A Father's Promise (Intimate Moments) Read online

  Sydney shifted the bundle of paperwork she was carrying as she drew nearer to the house. The nursery might be closed for the night, but there were still hours of work that needed to be done. Paperwork was the bane of her existence. Company or not, it still had to be done.

  Her work boots were caked with mud from her walk, and chunks of the stuff came off as she made her way over the brick patio to the small bench beneath the burning light. She carefully set down the folders of paperwork, all neatly fastened with rubber bands, and plopped herself down next to them. Over the years her mother and she had sat on this very bench after walking the field home, and had discussed business or future-expansion dreams. The hunter green bench with its chipped paint brought back lots of memories. All of them sweet.

  She bent down and untied her muddy boots. She and her mother used to joke about how pig farmers smelled better than them some of the time, especially when the two of them worked with certain mulches, like mushroom mulch. Today it had felt so wonderful to be outside in the sunshine and fresh air that she had helped Ian turn over a garden or two while adding a nice generous helping of mushroom mulch to enrich the soil. Everyone knew what mushrooms grew best in and tonight she smelled exactly like it.

  With a weary sigh she toed off her boots, leaned back against the white clapboard siding of the house and closed her eyes. The question that had been eating at her gut all afternoon returned to take a bite out of her heart. Why had her father invited Ellis to stay in their house? Thomas had never invited anyone to spend the night before. He and Julia had been proud of their home, but they hadn’t entertained a whole lot. The only people she could remember spending the night in the spare room had been some college friends of hers, during school breaks, and her mother’s sister, Rose, who visited every other year and lived in Minnesota. Beyond that, the room stood unused unless she or her mom needed to use the sewing machine that was in there.

  So what had compelled her father to offer the invitation to a virtual stranger? His past friendship with Catherine Carlisle might have something to do with it, but how close had it been? And had their friendship been strong enough to span thirty-two years and another generation? Could there be a chance, no matter how minute or how much her father denied it, that Ellis really was his son? Was that why her father had not wanted Ellis to leave earlier?

  She heard the kitchen door open, but she didn’t bother to open her eyes. It would be her aunt checking on her. Mary had probably seen her crossing the field from the window above the sink. “I’ll be in in a minute, Mary.” The aroma of roasted chicken drifted out the door and made her mouth water. “Something sure smells good.”

  “That’s what I told your aunt earlier.” Ellis Carlisle’s deep rich voice caressed the evening darkness like a lover’s hand.

  Her eyes flew open as she jerked away from the wall. “Oh, I thought you were my aunt.”

  “I’ve been mistaken for one or two people in my life, but never someone’s aunt.” Ellis closed the door behind him and stepped out onto the patio. “Mary saw you crossing the field and started to worry when you didn’t come in.”

  Ellis was wearing the same clothes from this morning, but now he looked more relaxed. More confident. She had to wonder if the invitation to stay a few days gave him that confidence, or was it her father’s willingness to take the blood test? “Are you all settled in?” If there was a slight edge to her question, she hoped he would chalk it up to a busy and tiring afternoon at the nursery.

  “It’s a lovely room, Sydney.” Ellis moved out of the circle of light and into the growing shadows around the edge of the patio. “If my staying here is making you uncomfortable, I’ll leave.”

  “It doesn’t matter how I feel about it.” She wanted Ellis to know she wasn’t going to be as easily accommodating as her father. They needed to set some ground rules.

  “It’s how Thomas feels, right?”

  She had to give Ellis credit for being on the ball. “Right.”

  “I’m sure your father wouldn’t want you to be uneasy with a stranger in the house.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t either. But for some reason he wants you to stay, so stay you shall.” Being an officer of the law for thirty-one years had honed her father’s perception of people to a fine skill. She had never once seen or known of her father misjudging a person. Thomas St. Claire trusted Ellis enough to invite him into their home for several nights. She just hoped that when her father lost his sight, he hadn’t lost his perception.

