A Father's Promise (Intimate Moments) Read online

  “My heart’s not weak, but you’re invited to join me.” He tossed the ABC Jungle book into his basket. “If the shop is as good as you and Thomas said, I just might need your help carrying Trevor’s haul.”

  “It’s as good as we said.” She shook her head at his basket that was already half-full of stuff for Trevor. “I just hope your MasterCard is gold.”

  Ellis stood in the middle of the Two-By-Two shop and stared at the display that took up half of the left side of the store. Six fake trees, surrounded by twice as many stuffed animals, crowded the area. The bark and branches of the trees were made out of brown plastic and the leaves were mostly silk, but a few appeared to be plastic. Hanging by one hand from a large branch of a fake mahogany tree was the reason for his visit. A hairy reddish-brown orangutan with shiny black eyes stared back at him.

  He was the perfect orangutan.

  Trevor would go nuts when he added this magnificent specimen to his collection.

  There was only one problem. Next to his son’s perfect present hung his Mrs., complete with a darling little baby orangutan clinging to her back. He didn’t know if he had the courage to break up the family.

  He glanced around the shop. Surely a place that appeared to contain every animal known to man would have another orangutan. A single fellow without the added responsibility of a wife and baby. His gaze skidded over the animals and landed on Sydney. She was standing by the front door slowly running her hand up and down the long slender neck of a giraffe. The silent, lucky fellow stood a good foot taller than Sydney’s fiveand-a-half-foot height.

  Sydney had surprised him when she invited herself along to the toy store. She had been surprising him a lot. He knew why she had insisted on coming along into town; she was afraid he was pushing her out of Thomas’s life. But she was wrong. The only reason he had offered Thomas the lift was that he had to do some shopping anyway, and by the fatigue bagging beneath Sydney’s eyes he figured she could use the break. Sydney had been upset with him, and by her thinking, rightly so. So why offer to accompany him to the toy store? Why start up a conversation with him in the pharmacy in the first place? She could have done her shopping and he might not even have known she had been there.

  Last night, after he retired to his room, he had listened to her move around in her room for hours. The faint sounds coming from behind the wall that separated their two bedrooms had played havoc on his concentration. He had booted up his laptop and started working up a proposal for a major manufacturer when the first muffled sounds had reached his ears. He had stared at that creamcolored wall of the guest bedroom for a long time, wondering what she was doing. His imagination kicked into high gear as he started to think about what a woman like Sydney would wear to bed. His brain told him it was none of his business while his libido screamed “nothing.” Needless to say, the proposal he was supposed to be working on never made it past the first page.

  What little sleep he did get had been filled with dreams of a mahogany-haired beauty with soft green eyes and a welcoming smile that promised a man paradise. Sydney St. Claire had even controlled his dreams. The last thing he had needed this morning was to come down the stairs and find her filling out a pair of jeans to perfection and flipping delicious-smelling pancakes. He had felt himself start to drool, and for the life of him he hadn’t been sure which sight had caused that reaction. After a near-sleepless night he had been primed to devour something, and food hadn’t been his first priority.

  Thomas’s presence at the kitchen table had prevented him from making a fool of himself by seeing if Sydney’s mouth tasted as good in person as it had in his dreams. The pancakes, on the other hand, had been light, fluffy and delicious. As for her kisses, he had made a silent vow that he would taste at least one before he headed back to Jenkintown and his son.

  He walked over to Sydney and nodded at the giraffe. “Found a friend?” He watched as her hand trailed once more down the slender neck. Sydney had the shortest fingernails he had ever seen on a woman. They were rounded, clean and coated with clear polish that reflected the sunlight streaming in through the window. They were the kind of nails a man would want his lover to have. Two-inch bloodred claws made him nervous. He wanted the skin on his back to stay there and not be shredded off in the heat of passion.

  “The tag says his name is Gerald.” Sydney gave Gerald’s rump a friendly pat. “I would kill for eyelashes like his.”

