Daddy To Be Determined

“I can pour my own milk if you don’t buy the really big bottle with the handle, and I know about looking both ways to cross the street, and I don’t cry when I fall down.”

“Yes, I know.”

“At Marianne’s I can swing higher than Austin O’Brian, and he’s six!”

She was the most adventurous child at the day care center—Marianne had told him that several times. Ben liked knowing she wasn’t afraid but hoped she’d acquire her sister’s sense of self-preservation before she did herself any real harm.

“I know you act like a big girl,” he praised her, taking her rag doll from the coverlet and putting it in her hands. “But you and Vanessa were such pretty babies that I still think of you that way sometimes.”

Roxie was a pushover for flattery. She smiled benevolently. “That’s okay, Daddy. What time is the lady going to wake up?”

“I don’t know, Rox. We’ll let tomorrow take care of itself, okay?”

Her pristine little brow puckered. “What does that mean?”

“It means we won’t worry about what happens tomorrow until it’s tomorrow.”

“Oh. Am I going to Marianne’s right after breakfast?”

“Yes. I have to put a new water heater in the building tomorrow and I’d like to get an early start. Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah. We’re going to make turkeys tomorrow by drawing our hands. That’s going to be fun.”

He tried to imagine how that would work and couldn’t. “Good.” He leaned down to hug her and got a big hug in return. “See you in the morning.”

“’Night, Daddy.”

“’Night, ba—” He caught himself just in time. “Good night, Roxie.”

“Wait!” She sat up again, and he swallowed frustration and a desperate need for a gin and tonic.

“Yeah?”

“You called Vannie a woman of…what was it?”

“Wisdom,” he replied.

“Yeah.” She grinned eagerly. “You have to call me something grown-up, too.”

He wasn’t sure he had a creative thought left in his head tonight.

“Ah…lady of adventure?”

She drew the blankets up to her chin and fell back giggling. “Now say good-night to me again.”

He leaned down, a hand on either side of her, and said, “Good night, oh lady of adventure.”

She looked pleased. “Good night, Daddy.”

He flipped off her light and pulled her door halfway closed. Then he backtracked to peer inside the guest room and found Natalie Browning still fast asleep, Starla clutched in her arms.

Her left leg, though, had kicked free of the blankets and now dangled over the side, covered in goose bumps from the cold. Ben groaned and went to his room for a pair of thermal underwear bottoms he wore when he worked outdoors in winter.

He carried them back to her room, wondering if he had the courage to put them on her. She was huddled under the covers as though cold, and he decided that he could be clinical about this in the interest of her welfare.

With swift but careful movements, he slipped the left leg of the longies over her foot, pushed the blankets aside to find her other foot and pulled the other leg on.

He almost hesitated when it came to slipping them over her hips but knew the less he thought about it, the better. He simply leaned over her with an arm under her waist, held her to him for the time it took to pull them over her bottom, then almost gasped with relief when he could lay her down again. He covered her quickly and left the room.

He went downstairs feeling as though the day had been thirty hours long. He mixed a gin and tonic, sat down on a bright red sofa he’d bought because the girls loved it, and propped his feet up on an old wooden garden bench he’d cleaned up and brought inside.

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.