  “Whatever Thomas wants?”

  “My father gets.” It was that plain and simple. She wouldn’t and couldn’t go against her father on this. Thomas St. Claire had his reasons and at this point in their lives she couldn’t defy her father. Then again, she’d never defied her father before the accident. She had always been a good girl.

  “In case it makes you sleep better, let me assure you I’m not an ax murderer or anything. I’m not here to harm you or your father.”

  She stood up and chuckled uneasily as she reached for the pile of folders on the bench. She didn’t like the coincidence that they both had thought up the ax murderer bit. It was unnerving. He might not be there to harm them, but there was a very good possibility that he could rip apart what was left of her family.

  She glanced down at her dirt-streaked jeans and cringed. They were in worse shape than her sweatshirt. All in all, she was a mess and not in any mood for company. What she desperately needed was a shower. A long hot shower might ease some of the tension in her shoulders and possibly help the headache forming behind her eyes. As for the pain in her heart, she didn’t think that would ever go away.

  “I have to give you fair warning, Ellis.” She stepped over to the door and placed her hand on the brass knob. She wasn’t about to let Ellis think he had infiltrated her family so easily. Thomas might trust him, but her vote wasn’t in yet.

  “About what?” Ellis had stepped back into the circle of light. Even in the gloom of dusk and under the glare of a forty-watt bulb he looked handsome as all hell.

  “If you do turn out to have any murderous inclinations, I do know how to protect what’s mine. My father taught me how to shoot his thirty-eight.” She smiled sweetly as if blowing big holes into things gave her great pleasure. “I’ve been told I’m an excellent shot and I will guarantee you that I will hit what I’m aiming at.” Ellis managed to look both impressed and apprehensive. Good, let him chew on that one for a while. She turned around, opened the door and stepped into the warm inviting kitchen.

  Ellis felt a little strange being all nestled up, kind of cozy like in the den, with Thomas St. Claire and his daughter. The evening news was on television, but turned down low and no one was paying much attention to it. Everyone was more intent on digesting the meal they had just shared.

  Thomas had seemed friendly and open about his curiosity regarding Catherine Carlisle. All through dinner Thomas asked questions, none of them really bordering on being too personal. But not once did Ellis get the impression Thomas was interrogating him. And the older man had expertly broken up the questions with an array of stories about a young, seemingly shy Catherine.

  Thomas didn’t act as if he had anything to hide and had been quite open with his answers to the few questions Ellis had asked. Nor did Thomas act like a man who just had his unwanted thirty-two-year-old son show up on his doorstep demanding a blood sample. Thomas seemed relaxed and confident that he could prove he wasn’t Ellis’s father.

  Ellis had come to Coalsburg prepared to hate the man whom his mother had claimed fathered him and then abandoned them both. But he had been prepared to hide his hate and bargain with the devil himself to give his son a chance. He was finding it awfully hard to keep his hatred toward Thomas alive.

  The one thing he did notice about Thomas was that he ate very little of his dinner. It seemed a shame when Thomas’s sister, Mary, left to go home to her husband instead of staying to enjoy the meal with them. She was an excellent cook and he couldn’t rememb
er ever enjoying a meal more. Taste wasn’t the problem, but maybe Thomas’s appetite was. The man appeared to be dwindling away. Of course, losing his sight might also have something to do with it. He had always considered taste and smell the two most important senses when it came to eating. But then he’d never thought about what it must feel like to be totally blind. If he was surrounded by darkness and had to eat in a black void, there was a good chance he would lose his appetite too.

  His first pangs of sympathy for Thomas had come and gone over dinner. He had hardened his heart. He wasn’t staying here to feel sorry for the man. He was here to discover Thomas’s price to become Trevor’s bone marrow donor. Thomas’s one and only weakness, he had discovered so far, was his beautiful yet wary daughter, Sydney.