  He glanced at Gerald’s thick, long and dark eyelashes. He chuckled. “They might complement his big dark eyes, but they’re sissy lashes.” He turned his head and studied her green eyes, which were filled with laughter and surrounded by dark lush lashes of her own. “I like your lashes better. They don’t look like spider legs.”

  Her “Oh” sounded breathless and slightly confused as if she wasn’t sure if she’d just received a compliment or not. It took her a moment to recover, and then she blinked rapidly and pulled her gaze away from his. “Did you find your orangutan?”

  He grinned. He liked making her flustered. She was beautiful when she was flustered. She was beautiful even when she wasn’t flustered. “Worse.”

  “Worse?”

  He nodded in the direction of the mahogany tree and its swinging primates. “I found a complete family of orangutans.” He gave a shrug. “I’m not into breaking up families.” He hoped his words put her at ease. He wasn’t in Coalsburg to break up her family and take Thomas away from her. He was here looking for a miracle.

  Sydney followed his gaze and smiled at the swinging trio. “They’re adorable. Your son would love them.” She walked closer, and stroked the baby orangutan’s back. “Of course you can’t split them up. They’re a family.”

  Ellis noticed that her hands did more talking than her mouth. Syndey was a “touchy” kind of person. He had to wonder what kind of lover she would make. His gut told him a fantastic one. Sydney’s hands alone would drive a man over the edge, time and time again. He forced his gaze away from her stroking fingers and took a deep breath.

  “Help me look for a single orangutan. One that wouldn’t take up an entire seat in the car.” Two-By-Two seemed to carry its share of huge, nearly life-size animals. There was barely any room left in Trevor’s room for a beanie-baby orangutan, let alone a daddy orangutan who looked to be a good forty inches tall.

  Sydney chuckled as she stepped away from the fake trees. “Georgette should have something a bit smaller.” Glancing at the woman behind the counter who was waiting on a young couple purchasing a small table-andchair set, she waved.

  The woman smiled in recognition and waved back. He couldn’t help noticing the wonderful table set. The table was hand-painted with a scene of Noah’s Ark and an assortment of animals. Each of the four chairs had a different back in the shape of an animal. There was an elephant, giraffe, tiger and monkey chair. Trevor would love it. He looked around the crowded shop and sighed. He was in trouble. Trevor would love just about everything in the shop.

  Ellis wasn’t surprised when an hour later he and Sydney drove to the police station to collect her father with the entire orangutan family taking up half the back seat of his car. Two-By-Two didn’t have any single, unattached orangutans. The pleasant and most accommodating owner, Georgette, had assured him she could order him one and that it would be there by the end of the week. He had decided not to wait and ended up with the entire family instead.

  He knew Trevor would love them all, but he also knew he was appeasing his own guilt for being away from his son. He couldn’t help it. He needed to be near Thomas St. Claire until the results came back. There was no law that could force Thomas to become his son’s bone marrow donor if there happened to be a match.

  Sydney had teased him unmercifully about being a marshmallow the entire time he was paying for his purchases. But she had been the one to insist on helping him carry the hairy creatures to his car. They had received more than one knowing yet sympathetic look on the way down the street to where he had parked.

  The pos
t office had been their next stop. He took two minutes to write Trevor a little note and then mailed him a package containing the two coloring books, crayons and the ABC Jungle book. It also contained two other books he had picked up at Two-By-Two.

  He had offered to wait in the car while Sydney went into the station to get her father. She had refused his offer and urged him to accompany her. It seemed their little shopping expedition had put her more at ease. He wasn’t sure if it was because she now considered him a marshmallow or if it had been his charming personality.

  He pulled open the heavy brick-red-colored door and allowed Sydney to precede him into the station. He hadn’t been picturing what the inside of the station would look like. If he had, Mayberry’s jail from “The Andy Griffith Show” would have sprung to mind. He wouldn’t have been far off.

  Coalsburg’s police station was the modern equivalent, only on a larger scale. The desks were huge battleships of gunmetal gray and each one was equipped with a computer terminal. A fax machine sat on top of an antique oak file cabinet, competing for the space with an overgrown plant. The floor was checkered in black-and-white tiles worn thin along the heavier-traveled paths. Tucked against the back wall were two cells that were empty. No Otis character was sleeping off his previous night’s excesses.

