wasn’t her business. This man did not want her help, assuming she would have the slightest idea how to give it.

With sudden and ill-concealed impatience, he shrugged. “Who knows? That disaster is long past mending. Let’s stick to Claire, if you don’t mind.”

Translation: Keep your nose where it belongs. He might as well have waved a sign.

And he was absolutely right. She’d been nosy. Worse—although mercifully he couldn’t know—she had let herself be intrigued by David Whitcomb himself. Big mistake.

“I’ll go call the girls,” she said, rising hastily enough that she scared Lemieux, who shot out of the room. To top it off, Grace stepped carelessly on one of her shoes and lurched into the coffee table.

David started to rise. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Just being her usual graceful, elegant, self. Why, she mourned, had her mother not insisted on ballet lessons? Pretending she didn’t feel ridiculously self-conscious, she said, “I’ll tell you what. If you don’t mind waiting about three minutes, I’d like to change clothes. If we’re really going out for pizza, jeans sound more comfortable.” Besides, poor Lemieux had dampened a goodly portion of her skirt.

“No hurry.”

“Right.” She ducked behind the coffee table and grabbed her navy pumps. Aware of his gaze on her back, she clutched at her dignity and strolled out. Only when she was out of his sight did she race up the stairs, banging her knuckles against Linnet’s bedroom door as she passed.

“Girls! We’re leaving for dinner in about two minutes.”

She stripped off her panty hose and suit with record speed, sighed over the skirt, which would now have to be dry-cleaned, and pulled on jeans. At least a full minute was wasted by her agonizing over which shirt to choose. Finally, annoyed with herself, Grace grabbed a vee-neck cotton sweater in a luscious shade of soft coral, brushed her hair firmly and slipped on a pair of clogs.

Linnet’s door was still closed. Grace rapped again. “Girls?”

“Can’t we just phone in an order?” her daughter called. “We have homework.”

Now, why did that sound canned? Could it be that someone else had planted the words in Linnet’s mouth?

Without asking permission, Grace opened the door. Both girls were sprawled on the rug with a teen magazine open in front of them. Linnet made a jerky motion as though to push the magazine out of sight under the bed and then blushed when she realized she was too late.

“We do,” she said hurriedly. “Have homework, I mean. It’s just that my YM came today, and we were only looking.”

“That’s fine,” Grace said equably. “You’ll have plenty of time to do your homework later. But right now, Claire’s dad is waiting to take us out for pizza. And I’m waiting to hear all about the audition.”

“Oh!” Linnet’s face lit and then clouded as quickly. She jumped up. “It was so scary. Wasn’t it, Claire?”

Before the other girl could answer, Grace smiled at her. “I hear you were fabulous. Your dad says you’re a natural.”

The pretty dark-haired girl squirmed. “It, um, went okay. But it was scary.”

“I would never, in a million years, have gone out on stage in front of an audience at your age,” Grace admitted. “I’m amazed at you two.”

They blushed and mumbled something, not protesting again as she hustled them downstairs where David waited. He opened the rear passenger door of the sedan. Linnet climbed in with a smile of thanks. Claire, of course, sauntered to the other side and got in on her own, refusing to accept even a routine courtesy from her father.

Once in herself, Grace repeated her praise. “What about you?” she asked David. “Did you ever do any acting?”

“Actually, I did,” he stunned her by saying. “I even played Benedick in Much Ado, once upon a time.”

“You did?” his daughter exclaimed from the back-seat. She sounded as if he’d admitted to having flown to the moon or served time for murder one.

“Uh-huh.” He was smart enough to keep his response low-key. Starting the car and pulling on to the street, David continued, “I acted in both high school and college. Not during football season—I was a wide receiver. But the rest of the year…heck, I did A Streetcar Named Desire, Inherit the Wind…probably a dozen plays.”

“Well.” Grace tried very hard not to sound as poleaxed as Claire had. “I can see you as Benedick,” she heard herself saying, and realized it was true.

He shot her a glance. “Flailing against the inevitable?”

Marriage and love, he meant. Benedick had been determined never to take a wife. To his horror, his friends fell one by one to the lure of gentle women—or, perhaps more accurately, to the lure of the manors and acres with which fathers were willing to dower daughters of marriageable age. And Benedick, poor Benedick, loved a sharp-tongued spinster without even knowing it, until she taunted him into admitting to his weakness. And until she admitted to needing him.

Grace wondered if Benedick had tried marriage once before, and failed. Shakespeare hadn’t said, not that she recalled. Benedick might well have been a man who didn’t know how to tell his daughter he loved her. He was rather clumsy about expressing affection.

She could hardly say that, however. “I was thinking more of his cynicism.”

Could a man’s eyes smile when his mouth hadn’t curved?

“So you think I’m a cynic,” he murmured.

“What’s a cynic?” Linnet piped up.

“Somebody who thinks everything is going to turn out bad,” Claire said.

“Not exactly.” Grace smiled over her shoulder at the two girls. “That’s a pessimist. A cynic is more somebody who thinks everyone is really behaving selfishly no matter how it appears on the surface.”

“You mean, like saying Mother Teresa was only in it for the press?” Claire suggested.

“Uh…I have a feeling that even a cynic would have a tough time with her.” A laugh bubbling in her throat, Grace took a shy look at David. “Shall we ask our resident expert?”

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