  Ellis glanced over at the other end of the couch where Sydney was poring over a computer printout and a small mountain of paperwork. Piles were neatly stacked on the coffee table in front of her. Two piles were on the floor, and a couple of folders were next to her on the couch. She seemed totally engrossed in the surrounding paperwork, but his gut was telling him she was very much aware of him and Thomas.

  Sydney St. Claire was becoming quite a distraction with that pair of glasses perched on her cute little nose. It made his fingers itch to pull off those round wire glasses and give her something more interesting to study besides dull computer printouts. Something like the human anatomy.

  His anatomy in particular.

  Sydney was an intriguing puzzle and suddenly he was wondering what it would feel like if he became a puzzle master. At first, he’s simply seen her as the protective and loving daughter of Thomas St. Claire. She was also, he’d learned from Thomas this afternoon, the sole owner of Ever Green Nursery since her mother had died.

  When he’d stepped onto the back patio earlier, he thought she’d smelled a little ripe, but hadn’t been positive until she had walked into the kitchen and Mary had laughingly shooed her upstairs to take a shower before dinner. Thomas had sat silently at the kitchen table until Mary had gently patted his hand. Only then did Thomas admit that the strange odor reminded him of his departed wife, Julia. At first Ellis hadn’t considered that a compliment, but then he remembered that Julia St. Claire had started the nursery. Julia and Sydney had stepped, worked or played in the same foul-smelling stuff. In his opinion it definitely took a different type of woman than what he was used to, to willingly smell like horse manure. His ex-wife, Ginny, had never even left their bedroom without dousing herself with French perfume. He shuddered to think what Ginny would have thought of Sydney’s choice of fragrances.

  The one thing he could say definitely about Sydney was she sure cleaned up nice. Real nice. She had replaced her work clothes after her shower with the same short-sleeved emerald green sweater she’d had on that morning, but this time she paired it with a flowing skirt of green-and-gold swirls. The silky skirt teased her calves and offered him an enticing peek of her long slim legs and her nicely shaped ankles. It made a man want to speculate what the rest of her looked like beneath all that silk:

  The last thing he needed was to be thinking about what Sydney would look like beneath the silk skirt, or denim jeans, or the emerald green sweater that clung so nicely to all the right curves. He surely didn’t need the dream he’d had last night, where her hair had been spread out across his pillow, her lips made swollen and red by his kisses and her legs wrapped around his hips. His overactive imagination, where Sydney was concerned, didn’t need any more visual stimulation.

  Sydney wasn’t the reason he was sitting in the same room with the man who had fathered him. Trevor was. Sydney was a dangerous distraction.

  “Did you get in touch with your son today?” Thomas’s voice broke the silence of the room.

  Ellis turned to Thomas, and looked away from the beautiful woman sitting on the opposite end of the couch. “Yes. I talked to him around lunchtime.”

  “He doesn’t mind you staying a couple of days?”

  He didn’t want to admit that his son’s voice had cracked with tears when he’d told him about the delay. He had felt so guilty for not being there for Trev, even though the boy was in the excellent and loving hands of Mrs. McCall. He didn’t know how to explain to his son how important this was. He could have gone back to Jenkintown and stayed with Trevor until the results of Thomas’s blood test were in. But if the miracle happened, and Thomas did match and then for some unknown reason decided not to be Trevor’s donor, his hands would have been tied. He wouldn’t have known enough about Thomas to know what kind of leverage he could use to convince him to change his mind. If Thomas was the kind of man to get an eighteen-year-old girl pregnant and then abandon her and the child without guilt, then who was to say he would go through with the transplant? Ellis couldn’t chance it. He wasn’t leaving Thomas’s side until the results of the test were in.

  Ellis shifted in the soft couch and remembered the bribe he had thrown his son. “Trevor was a little upset, but I promised him I would look for an orangutan.”

  “An orangutan?”

  “Trevor is in the middle of collecting what seems like a warehouse full of jungle animals. I was informed this morning he was still missing an orangutan.” He had Mrs. McCall to thank for pointing that one out to Trevor. “He has a gorilla and a chimpanzee, but no orangutan.”