  Gathered around one of the scarred desks were three police officers, Thomas and two elderly citizens, all competing to get a word in edgewise during the animated conversation. By the smile stretching Thomas’s mouth, he would say this morning’s visit was a success.

  “Hey, Sydney, your dad says he’s been a good patient, hardly giving you any trouble. Is that true?” yelled one of the officers.

  “Every word of it.” Sydney hurried forward. “I’m back, Dad.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Thomas glared for a moment in the direction of the officer who had just yelled before turning back to the direction from which her voice had come. “Is Ellis with you?”

  “I’m here, Thomas.” He stood next to Sydney and nodded to the men in the room. Each one of them was giving him a suspicious look, as if trying to figure out not only who he was but what he was doing here with Sydney. He wasn’t going to satisfy their curiosity. His business in Coalsburg was personal as well as private.

  “Hey, Pete and Harvey, think back a good thirty years.” Thomas was directing his question to the two older men dressed in regular clothes. “Remember Cathy Carlisle? She was the minister’s daughter who took off right after she graduated from high school.”

  “Cute little thing, but shy, right?” answered one of the men.

  The other man snapped his fingers. “Now I remember her. She was a looker, in a quiet sort of way.” The man’s smile slowly faded. “Her parents were real protective of her, if I recall. I remember my younger brother, Paul, had a crush on her bad in high school, but her parents wouldn’t let her go out on a date.”

  Thomas waved his hand in Ellis’s direction. “Well, Harvey, this is Ellis Carlisle, Cathy’s son.”

  “Really, wow!” said the man whose younger brother had had a thing for his mother. “She got married and had a kid? That’s good. How is your mother, Ellis?”

  “She passed away twelve years ago.” Didn’t the man pick up on the fact that his mother had never married? After all, his last name was still Carlisle. When the two men spoke about his mother as a girl, they didn’t tell him anything he hadn’t already known. He knew his mother had been beautiful when she was young. But he didn’t know Harvey’s younger brother had been denied a date with her. It was a strange feeling to think about his mother as an object of unrequited love. It was strange to even imagine her dating.

  “Sorry to hear that, son,” Harvey said. Pete echoed his words.

  “Yes, well...” He didn’t know how to respond to their expressed sympathy. His mother never once mentioned their names, or even Paul’s. He just hoped Sydney or Thomas didn’t reveal the reason for this visit. “She once told me about living in Coalsburg and she mentioned Thomas’s name, so when I found myself in the area with a few days off, I figured I’d drop in on him.”

  “Mentioned Thomas’s name, did she?” Pete chuckled and elbowed Harvey in the side.

  “They lived right next door to each other, didn’t they, Pete?” Harvey said.

  Thomas looked flustered as some of the officers started to chuckle. “Hey, that’s the boy’s departed mother you’re chuckling about. Show some respect,” snapped Thomas in a tone of voice that demanded instant obedience.

  The knowing smirks died immediately. “Sorry,” mumbled a few of the officers as they all seemed to study the tips of their shoes.

  He was thankful, yet wasn’t surprised by Thomas’s support. He was beginning to know the man and with that knowledge grew crushing doubts. The Thomas St. Claire sitting in the police station defending his mother’s name wasn’t the type of man to get an innocent eighteen-year-old girl pregnant and then force her and their unborn child out of his life. It was a devastating thought. One he couldn’t bear to think on.

  He glanced at the officers. “No problem.” All of the officers were too young to have even known his mother. Not a one of them could have been born when his mother lived in Coalsburg.

  “Did you flnd what you were looking for, Ellis?” asked Thomas, who seemed to know that he didn’t want to discuss his mother or the past any longer.

  “Not only did he find one, Dad, he found an entire family.” Sydney moved over to stand next to her father and lightly placed her hand on his shoulder. “The three of them take up half of his back seat and the baby clings so sweetly to the mother.” Sydney’s hand squeezed his shoulder gently.

  “Three of what?” asked Harvey.

  “Orangutans,” replied Thomas with a straight face.

  “Orangutans?” sputtered Pete.

  Ellis willed himself not to laugh and spoil the moment. Thomas and Sydney had set it up perfectly. The police officers looked ready to pull their guns. Pete’s eyes grew to twice their normal size and Harvey appeared to be having a hard time saying whatever word was still lodged in his throat. He met Pete’s gaze and slowly nodded. “Yes, orangutans. A male, a female and their offspring.”

  “Holy sh—” The baby-faced officer glanced at Sydney and flushed a dull red. “I mean, holy cow! You got real orangutans in your car?”

  “It’s a Mercedes,” muttered Thomas as if that was the real shocker.

  By the expression on the men’s faces, Ellis would have to say Thomas had indeed outshocked them. Having three orangutans in a car was one thing, but having them in a Mercedes was totally something else.

  “A real Mercedes?” squeaked a young officer.

  Ellis had to chuckle at that one. He’d never heard of a fake Mercedes. “Yes it’s a real Mercedes.”

  “No way,” said another officer, who was dressed in a light blue shirt instead of a navy one like the other two officers. Ellis guessed he was the chief, though he still looked a little wet behind the ears. “No one in his right mind would put three orangutans in a car, let alone a Mercedes. Plus, there’s the other obvious fact.”

  “What’s that, John?” asked Thomas.

  Ellis got the feeling he’d just stepped into the middle of a pop quiz, and he had to wonder if that had been Thomas’s intention all along.

  “The nearest orangutans are probably in the Philadelphia Zoo and there was no way Sydney had time to drive there and back since she dropped you off.” John puffed out his chest and grinned like a little boy who had just aced his history exam.

  “So where did he get the orangutans?” Thomas’s questions weren’t done yet.

  “He never said they were real orangutans.” John squinted his eyes at him. The man reminded him of a twelve-year-old boy trying to imitate Clint Eastwood. Any moment now John was going to pull his gun and growl, “Go ahead, make my day. ” “I’ll say they are stuffed orangutans and he bought them from Georgette’s store.”

  He smiled and nodded his head at the chief’s deductions
. They were right on the money. “Very good.” Thomas beamed like a proud father. “Of course, I taught him everything he knows.” Thomas reached up and covered Sydney’s hand.

  The other officers looked slightly embarrassed for believing the story in the first place. The younger of the two said, “We knew they couldn’t have been real monkeys.”

  Pete and Harvey rolled their eyes while the chief shook his head and tried to boost his men’s morale. “I know you didn’t, but even if you did, it can be expected. We don’t get too many monkey cases around these parts. Once in a while we get a dog bite or a cat stuck up in a tree, but never monkeys riding around in a Mercedes.”

  While everyone chuckled at the young chiefs attempt to console his fellow officers, Thomas patted Sydney’s hand once more. “Are you ready to take me home now?”

  “Sure, Dad.” Sydney glanced at the chief and silently mouthed the words thank you.

  John shook his head and glanced at Thomas as he stood up. “Now that you’re out and about, Tom, are you going to stop in for a visit from time to time? You know you are always welcome.”

  “I might just do that,” Thomas said as he took hold of Sydney’s elbow and said his goodbyes to the other men.

  “Good.” John walked with them to the door. “You used to use me as a sounding board, remember?”

  “Two heads are usually better than one.” Thomas chuckled at some distant memory.

  “I could use that second head around here on plenty of occasions, Tom.” John reached out and touched Thomas’s arm. “I miss you around here. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

  Thomas seemed taken aback by John’s offer. “You wouldn’t mind some blind old fool sitting in on some cases?”

  “You are blind, Tom. I can’t argue that,” John said. “As for age, I guess that depends on who’s looking at you. To a five-year-old, rm old. As for being a fool? I never once thought you were a fool.” John’s voice cracked. “The department could still use you here, Tom.” John’s voice broke completely on his next sentence. “I still need you around here.”