  Thomas laughed. “Sounds like it’s a real zoo around your place.”

  “You have no idea. Some of the guys I work with heard about Trev’s collection and bought him a five-foot-long stuffed alligator. The damn thing sleeps in the bathtub because there’s no room left in Trev’s room. Scares the living tar out of me every time I turn on the light.”

  Sydney seemed to stare at her father for a long time before joining in the laughter. “Tell me, what does a five-foot-long alligator eat?”

  “Anything it wants.” He liked Sydney’s laugh. It was low and throaty and made his gut tighten just a little bit. He gave her a slow smile. “There’s usually some cute fuzzy teddy bear clamped between its vicious jaws.”

  “Does your son name his animals?” Sydney pulled her reading glasses off her nose and dropped them on the printout she had been reading. “I used to name all my animals when I was little.” He watched in wonder as her features softened into a warm, loving smile directed solely at her father. He knew instantly that she hadn’t heard her father laugh in a long time. A very long time.

  “She gave them all. sissy names like Lulu and Priscilla,” Thomas said. “Boys give their animals tough, mean names.” Thomas scratched his jaw and grinned. “I bet he named the alligator Killer or Terminator or something equally as revolting.”

  “I’m afraid not, Thomas. Trevor does name every one of his animals, but he believes all animals must have people names. The teddy-bear mangler is affectionately known as Fred.”

  “Fred,” sputtered Sydney. “Where did he come up with that one?”

  “Me.” Ellis shrugged. “Hey, I was running out of names. There’s Wilson the elephant, Lawrence the giraffe and Richard the lion.” He had to shake his head at the complexities of raising a five-year-old. Trevor had stumped his mind on more than one occasion. Like why is cheese yellow and how come real stars don’t look like the ones everyone draws? “It’s not easy naming an entire jungle.”

  “Minus one orangutan.” Thomas pushed his recliner back and raised his feet. “I don’t envy you, Ellis. Orangutans are pretty scarce in Coalsburg nowadays.” Thomas rubbed his chin. “Last time I saw one was in eightytwo. Or was it eighty-three?”

  Ellis shook his head at Thomas’s attempt at humor. He didn’t need Thomas to tell him how difficult it was locating a certain breed of animal Trevor had set his mind on. Lawrence, the four-foot-high giraffe, had been Federal Expressed from a catalog company based in California. It was a real shame he didn’t have the catalog with him. There might have been an orangutan in the potpourri of pets that the company carried. “Thanks, I’ll remember that tomorrow when I’m out on the safari.”

/>   “Try Two-By-Two on Main Street,” Sydney said. “They carry just about every animal under the sun.”

  “Two-By-Two?”

  “It’s a toy store named in honor of Noah’s Ark. Georgette Gentry owns it. If she doesn’t have an orangutan in stock, she can order you one.”

  “I forgot about Georgette’s place,” Thomas said. “It’s right there at the intersection of Main and Oak Streets. Heck, Ellis, you could probably find a half-dozen species of jungle animals you don’t even know about.”

  “So what you are telling me is that I’ll be going back home with more than an orangutan in the back seat.”

  “Count on it.” Sydney slipped on her glasses and picked up the folder sitting beside her. “Georgette has everything.” Her smile held pure mischief. “I bet she’ll even have a mate for Fred.”

  “That’s just what I need. Two alligators startling years off my life and mating in the tub.” If Trevor ever found out about Two-By-Two, Ellis would have to build an addition onto the boy’s bedroom. Maybe that isn’t such a bad idea, he thought. He could build Fred his own cage and maybe Trevor would be able to fit his collection all in one room so the occasional monkey or tiger scattered throughout the house would eventually find its way back home.

  “I have a suggestion. Why don’t you bring Trevor out here?” Thomas asked. “He’s more than welcome to stay here, we have plenty of room for him and one or two of his favorite animals.”